MATLAB

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Pick and Place Robot

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ME102B - Mechatronics
Fall 2010 with Professor Kazerooni

  • Overview - Senior design project to prototype a device controlled by an Arduino micro-controller in one semester. Built a parallel robotic arm where the effector end remains parallel to the ground
  • Kinematics - Solved a system of equations using inverse kinematics to relate the angular position of the top parallelogram to the position of the effector. Prototyped and tested the dynamics equations in MATLAB. Compiled final C++ code using an Arduino micro-controller.
  • Software - Taking input from the user through a Wii controller, the micro-controller interpreted the signal to desired coordinate in 3D space and translated that location to a series of output angles on the robotic arm. The micro-controller sent corresponding PWM signals to the 3 servo actuators on the robot.
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Finite Element Code

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ME280 - Finite Element Method
Fall 2011 with Professor Zohdi

  • Coding - Wrote FEM code in MATLAB from scratch to understand the fundamentals and mathematics of the finite element method. Initially wrote a code to solve a 1D differential equation solution of a cantilever bar with linear basis functions progressing to non-linear basis functions and then a 2D FEM solver. Also wrote code to mesh 2D and 3D shape as well as a mesh refinement scheme for 1D. Compared code perfomance and mount of post-processing for a conjugate gradient solver versus Gaussian elimination. Used numerical methods such as Gaussian integration and Newton’s method to evaluate and solve the solutions.
  • Testing - Compared final FEM solutions to analytical solutions of differential equations. Used best approximation theorem to evaluate the potential energy of the solution and assess convergence. Solved simulations for linear, quadratic, and cubic basis functions with varying mesh sizes to find the reasonable combination of computation time and solution accuracy
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Wind Turbine Design

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ME163 - Aerodynamics
Fall 2010 with Professor Savas

 

  • Computation - Calculated bending and twisting moments on a blade with constant airfoil cross section and varying chord and twist angles. Compared analytical results to real world windmills of similar size.

  • Coding - Wrote code in MATLAB to design a windmill blade. Determined geometric and aerodynamic characteristics of blade such as total power and thrust output. Individual project completed over the course of one semester. Compiled results in reports written in LaTeX about airfoil and turbine blade analysis.
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Automatic Pencil Sharpener

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ME130 - Planar Machinery
Spring 2010 with Professor Yousseffi

  • Project -  Designed and built an automatic pencil sharpener that used a four bar mechanism to move a sharpener into place to sharpen a rotating pencil. The pencils were fed into the device and fell through the bottom when finished.