Hexa-ceptional: George Mason systems and industrial engineering team wins big for building smart

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 12 May 2025 17:52:29 +0000

Hexa-ceptional: George Mason systems and industrial engineering team wins big for building smart Nathan Kahl Mon, 05/12/2025 - 13:52

In This Story

John Shortle

Lance Sherry

A George Mason �鶹�� systems and industrial engineering (SIE) capstone team won second place and $2,000 in the General Entrepreneurship track of the Patriot Pitch competition and won Best Presentation in the General Engineering category at the prestigious General Donald R. Keith Memorial Conference at West Point.

The SIE capstone team set out to determine the practicality of the Hexayurt, a rugged, hexagon-shaped structure made from flat, triangular panels that can be quickly assembled in areas hit with natural disasters. Hexayurts provide urgently needed temporary shelters for food storage, food preparation, healthcare services, and living spaces. The team started with a process of “customer discovery.”

Hexayurts deployed in the desert. Photo credit Wikimedia Commons.

“In conducting stakeholder interviews, it emerged there were several issues with these shelters,” said SIE student Ethan Ford, team lead for the capstone project. “First, transporting the materials can be expensive especially when the location is remote, or roads are no longer functional. Next, the shelters need to provide insulation from the cold or heat and be impermeable to prevent soaking up water and growing mold. Finally, it would be nice if the materials used to build the shelters had anti-bacterial properties.”

The team identified a synthetic lumber, known as Novafoam, as a potential improved material for the shelters. The lumber is manufactured by an extrusion process developed by Italian inventor Mario Gualco and project sponsor Julia Rotta.

“The synthetic lumber is lightweight significantly reducing transportation costs,” said Stephano Barra, a team member. “It also has excellent insulation properties. It is impermeable and anti-bacterial.”

“In addition to the material properties, the Novafoam is made from recycled Styrofoam,” said team member Mickhail Ivanov. “By recycling the Styrofoam, we are reducing the load on landfills for non-biodegradable materials.”

The team documented all the stages of production from raw materials supply to pallets of finished synthetic lumber, focusing on the time-and-motion in production and the impact of fluctuations in the process. To better understand production bottlenecks, the team studied The Goal by Eli Goldratt—a classic text in operations and systems thinking. “It gave us a new perspective on balancing flow and throughput,” said team member Michael Smith.

The team also developed a detailed simulation model of the entire supply chain and production process, which “was instrumental in the design of the factory,” said team member Trevor Geisler. “The team spent hours adjusting the number and location of machines, and their parameters, to balance the flow and maximize the throughput. The final design could produce enough synthetic lumber for 2000 Hexayurts in less than 30 days.”

Team member Ethan Ford added, “The simulation model was also critically important for calculating the operating costs of the plant and the final cost of production for the lumber.”

“This project is a great example of how systems and industrial engineering can improve lives—especially in crisis situations,” said John Shortle, Systems Engineering and Operations Research department chair. “We're proud of what this team accomplished.”

Topics

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

materials

Patriot Pitch Competition

Students

A slippery slope to safety: New material promises steady steps

Nathan Kahl — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 12:11:36 +0000

A slippery slope to safety: New material promises steady steps Nathan Kahl Mon, 03/10/2025 - 08:11

Winter weather can be treacherous at times, especially for those trying to navigate slippery situations on foot. Fortunately, George Mason �鶹�� materials scientist Shay Bagheri is working on better footwear to handle icy conditions.

Shay Bagheri. Photo by Office of �鶹�� Branding

Bagheri, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and an affiliate scientist at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, received a $100,000 grant from the Commonwealth Commercialization Fund (CCF) of the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation for her research. CCF “supports Virginia’s small business community and its colleges, universities, and nonprofit research institutes at the earliest stages of their entrepreneurial and/or commercialization journeys, seeking innovative technologies with a high potential for economic development and job creation.”

In 2016, Bagheri was working at the Toronto Rehab Institute, which has numerous labs that recreate real-world environments. Bagheri was drawn to the Winter Lab, where researchers were studying shoe safety in slippery conditions.

“WinterLab is a self-contained facility with an ice-covered floor that can be tilted at different angles," Bagheri said. "Harnessed participants walk up and down the icy slope, and the steepest angle they can manage without slipping is used to measure the slip resistance of their footwear.”

The topography of the footwear surface, magnified. Graphic provided

While working at the Winter Lab, she received new generations of winter footwear based on composite technology. These shoes had excellent slip resistance when they were new, but she was surprised to learn many of the boots and shoes they tested lost a significant amount of their nonslip properties after a mere 75,000 steps—barely a week for a frequent, avid walker.

“And all of them cost over $200. So, we knew something had to be done in order to improve the material and the manufacturing process.”

The commercially available composite-based footwear have soles that get traction from tiny pieces of glass. Glass is by nature very sensitive to abrasion and the fabrication of glass is very hazardous, making it less than ideal. Bagheri said, “Instead of glass, we are adding polymeric fibers that are very resistant to wear and abrasion. They are non-hazardous, soft, and capable of withstanding significant abrasion. This material is five times more effective than what’s currently on the market.”

She said that instead of using the common injection molding technique to make these composite materials, she uses additive manufacturing, allowing for more uniform distribution, with a little bio inspiration. “In order to enhance friction on ice, we incorporate polymeric microfibers that protrude to the surface, triggering the friction mechanism similar to what you would see in polar bear feet,” she said. For the second approach, she uses a 2-D material with a large surface area that triggers the friction mechanism through adhesion, similar to the way frog’s feet work.

Bagheri and colleagues hold a patent for the method of manufacturing these innovative composites. She and her student at George Mason have also filed a provisional patent through their work, using additive manufacturing technology to make these composites more efficiently.

In This Story

Shaghayegh Bagheri

Learn more about Research at George Mason

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Topics

materials

mechanical engineering

patent

Research