Deep drawing operations are crucial for metal forming operations and manufacturing. Obtaining a defect free final product with the desired mechanical properties is very important for fulfilling the customer expectations and market competitions. Wrinkling is one of the fatal and most frequent defects that must be prevented. This study focuses on understanding the phenomenon of wrinkling and probable precautions that can be applied. In this study, dynamic &ndash / explicit commercial finite element code is used to simulate deep drawing process. The numerical experiments are compared with NUMISHEET benchmarks in order to verify the reliability of the finite element code and analysis parameters. In order to understand plastic wrinkling, the effect of blank holder force is investigated. Axisymmetrical numerical models of a cup are investigated with different blank holder forces. Wrinkling instability is illustrated in energy diagrams of the process. Effect of anisotropy on wrinkling is also discussed by comparing isotropic and anisotropic numerical experiments with the material as steel. Different drawbead models, both equivalent and physical, are implied to the problem and results are discussed. Besides numerical analysis, experimental verification is also conducted as conventional deep drawing operation by a hydraulic press. This yields to the ability to understand the effect of blank thickness on wrinkling formation through numerical and experimental analyses. The wave formations of different sized blanks with four different thicknesses are illustrated.

The Forming Limit Diagram (FLD) is a widely used concept to represent the formability of thin metallic sheets. In sheet metal forming processes, plastic instability may occur, leading to defective products. In order to manufacture defect free products, the prediction of the forming limits of sheet metals is a very important issue. FLD&rsquo / s can be obtained by several experimental, empirical and theoretical methods. However, the suitability and the accuracy of these methods for a given material may vary. In this study, FLD&rsquo / s are predicted by simulating Nakazima test using finite element software Pam-Stamp 2G. Strain propagation phenomenon is used to evaluate the limit strains from the finite element simulations. Two different anisotropic materials, AA2024-O and SAE 1006, are considered throughout the study and for each material, 7 different specimen geometries are analyzed. Furthermore, FLD&rsquo / s are predicted by theoretical approaches namely / Keeler&rsquo / s model, maximum load criteria, Swift-Hill model and Storen-Rice model. At the end of the study, the obtained FLD&rsquo / s are compared with the experimental results. It has been found that strain propagation phenomenon results for SAE 1006 are in a good agreement with the experimental results / however it is not for AA2024-O. In addition, theoretical models show some variations depending on the material considered. It has been observed that forming limit prediction using strain propagation phenomena with FE method can substantially reduce the time and cost for experimental work and trial and error process.

Failure of metallic structures operating under shock loading is a common occurrence in engineering applications. It is difficult to estimate the response of complicated systems analytically, due to structure&rsquo / s dynamic characteristics and varying loadings. Therefore, experimental, numerical or a combination of both methods are used for evaluations. The experimental analysis of the shocks due to firing is done for 12.7mm Gatling gun and 25mm cannon. During the tests, the Gatling gun and the cannon are located on military Stabilized Machine Gun Platform and Stabilized Cannon Platform respectively. For the firing tests, ICP (integrated circuit piezoelectric) accelerometers are attached to obtain the loading history for corresponding points. Shock Response Spectrum (SRS) analysis (nCode Glypworks) is done to define the equivalent shock profiles created on test pieces and the mount of 25mm cannon by means of the gun and the cannon firing. Transient shock analysis of the test pieces and the mount are done by applying the obtained shock profiles on the parts in a finite element model (ANSYS). Furthermore, experimental stress analysis due to shock loading is performed for two different types of material and different thicknesses of the test pieces. The input data for the analysis is obtained through measurements from strain rosette precisely located at the critical location of the test pieces. As a result of the thesis, a proposal is tried to be introduced where strain energy density theory is applied to predict the shock failure at military structures.

Fire is a complex phenomenon including many parameters. The nature of fire makes it a very dangerous and hazardous. For many reasons the number of tunnels are increasing on earth and fire safety is one of the major problem related to tunnels. This makes important to predict and understand the behavior of fire, i.e., heat release rate, smoke movement, ventilation effect etc. The literature includes many experimental and numerical analyses for different conditions for tunnel fires. This study investigates pool fire of three different fuel sources: ethanol, gasoline and their mixture for different ventilation conditions, different geometries and different amounts. Combustion gases and the burning rates of the fuel sources are measured and analyzed. The numerical simulation of the cases is done with Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), a CFD code developed by NIST.

Finned heat sink use for electronics cooling via natural convection is numerically investigated. An experimental study from the literature that is for vertical surfaces is taken as the base case and the experimental setup is numerically modeled using commercial CFD software. The flow and temperature fields are resolved. A scale analysis is applied to produce an order-of-magnitude estimate for maximum convection heat transfer corresponding to the optimum fin spacing. By showing a good agreement of the results with the experimental data, the model is verified. Then the model is used for heat transfer from inclined surfaces. After a large number of simulations for various forward and backward angles between 0-90 degrees, the dependence of heat transfer to the angle and Rayleigh number is investigated. It is observed that the contributions of radiation and natural convection changes with the angle considerably. Results are also verified by comparing them with experimental results available in literature.

In recent years, vibration-based energy harvesting technologies have gained great importance because of reduced power requirement of small electronic components. External power source and maintenance requirement can be minimized by employment of mechanical vibration energy harvesters. Power sources that harvest energy from the environment have the main advantages of high safety, long shell life and low cost compared to chemical batteries. Electromagnetic, electrostatic and piezoelectric transduction mechanisms are the three main energy harvesting methods. In this thesis, it is aimed to apply the piezoelectric elements technology to develop means for energy storage in munitions launch. The practical problems encountered in the design of piezoelectric energy harvesters are investigated. The applicability of energy harvesting to high power needs are studied. The experience compiled in the study is to be exploited in designing piezoelectric energy harvesters for munitions applications. Piezoelectric energy harvesters for harmonic and mechanical shock loading conditions with different types of piezoelectric materials are designed and tested. The test results are compared with both responses from analytical models generated in MATLAB&reg / and ORCAD PSPICE&reg / , and finite element method models generated in ATILA&reg / . Optimum energy storage methods are considered.

This thesis presents analysis, design, implementation, and testing of electrostatically actuated MEMS microvalves. The microvalves are specifically designed for lab-on-a-chip applications to achieve leakage ratios below 0.1 at pressure levels in the order of 101 kPa. For this purpose, two different microvalves are presented in the study. In the proposed designs, electrostatic actuation scheme is utilized to operate the microvalves in normally open and normally closed modes. Characterization of normally open microvalves show that, microvalves with radii ranging between 250

The use of sandwich structures in automobile body panels is investigated in this thesis. The applications on vehicles such as trains, aeroplanes and automobiles, advantages, isadvantages and modelling of sandwich structures are discussed and studies about static, vibrational and acoustic benefits of sandwich structures by several authors are presented. The floor, luggage, firewall and rear wheel panels in sheet metal form is replaced with panel made from sandwich materials in order to reduce the weight obtained by a trial and error based optimization method by keeping the same bending stiffness performance. In addition to these, the use of sandwich structures over free layer surface damping treatments glued on floor panel to decrease the vibration levels and air-borne noise inside the cabin is investigated. It has been proven that, the same vibration performance of both flat beam and floor panel can be obtained using sandwich structures instead of free layer surface damping treatments with a less weight addition. Furthermore, the damping effect of sandwich structures on sound transmission loss of complex shaped panels like floor panel is investigated. A 2D flat and curved panel representing the floor panel of FIAT Car model are analysed in a very large frequency range. Four different loss factors are applied on these panels and it is seen that, until it reaches damping controlled region, damping has a very little effect on TL of flat panels but has an obvious damping effect on TL of curved panels. However in that region, damping has an increasing effect on TL of both flat and curved panels.

This thesis reports on a design study, conducted for an advanced composite helmet shell for helicopter pilots. The helmet shell is expected to provide a level of protection against low velocity impacts with its weight criteria. Therefore, ergonomy, light weight, and the ability to withstand low velocity impact became the main issues for this study. For this purpose, an experimental program has been developed including low velocity impact tests on specimens. The drop height, drop weight, specimen stacking sequences and size were constant parameters. Test specimens were produced using the plate size of 220x220 mm having different thicknesses. Specimen materials were aramid, carbon, and a hybrid form of these two. Thus, the parameters of the study were specimen thickness and the material types. The impact tests are carried out on a specially designed test rig. The design decisions are made in accordance with the results of the experiments. In compliance with the lightweight and manufacturing criteria, the hybrid specimen was selected helmet shell. For the purpose of ergonomy a geometric design was also conducted from headfrom sizes of Turkish Army by using 3D design software. After specifying the composite material, manufactured helmet shell was tested in another test rig according to the ANSI Z90.1.1992. For the requirement of the acceleration level 300g, the helmet shell design was found to be successful at seven different and critical impact points.

This thesis investigates the refrigerant (R-134a) flow in three minichannels having different geometries experimentally. During the last 40 years heat transfer in small scales has been a very attractive research area. Improvements in heat transfer in the refrigeration applications by means of usage of micro/minichannels provide significant developments in this area. Also it is known that experimental studies are very important to constitute a database which is beneficial for new developments and research. During the two-phase flow experiments conducted in the minichannels, low mass flow rates and constant wall temperature approach, which are the conditions in the evaporators of the refrigerator applications were applied because one of the purposes of this study is to determine the most ideal minichannel among the tested minichannels for usage in the evaporator section of the refrigerators. Two-phase flow experiments were made with refrigerant R134a in the three minichannels having hydraulic diameters of 1.69, 3.85 and 1.69 mm respectively. As distinct from the others, the third minichannel has a rough inner surface. Comparison of the experimental results of the three minichannels was made in terms of forced convection heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop at constant quality and mass flux values. As a result of the experiments, the most ideal minichannel among the tested minichannels was determined for the evaporator applications in the refrigerators.