Systems Engineering Commons^™

Framework For Data Acquisition And Fusion Of Camera And Radar For Autonomous Vehicle Systems, Clay Edward Vincent

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The primary contribution is the development of the data collection testing methodology for autonomous driving systems of a hybrid electric passenger vehicle. As automotive manufacturers begin to develop adaptive cruise control technology in vehicles, progress is being made toward the development of fully-autonomous vehicles. Adaptive cruise control capability is classified into five levels defined by the Society of Automotive Engineering. Some vehicles under development have attained higher levels of autonomy, but the focus of most commercial development is Level 2 autonomy. As the level of autonomy increases, the sensor technology becomes more advanced with a sensor suite which includes radar, …

A Comparative Analysis Of Coastdown Testing Methods From An Electric Drive Unit Engagement Perspective Using A Student-Designed Parallel Hybrid Electric Vehicle, Dawson Everett Dunnuck

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Coastdown testing and road load determination are pivotal parts of the automotive design process. Vehicle manufacturers and independent companies perform and analyze road loads determined through a coastdown or similar method to determine a vehicle’s road load for modeling and EPA certification. For a traditional coastdown, the vehicle’s drivetrain must be disconnected through a clutch between the engine and the transmission while traveling at a high rate of speed to place the vehicle in neutral. This changes for hybrid and electric vehicles. Some hybrid, and most electric, vehicles delivered to customers do not have this clutch action to grant the …

Comparative Analysis Of Fullstack Development Technologies: Frontend, Backend And Database, Qozeem Odeniran

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Accessing websites with various devices has brought changes in the field of application development. The choice of cross-platform, reusable frameworks is very crucial in this era. This thesis embarks in the evaluation of front-end, back-end, and database technologies to address the status quo. Study-a explores front-end development, focusing on angular.js and react.js. Using these frameworks, comparative web applications were created and evaluated locally. Important insights were obtained through benchmark tests, lighthouse metrics, and architectural evaluations. React.js proves to be a performance leader in spite of the possible influence of a virtual machine, opening the door for additional research. Study b …

Like You Search, Gipson Bachman

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

As consumers continue to make their purchases solely online without visiting brick-and-mortar stores, they increasingly look for ways to “touch, feel and try on” products without actually doing so. We believe social media influencers provide a way to do this, with the influencers themselves acting as “stand-ins” for consumers in their place. Finding influencers that look like you in 2022 sounds like it would be easy, but it isn’t. Until now.

LIKE YOU aims to answer this gap in the market by creating a proprietary search engine that, through answering a few questions, recommends a list of influencers that can …

Design And Fabrication Of A Force-Displacement Control Mechanism For Bone-Surgical Tool Testing, Kenneth Nwagu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project focuses on the design and fabrication of an experimental setup for orthopedic-tool testing, tailored for a surgical instrumentation company. The multifaceted project encompasses a literature review, conceptual design, prototyping, and rigorous testing, resulting in a versatile control system capable of assessing various orthopedic tools, including bone drills, saws, burrs, and power handpieces.

Orthopedic surgical procedures (which include cutting and/or drilling into bone) often need to be performed on bones for faster recovery. The drilling and cutting process can cause an increase in temperature at the cutting site which can cause bone necrosis. The tools also need to be …

Development Of Directed Randomization For Discussing A Minimal Security Architecture, Henrique Oyama, Dominic Messina, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Akkarakaran Francis Leonard, Kip Nieman, Helen Durand, Katie Tyrrell, Katrina Hinzman, Michael Williamson

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Strategies for mitigating the impacts of cyberattacks on control systems using a control-oriented perspective have become of greater interest in recent years. Our group has contributed to this trend by developing several methods for detecting cyberattacks on process sensors, actuators, or both sensors and actuators simultaneously using an advanced optimization-based control strategy known as Lyapunov-based economic model predictive control (LEMPC). However, each technique comes with benefits and limitations, both with respect to one another and with respect to traditional information technology and computer science-type approaches to cybersecurity. An important question to ask, therefore, is what the goal should be of …

Investigating Applications Of Deep Learning For Diagnosis Of Post Traumatic Elbow Disease, Hugh James

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Traumatic events such as dislocation, breaks, and arthritis of musculoskeletal joints can cause the development of post-traumatic joint contracture (PTJC). Clinically, noninvasive techniques such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans are used to analyze the disease. Such procedures require a patient to sit sedentary for long periods of time and can be expensive as well. Additionally, years of practice and experience are required for clinicians to accurately recognize the diseased anterior capsule region and make an accurate diagnosis. Manual tracing of the anterior capsule is done to help with diagnosis but is subjective and timely. As a result, there is …

Practical Requirements Elicitation In Modern Product Development: A Multi-Case Study In Discontinuous Innovation, Michael King

Theses and Dissertations

Practical modern product development, specifically rapid, lean efforts to create new disrupting or specialized products, face constraints that require modified requirements elicitation (RE) techniques. Requirements elicitation conventions have not been updated to address the challenges of these approaches, and industry practitioners lack the tools to select the most efficient techniques. This study examines the RE approaches performed by three resource-limited teams conducting discontinuous new product development through a multi-case study to identify gaps between the literature and practice, with suggestions to fill them. Our findings suggest modern RE practices and challenges closely reflect those found by studies on RE in …

Towards Structured Planning And Learning At The State Fisheries Agency Scale, Caleb A. Aldridge

Theses and Dissertations

Inland recreational fisheries has grown philosophically and scientifically to consider economic and sociopolitical aspects (non-biological) in addition to the biological. However, integrating biological and non-biological aspects of inland fisheries has been challenging. Thus, an opportunity exists to develop approaches and tools which operationalize planning and decision-making processes which include biological and non-biological aspects of a fishery. This dissertation expands the idea that a core set of goals and objectives is shared among and within inland fisheries agencies; that many routine operations of inland fisheries managers can be regimented or standardized; and the novel concept that current information and operations can …

Developing An Early Life Cycle Manufacturability Assessment For Conceptual Designs, Tonya Gamblin Mccall

Theses and Dissertations

Studies have shown that 70 – 80% of a product's life cycle costs are committed by the end of the product design phase (Anderson, 2014; National Research Council, 1991; Swift, 1987). This supports the general claim that decision making in the conceptual stage drives the cost throughout the life cycle. The use of concurrent engineering has been viewed as the answer to this problem, offering the Design for Excellence (DFX) as one approach for evaluating product designs across specific disciplines. This research focuses on a subset of DFX referred to as Design for Manufacturability to develop a means to assess …

Hard-Real-Time Computing Performance In A Cloud Environment, Alvin Cornelius Murphy

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is rapidly working with DoD Services to move from multi-year (e.g., 7-10) traditional acquisition programs to a commercial industrybased approach for software development. While commercial technologies and approaches provide an opportunity for rapid fielding of mission capabilities to pace threats, the suitability of commercial technologies to meet hard-real-time requirements within a surface combat system is unclear. This research establishes technical data to validate the effectiveness and suitability of current commercial technologies to meet the hard-real-time demands of a DoD combat management system. (Moreland Jr., 2013) conducted similar research; however, microservices, containers, and container …

Multiple Heat Exchanger Cooling System For Automotive Applications – Design, Mathematical Modeling, And Experimental Observations, Zaker Syed

All Dissertations

The design of the automotive cooling systems has slowly evolved from engine-driven mechanical to computer-controlled electro-mechanical components. With the addition of computer-controlled variable speed actuators, cooling system architectures have been updated to maximize performance and efficiency. By switching from one large radiator to multiple smaller radiators with individual flow control valves, the heat rejection requirements may be precisely adjusted. The combination of computer regulated thermal management system should reduce power consumption while satisfying temperature control objectives. This research focuses on developing and analyzing a multi-radiator system architecture for implementation in ground transportation applications. The premise is to use a single …

Using Reinforcement Learning To Improve Network Reliability Through Optimal Resource Allocation, Henley Wells

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Networks provide a variety of critical services to society (e.g. power grid, telecommunication, water, transportation) but are prone to disruption. With this motivation, we study a sequential decision problem in which an initial network is improved over time (e.g., by adding or increasing the reliability of edges) and rewards are gained over time as a function of the network’s all-terminal reliability. The actions during each time period are limited due to availability of resources such as time, money, or labor. To solve this problem, we utilized a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) approach implemented within OpenAI-Gym using Stable Baselines. A Proximal …

A Systems Theory-Based Framework For Environmental Scanning In Complex System Governance, Dale E. Baugh

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop a Systems Theory-based framework for Environmental Scanning (ES) in Complex System Governance (CSG) using an inductive research design. Complexity and uncertainty are normal for external environments in which today’s systems (organizations) exist. These environmental characteristics provide impetus for researchers to focus on organizational planning for disruptive external forces that could threaten system stability and future system existence. The ES function supports the requisite governance metasystemic functions to be enabled, executed, and evolved sufficiently well to promote continuous system viability. In this research the functioning of ES was examined from a diverse literature-based …

Cybersecurity And Dynamic Operation In Practice: Equipment Impacts And Safety Guarantees, Kip Nieman, Dominic Messina, Matthew Wegener, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Though dynamic operation of chemical processes has been extensively explored theoretically in contexts such as economic model predictive control or even considering the potential for cyberattacks on control systems creating non-standard operating policies, important practical questions remain regarding dynamic operation. In this work, we look at two of these with particular relevance to process safety: (1) evaluating dynamic operating policies with respect to process equipment fidelity and (2) evaluating procedures for determining the parameters of an advanced control law that can promote both dynamic operation as well as safety if appropriately designed. Regarding the first topic, we utilize computational fluid …

Using Strategic Options Development And Analysis (Soda) To Understand The Simulation Accessibility Problem, Andrew J. Collins, Ying Thaviphoke, Antuela A. Tako

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Simulation modelling is applied to a wide range of problems, including defense and healthcare. However, there is a concern within the simulation community that there is a limited use and implementation of simulation studies in practice. This suggests that despite its benefits, simulation may not be reaching its potential in making a real-world impact. The main reason for this could be that simulation tools are not widely accessible in industry. In this paper, we investigate the issues that affect simulation modelling accessibility through a workshop with simulation practitioners. We use Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA), a problem-structuring approach that …

Study Of Stochastic Market Clearing Problems In Power Systems With High Renewable Integration, Saumya Sakitha Sashrika Ariyarathne

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

Integrating large-scale renewable energy resources into the power grid poses several operational and economic problems due to their inherently stochastic nature. The lack of predictability of renewable outputs deteriorates the power grid’s reliability. The power system operators have recognized this need to account for uncertainty in making operational decisions and forming electricity pricing. In this regard, this dissertation studies three aspects that aid large-scale renewable integration into power systems. 1. We develop a nonparametric change point-based statistical model to generate scenarios that accurately capture the renewable generation stochastic processes; 2. We design new pricing mechanisms derived from alternative stochastic programming …

Supporting The Discovery, Reuse, And Validation Of Cybersecurity Requirements At The Early Stages Of The Software Development Lifecycle, Jessica Antonia Steinmann

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The focus of this research is to develop an approach that enhances the elicitation and specification of reusable cybersecurity requirements. Cybersecurity has become a global concern as cyber-attacks are projected to cost damages totaling more than $10.5 trillion dollars by 2025. Cybersecurity requirements are more challenging to elicit than other requirements because they are nonfunctional requirements that requires cybersecurity expertise and knowledge of the proposed system. The goal of this research is to generate cybersecurity requirements based on knowledge acquired from requirements elicitation and analysis activities, to provide cybersecurity specifications without requiring the specialized knowledge of a cybersecurity expert, and …

A Methodological Framework For Parametric Combat Analysis, Dustin L. Hayhurst Sr.

Theses and Dissertations

This work presents a taxonomic structure for understanding the tension between certain factors of stability for game-theoretic outcomes such as Nash optimality, Pareto optimality, and balance optimality and then applies such game-theoretic concepts to the advancement of strategic thought on spacepower. This work successfully adapts and applies combat modeling theory to the evaluation of cislunar space conflict. This work provides evidence that the reliability characteristics of small spacecraft share similarities to the reliability characteristics of large spacecraft. Using these novel foundational concepts, this dissertation develops and presents a parametric methodological framework capable of analyzing the efficacy of heterogeneous force compositions …

Value Focused Thinking Analysis Of C-Band Australia Radar Operations, Samuel Ray Grothman

Theses and Dissertations

The radars used for Space Domain Awareness (SDA) are inherently all-weather, day/night sensors capable of around the clock operations. Despite this fact, some radars are operated for fewer than their maximum operating capabilities. The decision-making process for selecting the operating hours of a sensor has historically been based on only a few factors or just one. This research uses the techniques in Value Focused Thinking to develop an evaluation process to score possible alternatives and find the alternative with the most value for the decision maker. By investigating the value that is added by operating an SDA radar, it is …