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College

College of Science and Engineering

Major

Mechanical Engineering

Faculty Mentor

Josh Hamel

Faculty Editor

Frank Shih

Student Editor

Jesse Goncalves and Katie Miller

Abstract

Metabolic measurements are often a critical element of sports and exercise science research efforts, and numerous different systems are available for taking these measurements both in laboratory settings and outside of the laboratory environment. Laboratory-based mixing chamber systems, such as the Parvomedics TrueOne 2400, and portable breath-by-breath systems, such as the Cosmed Kb42, are extremely effective and widely used systems for taking metabolic measurements that have their own distinct strengths and weaknesses. Researchers in the Department of Kinesiology at Seattle University are interested in collecting data on research subjects using the both the TrueOne and Kb42 systems concurrently in the interest of better understanding the relationship between these two systems and in order to take advantage of both systems’ inherent strengths. The collection of data using these two systems concurrently has not been reported in the literature to date, and thus components and equipment for coupling these two metabolic measurement systems in an effective way does not exist. Researchers in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Seattle University approach this component issues as a mechanical design problem. Over the course of numerous design iterations involving computer 2 aided design tools and 3D printing, an effective coupling component was developed and prototyped. Preliminary qualitative results observed suggest that the coupler is functioning as desired, and that the coupler designed by mechanical engineering researchers has the potential to collect novel sports and exercise data and that the coupled system allowing for simultaneous mixing chamber and breath-by-breath data collection merits further study.

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