Michael Ethridge | Mechanical Engineer

First, I began using the method widely accepted in the materials testing community: the two-pronged contact method. This method involves one driver pin sending an electrical signal through the sample which is then received by the other pin. This method produces graphs that detail the response of the material to electrical vibrations. An experimental method I tested involved utilizing three prongs instead of two to allow for larger samples to be tested. However, the geometric properties of the samples prevented accurate data from being collected. Another area I performed analysis in was the calibration of the measuring device to reduce noise in the measurements and accentuate the peaks at the resonances detected in the material. To accomplish this, I wrote a series of MATLAB programs to extract the raw data from a test and use a calibration algorithm I wrote to smooth the curves and allow for not only calibration, but also rapid comparison between multiple sample types, whether it be pottery from ancient Chinese pottery from the Sui, Song, and Qing dynasties (Sui dynasty sample shown above), aluminum cubes, samples of niobium, or tubes of aluminum used in nuclear applications. 

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