Past Expo Projects

H2Oasis: Water Catchment System
The Masai are nomadic herders in Kenya that, during the dry season, suffer from dehydration and starvation while in search of water. Capturing water in ponds during rainy seasons will provide water at safe traveling distances. Well-designed catchment ponds in dry areas will store enough water to meet the needs of the Masai, support vegetation that provides nutrition, shade, fire wood and evaporation control, and has areas for rest, grazing, and cultural activities. The ponds must be constructed of native materials, be self-sufficient, avoid adding any burden to users, and be cost effective to build and maintain.

AIChE Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car
Each year, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers challenges undergradute students to create a model car that runs on alternate energy. University of Idaho Chemical Engineering students were able to create a hydrogen fuel cell, known as "Midnight Special." This fuel cell car runs soley on hydrogen and is something you don't want to miss.

Bio-Fuel Production from Cattle Manure Utilizing Supercritical Methanol
Cattle manure remains a problematic waste, however it has great potential as a bio-fuel. Using a high-temperature, high-pressure reactor, this team exposed the manure to supercritical methanol, which resulted in creating a bio-fuel. An economic analysis of the process indicates tax subsidies would be required to make it feasible at the current prices of methanol and crude oil.

Economic Recovery of Pyridine from an Impurity Stream
The goal of this project is to recover pyridine from an impurity stream for recycle back to the process. Several methods for the separation of the pyridine and 3-methylpyridine from the impurity stream are examined for the lowest processing cost that meets the targeted payback criteria.

Pyridine Recovery and Separation of Organics from an Industrial Recycle Stream
Pyridine is important in industrial organic chemistry as both a fundamental building block and as a solvent and reagent in organic synthesis. During the pyridine production separation process, useful product is lost to various streams. Using separation technologies, pyridine and 3-methylpyridine can be economically recovered and purified.

Silica Removal by Electrocoagulation from Inland Brackish Water
The high silica levels in Inland Brackish water sources are a concern for Reverse Osmosis systems, causing fouling within the membrane system and limiting the recovery of fresh water. Bench scale testing has determined the optimum operating conditions for a continuous electrocoagulation system that will precipitate silica, preventing the fouling of the membrane. Full-scale design for a community of 200,000 and economics have been evaluated.

Wireless Photovoltaic Monitoring System
The wireless photovoltaic monitoring system measures actual power produced by a photovoltaic (PV)-inverter system and compares the measurement with the power that theoretically should be produced by the system. The monitoring system is compatible with 120V/60Hz or 240V/50Hz, utilizes wireless technology and displays the comparison on a LCD screen.

ASCE Student Steel Bridge
Every year, the ASCE Steel Bridge Team works to design and construct a one-tenth scale steel bridge to compete at a regional and national level. Bridges are judged on deflection, construction speed, weight, and aesthetics and the University of Idaho has won past honors for strength, construction speed, economy and structural efficiency.

Boji Earthen Dam
The 10 - 15 year-old Boji Dam failed because of a 40 meter blowout. This team has designed a way to maximize storage in the reservoir, redesign the dam, improve the operational efficiency of the irrigation inlet and system, and construct catch basins for excess water.

Macon Sheep Bridge Replacement
The Bureau of Land Management has requested a design for replacement or rehabilitation of the Macon Sheep Bridge, in Camas County, Idaho, in response to the damage caused by excessive flows. Required analysis and design include hydrologic, hydraulic, geotechnical, and structural disciplines.

Sanitary Lift Station Replacement
The city of Moscow, Idaho, has an existing sanitary lift station where Highway 95 crosses the South Fork of the Palouse River. This project involves the replacement of the current 30 ft. deep station. The deliverables include the design of a new station, site configuration, and logistics of retaining system operability during construction.

Third Street Pedestrian Bridge
In the city of Moscow, Idaho, Third Street abruptly ends at Paradise Creek. The city has requested the design of a walkway bridge to span the creek in this location. There will be designs made for steel, concrete, and wood structures to provide the city with a variety of options.

US-26 Glencoe Road Interchange Analysis
Due to current deficiencies at the interchange of Glencoe Road and US 26 in North Plains, Oregon, a transportation, geotechnical and hydrologic analysis were integrated to create an upgraded interchange for the project site. The focus of the project is on transportation issues, including interchange design.

US-91 North Corridor Plan
This project looked at a troublesome intersection in Pocatello, Idaho. The intersection of US-91 and Tyhee Road was labeled as a problem intersection after the US-91 Corridor Study. The goal was to develop a solution which would increase the level of service and safety of the intersection.

Computer Science Recruiting Tool
The University of Idaho's Computer Science Department has a problem: enrollment has declined. One solution to this problem is to develop a tool designed to advertise and promote the Computer Science Department's program. This tool is to be accessible, interactive, aesthetically pleasing, and to the point.

Project Reporting System 4.0
The initial version of Project Reporting System was developed in Spring 2005, and this team has added more capabilities to it including automated support for Project Task Lists, Risk Assessments, and plotting of information contained in the defect data base. In addition the project has been investigating the integration of StatCVS code base tracking and the ability to monitor code base turmoil.

RadSAT
This project involves integrating two existing pieces of software and enhancing their capabilities. It is designed to automate testing for electromagnetic radiation during FCC compliance testing. The primary goal of the system is to minimize human interaction, and generally decrease the overall processing time.

SPSMV: Synchronized Power System Measurement Visualization Tool
Last fall, a team started work on a project for Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) to display data from Phasor Measurement Units around the world. This Spring, a team continued the project and produced a stable client that interacts with SEL's data server. The client package displays PMU data overlaid on a Google Map, allows the user to set data alarm levels, and stores the received data in a database to support future queries for selected data.

Synchrophaser Visualization System
This project developed a visualization tool infrastructure that allows power system operators and engineers to see a graphical and diagrammatic representation of power system measurements, such as frequency and phasor angles taken from phasor measurement units (PMUs) all over the world.

Cutthroat Energy: Battery Management System
Cutthroat is a fully autonomous, electric submarine, located in Bayview,Idaho. It is used for acoustic testing. During high velocity runs, the submarine's electrical system experiences a voltage drop and under certain conditions causes emergency protocol to interrupt testing. The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate possible supplemental voltage solutions for Cutthroat.

Smart Signals: Traffic Controller
This senior design project is part of an ongoing research effort to create smart, scalable traffic signals built around distributed control architecture to improve signalized intersection performance. The objectives of this senior project center on the creation of smarter, more pedestrian accessible intersection controls for experimental deployment at a local intersection. Capabilities include more accurate countdown times and remote activation for the visually impaired. A final objective is to design a monitoring system to log system performance during field trials.

Team Protection: Transformer Testing Station
Design a test environment to test the sensitivity of a microprocessor relay to internal transformer faults. Key to the test bed is the design of a transformer with internal tap able to survive fault currents plus test and measurement points. A safe, precisely timed mechanism for initiating faults and data collection was also designed.

Powder Metallurgy
The project's goal is to compare UTS and Elongation as well as micro-structure under different heat treatment conditions in copper infiltrated steel. The intended application is for Climbing Equipment.

Reduction of Waste During the Growth of Silica Nanowires
Experimental and computational methods are used to study the reduction of the amount of waste generated during the growth of silica nanowires. Recent work has shown uses for silica nanowires in biological applications, and the keys to commercialization are improvement of yield and reduction of waste during the vapor-liquid-solid growth process.

ASME: American Society of Mechanical Engineering
Today's ASME is a 120,000-member professional organization focused on technical, educational and research issues of the engineering and technology community. Locally our ASME organization, led by University of Idaho students, is focused on the younger generation of Mechanical Engineers; specifically their involvement in hands-on projects as well as increasing their knowledge of viable resources.

Catalytic Ignition Temperatures of Propane-Oxygen Mixtures
The ignition of propane/oxygen mixtures over a platinum wire catalyst was studied in low Re flow regimes. Nitrogen is the diluent. Experimentally obtained ignition temperatures are compared with a finite element model. The model shows good agreement between calculated and measured average wire temperatures as a function of the rate of heat loss.

Clean Snowmobile Challenge
The UICSC team is comprised of graduate and undergraduate students. Our objective is to create a snowmobile that is clean and quiet, while maintaining the reliability and performance of a stock machine. Each year, we attend the SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge, where our team's snowmobile is tested against many other universities' designs. This year, the team has begun the shift from design and manufacturing toward research and development. We are working on many different ideas for this year and those to come.

Clearwater Aid: Purification for Africa
Team Clearwater Aid is developing technologies for producing safe drinking water for the Masaii tribe in Kenya. Representatives from the team traveled to Africa for field testing and to build relationships with Masaii community leaders. Clearwater Aid will be displaying slow sand-filter technology and a kit for field testing of water quality.

Comparison of Modeling and Assembly Capabilities with SolidWorks and CATIA
Issues in solid modeling and assembling a 1/4 scale Offenhauser engine in SolidWorks and CATIA were explored during Spring 2007 as part of a technical elective in Advanced CAD. Both software programs are featured in the new Idaho Design and Engineering Analysis (IdeaWorks) Laboratory within Mechanical Engineering.

Design and Fabrication of a Ballistic Gas Compressions Apparatus
The object of this work is to design and fabricate a ballistic gas compressor intended to verify the accuracy and calibration of piezoelectric pressure transducers used in closed vessel testing. A variable volume code has been developed to predict the internal pressures generated within the ballistic compressor to ensure structural integrity of the device.

Precision Till: Fertilizer Distribution System
Most dry fertilizer is applied by depositing material at the bottom of the furrow. This project adapted a conventional air seeder for uniform fertilizer placement between 2-8 inches in a strip till application.

Shear Performance: Fuel Rod Spacer Removal System
A helically wound spacer wire needs to be removed from nuclear fuel elements at Idaho National Laboratory and then chopped into smaller pieces. Our system frees the wire from the rod and chops the wire in one motion.

Splitting Edge: Improving Simplot's Water Knife Sharpening System
Simplot currently uses a large amount of human resources sharpening the water blades used in their french fry plants. The goal of our project is to create an automated system and devices that reduce the use of human resources. This will also increase safety and productivity in the workplace.

Vandal Pullers: Quarter Scale Tractor Pull Team
Our goal is to design and build a 1/4-scale tractor to compete in the annual American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Quarter-Scale Tractor Pull Competition held in the mid-west in late May. The tractor is being designed around two 16-HP, Briggs and Stratton engines and traction tires, as supplied by the contest sponsors, and includes a CVT for power transmission.

Vandal Racing
The Vandals Racing 2007 car was designed to boldly address perceived limitations in previous vehicles. These include reducing vehicle weight by 15% to approximately 430 lbs, reducing engine sound below 108 db, boosting engine torque between 7500 and 10,000 rpm, and decreasing driver workload associated with shifting, steering, and braking.

New Fundamental Equations of State for Parahydrogen, Normal Hydrogen, and Orthohydrogen
The potential boom in the global hydrogen economy will strengthen the need for accurate hydrogen thermodynamic property standards. Based on these needs, new fundamental equations of state formulations for parahydrogen and normal hydrogen were developed to replace the existing standards. To accurately predict thermophysical properties near the critical region and in liquefied states, the Quantum Law of Corresponding States was applied to predict the vapor pressure curve for normal hydrogen and selected single phase data on the normal hydrogen surface. Once adequacy of the theory was established, pure orthohydrogen data were predicted and an orthohydrogen equation of state was developed.

Lunartics: Robotic Lunar Manipulator
As part of a multi-university project sponsored by the Idaho Space Grant Consortium, our team has designed, built and tested a robotic prototype that collects soil samples and digs trenches in a lunar environment. The platform is flexible for future instruments and repair work.

Operation Charge: Hybrid HUMVEE
Our team converted a Humvee vehicle for hybrid electric operation by implementing an auxiliary power unit that converts diesel fuel to electric power. A portion of our team has designed a thermal management system for a battery box that accomodates advanced lead-acid batteries.

Sleep Sound: Infant Monitoring Sleepwear
This project incorporates a variable inductor embedded into sleepwear to detect stopped breathing of an infant, such as a SIDS event. A signal sent from the circuit on the clothing to a base unit sounds an alarm if no breathing movements are detected for a given time period.

Terminal Velocity: High Velocity Descent Probe
Construct a high velocity atmospheric descent probe for the sub-orbital reentry experiments (SOAREX) project at NASA Ames Research Center. The probe will be launched on an experimental rocket from Wallops Flight Facility to an altitude of 500km and released into free descent. During the descent, the probe will be tracked via radar to determine atmospheric parameters such as density, pressure, and temperature.

Thermasense: A Wireless Temperature Sensor for Heat Shields
As a group we designed and tested a wireless system to be implanted into the heat shields of NASA space craft. This system will measure the shield temperature readings and will give NASA an idea of how close they are coming to the point of heat overload in the Thermal Protection System. The wireless technology will eliminate the need to create a hole for wires in the shuttle and increase safety and portability. This technology can be applied to nearly any spacecraft.

Zephyr: Controlled Air Flow Source Facility
This project's goal is to design an air flow source that will provide a controlled, uniform air flow in the range of 3-250cfm which will allow for accurate flow rate measurements and P versus Q curve generation (for CPU fan testing), as well as note variations in humidity, temperature, pressure, and viscosity.

VAST: Vandal Atmospheric Science Team
VAST is a multidisciplinary program targeted at students from all departments in the College of Engineering, as well as Physics, Chemistry, Life Sciences, Education, and other departments. The goal of the Idaho VAST program is to develop the capability to design, built, test, fly, and recover high altitude science and engineering instrumentation. The project provides excellent experience for student participants in the areas of teamwork, documentation, communication, and various technical areas. To date, VAST has flown ten times, reaching altitudes of over 100,000 feet.