Rapid Manufacturing techniques applied to provide Anisotropic structures

Project Title: Rapid Manufacturing techniques applied to provide Anisotropic structures
Postgraduate Project Suggestion (PPS)

Project Description: The aim of this project is to design, make and test different types of structures to enable Anisotropic properties to be demonstrated. The manufacture will involve the use of Rapid Prototyping (manufacturing) and the testing will involve the use of physical and virtual testing techniques.

Resources Required:

Access to rapid Prototyping
FEA software
CAD software

Electrical motor monitoring using vibration measurements project

Project Title: Electrical motor monitoring using vibration measurements:

Project Description: In this project vibration measurements will be collected from an electrical motor test rig. Vibration measurements will be analysed under different speeds, loads of normal cases, moreover these data will be analysed when the motor runs under some seeded faults.

Acoustic measurements processing project

Project Title: Acoustic measurements processing

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Project Description: acoustic data collected from electromechanical plants are usually very noisy requires more filtering and data processing to extract useful information about the speed, load and condition of such plants and machinery. In this project the student will be asked to perform some data processing on a ready collected acoustic data.

Power harvesting using vibration energy Project

Project Title: Power harvesting using vibration energy:

Project Description: The new techniques for converting vibration induced by electromechanical machinery will be investigated in this project. Piezoelectric materials have the ability to generate a micro electric charge when they are subjected to mechanical vibrations and the aspects of this conversion process will be investigated in this project to make it useful to power a micro sensor or charge a batter.

 

Marine Engines Health Monitoring Project

Project Title: Marine Engines Health Monitoring

Project Description: In this project the student will carry on some literature review and research on the techniques for maintenance and for condition monitoring of these huge marine diesel engines. A comparison between the old style and the new methods that adopt new trends using vibration measurements will be also carried out.

Automotive chassis control systems project

Project Title: Automotive chassis control systems

Project Description:

This project will look at various aspects of the mechatronics design and implementation of automotive chassis control systems including active braking, steering, suspension or driveline.

Product Details:

A typical project would include
i. Review of the current research and state of the art
ii. Selection/design of actuators and sensors for the system
iii. Controller design
iv. Practical implementation of the system where possible (e.g. if the system can feasibly be implemented on the formula racing car)

Bonded vs sputtered smart actuators for vibration control project

Project Title: Bonded vs sputtered smart actuators for vibration control

Project Description:

This project will investigate the performance of bonded and sputtered piezoactuators for vinration control.

Product Details:

The project will involve
ii. Working with the materials department to build test samples of beams with bonded and sputtered piezoactuators
iii. Designing and building an instrumented test rig for the piezoactuated beam
iv. Comparing the dynamic performance of both bonded and sputtered actuators
Evaluating simple control systems on the smart beams

Hardware in the loop testing of automotive mechatronic systems

Project Title: Hardware in the loop testing of automotive mechatronic systems

Project Description:

This project aims to the interfacing of automotive electronic systems (e.g. Electronic Power Assisted Steering) to a simulation model of a vehicle.

Product Details:

The project will involve
i. Developing signal conditioning for the vehicle steering systems,
ii. Interfacing the hardware to the DSPACE controller rapid prototyping system
iii. Testing various steering control algorithms running in software with hardware in the loop.

Reverse Engineering and Surface Modelling Project

Project Title: Reverse Engineering and Surface modelling

Project Description:

The project will involve using reverse engineering techniques to scan and produce CAD drawings of components. Using Alias software the components can then be redesigned to improve the appearance and functionality of the product.

Product Details:

It is envisaged that the product would be a car and could be linked to the TVR project currently being carried out by the university.

Resources Required:

Cimcore scanner
Polyworks software
Alias software

Project Title: Reverse Engineering and Fluid flow analysis

Project Description:

From these rapid prototype scale models can then be produced and tested using the wind tunnel facilities.

Product Details:

Using Polworks software CAD can be produced. In conjunction with wind tunnel testing
Analysis of the data produced can then be compared and analysed against conputated data gained from CFD techniques using the FLUENT package.

Resources Required:

Cim Core Scanner
Polyworks
Fluent

DFMA Costing Module Project

Project Title: DFMA Costing Module

Project Description:

The DFMA® Concurrent Costing software contains process and material information and calculations to quickly estimate the cost of manufacturing and finishing a part. It is limited in the range of processes it incorporates. The objective of this project is to increase the processes available for analysis.

Suggestions include Rotational Moulding, Compression Moulding, SPFDB, Rapid prototyping/manufacturing.

Product Details:

Software based analysis tool.

Resources Required:

PC with relevant software.
Access to manufacturing process data (Through contacts with suitable companies yet to be identified)