THE 2003-2004 PROJECTS

Each year ME seniors take a year-long design course taught by Senior Lecturer Andy Conn and assisted by Undergraduate Lab Coordinator, Mike Johnson, and the ME Department’s machinist, John Woomer. Students working in groups of two to four select small-scale engineering design problems suggested and funded by corporations, government, or non-profit agencies. With funding allocated at a base value of typically $10,000 per project, the students must handle every aspect of the design process, from brainstorming possible solutions, to preparing a budget, to purchasing equipment and putting together a final device or product. In the first semester, they present oral reports describing 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 present. The ASME judges selected Team AVID as this year’s award-winning project.

PROJECT ARMD (Advanced Robotic Mine Detection)
Sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Although numerous devices are available for detecting mines in relatively open and accessible sites such as along roads, what was needed was an inexpensive, easy-to-maintain system useable in third world countries to locate mines in rough terrain.  Examples are farms and orchards, implanted with mines from wars long ago and now overgrown.  These places cannot be used to grow food by anyone until the mines are removed, a dangerous and painfully slow process with existing equipment.  Team ARMD, consisting of designers Edoardo Biancheri, Dan Hake, Dat Truong, and Landon Unninayar was thus tasked by APL with devising a system that can travel through areas that have been overgrown by grass, weeds and bushes, and detect mines while the operator is as far away as possible.  This team has devised a remotely controlled two-vehicle system, with each treaded vehicle resembling a miniature army tank.  The metal detector is in the second vehicle, while the front vehicle has the motors to propel the system, plus a TV camera and the steering controls.  If a possible mine is detected, the operator sends an RF signal to mark the site with a burst of paint.

PROJECT AVID (A  Vortex  Inhibiting  Device)
Sponsored by Baltimore Aircoil Company
This project was motivated by the problem that BAC had in getting sufficient water flow rates out of the sumps (water collection tanks) in their cooling towers. These evaporative cooling systems use large pumps to transfer the water to and from the sites or equipment being cooled.  The problem being addressed here is with vortices that form as the water exits the sump.  When these vortices rise to the free surface, air is sucked in, thus potentially damaging the pump. This has forced BAC to have these pumps be run at less than optimum speeds for transferring the cooling water. To solve this problem David Albright, Eric Romanczyk, and Hui Son, the members of the ASME Award Winning Team AVID built a full-scale mockup of the cooling water loop.  Tests run with this experimental flow loop, at various flow velocities, served to simulate flow situations in the actual cooling towers and allowed various vortex-eliminating designs to be evaluated.  A computer-based model was developed to allow comparisons with test data, and then to allow predictions for other cooling tower systems.

PROJECT BETA (Banding  Elimination  Test  Apparatus)
Sponsored by Sun Automation, Inc.
Steve Edwards, Goldie Katzoff, and David Sparks, who comprised Team BETA were asked by their sponsor, a manufacturer of the machinery used by box manufacturers, to solve an extremely daunting problem, namely how to eliminate the phenomenon known as “banding” which arises when corrugated board is being processed to become a corrugated paper box.  Banding is very often seen when these boards, at very high speeds, are being printed.  These streaks or bands of lighter and darker ink impressions are usually observed when large solid areas of color are attempted to be printed.  Team BETA designed and built a half-scale, fully operational replica of a print station, and used instrumentation, such as accelerometers and a high speed digital video camera, to seek the cause for banding.

PROJECT CRASH (Contusion  Resisting  Automobile  Safety  for  Humans)
Sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Injury Research and Prevention
The objective of this project was to develop a way to protect “frail humans” during an automobile crash.  By frail, we are referring to persons suffering from ailments such as Osteogenesis Imperfecta (“brittle bone disease”), Osteoporosis (bone-mass loss) and Hemophilia.  Each of these persons can suffer greatly from the forces they would be subjected to when using the ordinary seat-lap belts commonly installed in cars.  Extensive research by this team into the literature on crash dynamics and physiology, and discussions with experts led to the establishment of impact mitigation standards.  Team CRASH then ran extensive tests in a special testing apparatus with various layers of foam, until they determined the foam-layer combination that best reduced the deceleration due to impacts.  A wearable vest was then designed, which was fitted with pockets where the foam layers could be inserted.  A purchased harness, with wide straps and a quick-locking retraction mechanism, completed the system.  The team consisted of members Rich Chen, Patrick Danaher, and Ryan Lavender.

PROJECT GOLD (Ground  Operated  Laser  Designator)
Sponsored by Lockheed Martin Corporation
The need to be fulfilled by Team GOLD: Gautam Jadhav, Bryan Brilhart, Bob Myers, and Michelle Clarke was a means to rapidly and accurately maintain the aim of a laser upon an object on the ground, while the unmanned air vehicle (UAV) carrying this designating equipment circled the object.  For instance, this technique could be used to guide a ground rescue team to the site of a lost child in the woods after the cameras on the UAV had spotted the child for the controller.  The size and weight limitations were very stringent, but a small device was successfully designed which used two small motors affixed with angular-position encoders and tightly machined sets of gears to complete the laser-steering mechanism.   Software also had to be developed which could take inputs pertaining to the UAV’s continually changing position, and then integrate these inputs with the known base-line coordinates of the object being designated to keep the laser continuously aimed at the object on the ground.

PROJECT MANGLE (Mechanical  Apparatus  for  Northrop  Grumman  Linking  Electronics)
Sponsored by Northrop Grumman Corporation
The need to rigorously test a new, innovative and inexpensive way to make numerous radio-frequency (RF) connections for a multi-array radar antenna was the motivation for this project.  This team was tasked with creating a “torture testing” system which would allow the automated cycling of the two main components of this new connecting invention, namely the “module” and the “circuit board.”  The purpose of this test system was to repeatedly make and break the connection between the module and the circuit board, each of which carried multiple RF paths, and then automatically check to see if each of the connections were adequately made each time.  The members of Team MANGLE:  Rob Curry, Sara Marten, and Mike Sharma thus built a computer-controlled system with air-powered actuators to move the module into contact with the circuit board, and then to sequentially verify the strength of the transmitted RF signal along each path.  Clamping and lock-in means were also created.

PROJECT MAST (Mechanically  Actuated  Sensor  Tower)
Sponsored by Lockheed Martin Corporation
This very challenging project involved providing a means for a small Navy surveillance boat to perform its mission of locating enemy ships, while minimizing the chances of itself being observed.  To accomplish this, an elevatable sensor mast was created.  The mast, with radar and thermal sensors affixed, lay flat on the deck when not in use.  The operator, at a control console in the cabin, activated the system, first causing the mast to be tilted upward perpendicular to the deck.  A second set of drive-train components then took the power from the single motor in the system and, via a winch device, elevated the mast to its full required height of 12-feet.  Team MAST, including designers Henry Mowry Cook III, Eric Jabart, Mo Ramadan, and Brian Tursi built and tested a full-scale working model of this device, which involved a record number of individual parts, significant amounts of electronic components, plus specially programmed controlling software.

PROJECT ROCK (Robby’s  Oscillating  Care  Kontraption)
Sponsored by: The Volunteers for Medical Engineering and the JHU Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Team ROCK, who is Ezel "C. J." Baltali, Rachel Callaway, Eric Simone, and Aaron Stackhouse was given the challenge of creating a way for Robby, a wheel-chair-bound pre-teen victim of cerebral palsy, to enjoy swinging.  His mother had learned that swinging was a very enjoyable and therapeutic experience for Robby, but with three other kids, she could not devote too much time to the difficult task of removing him from his special wheelchair and installing his rather helpless body into the swing.  Thus, this team devised a way for Robby, while in his wheelchair, to enjoy swinging.  All his mother needs to do is wheel the chair under the swinging mechanism and attach the chairs support bars to the swing chains.  Then with a push of a button, the legs on the swing are caused to elevate by means of pneumatic cylinders concealed in each of the four legs. When the required height is reached, a motor is then activated to start the swinging experience.  To convert the rotary motion of the motor to the needed swinging action, the motor output was connected through a gearbox to a crankshaft.  This crankshaft acted on a tilting rocker-arm to thus cause the swing to be actuated.

PROJECT VIPER (Very  Important  Plane  Enabling  Reconnaissance)
Sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory
The U.S. Army required a portable, self-contained means to launch a small, unmanned air vehicle (UAV), for battlefield reconnaissance. This UAV will be equipped with a TV camera that will relay information back to the troops in advance of their moving on to the next objective.  The UAV was to be transportable on a vehicle such as a Humvee, and it had to be easy to set up and launch the UAV, to allow it to fly out and perform its mission.  Team VIPER devised a launch tube that was powered by a set of strong elastic cords, which got the UAV up to a sufficient height where the propeller could be turned on.  The team:  Danielle Soya, Arturo Martinez, Oliver Buccicone, and Brent Golden designed an entirely new UAV that had a wing aligned along the axis of the fuselage while being launched.  The wing was then was caused to rotate 90 degrees into the flying position after launch was completed.

Check out the 2004-2005 PROJECTS!

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