Project goal: To provide designs and plans for direction of the activities at the San Xavier Student Mine for the next 3 years. The objective of the San Xavier Student Mine is to produce experienced engineers who are familiar with working in and around a mine site. The design reflects the limitations and freedoms provided by a student-run mine that operates 4 days a month and is not constrained by an ore body. The excavation design used the 3-D computer-aided design program MineSight to project advances per month over the 3-year time period. The team conducted extensive geo-mechanical testing and monitoring of the mine site. Ventilation designs were created in VentSim using the 3-D edit model of pre-and post-expansion. Environmental controls were implemented to Mine Safety and Health Administration standards. Cash flow and production scheduling of proposed equipment and personnel were also considered.

Project goal: To design a new tailings storage facility for an Arizona open pit copper mine capable of holding 750 million tons of tailings produced in the next 50 years. In the copper mining industry, about 98 percent of the material processed is considered tailings, or waste. A tailings storage facility is required to hold all of the waste material, which is saturated with processing solutions. Through analysis of the tailings material and the area’s hydrologic and geologic conditions,it was shown that center-line construction provides the required stability while remaining cost-effective. The design focused on stability and safety of the tailings, particularly under the most adverse weather and seismic conditions. This tailings storage facility used cyclone deposition and a cross-valley layout to further contribute to its stability and sustainability.

Project goal: To develop a web-based application to visit, browse, search and purchase baked goods, and to create accounts for vendors to advertise and sell baked goods.Home and independent bakers struggle with visibility and have to compete with big businesses that spend millions on advertising. Tappetite, a virtual marketplace, allows bakers to build their shop digitally and acquire customers at a fraction of this cost. The front-end development of the web application uses Hypertext Markup Language with Cascading Style Sheets. Data management is handled by JavaScript and Structured Query Language queries. The database is hosted on Google cloud servers,where much of the custom Tappetite code will be stored. Some third-party services will be used,such as Stripe, a payment processor to securely and seamlessly handle payment transactions and offload any liability for cybersecurity risks associated with handling client financial information. The system will use a third party in-application chat service called PubNub to ensure secure and confidential communication between vendor and consumer. Google application programming interfaces will be used to bring location-based services to the website, such as location-relevant search results and customer-delivery information.

Project goal: To design, build and test a non-contact bio-electric field detector that can display, record and monitor a person’s electrocardiogram. The design uses an ultra-sensitive shielded capacitor to detect the subtle change in voltage from the heart through air and skin. The capacitor analog output is converted to a digital output, filtered for noise, and then relayed to a computer to display the final electrocardiogram, or EKG,on the screen. The design allows two live electrocardiogram signals to be simultaneously displayed on the computer from two individual hearts. The device operates with a separation distance of 10 centimeters from the chest to the detector. Applications could include monitoring vital signs of pilots, a less intrusive test for children, and measurement of cardiac changes without affecting the patient under study.

Project goal: To design a system that improves current wind energy technology. Current technology was examined and analysis conducted to determine improvement areas. Fluid flow analysis provided understanding of how to manipulate wind coming from any direction. A model was created of the sponsor’s Windgrabber system that included the improved design. A rudimentary two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics analysis of the system identified the ideal design for the improved system. Through the fluid dynamics visualization, the deflector plates were positioned for optimal airflow to the turbine. A static computational fluid dynamics analysis was used to determine the pressure differentials of the turbine airfoils, and a similar analysis was performed to see how the air would flow in the Windgrabber scoop.

Project goal: To develop a wearable medical diagnostic device to measure reaction to venom injection, such as snakebites. The designed system is a band that incorporates temperature sensors, infrared bead sensors, and strain gauges to measure body temperature, swelling and band tension. Measured parameters are sent via Bluetooth to a user-configured smartphone. All the metrics are displayed through a general user interface on the smart phone using the Swift 4 software application. The designed product, named SwellSense, provides a real-time monitoring system for victims of venom injection that will reduce costs and optimize patient treatment.

Project goal: To design a mobile propellant-densification unit to provide support for the sponsor’s Vector-R launch vehicle. Large, stationary propellant coolant units are commercially available but as space missions using compact satellites and launch vehicles become more viable, the need increases for ground support equipment that is small and mobile. A full-scale system was designed. It was verified by a prototype that confirmed analyses and demonstrated functionality. This design used liquid nitrogen as the primary coolant,resulting in a compact heat exchanger and less process equipment. Analysis of the design was completed using Aspen, chemical process-modeling software,and SolidWorks simulations to verify that heat transfer and process calculations were accurate. The sub-scale prototype cools water while demonstrating the ideas and methodologies of the full-scale design. The prototype regulates using thermocouples, logic and variable frequency drives, allowing the system to operate autonomously.

Project goal: To create a smartphone application with a graphical user interface that communicates with an external heart-rate sensor. Stress negatively affects physical, mental and behavioral health. This heart-rate sensor can detect when a user is stressed and help lower their stress level via music therapy. The device designed employs an electrocardiogram sensor on the user’s chest to measure heart rate variability and transmit the data via Bluetooth to the application, which determines the user’s stress level. High heart-rate variability correlates to relaxation, while low variability indicates stress. If the application determines that the user is stressed, it will access an open-source third-party music application that will start playing music corresponding to the user’s musical interests to achieve quick and efficient stress management. The device quickly lowers stress and provides quantitative data that should further prove the effectiveness of music therapy for stress management.

Project goal: To automate the sponsor’s capacity-planning system by implementing an accessible and user-friendly web-based form.The sponsor runs an error-prone manual capacity-planning system using Microsoft Excel. The designed system includes back end and laser-marking capacity planning. An analysis of the sponsor’s current method was done in MatLab, and a simulation of the capacity planning was produced. The simulation was used to learn how to convert, process and interface the required information into a website. The designed web form consists of hypertext markup language graphic interfaces, C# back end computation, and an Oracle database that manages the data storage and interfaces with the web form using Structured Query Language. The web form allows multiple departments, such as human resources and sales, to enter data directly into the system within a certain time frame before a supervisor is notified via automated message. The system also checks if the input values fall within acceptable bounds.

Project goal: To design, build and test a robotic quality-assurance system to streamline the sponsor’s manufacturing process. The team designed a collaborative robot vision system integration consisting of a robotic arm integrated with visual part recognition, quality assurance, data logging, and part packaging. Each part being analyzed has a barcode that is scanned and logged in the packaging history. The designed system verifies,using 3-D analysis point clouds,that part pin dimensions and spacing meet the sponsor’s design parameters. The system chooses parts from an incoming supply, inspects them for quality assurance, and places them in either a packaging carton or a disposal bin. Continuous processing is achieved by a gravity-fed chute system. Empty input containers and full output containers are pushed aside by the robot arm to make way for fresh containers. The system is ready for implementation in the sponsor’s factory.