This capstone project worked with Los Alamos National Laboratory, a leader in the design and proliferation of nuclear weapons testing, to examine and encapsulate a concept known as the Digital Thread. Specifically, our client tasked us with designing and manufacturing a simple system with a digital twin that we could manipulate through the digital thread and model-based system engineering (MBSE) software. The goal of MBSE, and this project, was to be able to virtually test and validate system characteristics of a model.

GrowCery, which is in Anderson, IN, looks to address food insecurity with an automated hydroponic greenhouse. With the goal of growing food for the local community and serving as a teaching tool for children. Food insecurity awareness should be spread as well as viable solutions that automated hydroponic greenhouses can offer. Using these innovative technologies will allow people in Indiana to create greenhouses to provide food for their communities. 

Climate conditions in the future are expected to have higher temperatures, CO2 levels, and humidity and that will affect how plants grow. This project entails constructing a plant growth chamber that our client will use to simulate these conditions and compare the results against a control group of plants to see how climate change will affect plant growth.

enVista currently uses a third-party time capture and data collection application for measuring and reporting on labor utilization and productivity. enVista has determined there are opportunities to improve the user experience of the time study application and expand the capabilities of data management to more efficiently support their Labor Management System (LMS) implementations.

Stryker Corporation is a medical technology company that is looking for a system to track the end of the lifetime of bur guards produced by the company [1] . We are researching three different technologies that can be used as potential solutions to Stryker’s problem. The final deliverable will be three proof of concepts that will allow Stryker to track the use of the bur guards to ensure safety and prevent the bur guard from failing during use.

To study the interaction of dynamics and control systems, a cart with an inverted pendulum is made. A disturbance to the pendulum causes the cart to move and for the cart to come to a standstill, the pendulum needs to be in the balanced position.

The School of Engineering Technology (SoET) was approached to design a laser harp system to a current piece of artwork in Co. Cavan, Ireland. Our acting SoET sponsor for this project is Professor James Condron. Joey Burns, the artist of the wooden harp sculpture, wants us to iterate on the previous student group’s prototype of this laser harp system. The laser harp system, upon completion, will be installed into the harp sculpture, and allow a user to play musical notes by breaking the laser beams with their fingers.

Our project involved testing seals used in the fluid power industry. Specifically, we were testing different types of static seals. Static seals, as the name implies, seal against fluid pressure in a stationary environment. Our project involved testing these seals at various pressures and various temperatures. The overall goal of our testing was to record the number of pressure cycles that each seal type could withstand without leaking. Afterwards, the physical damage done to the seals by the pressure and temperature would be analyzed.

The Plastic Shredding design project was created to fulfill a need for the developing Smart Factory at Purdue University. The developers of the smart factory, most notably our client Paul McPherson, believe that integrating a recycling component into the factory would make it more sustainable by preventing plastic waste from going into a landfill, and would instead recycle that waste into something useful. It would also make it more engaging to students using the factory.

Clay County Parks has been troubled with vandalism in their parks. A robust security system is needed to curb bouts of vandalism and secure the parks for normal users. The Clay County Parks Department has suggested the security system to be operational twenty-four hours a day and remain out of sight of visitors to prevent tampering. The parks association has come to Purdue for help with this project and this team has been assigned the task of recommending a security system that best fits the community needs for implementation in the parks while remaining within the budget available.