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Afci Quarterly Input – Unlv October 1 Through December 31, 2006, Harry Reid Center For Environmental Studies. Nuclear Science And Technology Division

Transmutation Research Program Reports (TRP)

Quarterly report highlighting research projects, activities and objectives of the Transmutation Research Program at the Nuclear Science & Technology Division, Harry Reid Research Center.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas supports the AFCI through research and development of technologies for economic and environmentally sound refinement of spent nuclear fuel. The UNLV program has four components: infrastructure, international collaboration, student-based research, and management and program support.

Wave Propagation In Nanofibers, Xiangfa Wu, Yuris A. Dzenis

Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience: Faculty Publications

Surface effect on the longitudinal and flexural wave propagation in straight nanofibers/nanowires is studied within the framework of continuum mechanics. Modified Euler-Bernoulli and Rayleigh-Love rod equations and modified Timoshenko beam equation were developed to take into account the surface effect. It was found that surface tension/stress plays appreciable influence on the wave propagation in nanofibers/nanowires at very small diameters. Wave dispersion relations were presented in closed form, and numerical calculations were performed to show the variation of the phase velocity with the wave number at varying surface property and fiber diameter. The given results can be used as the theoretical …

Functional Disaster Resistant Buildings, Florida Solar Energy Center, William Young

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, tornados, tsunami and earthquakes, are becoming a greater problem as they destroy lives, homes, businesses and the natural environment. Such disasters can happen with little or no warning, leaving hundreds or even thousands of people without medical services, potable water, sanitation, communications and electrical services for up to several weeks. One proactive strategy to minimize this type of destruction and disruption to lives is the implementation of disaster-resistant buildings that are energy efficient, fortified to the latest codes, and incorporate renewable energy systems. This approach uses the best energy-efficient buildings, fortified to the latest …

Problems And Solutions: Training Disaster Organizations On The Use Of Pv, Florida Solar Energy Center, William Young

FSEC Energy Research Center®

In 1992, the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) assisted the University of Miami Field Epidemiology Survey Team (FEST) with photovoltaic systems to power temporary medical clinics after Hurricane Andrew struck south Dade County. At that time, it became apparent that there were no educational materials prepared for disaster relief or emergency management personnel on the use of photovoltaic (PV) to supply electrical power in response to a disaster. This need prompted FSEC to create an education program to develop awareness and train organizations on the proper use of PV in disasters. Since then, FSEC has …

Interface Characteristics Of Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanofibers For Interconnect Applications, Yusuke Ominami, Quoc Ngo, Makoto Suzuki, Alexander J. Austin, Cary Y. Yang, Alan M. Cassell, Jun Li

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The authors characterize the detailed interface structure of Ni-catalyzed vertically aligned carbon nanofibers (CNFs) prepared by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition for interconnect applications. Stacked graphitic layers and cup-shape structures of CNFs around the interface region have been observed using high-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy. The interaction between the Ni catalyst and Ti layer dramatically affects the CNF structure during initial growth. The effect of interface nanostructures on contact resistance is also discussed.

Evidence Of Long-Wavelength Collective Excitations In Magnetic Superlattices, Nikolay I. Polushkin, Steven A. Michalski, Lanping Yue, Roger D. Kirby

Materials Research Science and Engineering Center: Faculty Publications

We report on a mechanism of dynamic dipolar coupling in magnetic superlattices via long-wavelength nonevanescent fields. In the spin excitation spectra of our heterophase stripe structures, such interactions mediate a singlet ↔ doublet crossover in the frequency regime driven by the orientation of an external static field. This crossover is a new feature observed in collective behavior of superlattices, though there is some analogy of this phenomenon with birefringence taking place in optical superlattices. We envision applying the collective effects described here in microwave photonic devices.

Use Of Friction Stir Processing And Friction Stir Welding For Nitinol Medical Devices, Blair London, Murray Mahoney, Alan Pelton

Materials Engineering

Metallic materials may be joined utilizing a friction stir processing technique. The friction stir processing technique utilizes a shaped, rotating tool to move material from one side of the joint to be welded to the other without liquefying the base material.

Stabilisation Of Rail Tracks And Underlying Soft Soil Formations, Buddhima Indraratna, Mohamed A. Shahin, Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn

Faculty of Engineering - Papers (Archive)

Construction of rail tracks requires appropriate improvement techniques for ballast and underlying soft formation soil, both of which deform and degrade progressively under heavy train loads. This paper aims to demonstrate and discuss some major aspects in relation to stabilisation of ballasted rail tracks overlaying soft formation soils. The use of geocomposites (i.e. bonded geogrid-geotextile layers) for enhancing the performance of rail tracks is described, with the aim of achieving reduced track settlement, increased resilient modulus and decreased ballast degradation. The effects of increasing the confining pressure on rail tracks in regard to particle breakage are studied using laboratory tests. …

Grid-Connected Photovoltaic System Design Review And Approval, Florida Solar Energy Center, James Dunlop

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This document provides details of operations and procedures for the approval of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) system designs and documentation conducted by the Florida Solar Energy Center. The principal goal of this process is to help ensure the safety and quality of installed PV systems, and provides an assurance to installers, consumers and financiers that approved designs meet accepted codes and industry practices, and are accompanied by a complete System Manual that meets the minimum requirements outlined in this document.

Executive Summary: Evaluation Of The Impact Of Vacant Home Space Conditioning Strategies On Summer Relative Humidity, Energy, And Peak Load; Phase Ii, Florida Solar Energy Center, James Cummings

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The Vacant Home Space Conditioning Study was sponsored by Florida Power & Light (FPL) as part of its Conservation R&D Program and carried out by the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC). In the US, about one in four retiree "snowbirds" make Florida their destination to escape the northern cold. Snowbird residents number more than 900,000 in Florida during the winter. In some counties of FPL's territory these seasonal residents compose up to 15% of the population (Shih, 1981). This pattern of seasonal occupancy creates a need for space conditioning guidelines for vacant homes to avoid mold problems while minimizing both …

Test Method For Photovoltaic Module Ratings, Florida Solar Energy Center, Kevin Lynn

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This document describes the testing and reporting requirements for certification and labeling of photovoltaic modules (PV) for their power ratings. The test methods and procedures chosen for this purpose are based on consensus standards of relevant committees of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), or the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

Trajectory Model Validation Using Newly Developed Altitude-Controlled Balloons During The International Consortium For Atmospheric Research On Transport And Transformations 2004 Campaign, Emily E. Riddle, Paul B. Voss, Andreas Stohl, Daniel Holcomb, Darren Maczka, K. Washburn, Robert W. Talbot

Engineering: Faculty Publications

During the summer of 2004, five altitude-controlled tracking balloons were flown as part of the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformations (ICARTT) campaign. These Controlled Meteorological (CMET) balloons, newly developed at the University of Massachusetts, are notable for their light weight (∼1 kg mass), efficient altitude control, case of launch, long-duration flight capability, and ability to perform repeated quasi-Lagrangian soundings. The balloons were embedded in urban plumes from New York and Boston which they tracked over New England, eastern Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean while maintaining a nearly constant altitude. The flights ranged from 10 to 111 …

Design And Implementation Of A Modular Wireless Sensor Network Sniffer, John C. Mceachen, Teo Hong Siang, Georgios Kirykos

U.S. Navy Research

We present the design and implementation of a wireless packet sniffing application focused on the communications of TinyOS-based sensor networks. This modular, multi-threaded application allows robust analysis of transmitted frames in an easily understood format similar to tcpdump. The underlying software framework is presented and details of the implementation are discussed. Finally, verification of the application is performed using a basic TinyOS application.

A Comparison Of Optimized Link State Routing With Traditional Ad-Hoc Routing Protocols, Pore Ghee Lye, John C. Mceachen

U.S. Navy Research

The performance of mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET) is related to the efficiency of the routing protocols in adapting to frequently changing network topology and link status. This paper addresses the issue by comparing the relative performance of three key ad-hoc routing protocols: Destination-sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Ad-hoc Ondemand Distance Vector (AODV) and Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR). The protocols are tested based on two scenarios, namely, tactical networks for ships and sensor-based network nodes. Four performance metrics were measured by varying the maximum speed of mobile hosts, network size and traffic load, to assess the routing capability and protocol efficiency. …

Single-Sided Crash Cushion System, John D. Reid, John R. Rohde, Dean L. Sicking

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

A single-sided crash attenuation cushion system having an impact head and three stage energy absorption mechanism. The energy absorbing mechanism has a mandrel for deforming thin-walled tubes in a controlled collapse to absorb impact forces from a colliding vehicle. The third stage of the absorption mechanism includes an additional deformable compressible tube between the fixed-object hazard and the thin walled tubes.

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2006, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

The senior design competition helps to focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects …

A Bayesian Perspective On Estimating Mean, Variance, And Standard-Deviation From Data, Travis E. Oliphant

Faculty Publications

This article shows how to compute confidence intervals for mean, standard-deviation, and variance using Bayesian methods. The method is implemented in SciPy as scipy.stats.bayes_mvs After reviewing some classical estimators for mean, variance, and standard-deviation and showing that un-biased estimates are not usually desirable, a Bayesian perspective is employed to determine what is known about mean, variance, and standard deviation given only that a data set in-fact has a common mean and variance. Maximum-entropy is used to argue that the likelihood function in this situation should be the same as if the data were independent and identically distributed Gaussian. A non-informative …

Process Modelling Support For The Conceptual Modelling Phase Of A Simulation Project, Cathal Heavey, John Ryan

Conference papers

While many developments have taken place around supporting the model coding task of simulation, there are few tools available to assist in the conceptual modelling phase. Several authors have reported the advantages of using process modelling tools in the early phases of a simulation project.

This paper provides an overview of process modelling tools in relation to their support for simulation, categorizing the tools into formal method and descriptive methods. A conclusion from this review is that none of the tools available adequately support the requirements gathering phase of simulation. This is not surprising as none of the process modelling …

The Paperless Factory: A Review Of Issues And Technologies, Manocher Djassemi, James A. Sena

Industrial Technology and Packaging

paper-based data management can be a bottleneck, slowing factory-wide information transfer. This study explores the evolution of paperless communication in a factory environment and reviews some of the key technologies that contribute to the implementation of a paperless system including digital communication, the virtual factory, computer-integrated manufacturing, and web-centric information flow. The challenges facing users of a paperless information system are also discussed.

Inter-Turn Fault Diagnosis In Induction Motors Using The Pendulous Oscillation Phenomenon, Behrooz Mirafzal, Richard J. Povinelli, Nabeel Demerdash

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

A robust interturn fault diagnostic approach based on the concept of magnetic field pendulous oscillation, which occurs in induction motors under faulty conditions, is introduced in this paper. This approach enables one to distinguish and classify an unbalanced voltage power supply and machine manufacturing/construction imperfections from an interturn fault. The experimental results for the two case studies of a set of 5-hp and 2-hp induction motors verify the validity of the proposed approach. Moreover, it can be concluded from the experimental results that if the circulating current level in the shorted loop increases beyond the phase current level, an interturn …

Reliability-Based Optimization Of Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composite Bridge Deck Panels, Michel D. Thompson, Christopher D. Eamon, Masoud Rais-Rohani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

A reliability-based optimization (RBO) procedure is developed and applied to minimize the weight of eight fiber-reinforced polymer composite bridge deck panel configurations. The method utilizes interlinked finite element, optimization, and reliability analysis procedures to solve the weight minimization problem with a deterministic strength constraint and two probabilistic deflection constraints. Panels are composed of an upper face plate, lower face plate, and a grid of interior stiffeners. Different panel depths and stiffener layouts are considered. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to identify significant design and random variables. Optimization design variables are panel component ply thicknesses while random variables include load and material …

Ac Conductivity Relaxation Processes In Cacu₃Ti₄O₁₂ Ceramics: Grain Boundary And Domain Boundary Effects, Wei Li, Robert W. Schwartz

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The ac conductivity of CaCu₃Ti₄O₁₂ ceramics associated with electrical charge carrier motion (ions or vacancies) was investigated as a function of frequency at different temperatures. The long range migration of charge carriers within the ceramic is restricted by two kinds of insulating barriers, namely, grain boundaries and domain boundaries. The potential barriers associated with these boundaries lead to two anomalies in conductivity response and three frequency-dependent contributions to conductivity: long range diffusion of carriers, carrier migration localized within grains, and carrier migration localized within domains.

Acuta Enews December 2006, Vol. 35, No. 12

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

From the President.................. Carmine Piscopo, Providence College

Board Report............... Riny Ledgerwood, San Diego State Univ., ACUTA Sec./Treasurer

DC Update.................. Jeanne Jansenius, Sewanee, The University of the South

FYI: Useful Information from the Campus...................... Student Monitor

Pumping Up PoE............................ GaryAudin, Delphi, Inc.

Site to See

Web Tip: Website Recognition Program........... Aaron Fuegrer, ACUTA Information Technology Manager

Info Links................. Randy Hayes, Univ. of Northern Iowa

Thanks to Exhibitors for 2006

Welcome New Member

Fast Algorithms For Computing Statistics Under Interval And Fuzzy Uncertainty, And Their Applications, Gang Xiang, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many engineering applications, we have to combine probabilistic, interval, and fuzzy uncertainty. For example, in environmental analysis, we observe a pollution level x(t) in a lake at different moments of time t, and we would like to estimate standard statistical characteristics such as mean, variance, autocorrelation, correlation with other measurements. In environmental measurements, we often only measure the values with interval uncertainty. We must therefore modify the existing statistical algorithms to process such interval data.

In this paper, we provide a brief survey of algorithms for computing various statistics under interval (and fuzzy) uncertainty and of their applications, including …

Estimating Variance Under Interval And Fuzzy Uncertainty: Case Of Hierarchical Estimation, Gang Xiang, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

No abstract provided.

Marquette Interchange Installation Report, Marquette University, Transportation Research Center

Transportation Research Center: Marquette Interchange Instrumentation

Task three of the Perpetual Pavement Instrumentation Plan for the Marquette Interchange Project called for the installation of the various pavement sensors, data acquisition system, and various other components of the system outlined in the project proposal. The MU-TRC research team has successfully completed the installation of these various components of the system. This report fulfills the requirement of the installation report from task three in the project plan. This report is organized to describe in detail each specific component of the system. Most, but not all, of these details are written in the order they were completed.

Not every …

Machine Learning For Computer Security, Philip K. Chan, Richard P. Lippmann

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The prevalent use of computers and internet has enhanced the quality of life for many people, but it has also attracted undesired attempts to undermine these systems. This special topic contains several research studies on how machine learning algorithms can help improve the security of computer systems.

Titanium Alloyed With Boron, Seshacharyulu Tamirisakandala, Daniel B. Miracle, Raghavan Srinivasan, Jay S. Gunasekera

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Small additions of boron to conventional titanium alloys have been found to produce significant changes to the microstructures and associated properties. Grain refinement and improved strength and stiffness are first-order effects, which lead to possibilities for developing novel and affordable processing methodologies and to enhance performance over conventional titanium alloys. In this article, we introduce this new class of titanium alloys and describe unique formability benefits achieved via engineering microstructures.

39th Conference On Senior Engineering Design Projects, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

Senior Engineering Design Conference

The 39th Conference on Senior Engineering Design Projects was held on December 5, 2006 at the College of Engineering and applied Sciences on the Parkview Campus of Western Michigan University. The college sponsors the conference to showcase the work of its graduating seniors, who are required to complete a capstone project that puts into practice what they have learned. Many of the projects are sponsored by business and industry.

Laboratory Measurements Of Dynamic Properties Of Rail Pads Under Incremental Preload, Alexander Remennikov, Sakdirat Kaewunruen

Faculty of Engineering - Papers (Archive)

Rail pad is an important component in ballasted railway track. Its main function is to attenuate track loads, preventing underneath railway sleepers from excessive stress waves. Generally, the dynamic design of tracks relies on the available data that are mostly focused on the condition at a specific toe load. Recent findings show that track irregularities could significantly amplify the loads on railway tracks. This phenomenon gives rise to a concern that the rail pads may experience higher effective pre-loading than anticipated in the past. On this ground, this paper highlights the significance of accounting for effects of pre-loading on dynamic …