Senior Design Projects
Each year, Mechanical Engineering seniors take a year-long design course taught by Laboratory Administrator Mike Johnson and Professor Greg Chirikjian, assisted by Senior Machine Shop Coordinator Eric Harden, the department's machinist. Students, working in groups of three or four, select small-scale engineering design problems suggested and funded by corporations, government, or non-profit agencies.
With funds provided by the sponsoring organization, the students must handle every aspect of the design process, from brainstorming possible solutions to preparing a budget, purchasing equipment, and putting together a final device or product. In the first semester, they present oral reports that describe how they settled on their final solution to the problem. At the end of the year, their final devices or products are presented and demonstrated in a special two-day series of presentations with industry representatives and ASME judges in attendance.
2005-2006 PROJECTS
PROJECT AWESOME (Alternating Wind Energy System for Optimizing Mechanical Efficiency)
Sponsor: Differential Dynamics, LLC
The objective of this project was to develop a way to modify a small, wind-driven generator, such as is used to provide electrical power and to charge up a battery onboard small pleasure boats. The modification involved introducing to the power train a new and unique power transmission mechanism invented by the sponsor, to thus allow more efficient utilzation of the ever-varying wind power that is the input to the system. This totally mechanical device is called the IVMC, standing for: Infinitely Variable Motion Control. A specialized version of the IVMC -- the IVT (Infinitely Variable Transmission) -- was used in Project AWESOME. It provides the ability to smoothly output a constant RPM and torque, despite variations in the input to the system. Project Designers Candace Brakewood, Giles Haysom, Michael Scheib, and Kwame Small created the means to provide a feedback-actuated power-transfer regulator for the IVT, which allowed for an increase in the useful wind-speed range, as well as a smoothing of the wind speed versus output power curve.
PROJECT
ePOD (electronic
Portable Office Desk)
Sponsor: The Volunteers for Medical Engineering and the JHU Department of Biomedical Engineering
This VME project was initiated by the need to enhance the ability of a disabled person to continue to be able to tele-commute to her job. Although plagued by an undiagnosed and progressive neuro-muscular condition, which greatly limited her stamina and ability and for moving, she has been able – albeit with growing difficulties -- to use her computer to perform her job. But, the arrangement of the components in her computer system had caused her to reach and twist in ways that were becoming ever more deleterious to her health. Thus, Team ePOD: Boyang Li, Olivia Mao, and Eiline Yoon was charged with designing and building a new, easy-to-reach layout for her computer system, and to build, first, a stationary desk to be used adjacent to the hospital bed in the bedroom in her home where she does most of her work. This desk allowed for easy access to her keyboard, to the ports on her computer and to a new printer-fax-scanner-copy machine. A second desk, a portable unit, was also built to support a laptop computer. This was to be used while the client was seated in her motorized, high-tech wheel chair in her living room. She often has visitors coming to work with her, and thus this portable desk allowed her to easily interact with them. It featured a built-in turntable that allowed the laptop to be spun around for viewing by all.
PROJECT
HIT IT (Heavy Instrumental Tool for Impact Testing)
Sponsor: Naval Surface Warfare Center,
Carderock Division
This team
was asked by their sponsor to develop a Charpy Impact test machine that
was capable of delivering up to 350 foot-pounds of energy to the
specimen to be fractured. The existing Charpy machine at the NSWC
materials laboratory only had a capacity of 240 ft-lb., insufficient to
test the newest, much tougher alloys the Navy wanted to investigate,
hence the motivation for this project. In addition, Team HIT IT was
tasked with devising a means to automaticllay raise the very heavy mass
that swings down to apply the fracturing load to the specimens. This
was accomplished by purchasing a used machine, adding weights to its
striking mass, and then retrofitting a motorized chain drive to lift the
now 78 pound weight. A new dial gauge, which is needed to indicate the
energy absorbed by the test specimen during fracture, also had to be
created. In addition, team members Omar Irizarry, Joe Lee, Ashley
Schwarzmann, and James Wu developed a means to indicate the force
created at the moment of impact of the mass with the specimen, and also
developed a means to dynamically measure the propagation of the crack
which is formed as the specimen is being fractured.
PROJECT IBRAIL(Inexpensive
BRAILler)
Sponsor: National Federation of the Blind
Although
last year’s Senior Design Project BPEN was not entirely successful in
reaching all of its objectives, it showed sufficient promise to motivate
the NFB to support this second effort to invent a new, lightweight,
inexpensive means for typing Braille. The objective of the NFB was to
have a design that could be mass-produced inexpensively and then
supplied to those in need, especially in third world countries where the
level of Braille illiteracy is shockingly high due to the unreachable
cost of existing Braille typing machines. After numerous design
iterations, and constant re-evaluations by the sponsor’s
representatives, Team IBRAIL eventually devised a simple-to-use but
operationally sophisticated hand-held unit that worked in conjunction
with the existing plastic slates that are now used with a one-point
stylus to slowly peck out Braille – one dot at a time. By providing the
ability to create up to all six dots in the Braille cell simultaneously,
this new device offered the means to create Braille up to six times
faster than before. Product designers
Emily Kumpel, Peter Lillehoj, Mark MacLeod, and Penny Robinson won this
year's ASME Best Senior Project award.
PROJECT
MISSILE (MIniaturized
Solar Sensor for Improved TeLEmetry)
Sponsor: U. S. Army
Research Laboratory
The need
fulfilled by Team MISSILE: Ovi Chatterjee, Christopher Kovalchick,
Kostas Sarafidis, and Daniel Touchette was to develop a means to allow
the USARL to study projectile trajectories on much smaller warhead
systems than they are now able to test. The requirements for this
project asked for a rugged device that was half the size of the existing
sun sensors that are now being used. Other requested improvements
included achieving a design with less parts and an easier to assemble
method, and at less cost. The new sensor managed to reduce the number
of parts from 12 to only seven, and used a simplified top-down method
for assembly. Testing of a half-scale mock-up showed that this new
design, which features a neutral density filter element to control the
amount of light reaching the photocell – instead of the existing set of
difficult-to-install and costly obstructing pillars -- was able to
output signals that mimicked those required for this application.
PROJECT MRMAST (Mission Reconfigurable Mast for Antenna and Sensor Testing)
Sponsor: Lockheed Martin Corporation
Although
the name of this project suggests yet another follow-up to some previous
ship-borne mast projects for LMC, the mission of this year’s Team MRMAST:
Lauren Denk, Ondrej Juhasz, Jon Kracht, and Peter Kuhn was very
different. Their mast, which will be used at sea aboard an experimental
ship called the Sea Slice, has the job of supporting numerous
instruments such as radar units, other sensors, and antennas, which at
times would be under evaluation by the Navy. The problem to be solved
was to find a way to avoid having to interrupt a sea trial and return
(at great expense) to the Navy shipyard in San Diego each time even a
small change or repair was needed with one of those instruments, perched
35 feet above the deck. This student design team designed and built a
full-scale, simple but very rugged mast system, fully-equipped to be
installed on the Sea Slice. It consisted of two main vertical members
affixed to the face of the ship’s deckhouse, with a movable carriage
carrying the instruments that could easily be moved up and down since it
was powered by cables from a seaworthy hoist. Thus, even at sea the
instruments could be brought down to deck level and worked on by the
ship’s crew.
PROJECT
RADAR (Real-Time Antenna Deflection Analysis & Readings)
Sponsor: Northrop Grumman Corporation
The
challenge presented to Team RADAR: Ryan Chapman, Tristan Flanzer, David
Helmer, and Byong Hwang was to develop a methodology for allowing
corrections to be made to radar signals when a large, ship-borne antenna
array suffers mechanical distortions due to extreme ship’s motions in
heavy seas. The approach suggested by NGC, and successfully carried out
by this team, was first to create a finite-element model (FEM) of a
scaled-down portion of the full antenna array. The full-sized phased
array antenna array was 12 by 12 feet, and contained 36 individual radar
subarrays connected together in a 6 by 6 matrix. The FEM and physical
model created under this project had a 3 by 3 subarray matrix and was 3
by 3 feet in size. Comparisons were then made between the vibrational
shapes predicted by the FEM and the actual shapes, measured with
accelerometers, when the physical model was shaken in a special test set
up. Good agreement was seen between the two. NGC will now take these
results and feed them into software they are developing to make the
needed compensations to the radar signals for the full-scale system.
PROJECT
TAGGERS (TAGGing
AErial Remote System)
Sponsor: JHU Applied Physics Laboratory
It is an
unfortunate fact that our country must be ever more creative in its
battles against crime and terrorism. One such tool now under
development is a means to mark suspect vehicles (cars, ships) by using a
remotely-piloted unmanned air-vehicle (RPV). Team TAGGERS: Ashwini
Anjanappa, Reuben Brewer, Mark Porto, and Benjamin Soto was tasked to
create the first phase of this developing program, now ongoing at the
JHU APL. This student team assembled a small, unmanned helicopter from
a hobby kit, and then attempted to retrofit it with the equipment needed
to aim and shoot a paint ball gun at the target. An ultra-small video
camera and a range finder complemented this part of the system. A
special gimbal was designed and built that allowed the two
remotely-controlled degrees of motion needed for aiming the gun. Tests
were run to determine the best place to strike a car and cause minimal
noise and vehicle damage – it was determined to be the trunk area. The
sponsor will now take this system and proceed to introduce the desired
fully automated operation on another RPV.
Check out the 2009-2010 PROJECTS
Check out the 2008-2009 PROJECTS
Check out the 2007-2008 PROJECTS
Check out the 2006-2007 PROJECTS
Check out the 2004-2005 PROJECTS
Check out the 2003-2004 PROJECTS