Academic Work
Research and Publications from my Master's and Bachelor's degrees
Embedded Files
Master's Research | Data Driven Sensor Fusion
Master's Research | Data Driven Sensor Fusion
Over 2019 and 2020 I worked with Professors Jefferey Naber and Jason Blough at APS Labs at Michigan Tech on sensor fusion projects for Ford Motor Company. I have loved the work I have been able to do there, my project incorporates everything from digital signal processing, machine learning, dynamic system modeling, and optimization.
Control classes taught by Wayne Weaver and Gordon Parker showed me how to predict and control the world. Our ability to translate our physical world into math and back again has amazed me and inspired my education. The corner of mechanical design, classical controls, and data driven analytics is a fascinating field, and I plan to continue working in it.
Publications
Publications
My research resulted in a SAE WCX paper (https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2021-01-0418/) and my thesis (https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etdr/1115/)
If you have any questions on the work or are interested in a collaboration please get in contact with me via the about me page. I am able to share much more in my past work and projects sections as well, if you have time I recommend you give them a read.
Bachelor's Senior Design | Connecting Rod Design Optimization
Bachelor's Senior Design | Connecting Rod Design Optimization
As an undergraduate student at Michigan Tech I spent 3 years on the SAE Supermileage team, and 1 year as engine team lead. I loved my time on the team, a group of bright and creative students coming together for a common goal. It reminded me of my time in FIRST robotics in high school; I love the friendly yet competitive atmosphere, and in both scenarios I enjoyed leading my team to success.
Rather than write a long post on my senior design I decided to post my entire report below and outline the highlights here (it is also embedded below). During my senior year on the team I worked on reducing the bore and stroke of our engine along with using high compression pistons (we ran iso-octane fuel at competition so knock/pre-det was less of a worry). This involved designing a new connecting rod so that the piston could reach the desire stick-out height with the new shorter crankshaft. The crankshaft and head were sourced from a smaller engine, but the connecting rod needed to be custom.
The paper goes over the process of testing short-strand carbon, aluminum, and magnesium for strength and manufacturability before constructing rods in each material and tensile testing. The paper in, its entirety, is available at the bottom of this page.
Carbon test pieces were tensile tested to find the strongest strand length and epoxy content (parts by weight) combination for our application. We found that a 65/35 pbw carbon/epoxy with 1/2 inch chopped strand carbon gave the best results. All tests were completed using a high temp thermosetting epoxy.
A mold was then machined from tooling board in the same shape as the original connecting rod. An aluminum pin was used to align both sides of the mold
The mold was manually filled with wetted chopped strand carbon and expoy before the mold halves were clamped together. 4 holes in the mold were also filled with the epoxy/carbon mixture, and using a hydraulic press, dowels were forced into the holes. This pressurized the mold and filled any voids with carbon and epoxy. The manufacturing process was labor intensive, but lead to void-free and low weight carbon rods. There strength was to be tested next.
The carbon rods were to be tested against billet aluminum versions of identical geometry, as well as the original magnesium rods. Making the billet aluminum rods is the similar to manufacturing the tooling board molds for the carbon rods. Fixturing was more complicated for the aluminum rod as we are making a positive rather than a negative, but was completed by drilling two holes through the blank and bolting it to the table of the CNC mill.
The 6061 rod had an ultimate tensile strength, and was lighter than the stock rod by 5%. While performance of the carbon rod could have been improved through threaded inserts, further development was pursued for the aluminum rod as it is a proven method. Through topology optimization an even lower weight was achieved while maintaining OEM strength. These results are available in the paper below.
With the help of the incredible Mr. Fraley of Materials Science and Engineering at Michigan Tech, we completed tensile testing of each rod. The results are shown below in the load/strain plot (not stress/strain as the cross section isn't consistent.
The aluminum rod had the highest failure force, shearing the grade 8 M8 fasteners before it broke the rod. The carbon rod stripped the threads out and the magnesium rod failed at the oiling hole.
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