Materials such as paper, film, magnetic tape and soft polymers were not designed to be load bearing materials, yet we often use them in such a capacity. Our focus is to understand and predict the behavior of these materials, with the goal of improving the reliability of the mechanisms that must handle them. National Air and Space Administration Dexterous, whole arm manipulation requires the hyperredundancy observed in elephant trunks and squid tentacles. This project develops mechatronic systems that mimic the functionality of their biological counterparts. Controlled, pneumatic muscle-like actuators are designed and integrated into a biologically inspired structure.
Experiments demonstrate the performance of the proposed robotic arms.
The study involves numerical simulation of 3-D flow field using CFD and optimization of different shapes and number of fins. The objective of this project is to develop tolerance analysis and allocation methods for internal combustion engine dynamics. In particular, this project deals with the dynamics of a slider crank mechanism with discontinuous forcing functions and random parameters. The statistical analysis is then performed to compute the mean values and standard devations of steady state crank speed and driving torque. These analytical techniques have been used for optimal tolerance allocation via nonlinear programming.