Nathan\u27s Mobility Device

Nathan’s Mobility Device is a California Polytechnic State University senior project composed of a team of four mechanical engineering students that designed, built and implemented a specialized seat on an existing mobility device. Nathan, the sole beneficiary of this project, is an 11-year-old boy afflicted with a condition known as Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) which causes him extreme muscular weakness. In this report, the team discussed the problem at hand, provides preliminary research and product benchmarking (evaluation and comparison to specific criteria), and described the ideation, prototyping, testing, and iteration plan. In addition, the team explored the final design in detail while confirming that each component was within the specified budget, meets Nathan’s required criteria, and functions safely and appropriately. This final design review discusses the final design choices incorporated into the mobility device and the manufacturing and testing procedures done to achieve the final product. Manufacturing and testing were divided into mechanical and electrical subgroups and have their respective risk assessments and critical tests outlined in the sections six and seven. In the first two months of receiving this project, the team was undecided between modifying an existing power scooter that either focused on comfort or building a mobility device from scratch that focuses on aesthetics at the expense of reliability. In analyzing the hierarchy of Nathan’s needs and collaborating with his mother, Amy, team members decided to forfeit the latter idea and settle on a mobility base to build upon. This report spans the period before, during, and after this choice was made. The report also identifies the constraints that will be considered for the design to ensure that the project is within the scope of the team’s expertise. Some of these constraints include: budgeting, working within the scope of work, and modifying the mobility base without damaging existing components

Fire and Life Safety Evaluation of the Christopher Cohan Center

This project is an academic exercise, as part of the MS Fire Protection Engineering program of California Polytechnic State University. The project is a culminating report with regards to life safety analysis of the Christopher Cohan Center of Cal Poly, which builds on the fundamental and applied courses of the program. The analysis is twofold, where the first part is a Prescriptive Analysis of the building and its features, followed by a Performance Based Life Safety Analysis. Both parts are performed in accordance with NFPA 101 Life Safety Code 2015 edition, Codes/Standards references within NFPA 101, and supplemented by methods of the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering. California have yet to adopt the Life Safety Code, which per definition, makes it impossible to determine if the building is a new or existing structure. Nevertheless, the building has been analyzed as an existing building. Where noted, necessary assumptions were made to complete the analysis. The building in question is part of the Performing Arts Center of Cal Poly, and consists of assembly-, business-, and storage occupancies. Two adjacent buildings make up the remaining parts of the Performing Arts Center, but these buildings will not be analyzed in this report. The Cohan Center is separated from adjacent buildings by 4-hour rated walls, and/or separation distances of 60 ft. The prescriptive analysis concludes that the building in general meets the requirements of the applicable codes and standards, with the following exceptions: a place of assembly at the Balcony Level have no other means of egress than through the communicating space, the spacing of smoke detectors does not meet prescriptive requirements in the Entry Lobby, and the water supply for the sprinkler system is insufficient. All conclusions are based on the information available. The recommended actions are to perform a new water flow test, and based on the result, consider installing a fire pump to provide sufficient flow and pressure to the most remote area of the sprinkler system. The performance based analysis addressed life safety in the event of fire in scenery on stage. The fire was modeled at floor level, and in the fly-gallery. Based on building inspections, the author considers ignition more likely in the fly-gallery, than at the stage floor. The main focus of this model was to evaluate consequences of smoke spread, if the proscenium wall curtain fails to deploy. The analysis concluded that the fly-gallery fire meets the performance criteria, and results in an acceptable level of life safety. The scenery fire at the stage floor fails to meet the performance criteria of the Life Safety Code, with the current building design and feature. Further analysis concludes that installing addressable smoke detectors at the stage ceiling, that activates all smoke vents and sends an alarm signal to the fire alarm control panel, resulted in meeting the performance criteria regardless of the modeled fire location

An automotive lower back seat system design

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 37).by William Giacomo Fonte.M.S

Accessible Design in Rural Health care: Usability Profile of Outpatient Health Care Facilities in Rural West Virginia.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990. Since then, research has shown that people with disabilities continue to experience environmental, systematic, and structural barriers to health care. The purpose of this research is to explore the prevalence of barriers in rural West Virginia health facilities and the relationship between building characteristics (like age and purpose) and accessibility. The researcher evaluated ten rural outpatient member-sites of the West Virginia Practice-Based Research Network using a survey to understand building characteristics and a tool to measure essential features for a facility to be considered ‘usable’. Findings included a negative correlation between building age and accessibility score. The results showed that once adjusted for items that did not apply to specific clinics, surveyed clinics scored an average of 73% in overall accessibility. Counters, restrooms, and exam rooms were the lowest scoring categories. The study also found a moderate negative correlation (Spearman p -.6274) between the age of the building and overall score and a strong negative correlation (Spearman -.71) between the age of building and Mobility score. In addition, this research found a moderate statistical difference mean in usability score of buildings retrofitted to house medical offices. This research supports the notion that physical and environmental barriers to health care access still exists and that older clinical buildings run a higher risk of being non-compliant with essential ADA items and thus, contribute to barrier creation

FIRE PROTECTION AND LIFE SAFETY ANALYSIS OF THE 2704-HV HANFORD BUILDING

This report analyzes multiple aspects of fire protection and life safety design for the 2704-HV Building located at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation Site in Washington State. The analysis contained within focuses on both prescriptive and performance-based designs for the fire systems within the structure. The 2704-HV building is a two-story office building containing approximately 90 individual full-office spaces on each floor along with approximately 60 individual cubicle office spaces on each floor. There are various other types of gathering spaces within the 2704-HV layout including: conference rooms, showers, kitchen and dining areas, training rooms, and lobbies. The 2704-HV building was constructed in 1990 with the intent to serve as the primary Waste Treatment Plant (WTP) Operations Center for the low activity nuclear waste left behind from the Manhattan Project. During the construction of the facility, the building was deemed inadequate to process nuclear waste and therefore repurposed to serve as office space for operations and support personnel. The overall area of 2704-HV is 126,769 ft2 and the overall height of the building is 32 ft. The building’s geometry is rectangular with dimensions of 348 ft by 182 ft. In the prescriptive analysis, the means of egress, construction type, fire alarm system, and water- based fire suppression system located within the building were analyzed. After the in-depth analysis was performed, no deficiencies were noted in any of the systems. The 2704-HV building construction type, building height, building area, number of stories, and structural fire ratings comply with the International Building Code (IBC). In the performance-based analysis, three design fire scenarios were selected based on the degree of hazard to the facility and the occupants. Hand calculations were performed for these three fire scenarios, but only one was selected to be modeled using computer-based software known as Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). The first design fire scenario takes place in the main entrance lobby where two upholstered chairs located in the center of the lobby are ignited. Based on the combined peak heat release rate from the fire of these two chairs and external heat flux calculations, a third chair located at a distance of 2 meters across from the on-going fire auto-ignites. For this design fire scenario 1, sprinkler activation and secondary ignition were analyzed. From the results of fire scenario 1, sprinkler activation occurs at approximately 2.5 minutes or 152 seconds from ignition of a lobby chair. The chair peak HRR output is 4,168 kW at 11.25 minutes. Secondary ignition for the chair at 2 meters across from the on-going fire auto-ignites at approximately 139 seconds or 2.3 minutes. The secondary auto-ignition of the chair at 2 meters is based on an external critical heat flux of 10 kW/m2. The second design fire scenario takes place in one of the second-floor conference rooms. This scenario assumes that a conference room table and six chairs around it ignite. The heat release rate produced is evaluated along with the time to ignition of one of the chairs located along the wall of the conference room and directly across from the conference room table. For this fire scenario 2, secondary ignition, tenability conditions, and flashover conditions were analyzed. From the results of fire scenario 2, secondary ignition for a chair directly across from the conference room table against the wall at a distance of 1.52 meters auto-ignites at 1,300 seconds or 21.6 minutes. This assumes a critical heat flux of 10 kW/m2 for the polypropylene chair. Sprinkler activation was not analyzed for this fire scenario, instead untenable conditions were calculated. Untenable conditions per the calculation results show that the conference room becomes untenable very quickly at 35 seconds from the initial fuel package igniting. If the fire is not controlled through fire suppression means, the conference room would experience flashover when the fire reaches 1,538 kW which is approximately 25 minutes from the initial fuel package igniting. The third design fire takes place on the second floor in a cubicle office. The fire comes from a computer igniting and then secondary ignition occurs when a 7-gallon plastic trash bin within the cubicle auto-ignites. For this fire scenario 3, sprinkler activation, secondary ignition, and tenability conditions were analyzed. From the results of fire scenario 3, sprinkler activation occurs at approximately 4.6 minutes or 280.0 seconds from ignition of the cubicle computer. Secondary ignition for the 7-gallon trash bin located 1.2 meters from the on-going computer fire auto-ignites at approximately 799.0 seconds or 13.3 minutes. The secondary auto-ignition of the trash bin is based on an external heat flux of 10 kW/m2. Secondary ignition would never occur in this scenario unless sprinkler activation is neglected. This is because the sprinkler located at an approximate distance of 3 meters activates 8.7 minutes before an external critical heat flux of 10 kW/m2 is radiated onto the trash bin. Untenable conditions per the calculation results show that the cubicle area becomes untenable at approximately 8 minutes from the initial fuel package igniting. In this scenario, untenable conditions would not be reached because the fire would be suppressed by the sprinkler. Fire scenario 3 is the only design fire that was modeled using Pyrosim and Pathfinder. Sprinkler activation was neglected to analyze tenability conditions and to evaluate the available safe egress time versus required safe egress time (ASET Vs. RSET). Heat detection was modeled to determine the RSET detection time. The results for ASET were 16 minutes and 20 seconds and for RSET 6 minutes and 12 seconds. The results from the modeling analysis are satisfactory and validate the fire safety strategy currently installed in the 2704-HV building

Study of the educational and service facilities in the Providence junior high schools in comparison with accepted standards

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1933. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF AN ADVANCED REAL-TIME ELECTRICAL POWERED WHEELCHAIR CONTROLLER

Advances in Electric Powered Wheelchairs (EPW) have improved mobility for people with disabilities as well as older adults, and have enhanced their integration into society. Some of the issues still present in EPW lie in the difficulties when encountering different types of terrain, and access to higher or low surfaces. To this end, an advanced real-time electrical powered wheelchair controller was developed. The controller was comprised of a hardware platform with sensors measuring the speed of the driving, caster wheels and the acceleration, with a single board computer for implementing the control algorithms in real-time, a multi-layer software architecture, and modular design. A model based real-time speed and traction controller was developed and validated by simulation. The controller was then evaluated via driving over four different surfaces at three specified speeds. Experimental results showed that model based control performed best on all surfaces across the speeds compared to PID (proportional-integral-derivative) and Open Loop control. A real-time slip detection and traction control algorithm was further developed and evaluated by driving the EPW over five different surfaces at three speeds. Results showed that the performance of anti-slip control was consistent on the varying surfaces at different speeds. The controller was also tested on a front wheel drive EPW to evaluate a forwarding tipping detection and prevention algorithm. Experimental results showed that the tipping could be accurately detected as it was happening and the performance of the tipping prevention strategy was consistent on the slope across different speeds. A terrain-dependent EPW user assistance system was developed based on the controller. Driving rules for wet tile, gravel, slopes and grass were developed and validated by 10 people without physical disabilities. The controller was also adapted to the Personal Mobility and Manipulation Appliance (PerMMA) Generation II, which is an advanced power wheelchair with a flexible mobile base, allowing it to adjust the positions of each of the four casters and two driving wheels. Simulations of the PerMMA Gen II system showed that the mobile base controller was able to climb up to 8” curb and maintain passenger’s posture in a comfort position

An Ergonomic Evaluation of Aircraft Pilot Seats

Seat comfort has become increasingly important in today\u27s society as we spend more time at consoles, instrument panels, or just online. However, seat comfort is hard to define and difficult to measure. Several measures both objective and subjective were used to evaluate seat comfort in commercially available average pilot seats. Three pilot seats, which had the same material and similar adjustments but different physical attributes, and a universal classroom seat, with different material and no adjustments, were compared by 20 volunteers using subjective and objective measures in a Latin square controlled repeated measures design. A Friedman\u27s test was used to determine that both the comfort questionnaire and the body-map rating results were able to discriminate objective comfort levels between the seats. One-way repeated measures ANOVA tests were used to analyze both the objective tests, actigraph and pressure pad data. All results indicated that one seat was clearly the most comfortable and another, the classroom seat was clearly the most uncomfortable seat. Furthermore, the overall comments per seat were compiled and compared to Fazlollahtabar\u27s 2010) predictive automobile seat comfort theory to determine which factors influence comfort perception. The use of both subjective and objective data can better distinguish comfort from one seat over the other. These results have implications for future tests of seats that will be used for long durations. Limitations and future recommendations are discussed later in the paper. An interesting finding may explain why pressure pad data are typically seemingly at odds with subjective measures of seat comfort