Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Environmental Efficiency Assessment Of U.S. Transport Sector: A Slack-Based Data Envelopment Analysis Approach, Yong Shin Park, Siew Hoon Lim, Gokhan Egilmez, Joseph Szmerekovsky

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Sustainable transportation in the U.S. is essential for long-term economic growth and mobility, and environmental preservation. Using a non-radial slack-based measurement data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) model and state-level data, this study assesses the environmental efficiency of the transportation sector in the U.S. from years 2004 to 2012. In addition to environmental efficiency, carbon efficiency and potential carbon reduction were estimated for the 50 U.S. states. The findings of this study reveal that U.S. transportation sector was environmentally inefficient; U.S. states had an average transportation environmental efficiency score below 0.64. Therefore the states could substantially reduce carbon emissions to improve the …

Technology Innovations And The Financial Services Industry., Olubukola Akinniyi Akinwunmi

Bullion

This article explores the future of the financial services industry in the context of new technologies. Technological innovations were reviewed and likely implications for the industry were highlighted. The article suggests that a symbiotic relationship among new and incumbent financial services providers will benefit the industry. Since technology is re-defining the financial services industry and the global financial system as undergone transformation in the last couple of decades.

A Measuring System For Simultaneous Current, Wave And Ice Action On Offshore Structures, Yuxi Zhang

Link Foundation Ocean Engineering and Instrumentation Fellowship Reports

The design, fabrication and installation of a n Ice Force Measuring System (IFMS) were completed with partial support from the Department of Energy sponsored project entitled Measurement and Analysis of Extreme Wave and Ice Actions in the Great Lakes for Offshore Wind Platform Design in the fall of 2013 for ope rations during the winter of 2013 2014. The instrumentation was deployed in Lake Superior on a Keweenaw Peninsula lighthouse, where a large scale laboratory for cold regions engineering experimentation is naturally formed. A data acquisition system capture d readings from strain gauges encased in the IFMS plate and ice …

Interactive Training Of Teleoperated Robotic System For Real-Time Mriguided Steerable Needle Intervention, Gang Li

Link Foundation Modeling, Simulation and Training Fellowship Reports

Needle-based interventions, also known as percutaneous interventions, are common approaches for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures including tissue biopsy, delivery of therapeutic agents and tumor ablation. Needle steering, controlling the rotation of needle while inserting, is a clinical technique to produce a curved path to avoid anatomical obstacles (e.g. vasculature and bones) or compensate for placement errors. But, it requires delicate skills and long-term training to accurately steer the needle, due to difficult control of the needle path and lack of intraoperative image feedback. The objective of the proposed project is to develop a clinician-controlled teleoperated robotic system to train and …

A Framework For Collaborative Multi-Task, Multi-Robot Missions, John T. Shepard

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

Robotics is a transformative technology that will empower our civilization for a new scale of human endeavors. Massive scale is only possible through the collaboration of individual or groups of robots. Collaboration allows specialization, meaning a multirobot system may accommodate heterogeneous platforms including human partners.

This work develops a unified control architecture for collaborative missions comprised of multiple, multi-robot tasks. Using kinematic equations and Jacobian matrices, the system states are transformed into alternative control spaces which are more useful for the designer or more convenient for the operator. The architecture allows multiple tasks to be combined, composing tightly coordinated missions. …

Flexible Residential Test Facility: Impact Of Infiltration And Ventilation On Measured Cooling Season Energy And Moisture Levels (2016), Florida Solar Energy Center, Danny Parker

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Originally published in January 2014, this revision of the report clarifies and corrects references to Standard 62.2 as the 2013 version (62.2-2013), and it corrects the total CFM requirement for the subject buildings under the standard. Further, two plots have been updated to distinguish between the mechanical CFM and the total CFM required for the subject buildings under Standard 62.2-2013.

Evaluation Of The Impact Of Slab Foundation Heat Transfer On Heating And Cooling In Florida, Florida Solar Energy Center, Danny Parker

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The U.S. Department of Energy's Building America Partnership for Improved Residential Construction (BA-PIRC) performed experiments in the Florida Solar Energy Center's Flexible Residential Test Facility intended to assess for the first time (1) how slab-on-grade construction influences interior cooling in a cooling-dominated climate and (2) how the difference in a carpeted versus uncarpeted building might influence heating and cooling energy use.

Final Report: Cooling Seasonal Energy And Peak Demand Impacts Of Improved Duct Insulation On Fixed-Capacity (Seer 13) And Variable-Capacity (Seer 22) Heat Pumps, Florida Solar Energy Center, Charles Withers, Jr.

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Previous phase 1, 2, and 3 research identified that duct conductive losses to an attic environment imposed greater relative energy losses for the variable-capacity systems compared to the fixed-capacity systems (Cummings and Withers 2011) because of the longer dwell time of conditioned air in the ducts. The purpose of the Phase 4 experiments reported here was to see if duct R-value enhancement would benefit the overall operating efficiency of the variable-capacity system relatively more than the fixed-capacity system. The current Phase 4 experiments (the primary focus of this report) found that this was a secondary effect.

Quantification Of Frictional Drag Due To Biofouling On In-Service Ships, John Travis Hunsucker

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to improve the quantification of frictional drag due to biofouling on in-service ships by advancing the knowledge and methodology used to study the interactions between fouling communities and the surrounding environment. This research examined the influence of hydrodynamic stress on the development and frictional drag of fouling communities that developed on a fouling release coating; investigated the reliability of using ship performance monitoring to detect changes in the hull and propeller condition; and evaluated the feasibility of developing a field deployable instrument capable of measuring the local frictional resistance on a ship hull in …

All-Metal Structural Color Printing Based On Aluminum Plasmonic Metasurfaces, Z. Li, W. Wang, D. Rosenmann, D. Czaplewski, Xiaodong Yang, Jie Gao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

The Concentration Of Stress At The Rotator Cuff Tendon-To-Bone Attachment Site Is Conserved Across Species, F. Saadat, A. C. Deymier, Victor Birman, S. Thomopoulos, G. M. Genin

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Bioink Properties Before, During And After 3d Bioprinting, Katja Hölzl, Shengmao Lin, Liesbeth Tytgat, Sandra Van Vlierberghe, Linxia Gu, Aleksandr Ovsianikov

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Bioprinting is a process based on additive manufacturing from materials containing living cells. These materials, often referred to as bioink, are based on cytocompatible hydrogel precursor formulations, which gel in a manner compatible with different bioprinting approaches. The bioink properties before, during and after gelation are essential for its printability, comprising such features as achievable structural resolution, shape fidelity and cell survival. However, it is the final properties of the matured bioprinted tissue construct that are crucial for the end application. During tissue formation these properties are influenced by the amount of cells present in the construct, their proliferation, migration …

Assessing Latrine Use In Rural India: A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Reported Use And Passive Latrine Use Monitors, Antara Sinha, Corey L. Nagel, Evan A. Thomas, Wolf P. Schmidt, Belen Torondel, Sophie Boisson, Thomas Clasen

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although large-scale programs, like India's Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), have improved latrine coverage in rural settings, evidence suggests that actual use is suboptimal. However, the reliability of methods to assess latrine use is uncertain. We assessed the reliability of reported use, the standard method, by comparing survey-based responses against passive latrine use monitors (PLUMs) through a cross-sectional study among 292 households in 25 villages in rural Odisha, India, which recently received individual household latrines under the TSC. PLUMs were installed for 2 weeks and householders responded to surveys about their latrine use behavior. Reported use was compared with PLUM results …

High-Performance Self-Powered Photodetectors Based On Zno/Zns Core-Shell Nanorod Arrays, Hailing Lin, Lin Wei, Cuncun Wu, Yanxue Chen, Shishen Yan, Liangmo Mei, Jun Jiao

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent years, there is an urgent demand for high-performance ultraviolet photodetectors with high photosensitivity, fast responsivity, and excellent spectral selectivity. In this letter, we report a self-powered photoelectrochemical cell-type UV detector using the ZnO/ZnS core-shell nanorod array as the active photoanode and deionized water as the electrolyte. This photodetector demonstrates an excellent spectral selectivity and a rapid photoresponse time of about 0.04 s. And the maximum responsivity is more than 0.056 (A/W) at 340 nm, which shows an improvement of 180 % compared to detectors based on the bare ZnO nanorods. This improved photoresponsivity can be understood from the …

Minimum Conditions For Visible Mold Growth, G. A. Tsongas, Frank Riordan

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Considerable confusion and misunderstanding exists over the conditions required for visible mold growth at a surface in buildings. That is evident in papers and articles authored by engineers and other scientists, including various ASHRAE, ASTM and Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation publications. One of the major problems is that many HVAC engineers, building scientists, practitioners and others believe there exists a single critical value of the relative humidity (RH) of the indoor or ambient air well away from surfaces, below which mold will not grow on surfaces. However, that is not the case. The purpose of this article is to clarify …

Scenario Analysis For Techno-Economic Model Development Of U.S. Offshore Wind Support Structures, Rick Damiani, Andrew Ning, Ben Maples, Aaron Smith, Katherine Dykes

Faculty Publications

Challenging bathymetry and soil conditions of future U.S. offshore wind power plants might promote the use of multimember, fixed-bottom structures (or “jackets”) in place of monopiles. Support structures affect costs associated with the balance of system (BOS) and operation and maintenance. Understanding the link between these costs and the main environmental design drivers is crucial in the quest for a lower levelized cost of energy (LCOE), and it is the main rationale for this work. Actual cost and engineering data are still scarce; hence, we evaluated a simplified engineering approach to tie key site and turbine parameters (e.g., water depth, …

High-Frequency Instabilities Of Stationary Crossflow Vortices In A Hypersonic Boundary Layer, Fei Li, Meelan Choudhari, Pedro Paredes-Gonzalez, Lian Duan

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Hypersonic boundary layer flows over a circular cone at moderate incidence angle can support strong crossflow instability in between the windward and leeward rays on the plane of symmetry. Due to more efficient excitation of stationary crossflow vortices by surface roughness, such boundary layer flows may transition to turbulence via rapid amplification of the high-frequency secondary instabilities of finite-amplitude stationary crossflow vortices. The amplification characteristics of these secondary instabilities are investigated for crossflow vortices generated by an azimuthally periodic array of roughness elements over a 7° half-angle circular cone in a Mach 6 free stream. The analysis is based on …

The Feasibility Of Utilising Compressed Natural Gas As Part Of A Systematic Approach To Establishing The Necessary Groundwork For The Hydrogen Based Transport Economy, James Brunton, John Howlett, David Kennedy

Conference Papers

One key objective for vehicle manufacturers is to develop technology and infrastructure to facilitate the progression from combustion to conversion by the year 2050. In the short to medium term however, the combustion of fossil fuels such as petrol and diesel, coupled with advanced transmission innovations and emission control technology that are governed by strict Euro VI regulations appears to be the main path forward for the transport sector and the environment. This paper presents the feasibility of utilising the developing compressed natural gas network capabilities as part of a systematic approach to establishing the necessary groundwork for a hydrogen …

Realization Of Point Planar Elastic Behaviors Using Revolute Joint Serial Mechanisms Having Specified Link Lengths, Shuguang Huang, Joseph M. Schimmels

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

This paper presents methods for the realization of 2 × 2 translational compliance matrices using serial mechanisms having only revolute joints, each with selectable compliance. The link lengths of the mechanism and the location of the compliant frame relative to the mechanism base are arbitrary but specified. The realizability of a given compliant behavior is investigated, and necessary and sufficient conditions for the realization of a given compliance with a given mechanism are obtained. These realization conditions are interpreted in terms of geometric relationships among the joints. We show that, for an appropriately sized 3R serial mechanism, any single 2 …

Using The Gauge Condition To Simplify The Elastodynamic Analysis Of Guided Wave Propagation, Bhuiyan Yeasin Md, Victor Giurgiutiu

Faculty Publications

In this article, gauge condition in elastodynamics is explored more to revive its potential capability of simplifying wave propagation problems in elastic medium. The inception of gauge condition in elastodynamics happens from the Navier-Lame equations upon application of Helmholtz theorem. In order to solve the elastic wave problems by potential function approach, the gauge condition provides the necessary conditions for the potential functions. The gauge condition may be considered as the superposition of the separate gauge conditions of Lamb waves and shear horizontal (SH) guided waves respectively, and thus, it may be resolved into corresponding gauges of Lamb waves and …