Engineering Commons^™

Adaptive Local And Global Synchronization And Phase Control Of Inferior Olive Neurons (Ions), Srujan Kumar Chalike

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Clusters of inferior olive neurons (IONs) in the olive-cerebellar system play an important role in providing synchronized motor control signals for the activation of large number of muscles. However, the dynamics of IONs are highly nonlinear and the system parameters are assumed to be unknowm. The IONs evolving from arbitrary initial conditions are not synchronized. However the application of IONs for control of BAUV's requires that IONs oscillate in unison. The objective is to design control laws such that the controlled ION tracks the trajectories of the reference ION. The two control laws are derived based on tuning functions adaptive …

Hardware Implementation Of Processor Allocator For Mesh Connected Chip Multiprocessors, Rana Sangram Reddy Marri

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The advancements in the semiconductor process technology and the current demand for highly parallel computing has led to the advent of Chip Multiprocessors (CMPs). CMP is the integration of two or more independent processor cores, which can read and execute program instructions, on to a single integrated circuit die. CMPs are the main computing platforms for research and development in parallel and high performance computing environments. They offer minimum inter-core communication latencies as the processor cores are present on a single chip.

The Operating System (OS) plays a key role in using a CMP effectively. The OS should support a …

Hybrid Plasmonic Nanoantennas: Fabrication, Characterization, And Application, Shengjie Zhai

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As optical counterpart of microwave antennas, plasmonic nanoantennas are important nanoscale devices for converting propagating optical radiation into confined/enhanced electromagnetic fields. Presently, nanoantennas, with a typical size of 200-500 nm, have found their applications in bio-sensing, bio-imaging, energy harvesting, and disease cure and prevention. With the device feature size of next generation IC goes down to 22 nm or smaller, and biological/chemical sensing reaches the Gene’s level, the sizes of the corresponding nanoantennas have to be scaled down to sub-100nm level. In the literature, these sub-100nm nanoantennas are referred as deep subwavelength nanoantennas as size of such miniaturized nanoantennas is …

Image Segmentation For Quantification Of Air-Water Interface In Micro-Ct Soil Images, Kranthi Kumar Potteti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Soils are complex environments comprising various biological (roots, water, air etc) and physical constituents (minerals, aggregates, etc). Synchrotron radiation based X-ray microtomography (XMT) is widely used in extracting qualitative and quantitative information regarding spatial distribution of biological and physical soil constituents. Segmentation of these micro-CT soil images is of interest to geologists, hydrologists, civil and petroleum engineers and soil scientists. In this present work, we study and implement segmentation algorithms for microhydrology studies, specifically for soil water conductivity. Three well-known image segmentation algorithms are studied for evaluating their performance for the task. We demonstrate the problems and ways to segment …

Basic Research On The Characteristics Of A Constricted Pulsed Glow Discharge, Sean Daniel Andersen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In certain plasma discharge experiments, it has been observed that under specific conditions a plasma glow discharge column tends to seek the central location of the discharge electrodes away from the electrode edges and chamber walls. Further, the column appears to have the properties of a stabilized equilibrium plasma pinch in a glow (non-arc-like) state. This is unusual since, normally field enhancements occur on edges resulting in arc-like discharge breakdown. Also, the column of plasma that protrudes from the anode emits highly intense, non-uniform light that is uncharacteristically bright for a glow discharge.

The main purpose of this thesis is …

Evaluation Of Highly Efficient Distribution Transformer Design And Energy Standards Based On Load, James Sanguinetti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Power distribution transformers have been prevalent in commercial building distribution systems since the inception of modern commercial electricity. Yet as more and more manufactures seek to improve transformer efficiencies by making changes to the design of the transformer itself, a fundamental concept may be overlooked - the impact transformer demand sizing has on power losses. When modern transformers are improperly sized for the application they will be installed for they are not being utilized at their optimum design loading range, which may impact operating efficiency.

This thesis will aim to test and evaluate modern day transformer design coupled with currently …

Dynamic Modelling Of Single Phase Grid Connected Photovoltaic System, Gopi Krishna Ari

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) power systems have been sustaining an exponential growth rate during the past decade. This steep growth is driven by a growing concern about climate change, the adoption of an aggressive regional renewable portfolio standard, rebates and tax incentives, and reduction in PV system cost. One of the main technical barriers that can ultimately limit further PV penetration is the fast variations in the PV system's output power induced by cloud transients. Such events are known to cause voltage fluctuations which may lead to excessive operations of voltage regulation equipment and light flickering.

Solar irradiance variability, which can …