Digital Commons Network^™

Two-Dimensional Numerical Modeling Of A Proposed Freshwater Diversion From The Bonnet Carre Spillway To The Labranche Wetlands, Josef Patrick Hoffmann

LSU Master's Theses

Engineered modifications to the lower Mississippi River within the past century have limited the magnitude and frequency of flood events in wetlands along the Louisiana coast. Without this natural delivery of freshwater, sediment, and nutrients, the ecological health of these wetlands are now degrading. A recent study within the Bonnet Carre Spillway has revealed that the 7,623 acres of floodway between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain is one of the few areas in Louisiana that is actively accreting land as a result of pulsed sediment-laden freshwater input during high discharge events in the Mississippi River. On the other hand, …

Pavement Structural Evaluation Using The Rolling Wheel Deflectometer, Ahmed Moustafa Abdel-Khalek

LSU Master's Theses

The Rolling Wheel Deflectometer (RWD) offers the benefit to measure pavement deflection without causing any traffic interruption or compromising safety along the tested road segments. This study describes a detailed field evaluation of the RWD system in Louisiana in which 16 different test sites representing a wide array of pavement conditions were tested. Measurements were used to assess the repeatability of RWD measurements, to examine the effect of truck speeds, and to study the relationship between RWD and FWD deflection measurements and pavement conditions. Based on the results of the experimental program, it was determined that the repeatability of RWD …

Developing A Tool To Characterize The Ultradian Rhythm In Diploid Saccharomyces Cervisiae Using The Reporter Gene Green Fluorescent Protein, Imran Chiragh

LSU Master's Theses

Biological rhythms control many temporal behaviors of organism, such as the sleep cycle, hearts rhythms, seasonal animal migrations etc. Understanding these rhythms would provide insight into the temporal process of living organisms. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a budding yeast, is an ideal model organism to study biological rhythms in eukaryotic cells because of its sequenced genome and discerned processes. By characterizing the biological rhythm in budding yeast, insight can be gained into more complex organisms. Previous studies have exhibited oscillatory behavior of oxygen consumption and determined that deletion of the GTS1 gene dissipates this rhythm. However, to further understand the specific behavior …

Performance Assessment Of Innovative Framing Systems Through Building Information Modeling Based Energy Simulation, Santhosh Reddy Chinnayeluka

LSU Master's Theses

While many residential contractors, architects, and home-buyers today are concerned about the environment and interested in sustainable construction technologies, the perceived higher initial costs of innovative materials and methodologies and a lack of life-cycle cost and performance data present significant barriers in the implementation of such techniques. Research regarding an integrated design process has suggested that performance based decision making is key to the successful implementation of sustainable building practices. Therefore, a need exists for the development of whole building design and evaluation models to allow decision making in all phases of a building project. This research seeks information regarding …

Modeling Of First-Flush Reactor For Stormwater Treatment, Shaowei Sun

LSU Master's Theses

Stormwater runoff is one of the most common sources of non-point source water pollution to lakes, rivers and estuaries. Nitrate-nitrogen in stormwater runoff is an important limiting factor to the eutrophication phenomenon. While most pollutants and nutrients, including nitrate-nitrogen, in stormwater are discharged into receiving waters during the first-flush period, no existing Best Management Practices (BMPs) are specifically designed to capture and treat the first-flush portion of urban stormwater runoff. In addition, nitrate-nitrogen removal rates of most existing BMPs are relatively low. This thesis presents results from both laboratory experiments and numerical modeling of nitrate-nitrogen removal in a designed first-flush …

Network Traffic Data Analysis, Harish Kapri

LSU Master's Theses

The desire to conceptualize network traffic in a prevailing communication network is a facet for many types of network research studies. In this research, real traffic traces collected over trans-Pacific backbone links (the MAWI repository, providing publicly available anonymized traces) are analyzed to study the underlying traffic patterns. All data analysis and visualization is carried out using Matlab (Matlab is a trademark of The Mathworks, Inc.). At packet level, we first measure parameters such as distribution of packet lengths, distribution of protocol types, and then fit following analytical models. Next, the concept of flow is introduced and flow based analysis …

A Study Of The Scale-Invariant Feature Transform On A Parallel Pipeline, Phaneendra Vinukonda

LSU Master's Theses

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In this thesis we study the running of the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) algorithm on a pipelined computational platform. The SIFT algorithm is one of the most widely used methods for image feature extraction.

We develop a tile based template for running SIFT that facilitates the analysis while abstracting away lower-level details. We formalize the computational pipeline and the time to execute any algorithm on it based on the relative times taken by the pipeline stages. In the context of the SIFT algorithm, this reduces the time to that of running the entire image through a …

Parameter Tuning And Experimental Results Of Power System Stabilizer, Bixiang Tang

LSU Master's Theses

Power system stabilizers (PSS) have been studied for many years as a method to increase power system stability. This thesis focuses on the tuning and structure of the power system stabilizer. Different types of power system stabilizers are reviewed. The one studied in this thesis is the integral of accelerated power stabilizer. The generator control system is introduced to illustrate the working environment of the PSS. The mathematic model of the generator, automatic voltage regulator and PSS are analyzed and the system transfer function in presence of the PSS is derived. Base on the transfer function, a new tuning method …

Stochastic Modelling Of Eukaryotic Cell Cycle, Murali Krushna Koneru

LSU Master's Theses

Stochastic models are developed to capture the inherent stochasticity of the biochemical networks associated to many biological processes. The objective of the present thesis is to present a detailed picture of stochastic approach for the mathematical modeling of eukaryotic cell cycle, to demonstrate an important application of such model in chemotherapy and to present a methodology for selecting the model parameters. The stochastic cell cycle model, developed using stochastic chemical kinetics approach, leads to the formation of an infinite dimensional differential equation in probabilities of system being in a specific state. Using Monte Carlo simulations of this model, dynamics of …

Experimental Study Of Cognitive Radio Test-Bed Using Usrp, Venkat Vinod Patcha

LSU Master's Theses

Cognitive Radio is an emerging technology that enables efficient utilization of the spectrum. As such, it has created great interests in industrial and research fields. Many people have proposed test-bed models for the performance analysis of primary and secondary users in a real-time noise environment. However, these test-beds are generally lacking in their range of capabilities as well as accurate implementation of the proposed models. In this thesis, we develop our test-bed on USRP to achieve the spectrum sensing and co-existence of primary and secondary users, while implementing the rendezvous protocols for secondary traffic coordination. We first demonstrate the spectrum …

Discrete Element Modeling Of Cone Penetration In Jsc-1a Lunar Regolith Simulant, Mehmet Burak Cil

LSU Master's Theses

NASA plans to return back to the Moon for a long term presence and use of the Moon as a launch station for further space exploration to other planets. This scenario increases the importance of determining the geotechnical properties of the lunar surface. However, due to the limited availability of lunar regolith and its high scientific value, a simulant material which closely matches the composition and grain size distribution and other characteristics of the lunar regolith has become an indispensable need to benefit in hardware development as well as estimating lunar regolith properties. Therefore, JSC-1A lunar regolith simulant, which was …

Integrating Demand And Traffic Simulation Modeling To Evaluate Adaptive Evacuation Plans, Thomas Jude Montz, Jr.

LSU Master's Theses

Significant efforts are currently being made by transportation officials to improve the planning and preparation of mass evacuations. The idea of adaptive evacuation plans is an avenue of research that could help improve future evacuation processes. Adaptive evacuation plans stem from the observation that different disaster threat scenarios require different evacuation responses. While adaptive evacuation planning can be generalized to any form of evacuation planning, this project focused on adaptive planning in the context of a hurricane evacuation.

This project was the first to adapt the demand models of Fu, et al, and Cheng, et al, into a regional-scale traffic …

Performance Of Control Room Operators In Alarm Management, Dileep Buddaraju

LSU Master's Theses

Pipelines transport millions of barrels of petroleum products every day. These systems have significant safety concerns. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, while concerned with oil and gas extraction rather than distribution, shares many of the same safety and reliability issues as distribution systems, and demonstrates the significant potential for major disasters in the pipeline industry. In this work, a research study is being conducted to further understanding of the role of operators in the management of alarm systems and to measure the performance of operators in handling abnormal situations like pressure loss, liquid inflow/outflow variation and …

Dry Reforming Of Methane On Rhodium And Nickel Substituted Pyrochlore Catalysts, Sarthak Gaur

LSU Master's Theses

Dry reforming of methane (DRM) has been widely investigated, with most studies showing rapid deactivation due to carbon deposition. This suggests a need to develop catalysts that limit carbon formation while avoiding structural changes at the elevated temperatures typical of this reaction. Here, we report CO2 reforming of methane on four pyrochlore catalysts. First, Rh was partially substituted for Zr in lanthanum zirconate (La2Zr2O7) to give La2Zr2-xRhxO7.5 (LRZ, x=0.112, 2 wt% Rh) pyrochlore. A second pyrochlore catalyst was synthesized in which Ca was further substituted into the La-site to give La1.95Ca0.05Zr2-xRhxO7 (LCRZ, x=0.055, 1 wt% Rh). A third catalyst was …

Supercritical Pyrolysis Of Toluene, Khue Dang Nguyen

LSU Master's Theses

The development of future high-speed aircrafts will required the jet fuel to act as the primary engine coolant to absorb excess heat produced by the engine components. To aid in removing the excess heat and reducing the aircraft’s weight, future jet fuels used for high-speed aircrafts will act as both coolant and fuel; however, by exposing the fuels to temperatures and pressures above their critical point, they undergo pyrolysis to form larger and/or more abundant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and eventually carbonaceous solid deposits in the pre-combustion environment. The formation of solid deposits in the pre-combustion environment results in clogging …

Characterization Of Biocompatible Parylene-C Coating For Biomems Applications, Quoc Phuc Nguyen

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis characterizes parylene-C films with respect to biological micro-electro-mechanical system (BioMEMS) applications. BioMEMS devices have fueled the growth and research in the area of detecting, analyzing and identifying pathogens rapidly with precision in the bio-medical applications, thereby positively impacting millions of lives and made it extremely popular among researchers. These devices are fabricated using state-of-the-art techniques usually involving more than one material which typically has different biocompatibility and is not acceptable for various BioMEMS and biomedical applications; therefore, a special biocompatible coating is required. The parylene polymer is an example of such a coating as it is known for …

Interpretation Of Power Phenomena In Three Phase Systems With Neutral Using Instantaneous Reactive Power P-Q Theory, Rahul Anil Kantharia

LSU Master's Theses

The Instantaneous Reactive power (IRP) p-q theory considered as a major power theory as well as a primary fundamental for switching compensator control in three-phase systems, is analyzed in order to verify its ability to describe and identify the power properties or power phenomena in a 3pN system with asymmetrical and non-sinusoidal voltages along with unbalanced loads. This analysis is an outcome of the misinterpretations of power phenomena in three-wire circuits shown by IRP p-q theory under non-sinusoidal conditions. Different load and supply conditions such as balanced, unbalanced and Harmonic generating loads along with asymmetrical and non-sinusoidal voltages are assumed …

Fault Detection In Process Control Plants Using Principal Component Analysis, Vamshi Krishna Kandula

LSU Master's Theses

The aim of this thesis is to use a statistical method (principal component analysis) to detect a fault in a system. PCA is a dimensionality reduction technique that is used here. First the PCA algorithm was implemented on a simple two dimensional random data to reduce its dimensionality. Then the algorithm was implemented on a three dimensional data from a linear first order process and introduce some white noise later on and compare the results with that under normal operating conditions, thus determining the presence of a fault. Then data from a real time plant is considered for testing. This …

Smart Access Control System With Behavioral Profiling And Dynamic Pin Concept, Lohit Penubaku

LSU Master's Theses

Since ancient time, an access control device has been used for securing valuable properties as well as lives from threatening peoples. The most representative security device is Lock/Key. Recently, those security device technologies have been improved tremendously and provided various types of security methods. Nevertheless, these methods are not individually perfect to provide optimal security so that in recent years many such methods have been combined and used together to provide the required level of security. However, such combination can enhance security for limited number of users only but very difficult to provide scalable security with the number of users …

Implementing Lean In Healthcare Warehouse Operations - Evaluation Of 5s Best Practice, Sanjith Venkateswaran

LSU Master's Theses

Lean strategies in healthcare aim at improving patient throughput, reducing medication errors, redesigning work flow, improving patient safety, and reducing cycle time. Documented studies to improve healthcare’s warehouse operation are not common in the literature. Managing types of medical supplies has always been a priority due to demand uncertainties and the risk of shortages that would profoundly affect patient safety. This study showcases two implementation approaches for the Lean tool 5S (Hybrid and Traditional) conducted in three different hospitals’ central warehouses at Ochsner Health System. These warehouses store similar medical products with over 1000 types of supplies (e.g. syringes, gloves, …

Pore-Scale Lattice Boltzmann Simulations Of Inertial Flows In Realistic Porous Media: A First Principle Analysis Of The Forchheimer Relationship, Chukwudi Paul Chukwudozie

LSU Master's Theses

With recent advances in the capabilities of high performance computing (HPC) platforms and the relatively simple representation of complex geometries of porous media, lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) has gained popularity as a means of solving fluid flow and transport problems. In this work, LBM was used to obtain flow parameters of porous media, study the behavior of these parameters at varying flow conditions and quantify the effect of roughness on the parameters by relating the volume averaged flow simulation results to Darcy and Forchheimer equations respectively. To validate the method, flow was simulated on regular and random sphere arrays in …

Surface Parameterization Over Regular Domains, Shenghua Wan

LSU Master's Theses

Surface parameterization has been widely studied and it has been playing a critical role in many geometric processing tasks in graphics, computer-aided design, visualization, vision, physical simulation and etc. Regular domains, such as polycubes, are favored due to their structural regularity and geometric simplicity. This thesis focuses on studying the surface parameterization over regular domains, i.e. polycubes, and develops effective computation algorithms. Firstly, the motivation for surface parameterization and polycube mapping is introduced. Secondly, we briefly review existing surface parameterization techniques, especially for extensively studied parameterization algorithms for topological disk surfaces and parameterizations over regular domains for closed surfaces. Then …

Server Assignment In Mirrored Server Environments, Shawn Farlow

LSU Master's Theses

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) may use peer-to-peer, client-server, or mirrored-server environments. Since there exist multiple server options in mirrored server environments, a problem arises when deciding to which server each player should connect. We propose three distinct algorithms that assign players within Quality of Service (QoS) as each player joins and leaves, taking into consideration whether a player already in QoS can be moved to place a newly joining player in QoS without sacrificing QoS for the moved player. Our results show that for certain numbers of servers and values of QoS, our algorithms increase the total number of …

The Effects Of Highway Environmental Conditions On Photocatalytic Pavement's Ability To Reduce Nitrogen Oxides, Heather Dylla

LSU Master's Theses

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) emitted from vehicle exhaust are associated with negative health impacts and are a precursor to ozone. Self-cleaning, air-purifying concrete pavement is a rapidly emerging technology that can degrade pollutants such as NOx through heterogeneous photocatalysis. Although this technology has the potential to support environmentally friendly road infrastructure, a number of design and operational parameters may affect its effectiveness and thus need to be evaluated. The goal of this study was to measure the NOx reduction efficiencies from photocatalytic pavements under various environmental conditions common to highways. To achieve this goal, the objectives were to: (a) evaluate the …

Modeling Effects Of Coupled Convection And Co2 Injection In Stimulating Geopressured Geothermal Reservoirs, Tatyana Plaksina

LSU Master's Theses

Geopressured geothermal brines are a vast geothermal resource in the US Gulf of Mexico region. In particular, geopressured sandstones near salt domes are potential sources of geothermal energy because salt diapirs with high thermal conductivities may pierce younger, cooler strata. These characteristics enhance transfer heat from older, hotter strata at the base of the diapir into shallower strata. Moreover, widespread geopressure in the Gulf region tends to preserve permeability, enhancing productivity. As an example, the Camerina A sand of South Louisiana was chosen as a geomodel for a numerical simulation study of effects of CO2 injection and coupled convection as …

Anti-Microbial Self-Assembling "Click" Monolayers Utilizing Silver Nanoparticles For Indwelling Medical Devices, Emily Ann Hodges

LSU Master's Theses

The objective of this study was to synthesize and characterize antimicrobial, silver nanoparticles based self-assembling monolayer coatings, for use on chronic indwelling medical devices. The coatings are comprised of novel biomass mediated silver nano particles (SNP) that are biocompatible, highly concentrated, highly pure, cost-effective, polydispersed and compatible for use with existing chronic indwelling medical devices. The HPC SNPs were functionalized with an azide functional group and covalently bound to titanium substrates via ¨Dclick¡¬ chemistry.

Replenishment Policies For A Tree-Type Three Echelon Supply Chain System, Ratkrit Rochanaluk

LSU Master's Theses

One of the common goals which most companies have is to maximize profits. There are two way to increase profit: increasing revenue or reducing cost. Lacking of ability to keep the cost down could potentially drive the companies out of the business. In recent years, many researchers have been paying more attention on improving supply chain system due to high potential of creating cost savings. The supply chain network considered in this research is a tree-type, three-echelon single producer, multiple distributors, and multiple retailers system. The goal of this research is to develop a replenishment policy which satisfies customers’ demand …

Screening Of Tar Cracking Catalysts For Syngas Produced By Biomass Gasification, Bijeet Mukherjee

LSU Master's Theses

The gasification of biomass produces tars and particulates. These tars and particulates create problems in the gasification systems. Tars condense on surfaces at lower temperatures, such as exit pipes and on particulate filters, leading to blockages and clogged filters. Tars also have varied impacts on other downstream processes. Due to these reasons, syngas containing significant concentrations of tars cannot be used in internal combustion engines. Thus the processes through which tars can be removed have been subject to considerable research. The objective of this research was to identify the best catalyst for for down-draft gasifiers, including the LSU AgCenter down-draft …

Secure Distributed Detection In Bandwidth-Constrained Wireless Sensor Networks, Reza Soosahabi

LSU Master's Theses

Utilizing wireless sensor network (WSN) is a novel idea in a variety of applications. However, the limited resources allocated to the sensor nodes make the design of WSNs a challenging problem. We consider the problem of hypothesis testing in a bandwidth-constrained, low-power wireless sensor network operating over insecure links. Sensors quantize their observations and transmit their decisions to an intended (ally) fusion center (AFC) which combines the received messages to detect the state of an unknown hypothesis.

In many applications the sensor messages are vulnerable to unauthorized eavesdropping. The scarce bandwidth and processing power for the sensors rule out the …

Assessing The Suitability Of Various Feedstocks For Biomass Gasification, Akshya Sharma

LSU Master's Theses

Ten different types of feedstocks available in Louisiana were assessed for their suitability to produce SYNGAS in a down-draft biomass gasifier. The feedstocks tested for this research include: pine pellets, hardwood pellets, cypress mulch, pine bark nuggets, corn stover pellets, switchgrass pellets, sugarcane bagasse pellets, dairy manure pellets, and poultry litter pellets. The feedstocks were first analyzed for volatile & ash content, high heating value, moisture, and mass density. Feedstocks that met the analytical criteria and available in a form that is suitable for the down-draft gasifier at LSU were tested for gasification. The temperature profile within the gasifier and …