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Project Number:1 2 3 4 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 17 18 19 21 22 23
Advisor: M. E. Sloan Complete the implementation and testing of an electronic engine management system consisting of fuel injection and electronic ignition. The system will operate a four-stroke, four-cylinder gasoline engine for use in a high-performance race vehicle. The current design calls for a micro-controller-based in-car controller and PC-based programming and monitoring software. Tasks include optimization of the current design, development and implementation of a test plan, and design and implementation of one or more project extensions. This project is suitable for students with backgrounds in computers and practical electronics experience. Familiarity with engines is also beneficial.
Advisor: J. A. Soper A variety of community service and emergency activities occur frequently for which temporary radio communication within a local area is required. These activities include parades, races, man-made and natural disasters, search and rescue operations and training exercises. Amateur Radio operators (hams) are often called upon to provide communications systems for such incidents and events. Setting up a temporary radio communications system on short notice is a significant challenge, especially in an isolated area not accessible to conventional vehicles. The major technical need that would permit such a system to be developed is for a backpackable antenna and feedline system. It must be easy to erect at a remote site and must permit full duplex operation without damaging or desensitizing the receiver.
Advisor: D. H. Stone Steady load growth, increased generation, and political demands that other utilities must be able to sell power in Michigan has stretched parts of the existing transmission system to its limits. Given the general consensus of the population of the service territory, and recent decisions by judges, gaining right-of-way for new transmission lines is just shy of impossible. Therefore, the solution appears to lie in Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) technologies. The students will examine our transmission system, determine what type of device(s) should go at which station(s). An economic estimate of the project would be encouraged.
Advisor: D. H. Stone As de-regulation draws near, utilities must make plans to retain existing customers and attract new ones. One avenue is to sell "Premium Power" to industrial facilities. "Premium Power", simply put, is a clean waveform free of drastic voltage sags, surges, and harmonics. The students need to first find a way improve the power quality at an industrial substation, then find a way to measure that same quality.
Advisor: M. E. Sloan This project involves the design and construction of an expansion board for the Motorola MPC505EVB evaluation board that is used in the course EE463, Computer Interfaces and I/O. The expansion board would provide buffered inputs and outputs to protect the MPC505EVB from damage by a user, as well as additional hardware, such as analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. Credit in EE463 is beneficial but not necessary.
Advisor: A. K. Kulkarni Construct a test system which will continuously operate and monitor trainable garage door openers while exposed to an environmental profile which ranges from -40??C to +85??C. The test samples will also be exposed to a voltage profile which ranges from 9 V to 16 V. The test system shall be capable of exercising the samples and verifying proper operation by checking such items as proper RF signal and current draw. If a discrepancy is found, the test system shall log the conditions (number of cycles, temperature, voltage, current, proper RF signal, etc.) of the failure to a spreadsheet file.
Advisor: B. A. Mork Numerous outages to the generation/transmission system in the Adrian, Michigan area could cause unacceptable low voltage conditions and thermal overloads of the transmission facilities in the area. The risk exists of a cascading outage, the need to drop load, and the need to reduce generation due to the thermal overload problems. The project will determine where and how to reinforce the 345 kV and/or 138 kV power system transmission grid in the Adrian area and requires a system load flow analysis as well as economic considerations and risk analysis. A concept approval of the proposed solution is required. The project will include aspects of substation and line design, and possibly insulation coordination, relaying and other system protection requirements, and equipment specification.
Advisor: D. H. Stone Design a control system which anticipates the need for and controls the peak power generating facilities on a power transmission system. "Peakers" are needed on line before local low voltage conditions threaten to collapse the grid. Allow for remote control of the peaker generation facilities from a Power Control Center.
Advisor: A. K. Kulkarni Design an electrical power generating scheme (other than batteries) which can be used to power a wireless telemetry transmitter that is attached to moving machinery components such as pistons, connecting rods, turbines, crankshafts, etc. Power requirements are on the order of an half watt. Major consideration will have to be given to the operating environment.
Advisor: A. B. Kunz Design and build a GPS payload for testing on a Superloki rocket flight. The payload package should acquire GPS data during the flight and telemeter it back to an earth station in real time. Other possible payload packages could measure: pressure above 20 km, ozone, humidity and, index of refraction. The design problem includes developing a data acquisition and telemetry system.
Advisor: M. E. Sloan This is the continuation of a project begun in the 1997/1998 school year. The AMJOCH Observatory is owned by Michigan Tech's Electrical Engineering department and is jointly used by the EE and Physics department's. The Observatory is located in Atlantic Mine. The Observatory houses a 16 inch telescope which operates under computer control; that is, it can find and track a given star automatically. The Observatory dome rotates via motor control manually and the door in the dome opens under manual motor control. A previous design team worked on synchronizing the motion of the dome opening with the motion of the telescope, They worked to intercept control signals from the telescope computer and developed a software package to control the dome drive motors. This project would be to design the interface between the dome control computer and the dome drive motors in such a way as to assure precision tracking of the window with the telescope. A second aspect of the project would be to operate the Observatory from a computer located on campus.
Advisor: A. B. Kunz The design and development of loudspeakers is still in many ways an art form rather than a science, While quantitative measurements techniques exist, there is no general agreement as to the relative importance of any measured parameter to the perception of sound. In this design project, we will attempt to quantify the relevance of objective measurement of speaker performance with subjective perceptions of the sound. We will further attempt to design, construct, test and demonstrate practical approaches to achieving the performance goals that we have established. Advisor: B. A. Mork The Grand Rapids, Michigan area transmission system required the addition of a 345/138 transformer at the existing 138 kV Gaines switching substation. The 345 line near the substation will be tapped and one 345 kV breaker will be added. The 138 kV switching station is configured in a breaker-and-a-half arrangement with three incoming 138 kV lines. The existing 345 kV line is protected with 2 Directional Comparison Blocking schemes using power-line carrier for communications.
The project will develop the system protective relaying specifications for the modified Gaines substation and incoming lines, incorporating both the new equipment and system configuration as well as any required modifications to the existing system protection schemes. This project will require development of the new system short circuit models, protective relaying zones, and application of sufficient protective relaying to clear all faults within the critical clearing time. The use of Digital relays is preferred. Differential protection of the transformer is required.
Advisor: L. J. Bohmann For optimal life and efficiency, different battery manufacturers recommend different charging regimes for their batteries. Two typical charging regimes are constant current charging and constant voltage charging. This project would be the design and construction of a high powered (4-6kW) smart battery charger. This would require sensors to determine battery condition (voltage and current), high power rectifier and charging circuits, and some intelligent control circuitry so that the operation of the charging circuit changes in response to the sensor input.
Advsior: M. C. Roggemann Real-time digital video compression is becoming more important as the pressure to send more channels over the finite bandwidth available increases. Modern compression is based on the MPEG standards. Minimizing the bandwidth transmitted requires efficiently sensing and encoding moving and stationary parts of the scene. Unfortunately, the MPEG scheme is "lossy", and artifacts result in the decoded imagery which are annoying to human observers. There are two goals for this project: (1) to develop image enhancement techniques to minimize the impact of these artifacts, probably at the expense of some blurring; and (2) investigate enhancements to the MPEG encoding standard that would reduce the creation of these artifacts. The emphasis for both of these goals is, of course, on real-time implementations using commercial off-the-shelf technologies.
Advisor: L. J. Bohmann The Gratiot Lake Conservancy (GLC) is a non-profit organization focused on protecting Gratiot Lake and its watershed. GLC's means to this end are land conservation , land stewardship, and environmental education. The Gratiot Lake Conservancy (GLC) Field Station is located on the Southeastern shore of Gratiot Lake in Keweenaw County, MI. Gratiot Lake has many vacation homes and some year around residences on its opposite shore, but the field station is located in a natural area not currently served by public electrical utilities. The field station, a log cabin built in the 1940's by Prof. Noblet (founder of the MTU School of Forestry) as a hunting lodge, has a propane system for lights and cooking, but has no electrical power source. It is located on a nature preserve accessible by old logging roads and by boat. In order to more effectively carry our research and educational programs which sometimes include overnight stays, the GLC would like to have a source of electrical power, useable particularly from mid April through the end of October. It would be used for such things as the operation of power microscopes, occasional computer use, and perhaps for occasional power to a small refrigerator. Because this is a nature preserve, it is essential that the project be designed and implemented with utmost respect for the environment and the delicate ecology of the area. Since a goal of the GLC is to educate about the environment, being able to use this off the grid power system as a demonstration of environmentally friendly power alternatives would be an added plus.
Advisor: W. F. Perger The Electrical and Computer Engineering department's radio telescope at the Amjoch Observatory in Atlantic Mine has two 10 foot parabolic reflector antennas operating as an interferometer. This project is to design, build and test a system to permit the tracking of stars. This would require procuring a PC, a controller board, stepper motors, and associated hardware and software to provide smooth position control of the dishes, paying attention to real-world issues such as wind loading. A second aspect of this project is to utilize the same PC to sample the two 20 MHz IF signals at the output of each of the two dishes' receivers through an A-to-D converter card. These digitized signals would then be stored and processed to provide a plot of the radio signal received from a given star. Advisor: J. A. Soper This project will focus upon the control of a variable height - suspension system. The type of suspension will be left up to the team to decide, whether the system will be air, hydraulic or other. The system will need a micro-controller to make changes during varying driving conditions (on highway, in city, or off-road). The system will communicate with the vehicle computer to determine the road conditions using the existing CAN network in the vehicle.
Advisor: J. A. Soper This project will focus on developing a PC/104 compatible expansion board for use with the vehicle computer. The device must be able to communicate on the PC/104 bus as well as the CCD, J1850, and CAN in-vehicle communication networks. The use of a microprocessor is recommended to reduce the workload on the vehicle computer and to handle the timing demands of each network. The microprocessor will also perform near real-time speed control of the engine for the vehicle computer.
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| rschulz@mtu.edu | Modified: March 1, 2000 |