MAE

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.

• Background 
  • The autonomous target robot project is a project sponsored by the US Navy that is seeking to create a vehicle that navigates autonomously and is capable of acting as a mobile target on a shooting range.
• Goal and Objectives  
  • Design the structure for an autonomous vehicle
  • Write a program that directs the car to pre-designated GPS coordinates and presents a target oriented towards the shooter
  • Incorporate sensors that detect when the target has been shot, allow autonomous navigation, and wireless communication
  • Manufacture the robot and assemble electronics
• More Information
  • Sponsor/Advisor
    • Prof. Zak (Zaher) M. Kassas - zkassas@uci.edu
    • Nadim Khairallah - khairaln@uci.edu
  • Engineering challenge we are working on:
    • The Arduino systems that the robot functions off of can prove difficult to work if you are expecting a high amount of precision and/or lack of corrupted data
...

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 

The goal for students in IGV is to implement skills gained in classes while designing the vehicle and developing a method to allow it to navigate through the obstacle course. This includes usage of Finite State Machines, Ultrasonic and GPS Sensors, and microcontrollers. 

Currently, the project is in the optimization stage. The chassis has been built and the obstacle detection code, GPS, and navigation systems are nearly complete. The next steps are to reconstruct the chassis using a more flexible material as the plexiglass was very unwieldy. Furthermore, we plan to optimize the lane detection...

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.

Despite the nostalgic name, this project demands several disciplines of engineering, organization, and commuincation from each of the participating students. Three teams must create a robot that collects gold coins within a provided field both autonomously and through manual control. Not only will these teams build towards item recognition and retrieval, but must also plan against other competing teams as well as FUSION's own administrative team known as the Goldkeepers. With little design restrictions and a strong budget, this year-long project will test the strategies...

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 

Drones are rapidly becoming a part of modern day life. Their ease of use and relatively low price has made drones more accessible to the public than ever. Similarly, companies such as Amazon are researching and developing drone based delivery systems to be used within cities. However, noise nuisances are disrupting and even unhealthy with prolonged exposure. Therefore, it is necessary to find a way to reduce the noise level of the drone. Under this background, our group would like to design an attachment that would reduce the noise of a drone.

Goal and Objective

The goal of this project is to reduce the overall noise of a drone by 5-15 dB. The attachment needs to have reasonable price. It needs to be light weight and shouId not negatively influence the aerodynamics of the drone. The attachment is also required to be easily mountable and avoid unnecessary vibration. In...

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. 

Relativity Space has partnered with UCI to create a senior design project set to redesign the flange. With bolted flanges currently being the primary method of reversable attachment of two pipes it’s simple design and out of date manufacturing process has left much room for improvement. We have set forth to design, test and manufacture a prototype flange that is 3D printed, light weight, and maintains ASME flange standards.

For this project, our team was tasked to design a flexible IPA Sprayer made to navigate through the complex geometries of 3D printed components. The primary task is to fully coat the inside with IPA so that residual IPA can be analyzed for contamination.

UCI CubeSat is a student design team working on the design and construction of UCI's very first CubeSat satellite. Our mission is to deliver two research payloads to low earth orbit.

Background

The use of unmanned buoys for data collection is not a new concept as government offices such as NOAA utilize them for the collection of weather and oceanic data. The reliability of such systems has been a key focus for development. As of 2020, 10% of NOAA’s buoys have become inoperable. These reliability challenges necessitate the need for an external method of data collection as a portion of the buoys labeled inoperable may have simply experienced a malfunction in their communication systems. As this is the case for simple peacetime equipment, the need for a physical data transfer system is further necessitated by the complexity of wartime systems. An unmanned vessel that is capable of navigating to a buoy, establishing a physical connection, and downloading data would mediate these losses in buoy performance. Furthermore, such buoys could be designed without communication systems which would allow for lower profile designs...

Goal and Objectives

This year, the team is dedicated towards continuing too manufacture a car that will be powered by battery in order to compete our first vehicle version. Once the car is manufactured and tested, we will be able to enhance certain features which will allow us to compete in American Solar Challenge (ASC), a race in which teams are expected to create a solar-powered car that can travel along predetermined routes such as Route 66 and the cross-country passage from Texas to Canada. Through this process, Solar Car not only strives to produce an efficient machine for a succesful run at the ASC, but also hopes to expand the innovation and utilization of renewable energy sources. 

As the Fall quarter progresses, students have continuously worked in lab to design, test and manufacture mechaniccal and eelectrical components needed for the developmnt of our vehicle!

Contacts:

Project Manager: Hallie Park, parkhm2@uci.edu

Advisor

Penghui Cao, caoph@uci.edu

The autonomous robot project is a naval research project. The purpose of the project is to design, program, manufacture, and test an autonomous vehicle that can locate pre-determined GPS coordinates and present a target to the shooter.

Background

Established in 2015, HyperXite is a team of undergraduate students endeavoring to build a Hyperloop pod.

HyperXite has competed in the past four SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competitions. In the SpaceX Competition I, HyperXite was one of the semifinalists and placed fifth for their overall design worldwide. Additionally, the HyperXite pod was one of the only air-levitated pods to be tested within the Hyperloop itself during Competition II and placed in the Top 6. In the past two competitions, HyperXite was one of the top 22 finalists to attend the competition in Hawthorne, CA. 

This year, HyperXite will be attending the European Hyperloop Week, a Hyperloop competition established in 2020, and will build a small-scale pod to compete in the Netherlands during the summer of 2022.

Goal

HyperXite’s goal is to research, design, build and validate a scalable self-propelled pod to demonstrate the feasibility of Hyperloop design concepts at a high pace of innovation.

Objectives...

The mission of the Long Range Drone Senior Project is to create a lightweight drone that can fly for thirty minutes or longer using stored electrical power by the end of the winter quarter in 2022. The drone will carry a camera for navigational purposes. The drone will be designed to accommodate a hydrogen fuel cell by spring quarter of 2022.

This project is a small team of five people dedicated to learning the engineering design process and getting hands-on experience with mechanical and electrical components of drone design. There are currently no competitions in which the team participates.