Digital Commons Network^™

Systems Analysis Of Resources Development - California State University, Sacramento, Kaveh Madani

All ECSTATIC Materials

The course presents a variety of systems analysis techniques that can be used for resource planning and management in the civil engineering field. Simulation and optimization techniques (or mathematical programming) are emphasized as they apply to civil engineering problem solving. Course taught at University of Central Florida.

Impact Of Vegetable Oil On Distribution Of Trichloroethylene In Groundwater During Enhanced Bioremediation, M. Pu, Ryan Dupont, William J. Doucette

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Vegetable oils are increasingly being used as long-term carbon donors to stimulate reductive dechlorination of trichloroethylene (TCE). Besides potential enhancement of biodegradation, the addition of vegetables oils may impact TCE fate and distribution within the aquifer by acting as non-aqueous phase liquids (NAPL). Distribution coefficients for TCE between groundwater and four vegetable oils were determined using a slow-stir technique. Log vegetable oil/water distribution coefficients (log Kvw) were found to range from 1.0 to 2.56. TCE/vegetable oil distribution coefficients statistically increased with an increase in oil weathering while the concentration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the water did not change …

Watershed Management And Water Production Study For State Of Utah, Ibrahim Nourein Mohammed, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The amount of water produced from a watershed depends on the climate, soils, geology, land cover and land use. Precipitation water inputs in the form of rain or snow are partitioned by the watershed into evapotranspiration, runoff and groundwater recharge. This study has examined factors that may impact the production of runoff from Utah watersheds, focusing on factors related to land and watershed management. Specifically we are interested in how land use changes, such as afforestation, deforestation, agricultural, urban, industrial and mining development, impact runoff. The scale of interest is regional subbasins at the USGS cataloging unit 8 digit Hydrologic …

Generation Of Monthly Precipitation Under Limited Data And Climate Change: An Example From The Upper Blue Nile River Basin, U. Kim, Jagath J. Kaluarachchi, V. Smakhtin

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This work develops a methodology to project the future precipitation in large river basins under limited data and climate change while preserving the historical temporal and spatial characteristics. The computationally simple and reliable conditional generation method (CGM) is presented and applied to generate reliable monthly precipitation data in the upper Blue Nile River Basin of Ethiopia where rain-fed agriculture is prevalent. The results showed that the temporal analysis with the CGM performs better to reproduce the historical long-term characteristics than other methods, and the spatial analysis with the CGM reproduced the historical spatial structure accurately. A 100-year time series analysis …

Year Four Annual Report: Activities, Findings And Evaluators' Reports, Ncete Faculty

Reports to NSF

The National Center for Engineering and Technology Education is a collaborative network of scholars with backgrounds in technology education, engineering, and related fields. Our mission is to build capacity in technology education and to improve the understanding of the learning and teaching of high school students and teachers as they apply engineering design processes to technological problems.

Estimating The Subsonic Aerodynamic Center And Moment Components For Swept Wings, W. F. Phillips, Doug F. Hunsaker, R. J. Niewoehner

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

An improved method is presented for estimating the subsonic location of the semispan aerodynamic center of a swept wing and the aerodynamic moment components about that aerodynamic center. The method applies to wings with constant linear taper and constant quarter-chord sweep. The results of a computational fluid dynamics study for 236 wings show that the position of the semispan aerodynamic center of a wing depends primarily on aspect ratio, taper ratio, and quarter-chord sweep angle. Wing aspect ratio was varied from 4.0 to 20, taper ratios from 0.25 to 1.0 were investigated quarter-chord sweep angles were varied from 0 to …

A Relational Model For Environmental And Water Resources Data, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, David G. Tarboton, David R. Maidment, Ilya Zaslavsky

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Environmental observations are fundamental to hydrology and water resources, and the way these data are organized and manipulated either enables or inhibits the analyses that can be performed. The Observations Data Model presented here provides a new and consistent format for the storage and retrieval of point environmental observations in a relational database designed to facilitate integrated analysis of large data sets collected by multiple investigators. Within this data model, observations are stored with sufficient ancillary information (metadata) about the observations to allow them to be unambiguously interpreted and to provide traceable heritage from raw measurements to useable information. The …

Development Of A Low-Cost Fine Steering Mirror, Steven R. Wassom, Morgan Davidson

Space Dynamics Laboratory Publications

The Space Dynamics Laboratory has used internal funds to develop a prototype low-cost two-axis fine steering mirror (FSM) for space-based and airborne applications. The FSM has a lightweight 75 mm-by- 150-mm high-reflectance mirror, high angular deflection capability for along-track ground motion compensation and cross-track pointing, and a 70-Hertz bandwidth for small amplitudes to help cancel unwanted jitter. It makes use of off-the-shelf components as much as possible. Key performance parameters are: Clear aperture, 75 mm; elevation angle, ±15 deg (mechanical); azimuth angle, ±60 deg (mechanical); slew rate, greater than 75 deg/sec; bandwidth, 70 Hz; steady-state average error, about 1 arcsec; …

Particle Composition And Size Distributions In And Around A Deep Pit Swine Operation, Randy S. Martin, P. J. Silva, Kori D. Moore, M. Erupe, V. S. Doshi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The contribution of emissions from agricultural facilities is rapidly becoming a major concern for local and regional air quality. Characterization of particle properties such as physical size distribution and chemical composition can be valuable in understanding the processes contributing to emissions and ultimate fate of particulate matter from agricultural facilities. A measurement campaign was conducted at an Iowa, deep-pit, three-barn swine finishing facility to characterize near-source ambient particulate matter. Size-specific mass concentrations were determined using minivol samplers, with additional size distribution information obtain using optical particle counters. Particulate composition was determined via ion chromatographic analysis of the collected filters. A …

Optimization Model For National Water Master Planning: Design And Documentation, Richard C. Peralta

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Physical distribution system and Balancing and Allocation and Transfer modules descriptors.

Active And Attentive Ladar Scanning For Automatic Target Recognition, M. Mamanakis, R.R. Fullmer, R.T. Pack, Scott E. Budge

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this work we examine the dynamic implications of active and attentive scanning for LADAR based automatic target/object recognition and show that a dynamically constrained, scanner based, ATR system's ability to identify objects in real-time is improved through attentive scanning. By actively and attentively scanning only salient regions of an image at the density required for recognition, the amount of time it takes to find a target object in a random scene is reduced. A LADAR scanner's attention is guided by identifying areas-of-interest using a visual saliency algorithm on electro-optical images of a scene to be scanned. Identified areas-of-interest are …

Estimating The Subsonic Aerodynamic Center And Moment Components For Swept Wings, W. F. Phillips, Doug F. Hunsaker, R. J. Niewoehner

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

An improved method is presented for estimating the subsonic location of the semispan aerodynamic center of a swept wing and the aerodynamic moment components about that aerodynamic center. The method applies to wings with constant linear taper and constant quarter-chord sweep. The results of a computational fluid dynamics study for 236 wings show that the position of the semispan aerodynamic center of a wing depends primarily on aspect ratio, taper ratio, and quarter-chord sweep angle. Wing aspect ratio was varied from 4.0 to 20, taper ratios from 0.25 to 1.0 were investigated, quarter-chord sweep angles were varied from 0 to …

Photoelectric Charging By Ultraviolet Light Of A Lunar Dust Simulant In A Microgravity Environment, Microgravity Research Team 2008

Reports and Proposals

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Mentorship Programs On African-American Male High School Students’ Perception Of Engineering, Cameron De'leon Denson

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of mentorship programs on African-American male high school students’ perceptions of engineering. In this study, indicators of students’ perceptions included students’ perceptions of engineering, their self-efficacy in the area of math, and their self-efficacy in the area of science. This study used a two-group, posttest only, experimental design with randomly selected participants. A survey was used to collect data from 20 participants attending the Middle College at A&T. Using an independent t-test to determine a difference of statistical significance, inferential statistics were provided to answer the following research questions; (a) …

Resources: Getting There - Space, Todd R. Kelley

Publications

The article presents a school activity about transportation concepts using the DVD "Black Sky: The Race for Space & Winning the X-Prize." The article describes the video as a good resource to explore novel ideas in space travel with students. It suggests that the video inspires students to learn more about space transportation and the science and technology of modern rocketry.

Cognitive Processes Of Students Participating In Engineering-Focused Design Instruction, Todd R. Kelley

Publications

Since the publication of the Standards for Technological Literacy in 2000 (ITEA), there have been a number of new programs developed that are designed to teach pre-engineering. Project Lead the Way is one such program. Project Lead the Way boasts serving over 1250 schools in 44 states and teaching over 160,000 students (McVearry, 2003). Efforts are also being made to infuse engineering design into technology education programs. One example of this is the work of the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) partnering with high school technology educators in summer inservice workshops to help teachers develop activities and …

Pyrene Fate Affected By Humic Acid Amendment In Soil Slurry Systems, Y. Liang, D. Sorensen, Ronald C. Sims, Joan Mclean

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Background

Humic acid (HA) has been found to affect the solubility, mineralization, and bound residue formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). However, most of the studies on the interaction between HA and PAH concentrated on one or two of the three phases. Few studies have provided a simple protocol to demonstrate the overall effects of HA on PAH distribution in soil systems for all three phases.

Methods

In this study, three doses of standard Elliott soil HA (ESHA), 15, 187.5, and 1,875 μg ESHA/g soil slurry, were amended to soil slurry systems. ¹⁴C-pyrene was added to the systems along …

Final Report For Irrigation Water Quality Monitoring Of The Jordan River, 2008, Richard C. Peralta, Bassel Timani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The goal of the Jordan River Water Quality Project is to assess the quality of irrigation water removed from the Jordan River at three diversion locations: Jordan Narrows (JN), Cahoon and Maxfield (CM), and Jordan & Salt Lake Canal (JSLC). During 2008, Salt Lake City Corporation personnel took water samples on 12 dates from April 18 to September 25, 2008. Utah State University Analytical Laboratories (USUAL), an EPAcertified laboratory, performed water analyses on the samples. USUAL is located at Utah State University (USU) in Logan, Utah.

Analogical Reasoning In The Engineering Design Process And Technology Education Applications, Jenny Daugherty, Nathan Mentzer

Publications

This synthesis paper discusses the research exploring analogical reasoning, the role of analogies in the engineering design process, and educational applications for analogical reasoning. Researchers have discovered that analogical reasoning is often a fundamental cognitive tool in design problem solving. Regarding the possible role of analogical reasoning in the context of technology education; analogies may be a useful tool to develop student’s design skills, teach abstract or complex concepts, and build students’ analogical reasoning skills for general problem solving. The positive and negative educational implications of analogical reasoning being explored by researchers are also discussed.

Resources: E-Book Readers, Daniel Brenner, Todd R. Kelley

Publications

The article provides information on the resources of electronic book (e-book) reader. It cites that an e-book reader is a device where people can download, store, and read printed materials. However, e-book readers are not applicable in educational setting because textbooks are not yet available for download. There are funding programs for e-books readers in schools emerged like Target Early Childhood Reading Grants, HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative, and EDS Technology Grant Program.

Join The Mission, Design A Patch, Nathan Mentzer, Fay Mentzer, Krista Jones

Publications

The article presents a classroom activity designed for third grade and up that requires students to design their own mission patch. The activity references the patches developed and designed by the U.S. National Aeronautics & Space Administration. Moreover, the article discusses the design of the activity, the available resources, the evaluation process and interdisciplinary connections.

Infrastructure Economics - University Of California, Davis, Jay R. Lund

All ECSTATIC Materials

Graduate course in infrastructure economics offered at University of California, Davis in Winter 2008

The Power Of Soil: Using It To Our Advantage, Judith L. Sims, R. Otis

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Engineering Student Outcomes For Grades 9 - 12, Vincent W. Childress, Craig Rhodes

Publications

The article focuses on a study by Dearing and Daughtry about postsecondary engineering education. The study used a modified Delphi technique that they conducted with technology teachers, technology teacher educators, and engineering educators to identify engineering outcomes for high school pre-engineering students. The purpose of the study was to identify those concepts that are necessary to teach high school students in order to prepare them for postsecondary engineering education, while preserving the mission of teaching technological literacy.

Resources: Handheld Computing Devices, Cameron Denson

Publications

The article features a valuable resource to aid teachers in their effort to satisfy the need to implement modern instructional technology and their students' need to access green technology. It states that handheld computing devices are currently being widely used in many classrooms and technology savvy educators can manifest to the benefits of these data-collection systems. It believes that handheld units can offer students with an all-inclusive technological device that caters to all learners.

Quality And Characteristics Of Recent Research In Technology Education, Scott D. Johnson, Jenny Daugherty

Publications

The focus of research in technology education has evolved throughout its history as the field changed from industrial arts to technology education (Spencer & Rogers, 2006). With the move to technology education, the field has begun to broaden its focus to better understand the teaching, learning, curriculum, and policy implications of preparing the next generation of technological thinkers. Although a complete “paradigm shift” may not have occurred completely within all technology-oriented programs (Sanders, 2001), the current emphasis on engineering within technology education indicates a need to examine and assess the status of technology education research over the past ten years …

Resources: Staying In Touch - Gone Global, Todd R. Kelley

Publications

The article highlights two classroom activities that help classrooms communicate globally using communication technologies. They include the pen-pal/classroom exchange program and the online exchange program using web cams and videoconferencing. Moreover, it discusses how the cited communication technologies enhance learning as well as the challenges inherent in using them in a classroom setting.

Design Activity: Students Designing Their Own Video Games, Steve Shumway

Publications

The article presents a school activity helping students to design their own computer video games. In the past, advanced programming using Java or C++ was used to design video games. At present, there are many free, easy-to-use software programs available to help elementary-age children create their own video games. The article suggests that teachers download a free version of this software and begin the tutorial.

Optimal In-Situ Bioremediation System Design Using Simulated Annealing, H. J. Shieh, Richard C. Peralta

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The presented procedure combines continuous simulated annealing (CSA) heuristic optimization with BIOPLUME II simulation for optimizing in-situ bioremediation system design. The design goal is to minimize the total cost of facility installation and operation needed to achieve contaminant plume containment and cleanup. System design elements include pumping rates and well locations. During optimization, pumping rates are treated as continuous variables, differing from previously reported simulated annealing combinatorial optimization for groundwater management. To improve computation efficiency, CSA annealing schedules employing four different temperature update functions (TUF) are contrasted. Each yields somewhat different optimal designs and requires different computation effort. An adaptive …

Lidar Based Emissions Measurement At The Whole Facility Scale: Method And Error Analysis, Gail E. Bingham, Christian C. Marchant, Vladimir V. Zavyalov, Douglas J. Ahlstrom, Kori D. Moore, Derek S. Jones, Thomas D. Wilkerson, Lawrence E. Hipps, Randy S. Martin, Jerry L. Hatfield, John H. Prueger, Richard L. Pfeiffer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Particulate emissions from agricultural sources vary from dust created by operations and animal movement to the fine secondary particulates generated from ammonia and other emitted gases. The development of reliable facility emission data using point sampling methods designed to characterize regional, well-mixed aerosols are challenged by changing wind directions, disrupted flow fields caused by structures, varied surface temperatures, and the episodic nature of the sources found at these facilities. We describe a three-wavelength lidar-based method, which, when added to a standard point sampler array, provides unambiguous measurement and characterization of the particulate emissions from agricultural production operations in near real …