Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program
- Creators: O'Flaherty, Katherine
Description
This experiment used hotwire anemometry to examine the von Kármán vortex street and how different surface conditions affect the wake profile of circular airfoils, or bluff bodies. Specifically, this experiment investigated how the various surface conditions affected the shedding frequency and Strouhal Number of the vortex street as Reynolds Number is increased. The cylinders tested varied diameter, surface finish, and wire wrapping. Larger diameters corresponded with lower shedding frequencies, rougher surfaces decreased Strouhal Number, and the addition of thick wires to the surface of the cylinder completely disrupted the vortex shedding to the point where there was almost no dominant shedding frequency. For the smallest diameter cylinder tested, secondary dominant frequencies were observed, suggesting harmonics.
ContributorsCoote, Peter John (Author) / Takahashi, Timothy (Thesis director) / White, Daniel (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The following paper discusses the validation of the TolTEC optical design along with a progress report regarding the design of the optical mounting system. Solidworks and Zemax were used in conjunction to model the proposed optics designs. The final optical design was selected through extensive CAD modeling and testing within the Large Millimeter Telescope receiver room. The TolTEC optics can be divided into two arrays, one comprised of the warm mirrors and the second, cryogenically-operated cold mirrors. To ensure structural stability and optical performance, the mechanical design of these systems places a heavy emphasis on rigidity. This is done using a variety of design techniques that restrict motion along the necessary degrees of freedom and maximize moment of inertia while minimizing weight. Work will resume on this project in the Fall 2017 semester.
ContributorsKelso, Rhys Partain (Author) / Mauskopf, Philip (Thesis director) / Groppi, Christopher (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
This thesis project examines the likely factors that cause students to drop out of Barrett, the Honors College. Honors literature regarding retention and attrition suggests four areas encompassing individual student attributes and honors program characteristics which may impact a student's decision to stay or leave an Honors College. The primary question in focus is, "Why do students leave the Honors College?" followed by the tertiary questions of, "what can be done to mitigate this occurrence?" and, "how does this affect the quality of an honors education?" Assessing attrition can be broken down into biographical, cognitive-behavioral, socio-environmental, and institutional-instrumental components. Students who graduated with honors and those who did not graduate with honors were assessed on these four components through survey methods and qualitative interviews to investigate specific reasons why students leave the honors program. The results indicated a wide array of reasons impacting student attrition, the most significant being negative perceptions towards (1) honors courses and contracts, (2) difficulty completing a thesis project, and (3) finding little to no value in "graduating with honors." Each of these reasons reflect the institutional-instrumental component of student attrition, making it the most salient group of reasons why students leave the Honors College. The socio-environmental component also influences student attrition through peer influence and academic advisor support, though this was found to be within the context of institutional-instrumental means. This project offers solutions to ameliorate each of the four components of attrition by offering standardized honors contracts and more mandatory honors classes, mandatory thesis preparatory courses instead of workshops, and emphasizing the benefit Barrett gives to students as a whole. These solutions aim at increasing graduation rates for future honors students at Barrett as well as improving the overall quality of an honors education.
ContributorsSanchez, Gilbert Xavier (Author) / Parker, John (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
In this analysis, materials capable of being 3D printed such as acrylonitrile-butadiene styrene (ABS), polyethylene terephthalate-glycol (PETG), and polylactic acid (PLA) were analyzed mathematically to determine their potential application as a fuel source for a hybrid rocket engine currently being developed by Daedalus Astronautics. By developing a 3D printed fuel option, new fuel grain geometries can be manufactured and tested that have the potential to greatly improve regression and flow characteristics of hybrid rockets. In addition, 3D printed grains have been shown to greatly reduce manufacturing time while improving grain-to-grain consistency. In the end, it was found that ABS, although the most difficult material to work with, would likely provide the best results as compared to an HTPB baseline. This is because after conducting a heat conservation analysis similar to that employed by NASA's chemical equilibrium with applications code (CEA), ABS was shown to operate at similarly high levels of specific impulse at approximately the same oxidizer-to-fuel ratio, meaning the current Daedalus test setup for HTPB would be applicable to ABS. In addition, PLA was found to require a far lower oxidizer-to-fuel ratio to achieve peak specific impulse than any of the other fuels analyzed leading to the conclusion that in a flight-ready engine it would likely require less oxidizer and pressurization mass, and therefore, less overall system mass, to achieve thrust levels similar to ABS and HTPB. By improving the thrust-to-weight ratio in this way a more efficient engine could be developed. Following these results, future works will include the hot-fire testing of the four fuel options to verify the analysis method used. Additionally, the ground work has been set for future analysis and development of complex fuel port geometries which have been shown to further improve flight characteristics.
ContributorsWinsryg, Benjamin Rolf (Author) / White, Daniel (Thesis director) / Brunacini, Lauren (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Undergraduate on-campus residential education is a topic of significant inquiry within the field of higher education, and specifically student affairs. It has become commonplace for institutions of higher education in the United States to leverage the intersections between academics and residence life in order to promote student success by offering on-campus housing options that strategically place students in residential communities that provide additional connection to the students' academic experience, often by major, college, department, or other focus areas. Such models vary by institution, but are often referred to as living-learning communities or residential colleges, depending upon their structure and goals. For example, Barrett, the Honors College on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University implements a residential college model within its student housing; honors students live and study together, with the addition of three "special communities" designed for students majoring in Engineering, Business, or the Arts. This honors thesis case study describes and investigates the impact the visual and performing arts Barrett residential community has upon its residents in their first-year college experience. Through the lens of student development theory, this research focuses upon examining this specific residential community in detail in order to gain an understanding of its effect upon residents' academic and personal well being.
ContributorsBieschke, Sara Danielle (Author) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Thesis director) / Rendell, Dawn (Committee member) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
In injection molded plastic parts, knit lines occur where opposing streams of material fuse together while the mold cavity fills. When parts with knit lines experience external loading, the knit lines cause areas of mechanical weakness. This weakness is especially drastic in fiber-reinforced polymers due to an unfavorable orientation of fibers at the knit line. A possible way to reduce the impact of knit lines is to incorporate overflow tabs into the mold design. An overflow tab is a chamber attached to the mold cavity that provides an extra space for the end of material flow to occur. Research shows that overflow tabs improve the fiber orientation at the knit line, resulting in increased mechanical strength. The goal of this study is to utilize overflow tabs to optimize the knit line strength of nylon 6-6 that is 30% carbon fiber reinforced. In this project, an initial overflow tab is first designed. Then four modifications are made to the tab design, each altering a separate variable while holding the others constant. The design changes explored for the tab in this project include adding radii to the inlet, shifting the inlet location, increasing the inlet cross-sectional area by 50%, and increasing the tab chamber volume by 50%. Specimens were molded using the initial tab design and the modified tab designs. Testing for this experiment consists of three specimens of each type for three-point bending tests, and five specimens of each type for tensile tests. The material properties analyzed are the flexural modulus, flexural strength, tensile modulus, and tensile strength. From the testing, the tab with the 50% increased volume consistently yielded the highest results and showed large improvement from the initial tab design. However, the other three tab modifications either showed negative change or slight improvement from the initial tab design. Based on the results of this study, the overflow tab volume is the most beneficial design parameter to adjust.
ContributorsJones, Justin Michael (Author) / Adams, James (Thesis director) / Wamsley, Steven (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
In this paper, the effectiveness and practical applications of cooling a computer's CPU using mineral oil is investigated. A computer processor or CPU may be immersed along with other electronics in mineral oil and still be operational. The mineral oil acts as a dielectric and prevents shorts in the electronics while also being thermally conductive and cooling the CPU. A simple comparison of a flat plate immersed in air versus mineral oil is considered using analytical natural convection correlations. The result of this comparison indicates that the plate cooled by natural convection in air would operate at 98.41[°C] while the plate cooled by mineral oil would operate at 32.20 [°C]. Next, CFD in ANSYS Fluent was used to conduct simulation with forced convection representing a CPU fan driving fluid flow to cool the CPU. A comparison is made between cooling done with air and mineral oil. The results of the CFD simulation results indicate that using mineral oil as a substitute to air as the cooling fluid reduced the CPU operating temperature by sixty degrees Celsius. The use of mineral oil as a cooling fluid for a consumer computer has valid thermal benefits, but the practical challenges of the method will likely prevent widespread adoption.
ContributorsTichacek, Louis Joseph (Author) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Thesis director) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Middleton, James (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
To determine the effects of exhaust heat recovery systems on small engines, an experiment was performed to measure the power losses of an engine with restricted exhaust flow. In cooperation with ASU's SAE Formula race team, a water brake dynamometer was refurbished and connected to the 2017 racecar engine. The engine was mounted with a diffuser disc exhaust to restrict flow, and a pressure sensor was installed in the O2 port to measure pressure under different restrictions. During testing, problems with the equipment prevented suitable from being generated. Using failure root cause analysis, the failure modes were identified and plans were made to resolve those issues. While no useful data was generated, the project successfully rebuilt a dynamometer for students to use for future engine research.
ContributorsRoss, Zachary David (Author) / Middleton, James (Thesis director) / Steele, Bruce (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
The main objective of this project was to continue research and development of a building integrated solar thermoelectric generator (BISTEG). BISTEG is a promising renewable energy technology that is capable of generating electrical energy from the heat of concentrated sunlight. In order to perform R&D, the performance of different TEG cells and TEG setups were tested and analyzed, proof-of-concepts and prototypes were built. and the performance of the proof-of-concepts and prototypes were tested and analyzed as well. In order to test different TEG cells and TEG setups, a TEG testing apparatus was designed and fabricated. The apparatus is capable of comparing the performance of TEGs with temperature differentials up to 200 degrees C. Along with a TEG testing apparatus, several proof-of-concepts and prototypes were completed. All of these were tested in order to determine the feasibility of the design. All three proof-of-concepts were only capable of producing a voltage output less than 300mV. The prototype, however, was capable of producing a max output voltage of 17 volts. Although the prototype outperformed all of the proof-of-concepts, optimizations to the design can continue to improve the output voltage. In order to do so, stacked TEG tests were performed. After performing the stacked TEG tests, it was determined that the use of stacked TEGs depended on the Fresnel lens chosen. If BISTEG were to use a point focused Fresnel lens, using a stack of TEGs could increase the power density. If BISTEG were to utilize a linear focused Fresnel lens, however, the TEGs should not be stacked. It would be more efficient to lay them out side by side. They can be stacked, however, if the energy density needs to be increased and the costs of the additional TEGs are not an issue.
ContributorsPark, Andrew (Author) / Seager, Thomas (Thesis director) / Margaret, Hinrichs (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Walking ability is a complex process that is essential to humans, critical for performing a range of everyday tasks and enables a healthy, independent lifestyle. Human gait has evolved to be robust, adapting to a wide range of external stimuli, including variable walking surface compliance. Unfortunately, many people suffer from impaired gait as a result of conditions such as stroke. For these individuals, recovering their gait is a priority and a challenge. The ASU Variable Stiffness Treadmill (VST) is a device that is able to the change its surface compliance through its unique variable stiffness mechanism. By doing this, the VST can be used to investigate gait and has potential as a rehabilitation tool. The objective of this research is to design a variable damping mechanism for the VST, which addresses the need to control effective surface damping, the only form of mechanical impedance that the VST does not currently control. Thus, this project will contribute toward the development of the Variable Impedance Treadmill (VIT), which will encompass a wider range of variable surface compliance and enable all forms of impedance to be con- trolled for the first time. To achieve this, the final design of the mechanism will employ eddy current damping using several permanent magnets mounted to the treadmill and a large copper plate stationed on the ground. Variable damping is obtained by using lead screw mechanisms to remove magnets from acting on the copper plate, which effectively eliminates their effect on damping and changes the overall treadmill surface damping. Results from experimentation validate the mechanism's ability to provide variable damping to the VST. A model for effective surface damping is generated based on open-loop characterization experiments and is generalized for future experimental setups. Overall, this project progresses to the development of the VIT and has potential applications in walking surface simulation, gait investigation, and robot-assisted rehabilitation technology.
ContributorsFou, Linda Guo (Author) / Artemiadis, Panagiotis (Thesis director) / Lee, Hyunglae (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05