Engineering Commons^™

Prognostic Algorithm Development For Plant Monitoring And Maintenance Planning, Them Hill Bui

Doctoral Dissertations

The economic goals in a typical industrial plant are to improve product quality, maximize equipment up-time, reliability, and availability, and minimize spare part inventories and maintenance costs. Modern facilities are comprised of thousands of subsystems with critical unique components. Simple components and more complex engineering systems alike are typically engineered to perform satisfactorily. Their lives can be predicted under normal operation runtime. It should be the same with chronological time lapse from the moment of installation. However, their ages accelerate faster than chronological time lapse if they are operated under unfavorable working conditions, making their remaining life predictions likely not …

Fault Diagnosis And Failure Prognostics Of Lithium-Ion Battery Based On Least Squares Support Vector Machine And Memory Particle Filter Framework, Mohammed Ali Lskaafi

Doctoral Dissertations

123456A novel data driven approach is developed for fault diagnosis and remaining useful life (RUL) prognostics for lithium-ion batteries using Least Square Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) and Memory-Particle Filter (M-PF). Unlike traditional data-driven models for capacity fault diagnosis and failure prognosis, which require multidimensional physical characteristics, the proposed algorithm uses only two variables: Energy Efficiency (EE), and Work Temperature. The aim of this novel framework is to improve the accuracy of incipient and abrupt faults diagnosis and failure prognosis. First, the LSSVM is used to generate residual signal based on capacity fade trends of the Li-ion batteries. Second, adaptive threshold …

A Model For The Rapid Distribution Of Critical Medical Countermeasures To Large U.S. Populations During A Public Health Emergency Via The Sns-Rss-Pod System, Roger Ivan Fiske

Doctoral Dissertations

In the event of a large scale public health emergency in the United States, the need for emergency medical supplies may quickly exceed existing local and regional resources. In these circumstances, specific life-saving countermeasures may be released from the CDC (The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) and delivered to local Points of Dispensing (PODs) via a rapid emergency distribution system that involves multiple governmental agencies and private sector organizations. Included in this distribution system are temporary Receiving, Staging, Storage (RSS) warehousing operations. One of the primary objectives of this SNS-RSS-POD system is to …

Developing An Optimal Model For Infant Home Visitation, Isaac Atuahene

Doctoral Dissertations

The United States, Great Britain, Denmark, Canada and many other countries have accepted home visitation (HV) as a promising strategy for interventions for infants after births and for their mothers. Prior HV studies have focused on theoretical foundations, evaluations of programs, cost/benefit analysis and cost estimation by using hospital/payer/insurance data to prove its effectiveness and high cost. As governments and private organizations continue to fund HVs, it is an opportune time to develop and formulate operations research (OR) models of HV coverage, quality and cost so they might be used in program implementation as done for adult home healthcare (HHC) …

Collaborative Models For Supply Networks Coordination And Healthcare Consolidation, Shima Mohebbi

Doctoral Dissertations

This work discusses the collaboration framework among different members of two complex systems: supply networks and consolidated healthcare systems. Although existing literature advocates the notion of strategic partnership/cooperation in both supply networks and healthcare systems, there is a dearth of studies quantitatively analyzing the scope of cooperation among the members and its benefit on the global performance. Hence, the first part of this dissertation discusses about two-echelon supply networks and studies the coordination of buyers and suppliers for multi-period procurement process. Viewing the issue from the same angel, the second part studies the coordination framework of hospitals for consolidated healthcare …

Quantum Inspired Algorithms For Learning And Control Of Stochastic Systems, Karthikeyan Rajagopal

Doctoral Dissertations

"Motivated by the limitations of the current reinforcement learning and optimal control techniques, this dissertation proposes quantum theory inspired algorithms for learning and control of both single-agent and multi-agent stochastic systems.

A common problem encountered in traditional reinforcement learning techniques is the exploration-exploitation trade-off. To address the above issue an action selection procedure inspired by a quantum search algorithm called Grover's iteration is developed. This procedure does not require an explicit design parameter to specify the relative frequency of explorative/exploitative actions.

The second part of this dissertation extends the powerful adaptive critic design methodology to solve finite horizon stochastic optimal …

The Engagement Of Expert Opinions In The Modeling Of Multi-Attribute Decision Making For The Selection Of Project Delivery Methods In Building Construction, Issam H. Algraiw

Doctoral Dissertations

"Choosing the most appropriate project delivery method (PDM) available is acknowledged as a crucial issue in the construction industry. Both the choice and application of an unsuitable PDM can result in project failure. Likewise, the selection of a suitable PDM can increase the chance for project success. A method of selecting from among the seven PDMs recognized by the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) was created in an attempt to address this issue.

This research was comprised of three objectives. The first objective was to determine the influential factors needed to select the appropriate PDMs available to the US construction industry. …

Detection And Recognition Of R/F Devices Based On Their Unintended Electromagnetic Emissions Using Stochastic And Computational Intelligence Methods, Shikhar Prasad Acharya

Doctoral Dissertations

"Radio Frequency (RF) devices produce some amount of Unintended Electromagnetic Emissions (UEEs). UEEs are generally unique to a device and can be thought of as a signature of the device. This property of uniqueness of UEEs can be used to detect and identify the device producing the emission. The problem with UEEs is that they are very low in power and are often buried deep inside the noise band which makes them difficult to detect. There are two types of UEE detection methods. The first one is called stimulated detection method where the UEEs of a device are enhanced using …

Modeling Supply Chain Interdependent Critical Infrastructure Systems, Varun Ramachandran

Doctoral Dissertations

"While strategies for emergency response to large-scale disasters have been extensively studied, little has been done to map medium- to long-term strategies capable of restoring supply chain infrastructure systems and reconnecting such systems from a local urban area to national supply chain systems. This is, in part, because no comprehensive, data-driven model of supply chain networks exists. Without such models communities cannot re-establish the level of connectivity required for timely restoration of goods and services. This dissertation builds a model of supply chain interdependent critical infrastructure (SCICI) as a complex adaptive systems problem. It defines model elements, data needs/element, the …

Computational Intelligence Based Complex Adaptive System-Of-Systems Architecture Evolution Strategy, Siddharth Agarwal

Doctoral Dissertations

The dynamic planning for a system-of-systems (SoS) is a challenging endeavor. Large scale organizations and operations constantly face challenges to incorporate new systems and upgrade existing systems over a period of time under threats, constrained budget and uncertainty. It is therefore necessary for the program managers to be able to look at the future scenarios and critically assess the impact of technology and stakeholder changes. Managers and engineers are always looking for options that signify affordable acquisition selections and lessen the cycle time for early acquisition and new technology addition. This research helps in analyzing sequential decisions in an evolving …