Open Access

Article

Article ID: 3277

Sustainable mechanical design and manufacturing of pressure relief valves

by Suhaila E. Abidou, Ganna G. Ismail, Hesham A. Hegazi

Mechanical Engineering Advances, Vol.3, No.3, 2025;

This paper aims to provide an argument to take a closer look at the development and application of technology in relation to sustainability. Environmental awareness is driving industries across all sectors to re-evaluate their practices to reduce their impact on the environment. Therefore, integrating sustainability into the mechanical design and manufacturing of products and systems has become mandatory. An often-overlooked aspect of industrial processes is the role of valves; however, only a few studies have addressed their environmental sustainability. To address this research gap, this study aims to integrate mechanical engineering design with sustainable environmental engineering of industrial valves. The redesign concept has been applied to pressure relief valves and has been achieved by proposing the use of alternative materials other than metals, such as polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and perfluoro alkoxy polymer (PFA). This study used some relevant tools to evaluate the suitability of such proposed materials, including energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. A modified design that met the properties and specifications of the proposed polymer type was implemented, resulting in a simpler valve design, fewer valve parts, easier assembly, less weight, and lower cost. The implications of the trade-offs between metallic and polymeric valves for sustainable manufacturing fall within the theoretical framework of 6R, where all its concepts play an important role in promoting sustainable and environmentally conscious manufacturing. All to reduce emissions, energy consumption, and waste.

Open Access

Article

Article ID: 3077

Development of a stealth-enabled supersonic interceptor missile: Design, propulsion, and guidance

by Jacob Nagler

Mechanical Engineering Advances, Vol.3, No.3, 2025;

This research presents the Horned-Viper project—a technological demonstrator for a stealth-enabled, supersonic homing interceptor missile with multi-domain engagement capability (air-to-air, air-to-ground, and ground-to-ground). Distinguished by a dual-horn inlet blended into the fuselage, Horned-Viper achieves a 45% reduction in frontal RCS compared to canonical designs (e.g., AIM-120C-7, R-73). Its two-stage, dual-pulse solid-propellant architecture delivers a total impulse of 538.6 kN·s while sustaining 10 g maneuvers at Mach 1.5 and achieving a 60 km range from a 6000 m altitude launch—exceeding comparable systems by 20%–30% in agility and thrust management. A refined PNG-based guidance loop, augmented with PID (proportional-integral-derivative)-controlled canards, ensures a 10 Hz closed-loop bandwidth, yielding a 12% shorter time-to-kill relative to AIM-120C-7 under identical intercept conditions. The warhead employs directional spherical fragments, maximizing lethality within a 10 m lethal radius with an optimized fragment mass-to-explosive ratio, surpassing traditional fragmentation yields by 15 %. High-fidelity CFD (ANSYS Fluent) and 6-DOF trajectory simulations validate aerodynamic shaping and flight stability, demonstrating drag coefficient minimization in the Mach 1.8–2.2 regime and lift-to-drag improvements of 25% during terminal maneuvers. Collectively, these quantitative advances—coupled with modular servomotor and warhead innovations—establish Horned-Viper as a promising next-generation interceptor concept with critical performance advantages over X-90, R-73, Sidewinder, and Arrow systems.

Open Access

Article

Article ID: 2529

Multi-objective Thermal Exchange Optimization algorithm applied to mechanical system design

by Fran S. Lobato, Fabian A. Lara-Molina

Mechanical Engineering Advances, Vol.3, No.3, 2025;

Engineering system design is a highly relevant and dynamic field, with numerous applications reported in the literature. This type of problem generally encompasses several objectives and constraints, including those arising from mass, energy, and momentum balances, material behavior equations, and a range of environmental, physical, and operational restrictions. To address such challenges, a range of evolutionary optimization strategies has been proposed and evaluated. This work presents a Multi-objective Thermal Exchange Optimization (MTEO) algorithm that integrates concepts of Pareto dominance along with crowding distance strategies. To assess its performance, the proposed algorithm is applied to three well-established mechanical design problems. The results demonstrate that the MTEO algorithm provides accurate approximations of the Pareto front in comparison with conventional evolutionary methods. Specifically, average reductions of approximately 36%, 32%, and 68% were observed for the respective design problems. Furthermore, the MTEO parameters were found to be easy to configure across all applications.

Open Access

Article

Article ID: 2587

Optimization of mirror mount design based on opto-mechanical performance for space applications

by Fatouma Maamar

Mechanical Engineering Advances, Vol.3, No.3, 2025;

A new fixation type for mirror assembly was proposed in space telescope. The optomechanical design of a large aperture is necessary to maintain the stability of the optical structure regarding environmental disturbances, restrictions on the weight, size and shape of the mirror, which must be satisfied for space applications. This paper presents a study focusing on the optimal optomechanical design for mirror mounting using glue pad bonding. We have developed a new design specifically tailored for the BK-7 mirror with a diameter of 500 mm and a thickness of 45 mm. The primary aim of this research is to determine the optimal combination of glue pad number, size, and thickness to minimize both glue stress and errors in the mirror’s shape. To achieve this, we conduct simulations under various load cases, varying the size and thickness of the glue pads. The new design results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization method, which greatly minimizes thermal stress in the mirror and ensures adequate supporting stiffness. This solution for the mirror and mount design can provide valuable support to decision-makers and optical engineers during the development phase of space optomechanical systems.

Open Access

Article

Article ID: 2838

Innovative semi-analytical approaches to micropolar MHD fluid flow between stretching disks under radiant heat flux

by Ali Ahmadi Azar

Mechanical Engineering Advances, Vol.3, No.2, 2025;

This study investigates the viscous, incompressible, laminar, time-independent micropolar MHD fluid flow between two stretching disks under radiant heat flux, with applications in industrial systems like turbines and nuclear reactors. Using suitable similarity transformations, the nonlinear constitutive equations are reduced to coupled ODEs and solved through two novel semi-analytical approaches: the Hybrid Analytical-Numerical method (HAN method), which constructs analytical solutions from numerical data, and the modified Akbari-Ganji Method (modified AGM) that operates independently of numerical solutions. Results demonstrate that stretching Reynolds number, magnetic parameter, and three micropolar parameters significantly affect all five dimensionless quantities (axial/radial velocity, microrotation, temperature, and concentration), while Eckert number variations cause a 16.5% maximum temperature increase when doubled from 1 to 2. A 429% temperature surge occurs as the Prandtl number rises from 3 to 22, whereas the Schmidt number (0.1–1.5) only modifies the concentration profile shape without changing extrema. The radiation parameter (0–8) alters temperature distribution between disks without affecting maxima/minima. Three validation methods confirm solution accuracy: graphical verification, comparison with existing analytical results, and cross-method consistency between HAN and modified AGM outputs. The study’s innovative dual-method approach coupled with 3D contour visualizations provides unprecedented semi-analytical solutions for this classical problem, offering both theoretical advancement and practical industrial insights.

Open Access

Article

Article ID: 2512

On the analytical mechanics methods in mathematical modeling the dynamics systems with geometric constraints

by Aleksandr Ya Krasinskiy

Mechanical Engineering Advances, Vol.3, No.2, 2025;

A necessary condition for the most effective application of the mathematical control theory results to the modern automatic devices dynamics сonsideration is the presence of an adequate nonlinear mathematical model obtained by strict general methods. Methods for reducing the dimensions of dynamic models of systems with geometric constraints by analytical mechanics methods for non-free systems are considered due to the transition to equations in redundant coordinates free of constraint multipliers. A detailed algorithm for this procedure and its justification is given. Using the theory of critical cases, a complete solution is given to the stabilizing problem of a given configuration of systems with geometric constraints.