Spectra Newsletter

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Behzad Bavarian and Lisa Reiner, Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Management - AIMS^2

Biosensor Using Graphene-Based Materials
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Monitoring glucose is critical for diabetics, but doing so requires patients to prick their fingers multiple times a day to obtain a drop of blood. The aim of this project, different aspects of which have been under way for four years, was to make sensors sensitive enough to measure glucose in saliva or tears, where it appears in a much lower concentration than in blood. The material of choice was graphene, a special type of carbonous material that is very strong and highly conductive and has a large surface-to-volume ratio, which enhances the surface loading of the desired biomolecules. The graphene was used to manufacture electrodes, replacing more expensive materials like platinum and gold. [Read more…]

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Vibhav Durgesh, Mechanical Engineering - AIMS^2

Designing Hydrogen Bubble Flow Visualization for Aerodynamics Experiments
Experimental Study of Thin and Thick Airfoils at Low Reynolds Numbers

Google “drone crashes,” and you’ll get a plethora of hits—videos, databases, news stories and more. It seems the popular unmanned aerial vehicles, commercial and amateur alike, have an unfortunate tendency to crash, especially if the wind changes direction suddenly, and Vibhav Durgesh wants to figure out why. Very little research has been conducted with these aircraft, but the key may lie in the Reynolds number of the airfoils, or wings, which basically measures how fast the air flows over the wings when the drone is flying. The higher the Reynolds number, the faster the airflow. A commercial airliner, for example, has a significantly higher Reynolds number than, say, a drone, and is considerably more stable. To determine the aerodynamic characteristic of lift in thick and thin airfoils and at different angles of attack, Durgesh enlisted the help of an especially dedicated AIMS2 student to design and then run a series of 36 experiments using CSUN’s low-speed flow visualization water tunnel. Each repetition required the student to remain in the lab for 20 hours at a time. The results were presented at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech 2016 conference in San Diego in January and attracted a great deal of interest from the audience. “It started as a very small project and grew to be big and had a lot of impact,” Durgesh says.

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Vidya Nandikolla, Mechanical Engineering - AIMS^2

Mechanical Loading of Anatomic Human Foot Using Finite Element Analysis
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Two AIMS2 students developed a biomedical model of the human foot using CT scans and relating the anatomical domains of bones and soft tissue. They then analyzed the mechanical behavior of different types of feet—specifically, the biomechanical stress distribution. As the foot is the lowest extremity of the body, the contact surface area holds the weight of the entire body during walking, running, climbing etc. Studying the forces acting on the foot helps advance the understanding and impact of different types of foot injuries.

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Gloria Melara, Computer Science, and Vidya Nandikolla, Mechanical Engineering - AIMS^2

Learning by Building: Design and Construction of an Autonomous Drone
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Two computer science students, two electrical engineering students, and six mechanical engineering students joined forces under the direction of Gloria Melara and Vidya Nandikolla to build a drone from the ground up. The goal of the project was to emphasize engineering design, innovation, communication, small group collaboration and critical thinking skills, while seamlessly integrating concepts from the different engineering disciplines into a real-world robotics system. “You can buy a drone off the shelf, but we didn’t want the students to do that,” Nandikolla explains. [Read more…]

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