Engineering Commons^™

"A Comparison Of Variable Selection Methods Using Bootstrap Samples From Environmental Metal Mixture Data", Paul-Yvann Djamen 4785403, Paul-Yvann Djamen

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

In this thesis, I studied a newly developed variable selection method SODA, and three customarily used variable selection methods: LASSO, Elastic net, and Random forest for environmental mixture data. The motivating datasets have neuro-developmental status as responses and metal measurements and demographic variables as covariates. The challenges for variable selections include (1) many measured metal concentrations are highly correlated, (2) there are many possible ways of modeling interactions among the metals, (3) the relationships between the outcomes and explanatory variables are possibly nonlinear, (4) the signal to noise ratio in the real data may be low. To compare these methods ...

Effects On Strength And Corrosive Characteristics Of Hardened Cement Paste Using Rice Husk And Sugarcane Bagasse, Travis D. Garrett

Master's Theses

Cement is one of the most used building materials in the world. The production of ordinary Portland cement contributes to the release of harmful greenhouse gasses. In an effort to reduce these emissions, different materials are being evaluated for their use as partial replacements for ordinary Portland cement. Rice husk and sugarcane bagasse are agricultural waste products and large amounts of these are currently landfilled, making them inexpensive and available. When combusted at high temperatures they form rice husk ash and sugarcane bagasse ash that have pozzolanic characteristics. The high silicon dioxide in these products makes them good options to ...

Characterization Of Oxone Mediated Tempo-Oxidized Nano Cellulose Mixed-Matrix Membranes During Ultrafiltration And Hemodialysis, Kristyn Robling

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The ninth leading cause of death in the United States is kidney disease, and hemodialysis is the process most commonly prescribed for treatment. It utilizes a selectively permeable membrane filter to remove toxins such as urea from the blood and retain necessary protein levels. However, traditional filters, such as cellulose triacetate, used during dialysis can be inefficient in terms of separation performance and reduction of fouling. Recent exploration of nanoparticles has resulted in the creation of Oxone Mediated TEMPO-Oxidized Nano Cellulose which has properties that are believed to increase hydrophilicity, increase tensile capacity, decrease membrane resistance and lower fouling, making ...

Countermeasures For Pedestrian-Involved Accidents On Interstate-Highways, Anna C. Hunter

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Pedestrian access to the Interstate is prohibited, but many pedestrian-involved accidents still occur on the Interstate in the United States. This project is a case study of West Memphis, Arkansas, which has the second highest occurrence of pedestrian-involved accidents on the Interstate in Arkansas. The study site location includes a segment of Interstate I-40 which is at- grade. The surrounding area contains several different land-uses, which is believed to be the primary generator of these accidents. The goal of this project is to determine the primary causes of these accidents and determine potential countermeasures to reduce the crash rate for ...

Electrathon Vehicle: Front Suspension, Christopher Clark

All Undergraduate Projects

Central Washington University does not currently have a competition field-able Electrathon America electric vehicle with adequate front suspension. The aim of this project was to provide the vehicle with handling that supports sound ground contact throughout the competition environment. Handling that supports sound ground contact is important for vehicles so they can go around corners without a loss of traction or flipping over. The solution to this engineering problem was designed and tested through various requirements. The requirements at hand were that the suspension components weigh less than 50 pounds, that there be no more than 3 inches of suspension ...

Electrathon Vehicle: Steering, Lathan Halaapiapi

All Undergraduate Projects

The Electrathon Vehicle project is an ongoing project that dates back to 2012. The Electrathon Vehicle began as a frame and three wheels when given to the EV club. In past projects the vehicle has had frame and suspension work. The current design is only partially assembled and does not allow for any steering in the vehicle. A steering system needed to be developed in order for the vehicle to be controlled while a person is sitting in the seat. A steering system was designed that could withstand the force of maneuvering the vehicle in excess of 30 mph. This ...

Prosthetic Hand: Structure, Riley Smith, Riley Smith

All Undergraduate Projects

The objective of this project was to design the structure of a prosthetic hand that has articulating fingers and thumb in order to grip various objects. A design was developed that can add to the available options of prosthetics on the market.

In order to create a base hand for the project, the hand was modeled off of rough human hand dimensions. Analyses determined the feasible size of components. Once a base size was found the movement system in both grip and return form were developed and refined. With the parts being modeled in Solidworks and 3D printed, iterations of ...

Prevention Of Harmful Algal Blooms By The Mitigation Of Phosphorus Nutrient Loading Via Filtration By Steel Wool And Activated Carbon, Samantha Zidd, Sara Kidd, Ronald Simpson

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are a devastating ecological and economic consequence of the abundance of nutrient-rich agricultural runoff entering aquatic ecosystems (Baker et al. 2014). Bioavailable phosphorus from synthetic fertilizers is one of the major nutrients contributing to this global issue. Preliminary studies indicate that dissolved phosphorus can be removed from an aqueous environment when passed through a composite mixture of granular steel wool particles and activated carbon (Erickson, Gulliver, and Weiss (2007). Further research was conducted using higher quality concentration measurements to determine what grades of steel wool (0000, 000, 00) and types of activated carbon (GAC, PAC, EAC ...

Impact Of Chain Architecture On The Thickness Dependence Of Physical Aging Rate Of Thin Polystyrene Films, Gregory Brown, Elizabeth Lewis, Bryan D. Vogt

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The dynamics of polymer thin films have been demonstrated to be significantly altered from the bulk, but the origins of such differences are not well defined. In this work, we seek to understand the differences in the structural dynamics (or physical aging) of polystyrene (PS) through branching and other well defined architectures (comb and centipede). The aging dynamics of ultrathin films (< 30 nm) differ from relatively thick films (100-150nm) with linear PS thin films aging more rapidly than the relatively “bulk-like” thick films. Ellipsometric measurements are used to characterize the physical aging rate of the films. The change in film thickness and refractive index as the films are held below the glass transition temperature (T_g) provides a simple measure of the physical aging. In this study, four different architectures (linear, comb, 4 arm star, and centipede) will be investigated. For each PS architecture, the aging rate will be determined for film thickness ranging ...

Improving An Experimental Test Bed With Time-Varying Parameters For Developing High-Rate Structural Health Monitoring Methods, D. T. Foley, B. S. Joyce, J. Hong, Simon Laflamme, J. Dodson

Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Publications

With the development of complex structures with high-rate dynamics, such as space structures, weapons systems, or hypersonic vehicles, comes a need for real-time structural health monitoring (SHM) methods. Researchers are developing algorithms for high-rate SHM methods, however, limited data exists on which to test these algorithms. An experimental test bed to simulate high-rate systems with rapid parameter changes was previously presented by the authors. This paper expands on the previous work. The initial configuration consisted of a cantilevered steel beam with a cart-roller system on a linear actuator to create an adjustable boundary condition along the beam, as well as ...

Nurbs-Based Microstructure Design For Organic Photovoltaics, Ramin Noruzi, Sambit Ghadai, Onur Rauf Bingol, Adarsh Krishnamurthy, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian

Mechanical Engineering Publications

The microstructure – spatial distribution of electron donor and acceptor domains – plays an important role in determining the photo current in thin film organic solar cells (OSCs). Optimizing the microstructure can lead to higher photo current generation, and is an active area of experimental research. There has been recent progress in framing OSC microstructure design as a computational design problem. However, most current approaches to microstructure optimization are based on volumetric distribution of material, which makes the design space very large. In contrast, we frame the microstructure design optimization problem in terms of designing the interface between the donor and acceptor ...

The Biased Media And Their Utilization Of Propaganda: The True Obstructionists Of World Events And Our Minds, David B. Ross, Gina Peyton, Melissa Tara Sasso, Rande Matteson, Cortney Matteson

Dr. Melissa Tara Sasso

Mandela Splash Pad Pre-Construction Plan, Levi Sandbulte

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

In the construction industry, it is the responsibility of the general contractor to take the architect’s ideas and turn it into a real building. Many times this requires ample communication and several drafts. This efficient execution of this process is vital to the completion of a successful project. In this project, I practice this communication process. The challenge presented by the owner is to build an affordable splash pad, and without impacting the construction schedule of the Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) that is being built on the same property at the same time. This proposal gives the owner ...

Rapid Prediction Of Low-Boom And Aerodynamic Performance Of Supersonic Transport Aircraft Using Panel Methods, Ted N. Giblette

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Utah State University Aerolab developed and tested a set of tools for rapid prediction of the loudness of a sonic boom generated by supersonic transport aircraft. This work supported a larger effort led by Texas A&M to investigate the use of adaptive aerostructures in lowering sonic boom loudness at off design conditions. Successful completion of this effort will improve the feasibility of supersonic commercial transport over land.

Funding was provided by a NASA University Leadership Initiative grant to several universities, including Utah State University, as well as industry partners to complete this work over a five year period ...

Polyball: A New Adsorbent For The Efficient Removal Of Endotoxin From Biopharmaceuticals, Sidharth Razdan, Jee-Ching Wang, Sutapa Barua

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The presence of endotoxin, also known as lipopolysaccharides (LPS), as a side product appears to be a major drawback for the production of certain biomolecules that are essential for research, pharmaceutical, and industrial applications. In the biotechnology industry, gram-negative bacteria (e.g., Escherichia coli ) are widely used to produce recombinant products such as proteins, plasmid DNAs and vaccines. These products are contaminated with LPS, which may cause side effects when administered to animals or humans. Purification of LPS often suffers from product loss. For this reason, special attention must be paid when purifying proteins aiming a product as free as ...

Predicting The Daily Return Direction Of The Stock Market Using Hybrid Machine Learning Algorithms, X. Zhong, David Lee Enke

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Big data analytic techniques associated with machine learning algorithms are playing an increasingly important role in various application fields, including stock market investment. However, few studies have focused on forecasting daily stock market returns, especially when using powerful machine learning techniques, such as deep neural networks (DNNs), to perform the analyses. DNNs employ various deep learning algorithms based on the combination of network structure, activation function, and model parameters, with their performance depending on the format of the data representation. This paper presents a comprehensive big data analytics process to predict the daily return direction of the SPDR S&P ...

Hedge Fund Replication Using Strategy Specific Factors, Sujit Subhash, David Lee Enke

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Hedge funds have traditionally served wealthy individuals and institutional investors with the promise of delivering protection of capital and uncorrelated positive returns irrespective of market direction, allowing them to better manage portfolio risk. However, the financial crisis of 2008 has heightened investor sensitivity to the high fees, illiquidity, lack of transparency, and lockup periods typically associated with hedge funds. Hedge fund replication products, or clones, seek to answer these challenges by providing daily liquidity, transparency, and immediate exposure to a desired hedge fund strategy. Nonetheless, although lowering cost and adding simplicity by using a common set of factors, traditional replication ...

3d Janus Plasmonic Helical Nanoapertures For Polarization-Encrypted Data Storage, Yang Chen, Xiaodong Yang, Jie Gao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Helical structures have attracted considerable attention due to their inherent optical chirality. Here, we report a unique type of 3D Janus plasmonic helical nanoaperture with direction-controlled polarization sensitivity, which is simply fabricated via the one-step grayscale focused ion beam milling method. Circular dichroism in transmission of as large as 0.72 is experimentally realized in the forward direction due to the spin-dependent mode coupling process inside the helical nanoaperture. However, in the backward direction, the nanoaperture acquires giant linear dichroism in transmission of up to 0.87. By encoding the Janus metasurface with the two nanoaperture enantiomers having specified rotation ...

Orbital Angular Momentum Transformation Of Optical Vortex With Aluminum Metasurfaces, Yuchao Zhang, Xiaodong Yang, Jie Gao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) transformation of optical vortex is realized upon using aluminum metasurfaces with phase distributions derived from the caustic theory. The generated OAM transformation beam has the well-defined Bessel-like patterns with multiple designed topological charges from -1 to +2.5 including both the integer-order and fractional-order optical vortices along the propagation. The detailed OAM transformation process is observed in terms of the variations of both beam intensity and phase profiles. The dynamic distributions of OAM mode density in the transformation are further analyzed to illustrate the conservation of the total OAM. The demonstration of transforming OAM states ...

Development And Testing Of A Hydrogen Peroxide Injected Thrust Augmenting Nozzle For A Hybrid Rocket, Mark C. Heiner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During a rocket launch, the point at which the most thrust is needed is at lift-off where the rocket is the heaviest since it is full of propellant. Unfortunately, this is also the point at which rocket engines perform the most poorly due to the relatively high atmospheric pressure at sea level. The Thrust Augmenting Nozzle (TAN) investigated in this paper provides a solution to this dilemma. By injecting extra propellant into the nozzle but downstream of the throat, the internal nozzle pressure is raised and the thrust is increased, and the nozzle efficiency, or specific impulse is potentially improved ...