| Project Title | Sponsor |
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| Dissolved Gas Extraction Device | Water Science and Management/ Plant and Environmental Science Department at NMSU and USGS |
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The project is seeking to improve the design and efficiency of a device used to extract dissolved gases from groundwater for aquifer characterization. Improvements to the device include ease of use, transport and repair, minimize potential for contamination, increased efficiency and reduced costs. The objectives of this work are to identify parts and components, create a virtual design and establish methods for evaluating efficiency.
The main aim of this project would be to establish collaboration with a regional airport management authority interested to evaluate and analyze their existing public parking area. Based on the input from the client airport and our expertise, we would recognize set of important performance measures that would help to evaluate the system. Next an extensive data collection strategy plan would be developed for better demand forecast predication and develop a discrete event simulation model for the facility. The simulation model would be used to evaluate alternative system configuration that would aid for better decision making.
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| Internet of Things (IoT) Rain Gauge Device | CoCoTaHS |
| CoCoTaHS is a community of volunteers who take daily rainfall recording at a national level. Currently, manual gauges are being used to keep track of recordings and must be manually uploaded to a database for national weather service. This method only allows for rain collection to take place within city limits, but the need for data in rural areas is just as important. Through this project, students will develop a new method for measurement, and automatic input of data from the day-to-day measurement into the central database using the internet. | |
| Guided Wave-based Damage Detection in Aircraft Component | NMSU |
| This project focuses on structural health monitoring (SHM) system development for aircraft wing inspection using Lamb waves. Lamb waves are a type of ultrasonic waves that are guided between two parallel free surfaces, such as upper and lower surfaces of a plate, and are suitable for structural health monitoring applications since they travel long distances. Small, low-cost and light-weight piezoelectric (PZT) discs are bonded to a panel specimen with defects for simulated cracks monitoring. The PZT discs are used for generating and receiving ultrasonic guided waves. A toneburst input signal collected at normal conditions serves as baselines, and subsequent signals collected at defected conditions detect the presence of a defect and its location. | |
| Laboratory Scale Solar Simulator with Varied Heat Flux Capability | NMSU |
| Through this project, students will design a solar simulator that can simulate solar insolation conditions for testing different solar experiments. Required heat flux will be achieved by using Xenon or similar lamps. The design should facilitate different focusing locations for each lamp. The key questions that will be addressed under this project will be: the type of lamps and their locations to enable solar flux on a 1 square ft of area, required power, typical cost of the simulator, cooling requirements in the lab to dissipate the heat and uniformity of the insolation achieved. | |
| Power Installation for Arts Building and Devastali Hall | NMSU |
| This project will be designing and overseeing the construction of a medium voltage installation on NMSU main campus. The project will provide permanent power to the new Arts Building and Devastali Hall. |
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| Smartphone-Based Mobile Detection Device | NMSU |
| Water and food associated diseases still pose considerable public health threat even in highly industrialized parts of the world. In order to prevent such serious health problems, and economic losses due to outbreaks caused by water- and/or food-borne diseases, early detection, before the disease has spread to critical limits, is key to preventing a major public emergency. One approach to simple detection of pathogens is though staining with fluorescent dyes that have high affinities for nucleic acids (RNA and DNA). Students will develop a smartphone-based mobile device to process and analyze the fluorescent light emitted from biomolecular assays, which allows the detection of amplified DNAS for both point-of-use and real-time analysis. The goal of this project is to design and build a 3d printed prototype and developed software that operates a smartphone-based image sensing/analyzing device. | |
| Structural Health Monitoring by Elastic Wave Propagation | NMSU |
| This project focuses on an ultrasonic guided wave structural health monitoring (SHM) system development for aircraft wing inspection. Small, low-cost and light-weight piezoelectric (PZT) discs are bonded to a panel specimen with defects for simulated cracks monitoring. The PZT discs are used for generating and receiving ultrasonic guided waves. A toneburst input signal collected at normal conditions serves as baselines, and subsequent signals collected at defected conditions detect the presence of a defect and its location. | |
| Thermal Micro Grid Energy Solution Study | Ectogrid |
| To evaluate the economic competitiveness of the ectogrid™ system, the team will perform a series of calculations to derive a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). An LCOE is a measure of the overall competitiveness of a given power generation technology. To calculate the LCOE, cost inputs will be divided into 4 main categories. These categories are capital costs, maintenance costs, operation costs, and funds recouped from salvaging equipment. Each will be discounted appropriately thought the life cycle of the ectogrid™ system. Below is the empirical representation of the inputs to the LCOE and NPV function. | |
| Design and Testing of a Centralized Mirror Solar Tracking System for Enhanced Solar Desalination System | NMSU |
| Through this project, students will design and build a solar mirror arrangement that can also enable solar tracking (heliostats). The mirrors will reflect the sunlight onto a centralized mirror. Once the mirror arrangement is designed and built, a solar still be tested and its performance will be gauged. The key questions that will be addressed under this project will be: number of mirrors and location of each of them to focus sunlight onto the centralized mirror, size and height of the centralized mirror, structures that can be used for placing the mirrors, still performance enhancement achieved by using the mirrors, cost for small scale and large scale testing. | |
| Check Weigher Redesign | Agmechtronix |
| The Agmechtronix Check Weigher is a device that weighs small bags of produce as they roll over a conveyor belt. If the weight is out of the programmed specifications, it has an arm that kicks the product out of the stream. A new design and prototype is desired to improve the reliability, manufacturability and accuracy of the device. The design will include both the mechanical design of the device as well as the electrical design. The current electrical design is a custom printed circuit board using a Microchip Digital Signal Processor reading the weight from load cells. | |
