Senior Design Projects Spring 2012
Power-Assisted Door Safety System for Armored Vehicles
Team Members
Keith Helminen, Mark Holmstrom, Erik Peterson, Brett Schiavo, and Sean Keyes, Electrical Engineering
Advisor
Donald Secor
Sponsor
BAE Systems
Project Overview
BAE Systems has identified the need to increase safety and situational awareness for vehicles utilizing power-assisted doors. Safety needs to be improved to ensure that accidental damage to equipment or, more importantly, injury to personnel, does not occur due to powered-door operation. Situational awareness of the vehicle’s operators should also be improved by doubling the function of the safety system for uses such as detecting blind spots.
Remote Water-Sensing Hydrant
Team Members
Adam Geml, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Michael Mermuys, Mechanical Engineering; Xin Hao, Jonathon Nelson, Xingbo Song, and Zhi Zeng, Electrical Engineering
Advisor
Dr. Donald Secor
Sponsor
EJ
Project Overview
The scope of this project is focused on the dry barrel hydrant and creating and packaging a prototyped sensor to wirelessly transmit a signal if the hydrant contains water. The goal is to reduce or eliminate the number of hydrants damaged due to freezing weather.
Breaker Wear Monitoring
Team Members
Kyle Desser, Keith Diels, John Gibbs, Craig Helminen, Logan Pirkola, and Nicole Talbot, Electrical Engineering
Advisor
Sponsor
ITC Holdings
Project Overview
The objective of our project is to improve circuit breaker maintenance efficiency. The goal of our project is to identify a monitor with the capability to accurately measure accumulated breaker wear. Once a device has been identified, a method will be provided for the breaker-wear monitor to detect when a particular circuit breaker needs maintenance.
Solar-Powered Patio Umbrella
Team Members
Joseph R. Dowdle, Xiaolei Zhang, Douglas Sims, and Erik Griffith, Electrical Engineering
Advisor
Sponsor
3M
Project Overview
As solar technology gains popularity, there are emerging needs for ways to harness solar energy. One such area involves utilizing solar energy to provide light once sunlight becomes scarce or no longer available. With an interest in exploring this developing area, 3M seeks to assess the commercial viability of designing and building a solar-powered umbrella that is capable of using solar energy to power a lighting system. Additionally, the umbrella system should be capable of harnessing enough solar energy to provide four hours of reading light and have a manufacturing cost of $50 and a mean time before failure of at least five years.
RFID-Based Safety System
Team Members
Matt Rathbun, Computer Engineering, Yan Guo, Bin Zhou, and Mingzi Li, Electrical Engineering.
Advisor
Donald Secor
Sponsor
ArcelorMittal
Project Overview
We are planning to design a system that automatically logs when employees come in or out of dangerous areas. As the sponsor has requested, this capability won’t use a card swipe or a two-way radio. Instead, we will use RFID scanners in doorways and RFID tags that will be worn or held by employees. This all depends on the working environment and the specific needs of the sponsor, such as what type of RFID device they prefer or what they need the scanning range to be.
Leak Test Calibration Cart
Team Members
Aaron Friedsberg, Electrical Engineering; Adam Smith and Cody Finch, Computer Engineering; and Kyle King, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Advisor
Dr. Duane Bucheger, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sponsor
Fives Cinetic Automation Corp.
Project Overview
Our goal is to create a portable cart that moves easily from one station to another in a factory setting and performs three types of leak tests: pressure decay, mass flow, and mass spectrometer. The cart will perform the leak tests and compare the results to other stationary testers, so they can be calibrated if necessary.
Synchronous Belt Transmission Error Test Bench
Team Members
Ryan Helminen, Forrest Tingo, and Brittany Breitmeyer, Electrical Engineering; Patrick Haas, Mechanical Engineering; and Blake Latchford, Computer Engineering
Advisor
John Lukowski, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Sponsor
Nexteer Automotive
Project Overview
The goal of this project is to measure the transmission error between two pulleys attached to a synchronous belt. One pulley will be driven by an electrical motor, and the other will be permitted to spin freely. Transmission error is defined as the difference in angle between the two pulleys’ angle at an instance in time. A tension should be able to be applied to the belt by an idler or by a force separating the pulleys.
Nexteer REPS: Synchronous Belt Tension Measurement
Team Members
Jacob Augsburger, Matthew Sundquist and Shijun Liu, Electrical Engineering; Matt Stilwell and Emily Paquette, Mechanical Engineering; and Matt Johns, Computer Engineering
Advisor
Dr. Duane Bucheger
Sponsor
Nexteer
Project Overview
Our goal is to determine the most efficient and effective way of finding the belt tension in Nexteer’s rack-assist, electric-power steering gears. We are accomplishing this through the design and fabrication of a specialized testing stand and multiple measurement devices that utilize a variety of methods to accurately determine the tension in the belt. This tension is an important component in the operation of these gears, and the team has worked hard in acquiring the best results possible through research and testing of methods that use displacement and force, instead of harmonics, to find tension.
