COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & SCIENCE

The Bagger Tube Lift System is a device that assists workers in installing and removing bagger tubes from the bagger machines at a sweet potato plant. Bagger tubes funnel in sweet potato fries from a chute above, and the bag is formed around the outside of the tube. At the base of the 42-inch bagger tubes, the bag is sealed and released onto a conveyor for further processing. Bagger tubes must be changed for cleaning and resizing of bags. Each 75-pound bagger tube must be moved across the facility, then raised and lowered 37-inches between storage rack and mounting position within the bagger machine. The bagger tube lift system provides safety, with fewer and more guarded pinch points, and is operated entirely using a control panel. The system also allows installation and removal to be conducted faster than the current method.

During the fabrication of steel panels, a manual grinder is used to remove burrs and weld debris that have formed on the panels. Because employees must wield the heavy grinder for extended periods, a hoist-limiting boom has been installed which effectively reduces the weight of the grinder by 85%. Unfortunately, the boom is only effective when the grinder is parallel with the ground, and it is often necessary to operate the grinder at an angle in order to eliminate burrs on the edges of panel. Additionally, the boom requires a great deal of effort to reposition due to its large mass. To fix the first issue, a new harness has been installed on the grinder which enables free rotation of the grinder while reducing its effective weight by 85%. To fix the second issue, the boom was divided into smaller sections to reduce the force required by the operator to adjust its position.

Satellites are heavily relied upon in the public, private, and military spheres of society. Due to this continuously increasing reliance, satellites are progressively more vulnerable targets to directed energy weapons (DEWs). To defend satellites, defense systems must be designed that address the size, weight, and power constraints endemic to space operation. This project scope requires a proof-of-concept thermal defense system for small satellites. This system should be able to sense and respond to concentrated thermal energy threats from a DEW. To be considered successful, the defense system must be able to withstand an incident heat flux of at least 2.5 W/cm2 over a diameter of a 25 mm spot-size for 30 continuous minutes. The system must be able to maintain a surface temperature below 200oC across the satellite surface. It must be able to absorb thermal energy and then discharge it once the attack has passed. It is important that the system be able to adapt to a randomly changing location of attack.

This project involves the design and construction of an apparatus to mount and secure large skidder wheels in order to provide the leverage necessary for tire removal. Skidders are large vehicles used in forestry to haul felled trees. Their tires can have diameters of up to 80 inches, and the wheel assembly can weigh up to 2000 pounds. The scale of these tires makes them difficult to work with while lying on the ground, taking 2-3 shop workers several hours to remove a tire from the rim. Mounting the wheels vertically aids in this process, allowing one or two operators to perform this procedure in just an hour. In addition to the large load that the apparatus needs to withstand, the wide variety of skidder sizes and manufacturers necessitated the mounting stand’s ability to interface with different sizes of wheels and those with varying lug bolt patterns. This is accomplished through the use of a hydraulically actuated sled to interface with the central hole in the wheel’s rim (pilot hole). Since the lug holes cannot be used directly to restrain the tire, chains with attached hooks will provide the restraint needed during service operations.

The CLECO Acadia Power Station, located in Eunice, Louisiana, is a steam power plant which contains a cooling tower where the steam is condensed into water and sent to pumps that circulate the water throughout the plant. These pumps handle a massive quantity of water that must be filtered through a series of filter screens (approximately 20 feet tall) to ensure efficiency and reliability. The filter screens must be cleaned regularly, and the current process is cumbersome, requiring a crane and two operators to complete. The purpose of the project is to design a permanent, electrically powered overhead crane system designed specifically for these screens that can be operated by a single operator and to transport the screens efficiently and safely to the designated cleaning area and back. The surrounding area currently contains no structural members that can be utilized for the system, so a structure must be designed that can withstand any loads imparted on it due to the lifting and moving of the screens, and an effective system for lifting and moving the screens must be specified. A successful project will result in decreased labor to perform the cleaning process and increased convenience for the operator performing the task.

The senior design team has been assigned to Cleco Power LLC’s Crushing Wheel Gantry System project. This project is located at the Brame Energy Center in Lena, Louisiana. Cleco Power LLC’s current operation of opening and closing doors on a coal pulverizing tower is unsafe and time consuming. The current system has an equipment change during the opening and closing process of a 45,850 pound door, creating a safety hazard. With safety as the main priority, the team will design a new system that opens and closes the doors in one continuous motion, eliminating the equipment change and negating the safety hazard. Designing this new solution has space limitations due to the various equipment surrounding the pulverizing towers. The design team must provide Cleco Power LLC with a fully functional prototype, a complete bill of materials, a set of standard operating procedures, and all drawings that were created.

Within a large window, the metal pieces that hold individual panes of glass within the frame are collectively referred to as the mullion. When renovating or remodeling a building, it is sometimes necessary to add a wall that intersects at a window. Because the glass and mullion is usually set back from the surface of the wall, there is often a gap between the mullion and the new wall. Gordon, Inc, has designed a line of Mullion Mate products that are designed to be placed into this gap and then mechanically expanded to fill it. However, the smallest Mullion Mate that they offer cannot fit into a gap smaller than 2.75 inches. This project is focused on developing a smaller Mullion Mate that can be used to fill a gap from 2 to 3 inches, while keeping the appearance similar to that of Gordon, Inc.’s existing product line.

Frosty Factory produces frozen drink machines that are sold globally. The beater bar being used for their frozen drink machines with a 9-inch diameter barrel is not dynamically balanced and causes the machine to oscillate or vibrate when the machine is on. This vibration is significant enough to cause premature seal failure. Premature seal failure allows frozen drink mixture to leak into the core of the machine, damaging motors and cooling components. In extreme cases, the vibration can cause the machine to walk into other machines or off counters. The Senior Project Team for this project has made changes to the beater bar that make the beater bar dynamically balanced. These changes reduce the vibration and will improve seal life as well as prevent machines from walking off counters.

This project consists of researching, designing, and manufacturing a Mullion Mate with a sound transmission class (STC) that is higher than 60. A mullion mate is a spring and insulation-filled aluminum extrusion that encloses the vertical gap between partition walls and windows. A sound transmission class is the measure of how difficult it is for sound to travel through material. Therefore, a high STC means less sound transmits through the material. This is important within the scope of this project because it allows for the product to be implemented within infrastructures where confidential information is discussed. The project was broken down into two main components: insulation materials and the aluminum housing. This required research through the construction of an anechoic chamber and 3D printed models of the housing. In the design of the Mullion Mate, the team took into consideration the cost limit of $40 per ft., aesthetics, and ease of installation. The final design consists of two 1” thick extrusions which vary in width depending on the gap between the given set of partition walls and windows. This new design has tested very well in our anechoic chamber and is expected to meet the 60 STC rating.

A fan filter unit consists of a fan motor which forces air through a high-efficiency particulate filter (HEPA) into a cleanroom environment. The goal of this project is to improve the energy efficiency of a fan filter unit by using a new fan motor which has a larger air intake capacity as well as an optimized motor housing. If companies that utilize fan filter units to maintain a cleanroom environment had more efficient energy consumption, their overhead costs would decrease and therefore, the cost of production would decrease. Some types of clients that require clean rooms include semiconductor and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Lowering the overhead for these products may enable them to be sold at lower costs. The constraints are to make the unit height as compact as possible while maximizing energy savings by utilizing a new fan motor. As of now, the design exhibits a 28-watt power consumption at average operating conditions. This number is compared to a consumption of 113 watts for the previous design. This is a 75% improvement in energy consumption.

The Hitch Cargo Carrier aims to solve an increasing problem caused by decreasing vehicle sizes. Cargo space is sacrificed as vehicles are designed to be more compact. The Ford Expedition model has experienced this through its lifetime on the market. This project will offer a simple solution to increase the cargo capacity of a vehicle by utilizing the vehicle’s hitch receiver. The structure will be roughly the size of a typical home refrigerator unit and will mount to the vehicle through the hitch receiver. A sliding mechanism is used for easy loading and unloading of the structure by a single person. The structure will hold at least 150 lbs of cargo, allow easy rear door access, and will not reduce the fuel efficiency of the vehicle by more than 20%. The Hitch Cargo Carrier is a solution to easily increase the cargo space of a vehicle.

Lamb Weston’s sweet potato plant in Delhi, Louisiana, has problems with spillage of product in their overflow line. Sweet potato fries are sent to the overflow line whenever they cannot be bagged so that they can be bagged at a later time. The overflow line brings the fries to a shaker and the fries fall into one of four large totes that can hold 800 pounds of fries. The four hatches that let the fries fall into the totes are controlled manually by a switch at each hatch, despite the fact that no worker is actually stationed at the overflow line. The totes are placed under the shaker without much uniformity and tend to form lumped up piles that can cause spillage even before the totes are actually full. This project is alleviating these problems by restricting the tote placement area, by providing sensors, and auto-lighted alerts that personnel can respond to whenever the tote is too full, either by weight or by lumped up product height. In addition, a clear path to automate the hatches will be given to Lamb Weston from the information that the control system will collect regarding the state of fill of the totes.

OneSubsea, a Schlumberger Company, produces products that are used to extract oil and natural gas from sub-sea well heads. This project focuses on one product specifically, the OneSubsea Clamping System – Vertical, hereby known as the OCS-V. The OCS-V is a large clamp used to securely connect massive pipes to various components on the sea floor. The OCS-V employs a 2” diameter lead-screw, similar to a large bolt, that draws the clamp closed when tightened. This lead-screw is made of inconel, a very advanced nickel alloy. However, over decades of use this lead-screw has the potential to develop calcium-like deposits on the threads. This deposit can make it impossible to disengage the clamp. In the event that the clamp becomes inoperable, the lead-screw must be cut. The Contingency Cut-Off Tool, or CCOT, does just this. It is a hydraulically powered circular saw that utilizes a 14” blade to cut through the lead-screw. Since this operation must occur on the sea floor, a remotely operated vehicle must be used to perform all required work. This CCOT was strategically designed to be mounted to an OCS-V, intentionally minimizing room for error, to accurately and effectively perform the required cut.

Billions of people across the world rely on power plants for energy which often use turbines to generate electricity. A turbine consists of a rotating shaft, or a rotor, with blades that extract power from expanding gasses. Typical rotors are more than 2 feet in diameter. After maintenance, turbines may experience a phenomenon called “partial rub” in which the rotor of the turbine contacts components in its housing. Partial rub is not detrimental to performance, though it may trigger the control system to shut down the turbine due to abnormal vibration. If operators are trained to identify partial rub and override a shutdown triggered by it, they could save power companies millions of dollars per day. Bently Nevada has tasked the team with recreating the partial rub effect on the rotor kit, a 10-millimeter diameter scale model, for use during classroom demonstrations for operators and engineers. Bently Nevada provided the team with data collection equipment used in real power plants to analyze vibration behaviors on the rotor kit. The team presents two designs that cause partial rub and analyzes the effects of this rub on the rotor kit through the data collection system.