Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMMs) have been widely used in industry in order to determine the form / dimensional tolerances of workpieces with very complicated geometrical shapes. Therefore, CMM is an important tool during the manufacturing and quality control phases. Workpiece to be measured on a CMM is probed via touch trigger probe through its stylus tip. In other words, by virtue of the touch trigger probes CMM can acquire the dimensional data of the workpiece that is to be measured. Therefore the probe has become the most vital and fundamental part of the CMM. In this thesis, a novel type of touch trigger probe / scanning probe is proposed. The proposed probe can also be used as a scanning probe for different applications. The main purpose of this thesis is to develop a novel type of touch trigger / scanning probe that has different kinematic stage and sensing stage than the other probes currently used in the industry. Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) sensors are used for building the sensing stage of the proposed probe. GMR sensors are selected due to their outstanding sensitivity to small disturbances. Furthermore, in order to test the proposed probe / an anvil gauge setup is designed and proposed in this study. Finally, proposed probe is tested on a three-axis computer controlled electrical discharge machine (EDM), and the results acquired from those experiments are discussed.

In the thesis work, a code to solve the two dimensional compressible Euler equations for external flows around arbitrary geometries have been developed. A Cartesianmesh generator is incorporated to the solver. Hence the pre-processing can be performed together with the solution within a single code. The code is written in the C++ programming language and its object oriented capabilities have been exploited to save memory in the data structure developed. The Cartesian mesh is formed by dividing squares successively into its four quadrants. The main advantage of using this type of a mesh is the ability to generate meshes around geometries of arbitrary complexity quickly and to adapt the mesh easily based on the solution. The main disadvantage of this method is that the treatment of the cells that are cut by the geometry. For the solution procedure Roe&rsquo / s method as well as flux vector splitting methods are used for the flux evaluation. The flux vector splitting schemes used are van Leer, AUSM, AUSMD and AUSMV methods. Time discretization is performed using a multi-stage method. To increase the accuracy least squares reconstruction is employed. The code is validated by performing calculations around a NACA0012 airfoil profile. The effect of reconstruction is demonstrated by plotting the pressure coefficient on the airfoil. The distribution obtained using reconstruction is very close to the experimental one while there is a considerable deviation for the case without reconstruction. Also the shock capturing capabilities of different methods have been investigated. In addition the performance of each method is analyzed for flow around an NLR 7301 airfoil with a flap.

Solid propellant rocket motor is the primary propulsion technology used for short and medium range missiles. It is also commonly used as boost motor in many di_erent applications. Its wide spread usage gives rise to diversity of environments in which it is handled and stored. Ability to predict the storage life of solid propellants plays an important role in the design and selection of correct protective environments. In this study a methodology for the prediction of solid propellant storage life using cumulative damage concepts is introduced. Finite element mesh of the solid propellant grain is created with the developed parametric grain geometry generator. Finite element analyses are carried out to obtain the temperature and stress response of the propellant to the environmental thermal loads. Daily thermal cycles are assumed to be sinusoidal cycles represented by their means and amplitudes. With the cumulative damage analyses, daily damage accumulated in the critical locations of the solid propellant grain are investigated. Meta-models relating the daily damage amount with the daily temperature cycles are constructed in order to compute probability of failure. The results obtained in this study imply that it is possible to make numerical predictions for the storage life of solid propellants even in the early design phases. The methodology presented in this study provides a basis for storage life predictions.

Combination of high strength with light weight which is the prominent property of aluminum alloy forgings has led aluminum forgings used in rapidly expanding range of applications. In this study, to produce a particular 7075 aluminum alloy part, the forging process has been designed and analyzed. The forging process sequence has been designed by using Finite Volume Method. Then, the designed process has been analyzed by using Finite Element Method and the stress, strain and temperature distributions within the dies have been determined. Five different initial temperatures of the billet / 438, 400, 350, 300 and 250 degree Celsius have been considered in the thermo-mechanically coupled simulations. The initial temperatures of the dies have been taken as 200 degree Celsius for all these analyses. Finite volume analysis and finite element analysis results of the preform and finish part have been compared for the initial billet temperature of 400 oC. Close results have been observed by these analyses. The experimental study has been carried out for the range of the initial billet temperatures of 251&amp / #8211 / 442 degree Celsius in METU-BILTIR Center Forging Research and Application Laboratory. It has been observed that the numerical and the experimental results are in good agreement and a successful forging process design has been achieved. For the initial die temperature of 200 degree Celsius, to avoid the plastic deformation of the dies and the incipient melting of the workpiece, 350 degree Celsius is determined to be the appropriate initial billet temperature for the forging of the particular part.

In machining centers, with the increasing trends in high precision machining, chatter has become an important problem which results in poor surface finish and low material removal rate. Chatter can be avoided with stability diagrams which provide the stable regions in the machining process for the depth of cut and spindle speed combinations. In order to obtain stability diagrams, tool point frequency response function (FRF) of the system should be obtained. Throughout this study, contact parameters which are the most critical part of the analytical modeling of spindle-holder-tool assembly in order to obtain tool point FRF, are examined. For the accurate identification of the contact parameters, a recently suggested closed form approach based on measured FRFs is improved and applied to real structures by solving several application problems. In addition to the identification of contact parameters from experimental results, in order to eliminate the dependency on experiments, artificial neural networks are used to predict contact parameters for cases for which no experiments were carried out. By using trained neural network, contact parameters are predicted for the first seen combination of tool gauge length and diameter with a high accuracy. Such an application will have an important contribution to the machining stability studies since elimination of dependency on experiments will make it possible to predict stability diagrams for different combinations of spindle, holder and tool without performing any experiments. Additionally, since accurate identification of contact parameters, thus tool point FRFs and stability diagrams are highly dependent on accuracy of the performed experiments, possible errors due the mass of the accelerometers are also investigated. In order to compensate the mass effect of the accelerometers, a structural modification with matrix inversion method is applied to the accelerometer based results.

The objective of this study is to model and analyze a three dimensional single riveted lap joint (with and without a crack). By using finite element method, stress and fracture analyses are carried out under both the residual stress field and external tensile loading. Using a two step simulation, riveting process and subsequent tensile loading of the lap joint are simulated to determine the residual and overall stress state. Residual stress state due to riveting is obtained by interference and clamping misfit method. By employing different interference and clamping misfit values, the effects of riveting process parameters on stress state are examined. Two cracks namely the semi elliptical surface crack at faying surfaces of plates and the quarter elliptical corner crack at rivet hole are the most widely observed crack types in riveted joints. Fracture analysis of cracked riveted joints is carried out by introducing these two crack types to the outer plate at a plane perpendicular to the loading. The mixed mode stress intensity factors (SIFs) and energy release rates (G) around the crack front are obtained by using displacement correlation technique (DCT). Effects riveting process parameters (interference and clamping ratios) and geometrical parameters (crack shape and size) on fracture parameters are studied. The stress intensity factor solutions presented herein could be useful for correlating fatigue crack growth rates, fracture toughness computation, and multiple site damage (MSD) analysis in aircraft bodies.

High combustion temperatures and long operation durations require the use of cooling techniques in liquid propellant rocket engines. For high-pressure and high-thrust rocket engines, regenerative cooling is the most preferred cooling method. In regenerative cooling, a coolant flows through passages formed either by constructing the chamber liner from tubes or by milling channels in a solid liner. Traditionally, approximately square cross sectional channels have been used. However, recent studies have shown that by increasing the coolant channel height-to-width aspect ratio and changing the cross sectional area in non-critical regions for heat flux, the rocket combustion chamber gas side wall temperature can be reduced significantly without an increase in the coolant pressure drop. In this study, the regenerative cooling of a liquid propellant rocket engine has been numerically simulated. The engine has been modeled to operate on a LOX/Kerosene mixture at a chamber pressure of 60 bar with 300 kN thrust and kerosene is considered as the coolant. A numerical investigation was performed to determine the effect of different aspect ratio cooling channels and different number of cooling channels on gas-side wall and coolant temperature and pressure drop in cooling channel.

Aluminum forging products has been increasingly used in automotive and aerospace industry due to their lightness and strength. In this study, aluminum forging processes of a particular industrial part for the two different alloys (Al 7075 and Al 6061) have been analyzed. The forging part, forging process and the required dies have been designed according to the aluminum forging design parameters. The proposed process has been simulated by using the Finite Volume Method. In the simulations, analysis of the part during forging process has been performed / and the required forging force, the temperature distribution and the effective stress distribution in the parts have been obtained. The forging dies were produced in the METU-BILTIR Center CAD/CAM Laboratory. The experimental study has been performed in the METU-BILTIR Center Forging Research and Application Laboratory. The parts were produced without any defects as obtained in the finite volume simulations. The results of the experiment and finite volume simulation are compared and it has been observed good agreement.

In forging industry, the die setup starts with unloading the previous die set and ends with approval of the first part produced. During conventional die setup, forging press is kept idle. The aim of this study is to perform die changing applications of the 1000 ton forging press of Aksan Steel Forging Company in more systematic way to reduce the idle time. The applicability of Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED) System and quick die locating methods have been studied. SMED classifies the setup operations as internal and external setup operations. During the internal setup operations the press is kept idle. Therefore it has been tried to reduce the internal setup time. In this study, a new modular die system has been developed. The die system to be used for the forging press with 1000 ton capacity in Aksan Steel Forging Company has been redesigned regarding the dimensional limitations, requirements, SMED System and quick die locating methods. The modules of proposed die system and the dies for a particular forging part have been produced. Tests, observations and time studies have been carried out. The time spent for alignment of the upper and lower dies on the press have been eliminated in the proposed system. The solutions have been proposed for the frequently encountered problems of setup operations of the company and these have been applied in the system. In order to eliminate operator mistakes, marking applications have also been introduced and the application of die cavity revision has been renewed. During the time studies for the case study, it has been seen that the internal setup time of the forging press with 1000 ton capacity has been reduced from 220 minutes to 141 minutes which corresponds to a reduction of 36 %.

Inlet headers in the primary heat transport system(PHTS) of CANDU type reactors, are used to collect the coolant coming from the steam generators and distribute them into the reactor core via several feeders. During a postulated loss of coolant accident (LOCA), depressurization and vapor supplement into the core may occur, which results a deterioration in the heat transfer from fuel to the coolant. When a depressurization occurs, &ldquo / Emergency Coolant Injection(ECI)&rdquo / system in the PHTS in CANDU reactors, is automatically become active and supply coolant is fed into the reactor core via the inlet header and feeders. . This study is focused on the experimental and computational investigation of the ECI effect during a LOCA in a CANDU inlet header. The experiments were carried out in METU Two-Phase Flow Test Facility which consists of a scaled CANDU inlet header having 5 connected feeders. The same tests were simulated with a one dimensional two-fluid computer code, CATHENA, developed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited(AECL). The average void fraction and the two phase mass flowrate data measured in the experiments are compared with the results obtained from CATHENA simulation. Although a few mismatched points exist, the results coming from two different studies are mostly matching reasonably. Lack of three-dimensional modeling for headers in CATHENA and experimental errors are thought to be the reasons for these dismatches.