Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Investigating Fabrication Methods For Micro Single-Chamber Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Man Yang

Dissertations

A Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) is a green energy technology that offers a cleaner and efficient alternative to fossil fuels. The efficiency and utility of SOFCs can be enhanced by fabricating miniaturized component structures within the fuel cell footprint. This research focuses on the microfabrication of parallel-connected inter-digitized design of micro single chamber SOFC (μ-SC-SOFCs). In this dissertation, candidate micro/nano fabrication techniques to precisely fabricate micro patterns on planar substrates have been studied. These include EBL, soft lithography, photolithography, and direct-writing. After analyzing preliminary results, two combinational approaches were further investigated. The first method involves the combination of the …

The Role Of Shewanella Oneidensis Mr-1 Outer Surface Structures In Extracellular Electron Transfer, Rachida A. Bouhenni, Gary J. Vora, Justin C. Biffinger, Sheetal Shirodkar, Ken Brockman, Ricky Ray, Peter Wu, Brandy J. Johnson, Eulandria M. Biddle, Matthew J. Marshall, Lisa A. Fitzgerald, Brenda J. Little, Jim K. Fredrickson, Alexander S. Beliaev, Bradley R. Ringeisen, Daad A. Saffarini

U.S. Navy Research

The ability of the metal reducer Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 to generate electricity in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) depends on the activity of a predicted type IV prepilin peptidase; PilD. Analysis of an S. oneidensis MR-1 pilD mutant indicated that it was deficient in pili production (Msh and type IV) and type II secretion (T2S). The requirement for T2S in metal reduction has been previously identified, but the role of pili remains largely unexplored. To define the role of type IV or Msh pili in electron transfer, mutants that lack one or both pilus biogenesis systems were generated and analyzed; …

Microbial Treatment Of Swine Fecal Waste To Generate Long-Chain Linear Alkanes After Fast Pyrolysis, Lisa A. Fitzgerald, C. Ziemer, S. E. Lizewski, Bradley R. Ringeisen, K. Henry, Justin C. Biffinger

U.S. Navy Research

Research into the generation of energy from human and animal waste has been primarily focused on gas production (especially methane and hydrogen). While there is some work concentrated on ethanol and biodiesel creation from wastes (fuels used for ground transportation primarily), increasing research interest has been recently directed toward long chain hydrocarbon production for aviation fuels. Kerosene components from swine fecal waste have been generated from four natural sources: undigested dietary lipids, host lipids excreted in feces, bacterial cell walls and products of bacterial fermentation.

Probing Electron Transfer Mechanisms In Shewanella Oneidensis Mr-1 Using A Nanoelectrode Platform And Single-Cell Imaging, Ziaocheng Jiang, Jinsong Hu, Lisa A. Fitzgerald, Justin C. Biffinger, Ping Xie, Bradley R. Ringeisen, Charles M. Lieber

U.S. Navy Research

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) represent a promising approach for sustainable energy production as they generate electricity directly from metabolism of organic substrates without the need for catalysts. However, the mechanisms of electron transfer between microbes and electrodes, which could ultimately limit power extraction, remain controversial. Here we demonstrate optically transparent nanoelectrodes as a platform to investigate extracellular electron transfer in Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, where an array of nanoholes precludes or single window allows for direct microbeelectrode contacts. Following addition of cells, short-circuit current measurements showed similar amplitude and temporal response for both electrode configurations, while in situ optical imaging demonstrates …

Emerging Technology Supply Chain Model For Additive Manufacturing, David M. Dietrich

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research concerns developing an emerging manufacturing technology, additive manufacturing (AM), into a mature and flexible, cost-effective supply chain for aerospace production. The field of additive manufacturing is an approach to low volume manufacturing of plastic or metal parts using three dimensional Computer Aided Design data. As an emerging technology, AM's supply chain is not established compared to conventional aerospace manufacturing technologies, such as injection molding or composite manufacturing. Technical and business challenges limit the robustness of the additive manufacturing system for aerospace applications. The overall intent of this research is to: first, provide an introduction to two main polymer …

Development Of A Contingency Capillary Wastewater Management Device, Evan A. Thomas

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The personal body-attached liquid liquidator (PBALL) is conceived as a passive, capillary-driven, contingency wastewater disposal device. In this contingency scenario, the airflow system on the NASA crew exploration vehicle is assumed to have failed, leaving only passive hardware and vacuum vent to dispose of wastewater. To meet these needs, the PBALL was conceived to rely on capillary action and urine wetting conditions from 0° < θadv ∼ 90°, be adaptable for both male and female use, collect and retain up to 1 L of urine, minimize splash-back, and allow continuous draining of the wastewater to vacuum while minimizing cabin air loss. A subscale PBALL test article, which was tested on NASA's reduced-gravity aircraft in April 2010, successfully demonstrated key components of this design.

Application Of Quality Function Deployment In New Product And Service Development, Anusha Uppalanchi

Masters Theses

"Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic process to integrate customer requirements into every aspect of the design and delivery of products and services. Understanding the customers wants or needs from a product or service is crucial to the successful design and development of new products and services. QFD is a system that utilizes customer demands to meet client missions by outlining what the customer wants in a service or product. QFD was used in this research to determine customer needs and thus to ensure that customer demands are met. This methodology is demonstrated using two case studies: Hydrogen Fuel …

Improving Resiliency Using Graph Based Evolutionary Algorithms, Jayakanth Jayachandran

Masters Theses

"Resiliency is an important characteristic of any system. It signifies the ability of a system to survive and recover from unprecedented disruptions. Various characteristics exist that indicate the level of resiliency in a system. One of these attributes is the adaptability of the system. This adaptability can be enhanced by redundancy present within the system. In the context of system design, redundancy can be achieved by having a diverse set of good designs for that particular system. Evolutionary algorithms are widely used in creating designs for engineering systems, as they perform well on discontinuous and/or high dimensional problems. One method …

T-6a Texan Ii Systems Engineering Case Study, Air Force Center For Systems Engineering, Bill Kinzig, Dave Bailey

AFIT Documents

No abstract provided.

Risk And System-Of-Systems: Toward A Unified Concept, C. Ariel Pinto, Michael K. Mcshane, Rani Kady

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The scope of this paper is the survey of both fundamental and most recent publications in system-of-systems, business and insurance, as well as risk analysis, modeling, and management for the purpose of better describing the concept of risk in recognition of emergence and complexity which characterizes many systems within the concern of engineering and business managers. The ultimate goal is to provide engineering and business managers the necessary perspective on the concept of risk and in its management for the next generation of sustainable systems - including various descriptions of risk and discussion of the relevance of properties of system-of-systems …

The Effects Of Personal Protective Equipment Level A Suits On Human Task Performance, Yvette L. Simon

Masters Theses

"First response teams dealing with hazardous substances often require the highest level of protection provided by Level A suits. These suits are fully encapsulating, bulky, and heat retentive. The effect of these suits on the wearer's ability to perform various tasks is of interest when it comes to human performance analysis. This research effort examined the effect of the Level A suit on fine motor and gross motor dexterity. Seven members of the National Guard's Civil Support Team (CST) performed a battery of six tasks designed to test these abilities. Tasks comprised the Minnesota Dexterity test and the Mirror Tracer …

Task Analysis, Modeling, And Automatic Identification Of Elemental Tasks In Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery, Lavie Pinchas Golenberg

Wayne State University Dissertations

Robotic microsurgery provides many advantages for surgical operations, including tremor filtration, an increase in dexterity, and smaller incisions. There is a growing need for a task analyses on robotic laparoscopic operations to understand better the tasks involved in robotic microsurgery cases. A few research groups have conducted task observations to help systems automatically identify surgeon skill based on task execution. Their gesture analyses, however, lacked depth and their class libraries were composed of ambiguous groupings of gestures that did not share contextual similarities.

A Hierarchical Task Analysis was performed on a four-throw suturing task using a robotic microsurgical platform. Three …

Low-Cost Obstacle Detection Sensor Array For Unmanned Agricultural Vehicles, Santosh Pitla, Joe D. Luck, Scott A. Shearer

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Conference Presentations and White Papers

Mobile robots deployed for agricultural applications must operate in harsh environments where they encounter a variety of both moveable and immovable obstacles. Typically, robots utilize vision sensors to learn about the environment in which they are working. In this study, a low-cost infra-red (IR) sensor array was developed to act as an obstacle detection aid for an unmanned agricultural vehicle (UAgV). The IR sensor array developed consists of six IR sensors mounted on two orthogonal steel plates. The array of sensors was continuously oscillated about the yaw-axis to traverse a 200° field of view in front of the UAgV. Three …

Generating ‘As-Applied’ Pesticide Distribution Maps From A Self-Propelled Agricultural Sprayer Based On Nozzle Pressure Data, Joe D. Luck, Ajay Sharda, Santosh Pitla, John P. Fulton, Scott A. Shearer

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Conference Presentations and White Papers

The application of pre-emergence, post-emergence, and burn-down herbicides (i.e., glyphosate) continues to increase as producers attempt to reduce both negative environmental impacts from tillage and input costs from labor, machinery and materials. The use of precision agriculture technologies such as automatic boom section control allows producers to reduce offtarget application when applying herbicides. While automatic boom section control provides benefits, pressure differences across the spray boom resulting from boom section actuation can lead to offrate application errors. Off-rate errors may also result from spray rate controller compensation for ground speed changes and velocity variation across the spray boom during turning …

A Value Model For Product Development Process Using Lean Principles, Salik Yadav

Masters Theses

"This research presents a value quantification model for multi-stage product development Process (PDP) using lean value principles. The PDP stages considered in this research include conceptual development, systems design, detailed design and prototyping stages. The value at any of the PDP stages is formulated as a function of six factors: (a) importance of customer requirements, (b) cost of customer's ownership, (c) parts/service availability, (d) weighted average cost of capital, (e) information evolution, and (f) risk reduction. Factors (a)-(d) are adequately addressed in the literature. This study focuses on information evolution and risk reduction factors. These two factors are defined by …

Software Test Automation, Phillip Laplante, Fevzi Belli, Jerry Gao, Greg Kapfhammer, Keith Miller, W. Wong, Dianxiang Xu

Education Sciences and Professional Programs Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Synergy Between Biology And Systems Resilience, Ashik Chandra

Masters Theses

"Resilient systems have the ability to endure and successfully recover from disturbances by identifying problems and mobilizing the available resources to cope with the disturbance. Resiliency lets a system recover from disruptions, variations, and a degradation of expected working conditions. Biological systems are resilient. Immune systems are highly adaptive and scalable, with the ability to cope with multiple data sources, fuse information together, makes decisions, have multiple interacting agents, operate in a distributed manner over a multiple scales, and have a memory structure to facilitate learning. Ecosystems are resilient since they have the capacity to absorb disturbance and are able …

Application Of Quality Engineering To Investment Portfolio Selection And Optimization, Vivek Kulinchandra Jikar

Doctoral Dissertations

"The Taguchi System of Quality Engineering (TSQE) is a widely accepted philosophy and set of tools and techniques to rapidly design and manufacture high quality, low cost products and services. It is heavily focused on creating stable system designs that allow a product or system to perform as desired by customers in the environment of their choice. This research demonstrates the power of the TSQE to manage an investment portfolio. In particular, it uses the concept of design stability to select investments and optimize portfolios. It proposes a new design stability-based investment screening metric and discusses its application. Further, this …

An Analysis Of The Integration Of Lean And Safety, Pankaj Mahesh Pai

Masters Theses

"The lean philosophy has proven potential to help businesses improve productivity and reduce its losses. Lean can give businesses a cutting edge in this age of global competition. The fundamental principle of lean is to identify wastes in the system and reduce or eliminate them. There is a concern that during lean implementations, the focus on productivity may result in health and safety issues being ignored or worse, changes driven by lean may introduce new hazards. The relationship between lean and safety is not clearly understood. Lean and safety should be compatible. Both strive to improve processes. Both are against …

Periodic Resource Reallocation In Two-Echelon Repairable Item Inventory Systems, Hoong Chuin Lau, Jie Pan, Huawei Song

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Given an existing stock allocation in an inventory system, it is often necessary to perform reallocation over multiple time points to address inventory imbalance and maximize availability. In this paper, we focus on the situation where there are two opportunities to perform reallocation within a replenishment cycle. We derive a mathematical model to determine when and how to perform reallocation. Furthermore, we consider the extension of this model to the situation allowing an arbitrary number of reallocations. Experimental results show that the two-reallocation approach achieves better performance compared with the single-reallocation approach found in the literature. We also illustrate how …