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- All Subjects: engineering
- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
Time studies are an effective tool to analyze current production systems and propose improvements. The problem that motivated the project was that conducting time studies and observing the progression of components across the factory floor is a manual process. Four Industrial Engineering students worked with a manufacturing company to develop Computer Vision technology that would automate the data collection process for time studies. The team worked in an Agile environment to complete over 120 classification sets, create 8 strategy documents, and utilize Root Cause Analysis techniques to audit and validate the performance of the trained Computer Vision data models. In the future, there is an opportunity to continue developing this product and expand the team’s work scope to apply more engineering skills on the data collected to drive factory improvements.
The honors thesis presented in this document describes an extension to an electrical engineering capstone project whose scope is to develop the receiver electronics for an RF interrogator. The RF interrogator functions by detecting the change in resonant frequency of (i.e, frequency of maximum backscatter from) a target resulting from an environmental input. The general idea of this honors project was to design three frequency selective surfaces that would act as surrogate backscattering or reflecting targets that each contains a distinct frequency response. Using 3-D electromagnetic simulation software, three surrogate targets exhibiting bandpass frequency responses at distinct frequencies were designed and presented in this thesis.
Time studies are an effective tool to analyze current production systems and propose improvements. The problem that motivated the project was that conducting time studies and observing the progression of components across the factory floor is a manual process. Four Industrial Engineering students worked with a manufacturing company to develop Computer Vision technology that would automate the data collection process for time studies. The team worked in an Agile environment to complete over 120 classification sets, create 8 strategy documents, and utilize Root Cause Analysis techniques to audit and validate the performance of the trained Computer Vision data models. In the future, there is an opportunity to continue developing this product and expand the team’s work scope to apply more engineering skills on the data collected to drive factory improvements.
This creative project is an extension of the work being done as part of Senior Design in<br/>developing the See-Through Car Pillar, a system designed to render the forward car pillars in a car<br/>invisible to the driver so they can have an unobstructed view utilizing displays, sensors, and a<br/>computer. The first half of the paper provides the motivation, design and progress of the project, <br/>while the latter half provides a literature survey on current automobile trends, the viability of the<br/>See-Through Car Pillar as a product in the market through case studies, and alternative designs and <br/>technologies that also might address the problem statement.
Pelvic Circumferential Compression Devices (PCCDs), an important medical device when caring for patients with pelvic fractures, play a crucial role in the stabilization and reduction of the fracture. During pelvic fracture cases, control of internal bleeding through access to the femoral artery is of utmost importance. Current designs of PCCDs do not allow vital access to this artery and in attempts to gain access, medical professionals and emergency care providers choose to cut into the PCCDs or place them in suboptimal positions with unknown downstream effects. We researched the effects on surface pressure and the overall pressure distribution created by the PCCDs when they are modified or placed incorrectly on the patient. In addition, we investigated the effects of those misuses on pelvic fracture reduction, a key parameter in stabilizing the patient during critical care. We hypothesized that incorrectly placing or modifying the PCCD will result in increased surface pressure and decreased fracture reduction. Our mannequin studies show that for SAM Sling and T-POD, surface pressure increases if a PCCD is incorrectly placed or modified, in support of our hypothesis. However, opposite results occurred for the Pelvic Binder, where the correctly placed PCCD had higher surface pressure when compared to the incorrectly placed or modified PCCD. Additionally, pressure distribution was significantly affected by the modification of the PCCDs. The cadaver lab measurements show that modifying or incorrectly placing the PCCDs significantly limits their ability to reduce the pelvic fracture. These results suggest that while modifying or incorrectly placing PCCDs allows access to the femoral artery, there are potentially dangerous effects to the patient including increased surface pressures and limited fracture reduction.