MAE

Background

Domestic Hot Water for a Sustainable ADU is an undergraduate design project for Sustainability Decathlon (OCSD23) which is a collegiate design-and-build competition held in Orange County focused on sustainable housing. It challenges university teams to design and build model solar-powered homes that address climate change and California’s housing needs.

The elderly commonly rely on canes and walkers for balance and gait support. Similarly, crutches are commonly used after injury. All of these devices are cumbersome, force unnatural gait patterns, and greatly limit their arms. Several exoskeleton designs have been proposed in research, but they tend to be heavy and actively controlled (i.e. with motors). They also are difficult to don and doff, which does not make them very user friendly. The goal of this project is to design a passive semi-rigid assistive device that will provide moderate stability to gait and assist walking activities, while not restricting arm use.

Integrating renewable energy sources into everyday life is of paramount importance to a self-sustainable world. The Fall 2022 Small Scale Wind Turbine (SCWT) is a project that will design a portable wind turbine that harnesses wind as a natural resource to power devices. Prioritizing portability and efficiency, our turbine is designed to power camping appliances with a single overnight charge. Our design will be lightweight, cost-efficient, and easily accessible to display its practicality in camping situations. The SCWT project consists of designing and manufacturing processes to produce a turbine designed to meet engineering standards. 

The project's aim is to test and validate XFOIL, a numerical analysis tool that calculates the lift and drag forces experienced by 2D airfoil shapes. The goal of this team is to design and execute an experimental campaign to acquire reliable data for the validation of XFOIL's numerical prediction method.  The campaign involves a set of carefully coordinated wind tunnel experiments and numerical calculations to document methods and results.  With the application of the acquired data, XFOIL’s predictability is assessed through the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) framework adapted to assess modeling and simulation methods.

The Horizontal Stepping Robot is a rehabilitation tool that will allow researchers to study epidural electrical stimulation (EES), with the aim of allowing patients with spinal cord injury to regain the ability to walk. The robot will be rolled up to the patient's bed, allowing for training while the patient is still hospitalized, and support the weight of their legs to allow an “air stepping” motion. It will record the patient leg motion and allow for tracking of the patient's progress through rehabilitation. The current approach is to use pulleys, springs, and cables to design a passive system that hangs patients' legs and assists leg motion while using the microprocessor, Arduino, to collect data and attract the motion of patients' legs.

Our name comes from the e-Human Powered Vehicle Competition (HPVC), hosted by the national organization American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) which we are participating in. We want to establish this new UCI senior design project as a recurring project that anyone can join. In addition, we are partnered with ASME at UCI to help get lower-classmen involved in the process so they can gain some hands-on experience necessary for succeeding in their engineering careers.

ASME hosts an endurance race that runs for 2.5 hours with many obstacles such as tight turns, uneven terrain, and inclines. HPVC at UCI will design and manufacture a recumbent, tadpole bike with a sufficient rollover protection system to keep the driver safe in case of an accident during the endurance race. The bike consists of 5 major systems: braking system, drive system, steering system, rollover protection system, and electrical system. The team has been split into three subteams: statics which consists of the bike frame, rollover protection system and seat; dynamics which consists of steering, braking, and driving; electrical which consists of the battery, electrical box and electric motor. Overall, the team aims to produce a bike that is ergonomic, safe, and easy to handle.

Renewable energy remains to be a sustainable source, exhibiting benefits such as low environmental impact and ability to be naturally replenished. SCWT Design sets out to reintroduce the utilization of wind energy by creating a small-scale portable wind turbine that demonstrates practicality for camping applications. The focuses, placed on portability and functionality, draw to a design which demonstrate capabilities for providing electrity for ordinary charging portable appliances in a camping setting (2 cell phones, camera battery charger, flashlight, backup battery bank). SCWT Design, consisting of 5 members, plans to utilize the engineering process to produce a design feasible to meet the forementioned capabilities.

UCI Cargo Plane is an undergraduate design project based on the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Aero Design West Competition. The goal of this project is to design, manufacture, and test an electric RC aircraft with Short Takeoff and Landing (STOL) capabilities. 

Project Background:

For this Spring quarter project, Team MorfNX will be utilizing NX’s topology optimization tool to redesign an air duct for the 2008X X-series aircraft oil cooler. The team will examine the entire engine and cooling assembly as a whole, figuring out the maximum amount of volume the air duct can occupy (defining the design space), place geometry constraints, and boundary conditions in which the iterations of design will be fine-tuned and simulated using StarCCM+. By combining the power of topology optimization and computational fluid analysis, the team will come up with a design that can maximize the airflow for the cooling system.

Project Background:

For this Spring quarter project, Team MorfNX will be utilizing NX’s topology optimization tool to redesign an air duct for the 2008X X-series aircraft oil cooler. The team will examine the entire engine and cooling assembly as a whole, figuring out the maximum amount of volume the air duct can occupy (defining the design space), place geometry constraints, and boundary conditions in which the iterations of design will be fine-tuned and simulated using StarCCM+. By combining the power of topology optimization and computational fluid analysis, the team will come up with a design that can maximize the airflow for the cooling system.

Project Background:

For this Spring quarter project, Team MorfNX will be utilizing NX’s topology optimization tool to redesign an air duct for the 2008X X-series aircraft oil cooler. The team will examine the entire engine and cooling assembly as a whole, figuring out the maximum amount of volume the air duct can occupy (defining the design space), place geometry constraints, and boundary conditions in which the iterations of design will be fine-tuned and simulated using StarCCM+. By combining the power of topology optimization and computational fluid analysis, the team will come up with a design that can maximize the airflow for the cooling system.

The Active Antfins project works with the UCI Rocket Project Solids Team to  maximize the apogee of solid-propellant rockets. Due to external factors such as wind drift and changes in mass due to fuel burn, rockets can become unstable. To combat this, we are designing a module to keep a rocket stable by actively controlling the fins of the rocket. The Active Antins will control the rocket fins using servos, an IMU and a Microcontroller. This control module is designed around an existing solid-propellant rocket from the team. Additionally, it can be adjusted to fit into new rockets that the team develops in the future.

The solid rocket team will be designing a high power rocket to compete in the 10,000 ft Spaceport America cup next year. They also plan to develop their own solid propellant rocket motors in the near future. In order to verify the functionality of both their selected motor for the upcoming competition and the custom motors they are planning to build, the solids team will need a specialized test stand to safely measure and record the thrust of high powered rocket motors. Our goal is to design a compact, portable test stand that can characterize the thrust curves of a wide range of rocket motors with maximum stability. 

During the spring quarter, our team will design a human-powered vehicle able to be ridden by one person that can complete one or two competitions held by ASME, which include speed competition, endurance competition, and a practical usage exam. Although no actual prototype will be made this quarter, the project team is required to come up with a completely designed plan for the human-powered vehicle's assembly and testing. The Anteater-Power Vehicle has six people, each two team members from a subteam which includes Chassis, Human interface, and Powertrain. Three subteams will be responsible for one sub-system of the human-powered vehicle and collabrate together to complete the project. 

TBD

Our goal is to have a system that enables rapid, accurate tracking of the UAV in flight and deliver the relevant metrics to the ground station team so they can conduct their work more efficiently. Our plan is to create a system that supports the airMAX NanostationM 5Ghz station by allowing it to rotate 180 degrees around a vertical axis and 90 degrees across an axis tangent to the surface of the earth, relies on an independent power supply, and delivers angle adjustment information to the ground station team using code developed by the greater UAV Forge project.

The UCI rocket project seeks a method to create custom rocket tubes in-house rather than outsourcing designs to third party providers. Additionally, commercial off-the-shelf rocket tubes for various diameters are costly or not available to meet specific requirements developed by the rocket project. Therefore, the 189 composite winder team will work to develop a composite winder system capable of directly and accurately applying composite fibers onto metal mandrels, pressure vessels (such as fuel and oxidizer tanks), and rocket tube skins varying from three to eleven inches in diameter. Composite materials are preferred for this project due to their high strength to weight capabilities which serves as a reinforcement to existing rocket skins and pressure vessels during high stress flight. The overall system aims to be constructed with a total budget of $800 utilizing components that are commercially available, if components must be custom manufactured, they should be simple to machine.  

Over the world developing countries suffer from unsanitary water causing diseases such as cholera and dysentery. Our team Clean H20 2 GO is developing a portable hand pump water filtration system that is affordable, sustainable, and effective. For our design we are utilizing mechanical and carbon capture filters to eliminate most of the sediments and bacteria found in river water. Our system should be able to hold the minimum of 10 liters of clean drinking water to provide for a family of four. The mechansim for our design is a vaccum pump to efficiently filter the water and have an optimized flow rate to achieve full capacity in under 5 to 10 minutes. Other key components we look to optimize is low maintenance work and manufacturing cost to provide easy use for these communitites.

The World Health Organization published that more than 884 million people did not have access to safe drinking water in 2017. Unsanitary water can cause different diseases like cholera, dysentery, and polio. The goal of this project is to design and build an affordable, portable, and sustainable water filtration system that can provide clean drinking water for one day for a family of four in developing countries. This team will design a system that uses electric power to operate a pump or similar device to move water from the source to the designed filtration system.

The Autonomous Underwater vehicle project is created by a student-led group of Mechanical Engineering students working with Professor Camilo Velez to study and manufacture a swarm of small scale robots that can swim underwater. Our inspiration for this project stems from the idea that nano robots can work together to detect, isolate and remove a single cell in the human body. In an effort to work towards this idea, our team is set to construct a number of small-scale robots that can autonomously navigate 3-Dimensionally in a swimming pool to detect and attach magnetically to a specified item.

Background

Students that are a part of the UC Irvine Intelligent Ground Vehicle Team will design and test an autonomous ground vehicle that is able to navigate through an obstacle course. The technologies used in IGV encompass a wide range of applications in engineering including military mobility, intelligent transport systems, and manufacturing. 

Goals and Objectives 

Like many professional organizations at UCI, FUSION takes pride in providing experience and opportunities to eager students. We believe in Social support, Professionalism, Academia, Culture, and Engineering as pillars for our club. Each of these pillars are deeply embedded in our annual engineering projects. Since the beginning of this club, iterations of the club projects gained recognition for providing valuable experience and lessons for the participating students. This year, FUSION presents the 2021-2022 Engineering Project: Hungry Hungry Hippos.

The RF-controlled Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) is designed to perform jobs without a human operator onboard. Each RF-controlled UGV is designed differently to perform different tasks. An RF-controlled UGV would be perfect for the inspection of steel structures because the job could be very dangerous to human operators, and UGVs can be used for both civilians and military projects. A UGV makes it possible to perform inspections under realistic time constraints, where not only human errors will be avoided but also in locations human being would normally be unable to go. This process of steel inspection is multipurpose, meaning the UGV design will be able to accomplish multiple jobs. Furthermore, the advantages of the UGV is that it reduces injuries and fatalities in all parts of the steel inspection process.

Project Background:

For the winter and spring quarters of 2022, Siemens and Morf 3D have partnered up with the University of California, Irvine to teach senior-level Mechanical Engineering students using their CAD software, NX, emphasizing additive manufacturing in the aerospace industry. To get the UCI team familiarized with the NX software and the concept of additive manufacturing in the aerospace industry, Siemens and Morf 3D engineers will work alongside the UCI team. This project will serve as a guide to learn how additive manufacturing will be the future of the aerospace industry and the manufacturing industry because of the digitalization of engineering design projects in the industrial sectors. In this quarter, the UCI team will learn about engineering in the industry, applying applicable engineering design processes, modifying parts, making the correct design and manufacturing decisions, and ultimately designing effective support structures for the parts provided by Siemens and Morf 3D.

As technology advances, being autonomous has become a trending focus. Imagine cars can drive by themselves, foods can be delivered without human interaction, and rescuing jobs can be handled by autonomous robots. Aiming to achieve these wonderful outcomes, UCI IGV (Intelligent Ground Vehicle) team is formatted under the supervision of the UCI Mechanical Engineering department. Our goals are to design and fabricate an autonomous ground vehicle that can detect and avoid obstacles. The team is divided into three subteams, control, electrical, and mechanical. Each team has unique tasks and works closely with the others. The mechanical team mostly focuses on the mechanical side of the project. We aim to design a stable steering system that is capable of achieving a wide range of turning angles and a propulsion system that provides sufficient power that drives the vehicle forward at a reasonable speed. 

The steerable mechanical walking robot is a project that uses a motor-driven Jansen leg mechanism to move, while also using a separate servo motor to steer the robot through a bell crank mechanism. The robot is wirelessly controlled via infrared, having buttons on the IR remote command the robot to turn left or right, go forwards or backward, and also to stop.

An Arduino UNO facilitates the electronics control of the robot, processing IR signal from an IR receiver, which promptly translates it into an action. The Arduino is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

A motion study was used with a CAD model to analyze the motion of the physical prototype before building the robot. The final prototype uses a Jansen-style leg mechanism, which uses 11 linkages to mimic the walking motion of a leg. 

Background 

The goal of this project is to turn microalgae into crude oil for commercial use. The students must design effective growing systems - from physical tanks, to electronics, to regulating the environment - to turn the algae into fuel that results in cheap, clean, compatible fuels. Recreate Energy has previously tested the optimal algal growing conditions to build the reactor around and has already signed with a company to deliver a commercial ready bio-reactor with web management platform.  Recreate Energy is currently developing modular bioreactors, compared to the previous exclusively on open-air systems or closed-controlled systems, to lower costs and include the best of both systems when it comes to algae cultivation for biofuels. The project is separated into 3 sub teams that deal with specific design considerations: Temperature Control, Electro-Flocculation, and Electronic Box. 

The RF Controlled Miniature Lathe project surrounds the conceptualization, design, and construction of a tabletop lathe that can be controlled and used to alter the inserted material without direct interaction with the machine. The miniature lathe's remote control capabilities will be supported by a radiofrequency controller, with joysticks that will allow for four directional movement: right, left, forward, and backward. In instituting a remote control option, users will be able to maintain a safe distance from the machine, even standing behind a glass shield, and still be able to chisel and sand the piece in question. As opposed to machining metal or solid wood cylindrical pieces, the mini lathe will process high-density closed cell foam. Fabrication of the lathe itself will combine 3D printed parts with manufactured wood components.