Engineering Commons^™

A Note From The Co-Editors, Jada C. Johnson

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

An introduction to the fifth issue of the third volume of Ideas Magazine, concerning the thoughts, experience, and work of Dr. Marcelo J.S. de Lemos.

Deep Learning Approach To Improved Image Quality For Medical Diagnostics, Olivia Loesch, Katie Leyba, Halyley Chan, Craig Goergen

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

The United Nation’s health-related Sustainable Development Goals are difficult to achieve in low- and middle-income countries due to workforce shortages and inadequate health surveillance systems. However, with the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer algorithms, it is possible to apply AI to healthcare technologies to improve progress towards these UN standards. This project aims at using and improving computer algorithms and deep learning to aid in the extraction of important structural and functional information from murine carotid artery ultrasound and photoacoustic images. First, we created a large database of simulated photoacoustic images to optimize the algorithms. These images were …

Astronaut Or Astronot?, David A. Gusis

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

As space becomes more and more accessible to the general population, the terminology we used in the past to describe those who trained endlessly to become the pioneers of a new frontier is beginning to lose its meaning. Astronauts like Colonel Richard Covey have earned their title and to bestow it on others who haven't gone through the same training or have paid to visit space as a tourist is wrong. My hope is to provide the necessary background information about what it means to be an Astronaut and provoke thought about preserving the term and creating new terminology for …

The Biological Problems Of Space Travel, Madilyn R. Reid

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

Colonel Richard Covey is a distinguished former astronaut who has logged over 646 hours of space travel. Over the years, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and research scientists in the aerospace industry have become increasingly concerned about the biological complications of space travel. This article goes in-depth on what is already known about the biological problems of being in space and potential solutions to remedy the complications.

A Brief History Of The Making Of An Astronaut, Sharon J. Kulali

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

With more advancement in technology, recreational travel to space is increasingly becoming common. This raises the question of whether all individuals who travel to space are considered astronauts. In this paper, the astronaut requirements that the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has had throughout the years are broken down. Furthermore, renowned former astronaut, Colonel Richard O. Covey, is used as an example to demonstrate these requirements.

Undersea Cables: The Ultimate Geopolitical Chokepoint, Bert Chapman

FORCES Initiative: Strategy, Security, and Social Systems

This work provides historical and contemporary overviews of this critical geopolitical problem, describes the policy actors addressing this in the U.S. and selected other countries, and provides maps and information on many undersea cable work routes. These cables are chokepoints with one dictionary defining chokepoints as “a strategic narrow route providing passage through or to another region."

The Three-Year Capstone: A Progression Of Learning In Purdue University’S Theatre Engineering Program, Leigh Witek

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

Purdue University’s Theatre Engineering Program capstone combines the yearly production work of the College of Liberal Arts with the final senior design format used in the Colleges of Engineering. By starting their production work after gaining admission to the program, students work on progressively more involved projects throughout their time at Purdue. This poster presentation will examine the lessons learned and challenges faced by Leigh Witek, a recent Theatre Engineering graduate, as she completed each role in the program. She will share how each project informed her understanding of the design process and how a three-year immersion in production work …

Timing, Latency, And Live Performance, Robert Klimek, Catherine Skokan

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

How important is synchronous timing in a performance? In the world of science, engineering and the arts, we cannot avoid it. In the arts, it is a living and vital concept between composer, performer and audience. During the Pandemic, with an increase in virtual meetings and performances, made us more aware of timing issues and introduced us to a path with many questions about latency and affect between audience and performer. The hand waving, head nodding and eye gestures of Renaissance musicians led eventually to the classic conductor’s baton. These all helped ensembles of dissimilar instruments and/or voices, conquer problems …

Catenate: Creating An Interdisciplinary Art Project, Brian Phillips, Melissa Eddings Mancuso, Emma Sherban

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

This paper will present the rationale for, the challenges of, and successes encountered in the formation process of an interdisciplinary Visual & Performing Arts Project, Catenate, at Ohio Northern University’s School of Visual & Performing Arts.

Developing Soft Skills With Interdisciplinary Teams In The First Year: Lessons Learned, Christian Rogers

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

The academic structure of most universities dictates that a student work with those of their own program and in conjunction with a program that is tangential to theirs. Interdisciplinary educational experiences that provide students with the opportunity to develop soft skills (such as communication, empathy and problem solving) are considered rare but are much more common in the working environment. As an example, working environments such as Universal Creative are comprised of multiple disciplines (i.e. civil engineer, mechanical engineering, illustration, user experience design, etc.) A function of working in an interdisciplinary team can also be to work on unknown or …

Insights From Two Decades Of P-12 Engineering Education Research, Cary I. Sneider, Mihir K. Ravel

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

The 21st century has seen a growing movement in the United States towards the adoption of engineering and technology as a complement to science education. Motivated by this shift, this article offers insights into engineering education for grades P-12, based on a landscape review of 263 empirical research studies spanning the two decades from January 2000 to June 2021. These insights are organized around three core themes: (1) students’ understandings, skills, and attitudes about engineering and technology; (2) effective methods of P-12 engineering education; and (3) benefits of P-12 engineering education. The insights are captured in the form of evidence-based …

Research Experiences Instrument: Validation Evidence For An Instrument To Assess The Research Experiences Of Engineering Ph.D. Students’ Professional Practice Opportunities, Eric A. Holloway, Kerrie A. Douglas, David F. Radcliffe, William C. Oakes

School of Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Background. There are long-held concerns about how graduate research programs prepare engineering Ph.D. students for professional practice. Suitable instruments are lacking to effectively assess how research experiences contribute to the success of graduate students becoming professionals.

Purpose. The purpose of this work is to examine evidence of internal reliability and validity of using the Research Experiences Instrument (REI) scores as a measure of engineering Ph.D. students’ professional practice opportunities in their research experiences.

Method. REI was constructed using an ontological framework. REI was administered twice to engineering Ph.D. students, once to a single university (n = 236) and …

A Review Of Mobile Apps For Chronic Kidney Disease Patients, Clarisse Zigan, Carl Russell Iii, Kirsten Wozniak, Kshaunish Soni

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Collision Tracking And Brain Mapping, Carl Russell Iii

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Continuous Liquid-Liquid Extraction Of Lomustine Synthesis, Devna Grover

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Multiphase Energetic Experiments: Application Of Multiple Object Tracking, Sarah Davis Finch

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

The process of using computer vision for multiple-objects tracking is incredibly complex. Thus, simulated data was created to mimic the complexities of more realistic data. These test cases would isolate a few of the inaccuracies of real data and allow the researchers to determine what factor of said data is the most detrimental to the object-tracking process. Due to the large quantity of factors at play, Cotter’s method was used to analyze the significance of each factor. The number of detections and the number of centroids were the main dependent results that were utilized to analyze the data. The overall …

Visualizing Bacteriophage Evolution Through Sequence And Structural Phylogeny Of Lysin A And Terminase Proteins: An Analysis Of Protein Structure Across Phage Clusters, Maansi Asthana, Alyssa Easton, Julia Mollenhauer, Sean Renwick, Anita Golpalrathnam

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Understanding how genes evolve and persist is a critical part of viral genomics. Bacteriophages can provide unique insight about viral evolution because of their abundance and largely unexplored history. Traditionally, phylogenetic trees have used DNA sequence comparison to visualize evolutionary paths between organisms. However, DNA sequence similarity does not reflect key alterations to protein structure and therefore how the protein performs its function. Phylogenetic trees based on predicted protein structure could provide an alternative lens through which to view evolutionary paths. From each of the 10 largest clusters included in the Actinobacteriophage Database, three mycobacteriophage genomes were selected. Lysin A …

Epics Lakota: Promoting Food Sovereignty On Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Samantha Bijonowski, Kathleen Johnson, Jonathan Damon

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

EPICS Team Lakota was started as a way for students to help promote food sovereignty and combat loss of cultural knowledge as felt by the residents of Pine Ridge Reservation, which is located in one of the poorest counties in the United States and is a food desert. In partnership with EPICS students at Oglala Lakota College (OLC) and South Dakota School of Mines (SDSM), students at Purdue came up with the idea of putting up a greenhouse on the Rapid City Campus of OLC. This greenhouse was meant not as a direct solution to food scarcity, but as a …

Adapting Global Service-Learning Project And Community Partnership Outcomes Using A “Tele-Engineering” Approach In Response To The Covid-19 Pandemic, Christiane Ley, Danielle Angert, Tessa Hudelson, Jordan Harris

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The Water Supply in Developing Countries (WSDC) service-learning course at Purdue University has fostered a strong partnership with the La Vega region in the Dominican Republic since 2012. During this time, an interdisciplinary group of engineering and science students has helped design drinking water treatment systems and the group has developed water, sanitation, and health (WASH) education materials. These WASH education and water safety approaches often have been conducted in person in the past. However, with the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and the inability to travel in the fall and spring semesters of the 2020–2021 academic year, the students …

Creating Reel Designs: Reflecting On Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita In The Community, Iris Layadi

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Because of its extreme rarity, the genetic disease arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (AMC) and the needs of individuals with the diagnosis are often overlooked. AMC refers to the development of nonprogressive contractures in disparate areas of the body and is characterized by decreased flexibility in joints, muscle atrophy, and developmental delays. Colton Darst, a seven-year-old boy from Indianapolis, Indiana, was born with the disorder, and since then, he has undergone numerous surgical interventions and continues to receive orthopedic therapy to reduce his physical limitations. His parents, Michael and Amber Darst, have hopes for him to regain his limbic motion and are …

Enhancing Engineering Identity Among Boys Of Color, Jerrod Henderson, Virginia Snodgrass Rangel, James Holly Jr, Rick Greer, Mariam Manuel

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Black and Brown men continue to be underrepresented in engineering. One explanation for the dearth of Black and Latino men in engineering is that engineering (and STEM) identity often is not inclusive of People of Color. As a result, Black and Brown boys may be less likely to become interested in STEM subjects. The purpose of this study, then, was to investigate how the components of one afterschool engineering program tap into engineering identity formation among fourth- and fifth-grade Black and Brown boys. Leveraging research on the STEM and engineering identity, we argue that the program and its key components …

Comparative Safety Analysis Of Accelerator Driven Subcritical Systems And Critical Nuclear Energy Systems, Run Luo, Shripad Revankar, Fuyu Zhao

School of Nuclear Engineering Faculty Publications

The accelerator driven subcritical system (ADS) has been chosen as one of the best candidates for Generation IV nuclear energy systems which could not only produce clean energy but also incinerate nuclear waste. The transient characteristics and operation principles of ADS are significantly different from those of the critical nuclear energy system (CNES). In this work, the safety characteristics of ADS are analyzed and compared with CNES by a developed neutronics and thermal-hydraulics coupled code named ARTAP. Three typical accidents are carried out in both ADS and CNES, including reactivity insertion, loss of flow, and loss of heat sink. The …

Introduction To Prefabrication And Automation In Construction, Luciana Debs, Jiansong Zhang, Yunfeng Chen

School of Construction Management Technology Open Educational Resources

New developments and recent advances in construction methods have the potential to change the future of the architecture, engineering and construction industry. Prefabrication, along with modular construction, provides a safe and controlled environment for the production of building construction elements and raises the need for improved collaboration and coordination from design to manufacturing and from transportation to final assembly. Prefabrication also provides relief from the skilled construction labor shortage while opening up new opportunities for mass customization within the building industry. Prefabrication and modular construction automation are emerging expansion routes for the construction industry. In addition, integral to developing the …

Designing A Computer-Vision Application: A Case Study For Hand-Hygiene Assessment In An Open-Room Environment, Chengzang Zhong, Amy R. Reibman, Hansel A. Mina, Amanda J. Deering

Department of Food Science Faculty Publications

Hand-hygiene is a critical component for safe food handling. In this paper, we apply an iterative engineering process to design a hand-hygiene action detection system to improve food- handling safety. We demonstrate the feasibility of a baseline RGB-only convolutional neural network (CNN) in the restricted case of a single scenario; however, since this baseline system performs poorly across scenarios, we also demonstrate the application of two methods to explore potential reasons for its poor performance. This leads to the development of our hierarchical system that incorporates a variety of modalities (RGB, optical flow, hand masks, and human skeleton joints) for …

Stable Thermally-Modulated Nanodroplet Ultrasound Contrast Agents, Anastasiia Vasiukhina, Javad Estraghi, Adib Ahmadzadegan, Craig J. Goergen, Pavlov P. Vlachos, Luis Solorio

School of Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Liquid perfluorocarbon-based nanodroplets are stable enough to be used in extravascular imaging, but provide limited contrast enhancement due to their small size, incompressible core, and small acoustic impedance mismatch with biological fluids. Here we show a novel approach to overcoming this limitation by using a heating–cooling cycle, which we will refer to as thermal modulation (TM), to induce echogenicity of otherwise stable but poorly echogenic nanodroplets without triggering a transient phase shift. We apply thermal modulation to high-boiling point tetradecafluorohexane (TDFH) nanodroplets stabilized with a bovine serum albumin (BSA) shell. BSA-TDFH nanodroplets with an average diameter under 300 nanometers showed …

Case Study Of An Automated Mower To Support Airport Sustainability, Sarah Hubbard, Adam Baxmeyer, Bryan Hubbard

Aviation Technology Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper documents a case study of an automated mower to support sustainability at an airport. Mowing is an essential component of an airport’s Wildlife Hazard Management Plan (WHMP), which reduces the risk of birds and other wildlife to aircraft operations. Many airports have large areas of land (hundreds or even thousands of acres), which requires significant resources to manage and mow; experience at the Purdue Airport (KLAF) suggests that automated mowing may support economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. Automated mowing supports economic efficiency by reducing personnel requirements, although personnel are still needed for inspections, maintenance, and “mower rescue” …

Robust Data Submission Pipeline For Agmip Global Economics Modelers, Raziq Ramli

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) is an international effort to improve agricultural models and scientific and technological capabilities for assessing the impacts of climate variability and other driving factors on agriculture, food security, and poverty. The Global Economics (GlobalEcon) team in AgMIP conducts extensive model intercomparison to assess the agricultural effects of climate change, bioenergy policies, and socioeconomic factors. Currently, the preparation and sharing of GlobalEcon model data are done manually, which is time-consuming and error-prone. This project aims to address this problem by designing a robust data submission pipeline capable of harmonizing data from diverse modeling groups …

Radiation Effects On Space Solar Cells At Various Earth And Jupiter Orbital Altitudes, Naazneen Rana

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

Solar cells are used as the primary power source for earth-orbiting satellites and as a primary/secondary power source for various missions within the solar system. However, high energy particles from the sun, planetary magnetospheres, and the galaxy can affect the performance and life expectancy of the space solar cell and associated power systems. As the interests for interplanetary travel and the exploration of planets within our solar system increase, the need to understand a device’s performance within a particular planet’s environment is necessary. Therefore, this study will analyze the performance of space solar cells, particularly the SolAero IMM-α, at various …

Detection And Tracking Of Pedestrians Using Doppler Lidar, Xiaoyi Peng, Jie Shan

Lyles School of Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Pedestrian detection and tracking is necessary for autonomous vehicles and traffic manage- ment. This paper presents a novel solution to pedestrian detection and tracking for urban scenarios based on Doppler LiDAR that records both the position and velocity of the targets. The workflow consists of two stages. In the detection stage, the input point cloud is first segmented to form clus- ters, frame by frame. A subsequent multiple pedestrian separation process is introduced to further segment pedestrians close to each other. While a simple speed classifier is capable of extracting most of the moving pedestrians, a supervised machine learning-based classifier …

Active Experiential Learning At A Distance, Zach Schreiber, Robert J. Herrick, Anne M. Lucietto

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

E-learning became the mode of instruction for students worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instruction was forced onto numerous online platforms quickly, some seamlessly and some not. For those not well versed in online education, the move of all forms of education, including hands-on, laboratory experiential learning, deprived students of new experiences, skills, and knowledge due to a lack of provisions to perform remotely. Uncertain of the pandemic’s duration as well as the future of hands-on education, these authors investigated new technology, equipment, and experiments that would provide a hands-on laboratory experience performed by students at a distance. In response to …