Search

The objective of this research was to develop and implement an elastomer solenoid capable of generating underwater jet propulsion for soft robot actuation. This is significant in pushing forward the progress of soft robotics by proving the viability of a new soft actuation method in addition to proving the viability of using silicone and magnetic particles as the driving mechanism for a soft actuator. The two primary aims were to effectively manufacture an elastomer solenoid core and to incorporate that core with a flexible diaphragm that actuates when a voltage is applied. This combination creates a pulse of water that is pumped out of an orifice. In practice, this was a success. The propagated magnetic field in the elastomer core was very apparent in air and displacements of 2.7 cm could be achieved for a 100 mm wide diaphragm. Underwater, the added damping force of the fluid limited the displacement of the diaphragm, however; the final device was able to pump water at 250 ml/min out of an orifice.

The American Medical System’s AMS 800TM has been the gold standard for over 40 years with over 150,000 patients treated for Urinary Incontinence and is the leading treatment for male stress urinary incontinence (SUI) following prostate surgery. Type III SUI, or intrinsic sphincter deficiency, is the inability of the urethra to maintain closure pressure sufficient to keep the patient clinically dry at rest and during periods of heightened activity (~120 cmH2O; coughs, sneezes, posture changes, and exercises). The current AMS 800TM is not personalized to a patient’s needs and compromises with an in between pressure- as high (61-70 cmH2O) as it can be without exceeding safety threshold levels. As such many men still leak when they are active. The market is hungry for a device that can adapt to the patient’s level of activity, reducing pressure most of the day to protect the urethra and then briefly increasing the pressure when he is more active. We are developing a novel implantable pump (henceforth called “add-on device”) which will be an add-on to the AMS 800TM and it includes a solenoid coil-cum-plunger and a fluid reservoir within the pump body. The add-on device will be small, light-weight and battery powered, and maintain compatibility with the AMS 800TM device. The device idea is in its proof-of-concept stage. This add-on device can be a possible solution to reducing the risks including urethral atrophy (leading to return of incontinence) and erosion (leading to infection of the implant) resulting from the constant pressure.

Aerospace Engineering

Integrated circuit technology continually presses toward higher transistor density and thus smaller dimensions, yet passive components which remain the bulk of the circuit area, surprisingly receive sideline attention. This work addresses a niche area of inductor design as it applies to the 3-dimensional (3-D) integration of active transistors and passive components. Hybrid, 3-D circuits residing on inexpensive silicon substrates can be fashioned using a photosensitive epoxy known as SU-8 serving as the interposer layer between the substrate and in which the passive components are embedded. The active components, which are known-good-chips, are secured with epoxy into deep reactive ion etched pockets in the silicon substrate. The inductors are fabricated in the SU-8 covering the active chips. This technique saves considerable money and increases the yield of 3-D circuits compared with the high cost of monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). The design of solenoid inductors was simulated using a Matlab model incorporating closed-form equations. Herein, that model was developed and verified against both empirical data from fabricated solenoids and against data from a physical simulator in CoventorWare's 3-D electromagnetic, software. A design of experiments examined the effect of solenoid geometry on inductance, quality factor and AC resistance. Additionally, solenoids were fabricated with ferromagnetic cores in an effort to study the potential of enhancing the inductance and quality factor.

The demand for efficient, lightweight consumer products created the need for miniaturization of passive components especially inductors which are some of the bulkiest parts of an integrated system. The purpose of the work described here was to study toroidal inductor structures since they were compact and self-shielding. Toroidal inductors were modeled using a commercial electromagnetic simulator. The results show that these structures have good characteristics in terms of inductance, quality factor and area. Three different structures are fabricated and experimentally characterized using the HP Vector Network Analyzer. We also make several observations about the effect of the placement of each pair of top and bottom metal strips with respect to each other on the flux linkage and hence, the inductance and quality factor of the inductor.

TwinSol is a unique apparatus designed and built as a joint nuclear physics project of the University of Michigan and the University of Notre Dame. TwinSol is installed at the 10 MegaVolt tandem Van de Graaff accelerator facility located on the campus of the University of Notre Dame's Nuclear Structure Laboratory in Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. This device employs a pair of in-line, large bore, air-core persistent-mode superconducting solenoids (Bmax = 6 tesla) to produce, collect, transport and focus secondary beams of low-energy (E/A < 10 MeV) radioactive ions. Reactions induced by these radioactive nuclear beams (RNBs) are studied using several particle detection systems. Such reactions are pertinent to the understanding of nucleosynthesis and nuclear astrophysics. They are also important in expanding our basic understanding of the properties of nuclei as these RNB which have N >> Z or Z >> N often exhibit behavior that is very different from ordinary, non-radioactive nuclei (N &ap; Z). This thesis details the design, installation and initial in-beam tests of the TwinSol apparatus as well as the results of several experiments performed with the system.

The spin dynamics of circulating beams must be thoroughly understood in order to provide polarized beams for high energy experiments exploring spin dependent particle interactions. A radio frequency solenoid was installed in the Cooler Ring of the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility where the energy spread of the proton beam is small hence facilitating high precision measurements. The measurements were made at a beam kinetic energy of 104.11 MeV. The rf-solenoid introduced a weak depolarizing field. The spin tune of the unperturbed synchrotron was measured by finding the resonance condition between the frequency of the weak depolarizing field and the spin's intrinsic precession frequency, the spin tune. The spin tune was measured to an accuracy of one part in 10$\sp5$ both with and without the presence of a full Siberian Snake. The spin vector of a circulating beam was observed to freely precess about the field of the rf-solenoid in the proximity of the resonance. The free spin precession demonstrated the high precision to which the spin vector can be manipulated. The synchrotron sidebands of an induced resonance were measured and found to have an unexpectedly large width. The width of the synchrotron sidebands can be described by the influence of the rf-solenoid on the beam's orbit dynamics thus emphasizing the coupling between spin and orbit dynamics. Specific recommendations are made for the improvement of the rf-solenoid and the design of similar oscillating field devices to be used as experimental tools in future polarized beam facilities.

A spectrometer based on an air-core, superconducting solenoid has been constructed, tested, and demonstrated to be useful as a heavy-ion reaction-product collection and detection device. Two detector systems which measure ion energy loss, residual energy, time-of-flight, and position in the detector plane have been developed for use with the spectrometer. This spectrometer is the first which uses an air-core rather than a steel-yoked magnet. The characteristics of the two different designs are compared. The spectrometer's cylindrical symmetry, focusing properties, and large solid angle make it well-suited for several different types of experiments, including reactions with low cross sections and experiments requiring detection of reaction products emitted at small angles to the beam. The optical properties of the spectrometer were determined using alpha-particle sources and elastically scattered particles from an accelerator beam. Simple first-order and ray-tracing calculations are shown to reproduce well the measured effects. The spectrometer was then used in the study of $\sp{18}$O-induced transfer reactions on neutron-rich targets, which resulted in the measurement of the masses of $\sp{30}$Mg, $\sp{108}$Ru, and $\sp{109}$Rh.