2020 Abstracts

Parkinson, Bethany; Andrews, David; Magleby, Spencer (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Magleby, Spencer (Brigham Young University, Mechanical Engineering)

Increasing worldwide urbanization is leading to a rising population of people living in apartments. Apartments typically have short leases, which lead to a high turnover rate, or number of renters that move in per year. For example, the 2018 turnover rate in New York City was 30.5%. People who move this often usually buy cheap furniture each time they change apartments, because carrying furniture on public transportation is impractical. The goal of our research is to create furniture that allows people who move often to avoid re-purchasing furniture. This goal leads to three design requirements. First, the furniture should be easily collapsed and deployed. This permits the furniture to be conveniently stored and transported. Ideally, the furniture could be deployed with one hand. Second, the furniture should be inexpensive, both in manufacturing processes and material selection. Lastly, the furniture should be aesthetically pleasing. We have utilized origami as a method to achieve these design objectives, because it can be deployed in one motion.

There are significant challenges to designing and implementing origami-inspired furniture. For example, any joints between the legs, seat, table, and back of the furniture need to allow not only for the furniture to be stable in its deployed state, but also to be flat in its non-deployed state. Additionally, the employed joints must account for the thickness of the material. Each type of joint that is adaptable to thick materials was therefore considered and analyzed in the specific loading situation of a chair. Using these criteria and three unique types of joints, a variety of chairs were conceptualized. After prototyping, each type of chair was expanded to create an entire family of furniture, including a table, stool, and couch. The principles and design approaches developed in this project have generated origami-inspired furniture that is easily transportable, functional, inexpensive, comfortable, and aesthetic.

Mehr, Judd; Alvarez, Eduardo; Cardoza, Adam; Ning, Andrew (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Ning, Andrew (Brigham Young University, Mechanical Engineering)

Wind power is an attractive alternative energy source because it is sustainable, clean and cost effective. However, wind energy is difficult to harvest because wind is irregular, seasonal, and often far away from urban areas. Several organizations have sought to solve this problem by designing wind harvesting aircraft, called windcraft. Windcraft are aircraft that are tethered to the ground, propel themselves into the air, enter steady flight in a crosswind, and allow the propellers to spin freely. The wind keeps the windcraft aloft and forces the propellers to turn backwards, turning them into turbines. Power generated from the turbines is sent down the tether and stored. Windcraft provide several advantages beyond those of conventional wind turbines, including high portability due to its smaller weight.

This research employs aerodynamic analysis to determine the forces on the turbines and lifting surfaces of a windcraft modeled after the Makani M600, an 8-rotor prototype produced by Makani Technologies. The analysis is a combination of modeling methods with varying fidelity, including the vortex lattice, vortex particle, and blade element momentum methods. The vortex lattice method models the lifting surface as a sheet of vortices that have the same capability to push on the oncoming flow as the lifting surface would. The vortex particle method uses a set of discretized fluid motion equations in a form that allows for the solution of the strength of the vortex at each point in the flow. The blade element momentum method uses two theories, the blade element theory and the momentum theory, to calculate the power, thrust and axial air velocity of a propeller or turbine. The modeling methods are validated by using experimental data from The Mexico Project and NASA. We implement basic design space exploration to display this model's compatibility with design optimization.

Brad Bundy; Nelson, Andrew; Welton, Meagan (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Bundy, Brad (Brigham Young University, Chemical Engineering)

Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) is the process of making proteins without the limiting environment of a cell. The CFPS system allows us to modify and engineer proteins in ways that have not been done before. This technology has the potential to significantly impact the fields of protein therapeutics, unnatural amino acid insertion, and biosensors. Our research looks into optimizing the process of CFPS. Specifically, we want to understand what the impact of adding bubbles to a cell-free reaction is on CFPS yields. We want to know if adding bubbles to the CFPS mixture prior to incubation will increase the oxygenation of the reaction and affect protein production rates. This knowledge will help us optimize the CFPS process for future applications.

Jensen, Sally; Lignell, David (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Lignell, David (Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, Chemical Engineering)

Radiative heat transfer is central to many chemical engineering processes. Turbulent combustion accounts for 80% of the world's energy. Understanding radiative heat transfer is important for efficient design, regulating pollutant emissions, and doing hazard analyses of these processes. Radiation depends on temperature as well as local composition fields. It is important for combustion because it affects heat transfer to surrounding environments. This in turn impacts fire spread in wild fires as well as heat transfer in power plant boilers and other such applications. Radiation also directly affects the temperature field. The temperature field in turn feeds back to the radiation and impacts the formation of pollutants, such as soot, NOx and other species. Modeling is difficult because computing the absorption coefficient depends on the spectral properties of molecules. Computing these requires millions of spectral bands, which is too expensive to compute for normal applications. A common method that is currently used to predict radiation is the Weighted-sum-of-gray-gases model. Doctors Solovjov and Webb developed a new method called the Rank Correlated Integration of the Spectral Line Weighted-sum-of-gray-gases (rcSLW) model. It is a complex model that is difficult to implement, but it is accurate. It has been implemented in python and in C++. The model has been provided on github to allow for easy access by the community. We will present an overview of the rcSLW model and code interface as well as show selected results applied to systems of interest with respect to combustion.

Pulsipher, Kyle; Despain, Dillon; Wood, David; Fullwood, David T.; Bowden, Anton E. (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Bowden, Anton (Brigham Young University - Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering); Fullwood, David (Brigham Young University - Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering)

Design and Testing of Flexible Wiring Systems in Biomechanical Devices
Kyle Pulsipher, Dillon Despain, David Wood, David T. Fullwood, Anton E. Bowden
A major challenge to wearable electronic devices is the implementation of required wiring and hardware that can accommodate large deformations and strain. For example, several current biomechanical engineering projects utilize a nanocomposite, wide-range, wearable strain sensing technology developed at BYU. Our research challenge was to create a wearable system of conductive links between a multi-sensor system and a microcontroller, while keeping the system low-profile, inexpensive, and functional when experiencing strains of at least 60%.

Several solutions were hypothesized and tested, including experimental silicone composite solutions with dispersed conductive nanofillers. Mechanical solutions were also contemplated, in the form of geometrically positioning a traditional wire in such a way that it could strain the required amount.

Our final solution utilizes a fine-gauge wire shaped into a sine curve, whose period and amplitude are controlled, such that the stretched length (the arc length of the sine curve) is a required strain factor longer than the period of the function. The wire is coated in an elastic silicone body that maintains the wire at the unstrained shape and length. Our implementation provides 130% of the wiring system and accommodates 16 independent sensor connections.

The wiring system is positioned in such a way that the wires are hidden in the artistic form of the sensing system. This electrical structure is both highly practical and aesthetically pleasing.

Bailey J. McFarland, Cheng Chen, Asfand Yar Khan, Harley Cragun, Justin A. Jones and Yu Huang (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Huang, Yu (College of Engineering, Biological Engineering Department); Jones, Justin (College of Science, Biology Department)

Neurological diseases are the largest cause of disability worldwide. Tissue engineering approaches are desirable as they can be used to treat these diseases by replacing damaged and non-repairable brain tissues with engineered materials. Electrospinning of bioactive molecules is a promising materials engineering method to culture neurons and support nervous tissue growth. This suitability for neural cell culture is due to the electrospun material's fibrous and porous structure that mimics the structure of the extracellular matrix. The electrospinning process also allows for the controllable development of complex 3D cell culture, which is key to the creation of viable neural connections. In addition, the formation of both aligned and unaligned layers of fibers allows for intricate guiding of cell morphology that improves outcomes in neural cultures. Finally, the choice of appropriate bioactive materials can improve neurological cell culture. Spider silk, a bioactive protein, contains sequences of amino acids that support nerve cell binding and scaffolding, in complement to which, chitosan fibers have been shown to promote the healthy growth of neural cells.

This project develops a novel method of electrospinning a fibrous scaffold for neural tissue engineering from solutions of recombinant spider silk protein and chitosan. Preliminary results in this study are promising and add to the body of research in neural tissue engineering. These bioactive materials paired with the morphological benefits of electrospinning allow an opportunity to create a substrate that can improve stem cell differentiation into healthy neurons.

Liu, Xintong (University of Utah)
Faculty Advisor: Ji, Mingyue (College of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering)

One of the significant challenges of the machine learning faces today is how to deal with the privacy constraint of the user in a large-scale and distributed communication network. A myriad of data produced by billions of distributed devices need to be sent into the central cloud and to be managed, but what happens if the user does not want to send his/her data to the central cloud. It is reasonable that many users expect the data they send is being protected and maintain privacy. So, we are thinking about whether it is possible to create an individual machine learning in the application of Federated Learning so that the user's data will be protected from the privacy constraints. In this case, the raw data will not be known by anyone except the owner of these data. So, there would be all unknown input data pass through the private machine learning model, and the generated result, which is still hidden data will be sent back to the user. The main topic of the presentation is the designed codes which produces a private configuration with non-linear computation for the learning model and enable privacy constraints for the user's data.

Adams, Sidney (Weber State University)
Faculty Advisor: Arnold, Kristen (Weber State University, Interior Design)

The SMART Recovery Youth Rehabilitation Center will be designed to help youth gain the skills they need to recover from their addictions, and hopefully further eradicate such problems as homelessness in the Salt Lake area. By providing a rehabilitation facility that is welcoming and comfortable for struggling youth, I hope to create a supportive atmosphere where change can take place. This facility will be functional and safe for both staff and patients.

Facility design has a tremendous impact on patient safety. It impacts how people move through the building, how much of a given area staff can see at one time and how people feel when they are in specific spaces. (Sammer, 2018) Patient safety will be a top priority in the design of this facility, and anti-ligature products will be specified. This Youth Rehabilitation Facility will combine functionality with a calming aesthetic to make patients feel secure and at home, and to ensure a successful road to recovery. Everything from seating arrangements to recreational areas will be thoughtfully considered to encourage a supportive atmosphere. Studies show that therapeutic architecture immensely benefits drug patients, especially when environmental factors such as acoustics, smell, color schemes, views, and natural light are considered. (Abdelhay and Dewidar, 2016) In addition, sustainable products and practices will be sourced and implemented in effort to achieve LEED certification.

Moulton, Benjamin (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Hunsaker, Doug (College of Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department)

A morphing allows for more efficient controlled flight. Morphing wings induce a continuous deflection of control surfaces. Deflection can be caused by compliant mechanisms and composite materials. Factors contributing to efficient morphing wings range from a continuous morphing trailing edge to stiffness and flexure. Wing stiffness supports aerodynamic loading. Wing flexure supports transverse deflection, or twist of the wing trailing edge. Graduate students in the USU Aerolab have written an algorithm to optimize where these deflections should occur on the wing. The student seeks to build a morphing wing to demonstrate the success of the optimization code. Different manufacturing methods are explored. 3D printing provides the most promising results. The 3D printing of thermoplastic materials allows for shear and deflection.

Hunt, J. Porter; Barnett, R. Jordan; Robinson, Hannah; Wilding, Kristen; Bundy, Bradly C. (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Bundy, Bradly (BYU Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, Chemical Engineering)

Amino acid concentration assays assist both healthcare providers and patients in determining treatment plan options and diagnosis for diseases ranging from genetic conditions to eating disorders. Cell free protein synthesis provides a rapid, inexpensive platform where a single amino acid assay gives the concentration in that sample. As a biosensor, this assay has proven to provide sensitive and accurate results and has an extensive range of applications. Progress towards a simple product that anyone could use to test amino acid concentrations represents a major contribution to the healthcare industry.

Beatson, Bridget; Bolanos, Diana; Jackson, Corinne (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Vargis, Elizabeth (College of Engineering, Biological Engineering Department)

Origami, traditionally known as the art of paper folding, is not limited solely to paper media. The concepts used in folding paper can also apply to more pliable materials such as fabric. As with paper, different fabric-based origami designs exhibit properties such as shape compliance, increased surface area per unit volume, and selective stiffness. This study explores selected fold patterns in various incontinence product fabrics, aiming to increase fluid wicking performance and thus reduce sag due to saturation. The most suitable materials from various adult incontinence product brands were tested then utilized to develop new concepts for integration into an innovative and revolutionizing product. For the liquid dispersion layer, the concept of pleated fabric was incorporated into the design, mimicking the origami characteristics of peaks and valleys. Tests were performed on suitable materials to measure the spread of fluid in the modified layer as would be actuated by human urination. Final results from this testing indicated significantly broader dispersion of the synthetic urine utilized for testing as compared to that of the unmodified materials. When incorporated into a final product, this would allow for larger distribution of the fluid, thus increasing the product's holding capacity and enabling a more even distribution of the weight of the fluid, helping to reduce sag. This result could greatly increase the comfort and functionality of adult incontinence products.

Boyce, Cassandra; Runyan, Josh (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Wingate, David (Brigham Young University, Computer Science)

India has the world's highest rate of mortality due to cervical cancer. Despite this variant's high treatability, there aren't enough pathologists to read the pap smear slides. In order to streamline this process, we developed a low-cost, digital pathologist using deep learning to read pap smear results as a form of preliminary testing in order to decrease mortality rates. Deep learning alone cannot provide a solution because a housing is required for the hardware. The industrial design aspect of this project is also important to create a medical device that is not only functional and robust but accessible and unintimidating for those in rural India.

Clayton, Abigail (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Horrocks, Jamie (Humanities, English)

Prior to its public auction in 1847, Shakespeare's Birthplace—the home where he was born on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon—was passed down through various private owners and their tenants who turned the property into an inn and a butcher shop. A mere sign indicated that "Shakespeare was born here." By this point in time, Shakespeare's literary influence permeated both Europe and America, but his status as a cultural icon was not strongly associated with the physical space of his home. However, this was about to change. In 1842, P.T. Barnum, the American showman of circus fame, was touring England with "The Greatest Show on Earth" when he went to visit Shakespeare's home. Five years later, as he was always on the lookout for more "oddities" to add to his menagerie, the public auction of the Birthplace caught his interest, and he could not resist making an offer. This attempt by a foreign invader to "steal Shakespeare" inflamed the British public and sparked debates regarding the cultural ownership of the great playwright. Among leaders of these debates was Charles Dickens, who initiated a series of events across England in an attempt to raise enough money to reclaim Shakespeare for the British people. Although Barnum and Dickens never met in person, the way in which nineteenth-century media manipulated their celebrity personas and followings reveals the way in which transatlantic celebrity was crucial to the formation of Shakespeare as a British heritage icon. The cultural warfare between the two, as represented by sensationalist journalism of the time, started debates over the appropriation of Shakespeare as a symbol of national heritage and identity that have lasted into the twenty-first century.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; U.S. Department of State; The Walk Free Foundation; The Borgen Project; Ling, Bonny; (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Guo, Li (College of Humanities and Social Sciences; Languages, Philosophy and Communication Studies Department)

It is a historical fact that human trafficking for the purposes of sex and forced marriage has been a cancer in societies and civilizations throughout the history of the world. China has a well documented history of trafficking women for the purpose of forced marriage. The main objective of this research is to investigate trends found in the forced marriage markets of China from the rise of Mao Zedong in the mid-twentieth century until 2019. The author used interviews with victims of the forced marriage markets in China as well as secondary data collected from NGOs and watchdog organizations, government publications, and relevant journals. My findings are significant because they illuminate patterns and trends that governmental and non-governmental organizations can use to identify high risk populations and to take action on educating and protecting women who are at high risk of being forced into marriage in China.

Bundy, Brad; Crop, Tyler (Brigham Young University)
Faculty Advisor: Bundy, Brad (Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, Chemical Engineering)

Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) has proven to be a novel and effective method for recombinant protein production. However, one key disadvantage in this process is the need to store the requisite cell extract and energy source for the reaction at below-freezing temperatures. Our lab has developed a lyophilization-based system to overcome this problem. We have shown that lyophilization of the cell extract and energy system needed for the reaction are possible while still maintaining equivalent protein production capabilities of the reaction. This lyophilization-based system provides a solution to the high costs associated with the storage of these reagents, increases the shelf-life of the reagents, and, when mixed with water, allows for on-demand protein production in remote locations around the world.

Zane, Regan; Kamineni, Abhilash; Nimri, Reebal (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Kamineni, Abhilash (College of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department); Zane, Regan (College of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department)

Transportation electrification will bring a positive effect on sustainable environments and robust economies. Electric Vehicles (EV) are emerging in today's market as a solution. However, the battery technologies on EV cannot compete with fuel and diesel cars in terms of energy storage capacity, and time needed to recharge (equivalently refuel). These limitations directly reflect on the consumers' convenience, the max miles the Vehicle can perform for, and hence EV adoption. Wireless power transfer (WPT) systems are seen as a solution to ease consumers' transition to EV. A high-level diagram of WPT is shown in Figure (**).

Major advancements in WPT technology has enabled the commercialization of stationary WPT solutions — materials technology has been a major impediment. Hence, academia and industry are jointly considering more advanced solutions in WPT, namely Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (DWPT). Implementing DWPT systems will permit on the go charging for EV the upper hand over present charging (equivalently fueling) methods and encourage EV adoption. This document reflects on some of the challenges of realizing an effective DWPT that maintains power transfer between the primary pad and secondary pad, and a proposed solution to allow dynamic charging. Also, the proposed DWPT offers compatibility with SAE J2954 (Wireless Power Transfer for Light-Duty Plug-in/Electric Vehicles and Alignment Methodology) WPT3Z3 pad.

A comprehensive approach was taken in the design of the primary pad to validate the power transfer requirements for the designed pads. The proposed solution consists of a custom primary pad and a custom secondary pad for dynamic charging. This document will refer to the custom primary pad and a custom secondary pad as DGA and DVA, respectively. DGA offers compatibility with WPT2Z3 for dynamic charging and DVA offers compatibility with the Universal Ground Assembly (UGA) for stationary charging.

Carter Olson, Candi; LaPoe, Victoria (Utah State University)
Faculty Advisor: Carter Olson, Candi (College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Journalism and Communication Department)

The Spiral of Silence theory is the idea that people in society are excluded based on their opinions. Because of this, members of society may keep their opinions quiet to avoid exclusion. While the theory was first introduced in 1974, its effects are important to research today, particularly with the political atmosphere and advanced communication technology we now have. Because social media allows users to broadcast their opinions to a large audience, researchers wanted to know how users self-censor on the internet. The study also aimed to determine if the tone, rhetoric, and events of the 2016 U.S. election influenced self-censorship. In this study, researchers found that many people, especially those in marginalized groups, tended to keep their opinions offline during the time surrounding the election.

Heftel, Christian (Utah Valley University
Faculty Advisor: Abbott, Scott (Humanities and Social Sciences, Integrated Studies)

The cosmos of Dante Alighieri is one obsessed with verticality. Hell is a hole in the ground, Purgatory a pillar that rises to the heavens. The deeper one descends into Hell, the worse the sinners one encounters. The higher one soars into Paradise, the more blessed the saints, until one finally arrives at the pinnacle of the Great Chain of Being: God. This accords with the common orientational metaphors identified by Lakoff and Johnson, where up is associated with good, with power, and with authority; and down is associated with depravity, impotence, and subjugation.

However, it is not merely Dante's cosmology that is concerned with the vertical. In his treatment of individual humans and their qualities and deeds, Dante similarly expresses an interest in their height, their posture, and their ability to stand upright. This interest is shown vividly in three beings or classes in Inferno: the virtuous pagans of Limbo, the wind-tossed lustful, and the king of Hell himself: Satan. In the poem, the virtuous pagans stand, suggesting moral and intellectual uprightness. The lustful, although lifted high into the air by the storms that beat them, are still unable to stand because they lack ground beneath their feet. Finally, Satan appears to stand, but is actually later shown to be imprisoned and inverted, frozen halfway through a fall from Heaven. Examining these three cases gives insight into Dante's conception of reason, sin, virtue, and the universe itself--and it gives similar insight into the linguistic and metaphorical connotations of human bipedality.