Engineering Commons^™

Widening Of Reinforced Concrete Bridges – Extension Of Pier Cap Beams With Cfrp Composites, Cheng Tan

Dissertations - ALL

Increase in traffic load dictates widening highway bridges rather than construction of new bridges, as it offers an economical solution. Highway bridge widening is usually accomplished by the construction of additional new bridge piers, however, large amount of construction work and extensive use of heavy plant and machinery could result in very high cost. For limited widening of bridges, e.g. addition of one driving/emergency lane, extension of the pier cap beam offers an attractive solution. Due to additional load resulting from the widened bridge, strengthening of extended cap beams may be needed. In addition, depending on the strength of the …

Network Sampling Through Crawling, Katchaguy Areekijseree

Dissertations - ALL

In recent years, researchers have increasingly used OSN data to study human behavior. Before such a study can begin, one must first obtain appropriate data. A platform, e.g, Facebook or Twitter, may provide an API for accessing data, but such APIs are often ratelimited, restricting the amount of data that an individual collects in a given amount of time. In order for the data collector to efficiently collect data, she needs to make intelligent use of her limited budget. Therefore, when collecting data, efficiency is extremely important. We consider the problem of network sampling through crawling, in which the data …

Status And Remediation Of Mercury In Fish And Aquatic Ecosystems, Geoffrey Dean Millard

Dissertations - ALL

Mercury is a known neurotoxin which can bioaccumulate and biomagnify as methylmercury, causing significant human and ecological impacts. New York State and the surrounding region is impacted by mercury in complex ways as some areas are recovering from the effects of acidic deposition while the entire region is increasingly influenced by climate change. In order to better understand the drivers and trends of mercury dynamics in New York State, my research was conducted in three phases: 1) the impact of lime (calcium carbonate) additions on mercury cycling in small acid-sensitive headwater streams of the Adirondack State Park; 2) applied advanced …

Locating People Of Interest In Social Networks, Pivithuru Wijegunawardana

Dissertations - ALL

By representing relationships between social entities as a network, researchers can analyze them using a variety of powerful techniques. One key problem in social network analysis literature is identifying certain individuals (key players, most influential nodes) in a network. We consider the same problem in this dissertation, with the constraint that the individuals we are interested in identifying (People of Interest) are not necessarily the most important nodes in terms of the network structure. We propose an algorithm to find POIs, algorithms to collect data to find POIs, a framework to model POI behavior and an algorithm to predict POIs …

Network Level Pavement Deterioration Prediction Modeling For The City Of Syracuse, Burak Gursoy

Theses - ALL

Pavement deterioration prediction models play an important role in pavement management systems and allow decision makers to plan maintenance and rehabilitation works in advance. There are several factors affecting the deterioration of pavement sections such as traffic loading, freeze and thaw, snow plowing, construction quality as well as pavement thickness and age. Developing pavement deterioration prediction models can provide decision makers with many benefits. First of all, pavements can be treated before they reach undesired levels of service and this would extend the lifetime. Secondly, required budget for expenses can be provisioned, which helps public authorities to generate more precise …

Spectroscopic Analysis Of The Vanadium Oxide Catalyst During The Ketone Oxidation, Bowei Liu

Theses - ALL

Levulinic acid is a platform chemical that derived by environmental friend biomass. We have previously reported a reaction pathway to transform levulinic acid to maleic anhydride through methyl scission on supported vanadium oxide, which could achieve a 70% yield. The structure of vanadium oxide on the surface of supports can be informative for catalyst selection. We investigated the polymerization of vanadium oxide on support through diffuse reflectance UV-vis spectroscopy. Peak deconvolution of ligand to metal charge transfer region of the spectra provided knowledge of different coordinated structure. All of our catalysts have bulk V2O5 that exists on the surface of …

Homeostatic Elastic States And The Stability Of Elastic Arteries, Xinyu Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

Vascular mechanics has undergone significant growth within the last 50 years owing to the rapid development of nonlinear continuum mechanics occurring roughly within the same period and motivated primarily by rubber materials. However, one important distinction of blood vessels, in contrast to typical engineering materials is that, through a variety of physiological mechanisms, they seek to maintain constant a preferred mechanical state (mechanical homeostasis) thereby exhibiting a remarkable mechanical stability in response to temporal evolution and alterations in blood pressure, vessel tethering forces and geometry and material properties. The mechanical state experienced by blood vessels plays a critical role in …

Characterization Of Phenolic Acids For Incorporation Into Shape Memory Polymer Foams, Jingyi Liu

Theses - ALL

Shape memory polymer (SMP) foams provide a promising new option for hemorrhage control on the battlefield; however, they lack a mechanism to control wound infections that can delay healing processes. Adding phenolic acids (PAs) into SMP foams provides a natural, non-drug option for incorporations of antioxidant and antimicrobial functionalities that may promote healing. However, PAs lack a systemic characterization of their structure/property relationships, and their chemical incorporation into SMP foams may alter their efficacy. In this work, a library of PAs was screened in terms of antioxidant and antimicrobial properties to provide a full understanding of how their structure affects …

An In-Vitro Model To Understand Osteoblast Mediated Bone Mineralization, Vaikhari Abhay Marathe

Theses - ALL

Musculoskeletal diseases are widespread, and they affect hundreds of millions of people all around the world. Bone defects occurs due to various reasons such as surgeries, fracture and diseases. These bone defects need a surgical intervention and are generally treated with state-of-the-art grafting techniques such as natural bone grafts and implants. However, even the best available corrective treatments have several limitations such as availability, disease transfer, donor site scarcity, and immune rejection. Bone remodeling techniques which would support natural bone regeneration upon graft implantation, can be used to maximize the efficiency of current grafting techniques. In this study, our goal …

Novel Shape Memory And Multi-Shape Memory Polymers For Biomaterial Applications, Shelby Lois Buffington

Dissertations - ALL

Biomaterial platforms have been used to probe how cells respond to chemical, topographical or mechanical changes in their environments. However, these traditionally static biomaterial platforms have not enabled the study of how cells respond to dynamic changes in their environment. Driven by a need to better understand cell behavior and its role it disease, development and tissue regeneration recent efforts have focused on designing dynamic biomaterial platforms to better mimic a cell’s natural environment. In this work, advanced shape memory polymers (SMPs) that respond to non-thermal triggers and multi-shape memory materials capable of multiple topographical transitions were developed for advanced …

Sampling And Characterizing Evolving Communities In Social Networks, Humphrey Appiah Mensah

Dissertations - ALL

One of the most important structures in social networks is communities. Understanding communities is useful in many applications, such as suggesting a friend for a user in an online friendship network, recommending a product for a user in an e-commerce network, etc. However, before studying anything about communities, researchers first need to collect appropriate data. Getting complete access to the data for community studies is unrealistic in most cases. In this work, we address the problem of crawling networks to identify community structure. Firstly, we present a network sampling technique to crawl the community structure of dynamic networks when there …

Sequential Methods For Non-Parametric Hypothesis Testing, Prashant Khanduri

Dissertations - ALL

In today’s world, many applications are characterized by the availability of large amounts of complex-structured data. It is not always possible to fit the data to predefined models or distributions. Model dependent signal processing approaches are often susceptible to mismatches between the data and the assumed model. In cases where the data does not conform to the assumed model, providing sufficient performance guarantees becomes a challenging task. Therefore, it is important to devise methods that are model-independent, robust, provide sufficient performance guarantees for the task at hand and, at the same time, are simple to implement. The goal of this …

Copula-Based Multimodal Data Fusion For Inference With Dependent Observations, Shan Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

Fusing heterogeneous data from multiple modalities for inference problems has been an attractive and important topic in recent years. There are several challenges in multi-modal fusion, such as data heterogeneity and data correlation. In this dissertation, we investigate inference problems with heterogeneous modalities by taking into account nonlinear cross-modal dependence. We apply copula based methodology to characterize this dependence.

In distributed detection, the goal often is to minimize the probability of detection error at the fusion center (FC) based on a fixed number of observations collected by the sensors. We design optimal detection algorithms at the FC using a regular …

Numerical Investigation Of Laser-Induced Ignition Phenomena, Deshawn Coombs

Dissertations - ALL

This thesis investigates various aspects of laser-ignition. Laser ignition is a form of combustion initiation by means of a focused laser pulse in a combustible mixture. The ignition process consists of a chain of processes with varying degrees of importance to the prediction of a successful flame propagation. Some of these processes include plasma formation, induced shock wave, emergence of a flame kernel, and successful transition to a self-sustained flame or flame quenching. This thesis will explore various aspects of this process using computational fluid dynamics and model analysis with the aim of identifying the controlling processes and simplified ways …

Modeling The Interactions Of Forest Cutting And Climate Change On The Hydrology, Biomass And Biogeochemistry Of A Northeastern Forest, Mahnaz Valipour

Dissertations - ALL

Global and regional environmental disturbances, including harvesting and climate change, can lead to integrated and interactive effects on forest ecosystems, altering their structure and function, and therefore long-term sustainability. Understanding both short- and long-term impacts of harvesting practices (e.g., cutting rotation length, intensity) on forest dynamics is a key factor in developing criteria and guidelines for sustainable forest management practices. Process ecosystem models are useful tools to improve predictive understanding of complex, interacting ecological process and their response to disturbance. Few studies have rigorously tested model simulations against field measurements which would provide more confidence in efforts to quantify logging …

Inferences From Interactions With Smart Devices: Security Leaks And Defenses, Diksha Shukla

Dissertations - ALL

We unlock our smart devices such as smartphone several times every day using a pin, password, or graphical pattern if the device is secured by one. The scope and usage of smart devices' are expanding day by day in our everyday life and hence the need to make them more secure. In the near future, we may need to authenticate ourselves on emerging smart devices such as electronic doors, exercise equipment, power tools, medical devices, and smart TV remote control. While recent research focuses on developing new behavior-based methods to authenticate these smart devices, pin and password still remain primary …

Intrusion Detection For Cyber-Physical Attacks In Cyber-Manufacturing System, Mingtao Wu

Dissertations - ALL

In the vision of Cyber-Manufacturing System (CMS) , the physical components such as products, machines, and tools are connected, identifiable and can communicate via the industrial network and the Internet. This integration of connectivity enables manufacturing systems access to computational resources, such as cloud computing, digital twin, and blockchain. The connected manufacturing systems are expected to be more efficient, sustainable and cost-effective.

However, the extensive connectivity also increases the vulnerability of physical components. The attack surface of a connected manufacturing environment is greatly enlarged. Machines, products and tools could be targeted by cyber-physical attacks via the network. Among many emerging …

Carboxylic Acid Hydrodeoxygenation Over Supported Noble Metal Catalysts, Joshua Gopeesingh

Dissertations - ALL

Carboxylic acid hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) over supported noble metal catalysts was carried out in order identify the main challenges associated with supported monometallic catalysts and identifying solutions that may increase the practicality of these high activity metals. Using propionic acid as a probe molecule, it was found that supported platinum (Pt) and ruthenium (Ru) catalysts have two main issues: selectivity and stability. Both metals are quite unselective towards HDO products, multiple chemistries occur over the catalysts that lead to a myriad of undesired products. Decarbonylation (DCN) is the most selective pathway over Pt catalysts, while both DCN and methanation chemistries are …

Empathy Based Reinforcement Learning, Dhwani Himanshu Patel

Theses - ALL

Among the different emotional functions, empathy is difficult to model but is important for a robot to have so that they can socially interact with society. Perceived empathy has positive consequences on attitude and the social behaviors of an individual. The project aims to model empathic behavior and perceptive capabilities in a robot in such a way that they can engage in empathic interactions with other agents in a shared physical space. In this study, a small grid environment world was designed and developed with multiple agents. Also, The Markov Decision Process and a Hand Coded algorithm were implemented and …

Dissolved Organic Matter Dynamics In Calcium-Treated And Reference Watersheds At Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, Nicholas Alexander Lorusso

Theses - ALL

Organic carbon makes up the molecular structure of all living organisms on Earth and is essential to understanding ecological interactions. For forest ecosystems, organic carbon pools and fluxes have been extensively quantified, while less is known about its more highly variable composition. Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is a major source of biologically available organic carbon and nitrogen and serves as an indicator of watershed carbon processing. The extent to which DOM is metabolized, before it is transported from the watershed, is highly dependent on its source molecular structure and the processes exacted upon it. Spectroscopic techniques, such as fluorescence characterization, …

A Framework To Predict The Dewatering Performance Of Large Scale Geotextile Tubes In The Field, Chinthoory Ganesalingam

Theses - ALL

Over the past two decades, geotextile tube dewatering technology has been widely used to handle high water content waste materials in a more sustainable and economical way. The function of a geotextiles tube in a dewatering project is to retain the solid particles inside the tube and release the effluent from the tube through the pores in its surface. Several small-scale (Pressure Filtration Test – PFT, Falling Head Test – FHT) and medium-scale (Geotextile Tube Dewatering Test – GDT, Hanging Bag Test – HBT) performance tests are available to predict the results of the geotextile tube dewatering process in the …

A Feasibility Study Of A Low-Cost, Large-Scale Thermal Treatment Process For Human Feces, Ryan John Homeyer

Theses - ALL

To hygienically manage the global sanitation crisis, it is pertinent to develop new methods for treating human excreta. This thesis proposes a new design where human feces is stored in a steel shipping container that is subject to shortwave solar radiation that, according to theory, heats the enclosed excreta to temperatures that inactivate fecal pathogens. The feasibility of this design is analyzed by way of numerical and experimental modelling. The experimentally validated model is used to simulate the effectiveness of the design over the course of many days of irradiation. This study shows that a sufficient temperature distribution (i.e., T(x,y) …

Performance Analysis For 5g Cellular Networks: Millimeter Wave And Uav Assisted Communications, Esma Turgut

Dissertations - ALL

Recent years have witnessed exponential growth in mobile data and traffic. Limited available spectrum in microwave ($\mu$Wave) bands does not seem to be capable of meeting this demand in the near future, motivating the move to new frequency bands. Therefore, operating with large available bandwidth at millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands, between 30 and 300 GHz, has become an appealing choice for the fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. In addition to mmWave cellular networks, the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) base stations (BSs), also known as drone BSs, has attracted considerable attention recently as a possible solution to meet …

Modeling And Simulation Of High-Density Spray Combustion, Chenwei Zheng

Dissertations - ALL

High-efficiencies and low-emissions can be realized in combustion engines that operate at high-pressures and low-temperatures conditions (high densities). The design of such engines relies on accurate models of the physical processes involved. Three areas of concern are multi-phase phenomena, the equation of state for the gas phase and cost-effective chemical kinetic modeling. Fuel injected as liquid must break up into droplets, evaporate, and mix with air before combusting. Models for these processes have been developed and need to be tested against experiments. As for the gas phases, the ideal gas model fails to capture thermodynamic relations at high-density combustion. A …

False-Match Symmetry: Data Files And Simulation Code, Cherlyn J. Ng, Bart Farell

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering - All Scholarship

This record provides data from random-dot stereograms to use in solving the binocular correspondence problem through false-match symmetry. It also provides an implementation of the algorithm used in the article ‘Solving the stereo correspondence problem with false matches’ [Ng CJ, Farell B (2019) Solving the stereo correspondence problem with false matches. PLoSONE 14(7): e0219052. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0219052].

The record consists of two parts, Data and Algorithm Demo. The Data component consists of pre-computed Keplerian arrays of all possible matches between filtered random-dot image pairs containing stereoscopically defined surfaces. The Algorithm Demo allows data files to be computed afresh from supplied pairs of …

Impacts Of Urban Development Pattern On Runoff Peak Flows And Streamflow Flashiness Of Peri-Urban Catchments: Assessing The Performance Of Physical And Data-Driven Models For Real-Time Ensemble Flood Forecasting, Babak Kasaee Roodsari

Dissertations - ALL

Urban growth is a global phenomenon, and the associated impacts on hydrology from land development are expected to increase, especially in peri-urban catchments, which are newly developing catchments in proximity of growing cities. In northern climates, hydrologic response of peri-urban catchments change with the water budget and climatic conditions. As a result, runoff response of northern peri-urban catchments can vary immensely across seasons. During warm seasons, the evapotranspiration (ET) and infiltration rates are high, so urban floods are expected to occur during high intensity, low duration storm events. During cold seasons and below freezing temperatures, surficial soils are typically frozen …

A Web-Based Collaborative Multimedia Presentation Document System, Chunxu Tang

Dissertations - ALL

With the distributed and rapidly increasing volume of data and expeditious development of modern web browsers, web browsers have become a possible legitimate vehicle for remote interactive multimedia presentation and collaboration, especially for geographically dispersed teams. To our knowledge, although there are a large number of applications developed for these purposes, there are some drawbacks in prior work including the lack of interactive controls of presentation flows, general-purpose collaboration support on multimedia, and efficient and precise replay of presentations.

To fill the research gaps in prior work, in this dissertation, we propose a web-based multimedia collaborative presentation document system, which …

Connecting With Deans And Chairs: Tools And Success Stories, Daniel Christie, Sally Fell, Kari Kozak, Anne E. Rauh

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

No abstract provided.

Forming Key Partnerships To Enhance Graduate Student Programming, Emily K. Hart, Alex Vincent Jannini, Alexander James Johnson, Katy Pieri

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

The graduate chapter of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE@SU) and the SU STEM Librarian formed a collaborative and mutually beneficial partnership with the goal of enhancing non-curricular educational opportunities for graduate students in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS). By combining the expertise of both organizations, including strategies for event planning, marketing, and outreach, as well as data garnered through event feedback surveys, significant strides were made toward connecting with and better understanding the needs of the ECS graduate students. The goal of this study is to share lessons learned and recommendations for developing successful graduate …

Modern Methods In Machine Learning As Applied To The Study Of A Complex Supersonic Jet Flow, Andrew Steven Tenney

Dissertations - ALL

The desire for aircraft to fly higher, farther, and faster has led to the use of more complex nozzle geometries over the last several decades. These nozzles often take advantage of multiple high-velocity streams issuing from non-axisymmetric exit areas and can be optimized for airframe integration and stealth performance. The associated turbulent jet physics and the aeroacoustic phenomena have been studied thoroughly over the past 80 years; however, the complex non-linear interactions between multiple merging canonical flows are not well understood. In this study, we seek to gain a better understanding of the flow physics in the near-field of a …