Engineering Commons^™

Improving The Peak Performance Lifespan Of A Two-Piece Composite Bat, Angelina Sicurezza

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The push for innovation and enhancement of sports equipment in recent years has led to significant advancements in composite materials. This project aims to propose new design possibilities that will improve the lifespan of a two-piece composite bat. Using finite element analysis (FEA) software, various fiber orientations and materials were modeled and analyzed for their impact response. Two unique quarter-cylinder designs along with a baseline design were modeled with symmetric boundary conditions. The proposed bat deigns include a helicoidal model and a CFRP-Aramid hybrid model. Comparative analysis of the elastic responses revealed that both the helicoidal and hybrid models demonstrated …

Growth Plate Cartilage: Understanding The Contribution Of Adhesion To Column Formation And Matrix Structure, Sydney E. Greer

Theses & Dissertations

Throughout fetal and adolescent development, bone growth is regulated by fine-tuned and controlled maturation of chondrocytes through a cartilaginous template called the growth plate. Bone growth rate is controlled through cell enlargement and extracellular matrix deposition, while the polarized arrangement of proliferative chondrocytes into columns aligned with the long axis of the bone potentiate growth. Chondrocytes are surrounded by a complex three-dimensional arrangement of matrix molecules, all of which are secreted by chondrocytes and assembled/remodeled to support the biological functions of the cell. Adhesion receptors found on the cell membrane of chondrocytes are crucial to the organization of matrix proteins …

Development Of Corn Kernel-Based Biocomposite Films For Food Packaging Applications, Swastika Bera

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Most of the current and active food packaging resources and methods are nonbiodegradable and nonrenewable therefore harmful to the environment. Due to this, alternate sources of food packaging materials are in high demand. In this study, a bio-composite film has been developed, with Corn kernel powder as fiber reinforcement which is mixed with gelatin, and lignin two biopolymers as the matrix. The effect of Corn Kernel (CK) reinforcement on the Gelatin/Lignin (G/L) matrix on mechanical and barrier properties has been studied. CK has shown great potential as reinforcement to natural polymer, gelatin, and lignin (G/L) for food packaging applications as …

A Pilot Study On The Nanoscale Properties Of Bone Tissue Near Lacunae In Fracturing Women, Wen Qian, Roman Schmidt, Joseph A. Turner, Sue P. Bare, Joan M. Lappe, Robert R. Recker, Mohammed P. Akhter

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

The goal of this study is to investigate the causes of osteoporosis-related skeletal fragility in postmenopausal women. We hypothesize that bone fragility in these individuals is largely due to mineral, and/or intrinsic material properties in the osteocyte lacunar/peri-lacunar regions of bone tissue. Innovative measurements with nanoscale resolution, including scanning electron microscope (SEM), an atomic force microscope that is integrated with infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR), and nanoindentation, were used to characterize osteocyte lacunar and peri-lacunar properties in bone biopsies from fracturing (Cases) and matched (Age, BMD), non-fracturing (Controls) postmenopausal healthy women. In the peri-lacunar space, the nanoindentation results show that the modulus …

Mathematical Modeling Of Synthesis 4´,4´´-Di-(1-Methyl-1-Hydroxy-2-Phenylethynyl)-Dibenzo-18-Crown-6, Lyubov Kozinskaya, Dilorom Mirkhamitova

CHEMISTRY AND CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

The main goal of this study is the mathematical modeling of the optimal conditions for the synthesis of 4´,4´´-di-(1-methyl-1-hydroxy-2-phenylethynyl)-dibenzo-18-crown-6 by the least squares method. In the STAT program, iconograms of mathematical modeling of the synthesis and the dependence of the rate of formation of 4´,4´´-di-(1-methyl-1-hydroxy-2-phenylethynyl)-dibenzo-18-crown-6 on temperature and reaction time were obtained, the corresponding analytical dependencies are determined. Mathematical processing of the results of the synthesis of 4´,4´´-di-(1-methyl-1-hydroxy-2-phenylethynyl)-dibenzo-18-crown-6 was carried out, a system of linear equations was compiled using the matrix method. The average reaction rate and the optimum of the mathematical model were determined, and the experimental and calculated …

Putin And Putnam: Interpreting Russian Military Activity Through A Three Player, Two-Level Game, Nathan M. Colvin

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

Is Vladimir Putin a bad strategist, perhaps irrational? Previous military activity by Russia, such as the annexation of Crimea of 2014, yielded limited international gains, at a significant economic and reputational cost. Yet as the 2022 invasion of Ukraine shows, Putin is willing to commit military power, despite the cost of sanctions and other possible retaliation. This three-player simultaneous game, originally created in June, 2021, demonstrates how domestic and international considerations of President Vladimir Putin might lead to otherwise unpredictable Russian military behavior. In this extended version of Robert Putnam’s “two-level game,” President Putin rationally uses the international venue as …

Matrix Acidizing In Carbonate Formations, Ofelia Gomez Chacon, Maysam Pournik

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Matrix acidizing in carbonate reservoirs is a process that has been long used to increase productivity in oil and gas producing formations. The main goal is to create wormholes that bypass the damage in the formation. Hydrochloric acid (HCl) is the main acid used for this; however, it has several disadvantages that affect the success of these treatments. Its high reaction rate, inability to divert, and corrosive nature are a few of the reasons why research in this area has focused on finding alternative fluids. This paper discusses studies on successful alternatives to HCl. It has been observed that emulsified …

Artificial Neural Networks For Measuring The Moisture Of Bulk Materials, Erkin Uljaev, Shohrux Nurali O‘G‘Li Narzullayev

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

One of the urgent tasks of industrial production is improving the quality of verification of received, manufactured, and stored products, reducing energy consumption in the production of a final product. The solution to this problem is impossible without the creation of devices that control the quality indicators of materials within the limits of the permissible error. One of the most common indicators of the quality of bulk materials is moisture. In the national economy and industrial production, it is required to determine the moisture content of more than 500 different substances and materials. The paper shows the possibility of using …

Lecture 11: The Road To Exascale And Legacy Software For Dense Linear Algebra, Jack Dongarra

Mathematical Sciences Spring Lecture Series

In this talk, we will look at the current state of high performance computing and look at the next stage of extreme computing. With extreme computing, there will be fundamental changes in the character of floating point arithmetic and data movement. In this talk, we will look at how extreme-scale computing has caused algorithm and software developers to change their way of thinking on implementing and program-specific applications.

Reliable Risk Assessment Method For Effective Organization Of Information Security At Enterprise, Fayzullajon Bakhtiyorovich Botirov

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

The problems of the new industry 4.0 automation paradigm are considered and the latest technologies in the field of information and communication technologies that stimulate it are analyzed, including cyber-physical systems, cloud computing, the Internet of things and big data. Some methods of multidimensional, multi-faceted industrial representation and analysis of big data are proposed. The basics of big data processing using granular computing methods have been developed. Marked the emergence of the problem of creation of special cognitive tool for constructing artificial agents, understanding integrated intelligence enterprises. In the process of information protection at the enterprise, it is proposed to …

A Perceptual Evaluation Of Short-Time Fourier Transform Window Duration And Divergence Cost Function On Audio Source Separation Using Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, Ryan J. Miller

Student Theses

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is an established method of performing audio source separation. Previous studies used NMF with supplementary systems to improve performance, but little has been done to investigate perceptual effects of NMF parameters. The present study aimed to evaluate two NMF parameters for speech enhancement: the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) window duration and divergence cost function. Two experiments were conducted: the first investigated the effect of STFT window duration on target speech intelligibility in a sentence keyword identification task. The second experiment had participants rate residual noise levels present in target speech using three different cost functions: the …

Effects Of Nano-Clay Content, Foaming Temperature And Foaming Time On Density And Cell Size Of Pvc Matrix Foam By Presented Least Absolute Shrinkage And Selection Operator Statistical Regression Via Suitable Experiments As A Function Of Mmt Content, Zhixiong Li, Hamzeh Shahrajabian, Seyed Amin Bagherzadeh, Hamid Jadidi, Arash Karimipour, Iskander Tlili

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Present article aims to investigate the effect of nano-clay content, foaming temperature and foaming time on the density and cell size of the PVC matrix foam. The cell size would affect the insulating and mechanical properties. The foaming temperature is set in three levels of 70, 80 and 90 °C, foaming time is set in three levels of 10, 20, and 30 s; and nano-clay is in content of 1, 3, and 5 wt%. Outputs consist the density and cell size, which affect impact the thermal conductivity, mechanical properties and the weight of the polymer foam. In addition the Least …

Robust Extended H∞ Control Strategy Using Linear Matrix Inequality Approach For Islanded Microgrid, Maniza Armin, Mizanur Rahman, Md Mukidur Rahman, Subrata K. Sarker, Sajal Das, Md Rabiul Islam, Abbas Z. Kouzani, M. A Parvez Mahmud

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This paper presents the design of an extended parameterisations of H∞ controller for off grid operation of a microgrid. The microgrid consists of distributed generation units, filters and local loads. The filters are used to achieve accurate sinusoidal output voltage. However, loads which are connected to the microgrid are parametrically uncertain. Hence, it undergoes with unknown loads uncertainties. These unknown loads may create unknown loads harmonics, non-linearities which may reduce the voltage and current profile of the microgrid. As a result, the sudden rise and fall of voltage current profile damages the domestic and commercial loads. The proposed controller provides …

Moisture Characterization Of Thermoplastics And Thermosets For Use As Matrices In Fiber Reinforced Composites, Kieran Hook, Ray Hsu

Materials Engineering

Epoxy matrix composites are widely used in aerospace industry for lighter aircraft while thermoplastic-matrix composites have traditionally been underutilized despite their excellent fracture resistance, impact strength, and the ability to be recycled. Toray Advanced Composites (Morgan Hill, CA) wants to investigate the structural integrity of thermoplastic matrices in common aircraft operating environments. An experiment was conducted to observe the effect of moisture absorption on thermoplastic composites’ mechanical strength. PEEK, PPS, and PEI matrices were compared to an epoxy matrix in this experiment. Samples were submerged in 160ºF distilled water to accelerate moisture absorption. For two months, the changes in mass …

Design And Development Of Hybrid Rocket For Spaceport America Cup, Benjamin Barnhill, Sean Darling, Austin Springer, Adam Todd, Stewart Whaley

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Using Explainability For Constrained Matrix Factorization, Behnoush Abdollahi, Olfa Nasraoui

Commonwealth Computational Summit

Explainable Model

• Black Box (opaque) predictors such as Deep learning and Matrix Factorization are accurate,
• ... but lack interpretability and ability to give explanations.
• White Box models such as rules and decision trees are interpretable (explainable),
• ... but lack accuracy.

Patient-Derived Hydrogel As A Sacrificial Matrix For Efficient Cell Loading, Shalmli U. Joshi

Honors Scholar Theses

The field of tissue engineering focuses on delivering patient-derived stem cells to the body through the use of degradable biomaterials, such as hydrogels, which are infused into engineered scaffolds. Hydrogels act as templates to support and guide cells towards the regeneration of new tissue. In this study, we introduce a completely intraoperative procedure for obtaining a fibrin hydrogel for tissue engineering applications. In the past, fibrin hydrogel has been commonly formed by combining fibrinogen protein with animal-derived thrombin. Instead, we have developed an automated, and therefore reproducible, protocol to isolate and form fibrin hydrogel without the use of animal-derived thrombin. …

Characterization And Mechanical Properties Of Α-Al2o3 Particle Reinforced Aluminium Matrix Composites, Synthesized Via Uniball Magneto-Milling And Uniaxial Hot Pressing, Buraq Talib Shalash Al-Mosawi, David Wexler, Andrzej Calka

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Al-based composite powders containing 2, 4, 7 and 10 volume fraction of α-Al₂O₃ were prepared using the uniball controlled magneto-milling method and were then uniaxially hot pressed at (600 ± 10)°C under 70 MPa for 15 min. The resulting composites were greater than 99% theoretical density with enhanced mechanical properties. Detailed characterization was performed using: X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy, electrical conductivity, compression, ultra-micro indentation testing and pin on drum wear testing at ambient temperature. Microstructure-mechanical property correlations were obtained as functions of α-Al₂O₃ volume fraction. It was found …

Acetylated Bacterial Cellulose Coated With Urinary Bladder Matrix As A Substrate For Retinal Pigment Epithelium, Sara Goncalves, Ines P. Rodrigues, J Padrão, J P. Silva, Vitor Sencadas, Senentxu Lanceros-Méndez, Henrique Girao, F M. Gama, F Dourado, L R. Rodrigues

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This work evaluated the effect of acetylated bacterial cellulose (ABC) substrates coated with urinary bladder matrix (UBM) on the behavior of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), as assessed by cell adhesion, proliferation and development of cell polarity exhibiting transepithelial resistance and polygonal shaped-cells with microvilli. Acetylation of bacterial cellulose (BC) generated a moderate hydrophobic surface (around 65°) while the adsorption of UBM onto these acetylated substrates did not affect significantly the surface hydrophobicity. The ABS substrates coated with UBM enabled the development of a cell phenotype closer to that of native RPE cells. These cells were able to express proteins essential …

Mechanical Properties And Tribological Behavior Of Aluminum Matrix Composites Reinforced With In-Situ Alb2 Particles, Linlin Yuan, Jingtao Han, Jing Liu, Zhengyi Jiang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Aluminum matrix composites (AMCs) reinforced with in-situ AlB₂ particles have been fabricated using a combination of powder metallurgy, hot rolling and solution treatment. The effects of boron content (7 and 12 wt%), hot rolling and heat treatment parameters on the microstructures and mechanical properties of the composites were investigated by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), tensile test and micro-hardness measurements. The friction coefficient, wear behavior and scratch morphology of the AMCs and pure aluminum were also studied using scratch tests. The hardness and wear properties are higher in a case of composites when compared to unreinforced matrix material.

Dual Channel Matrix Switch Audio Receiver, Austin Fox

Electrical Engineering

The Dual Channel Matrix Switch Audio Receiver controls 2 separate audio output channels. Each channel plays any of the system's 3 inputs. This controller enables a user to play two separate audio signals through two separate speaker channels. The system design allows audio input from 2 RCA sources or 1 RCA source and a phono source. The system outputs an audio signal for each output simultaneously at up to 36W on each channel for an 8Ω load. The device allows a user to control the audio input and the volume of each output channel. An Arduino Uno R3 microcontroller interfaced …

Enhanced Tensile Properties Of Aluminium Matrix Composites Reinforced With Graphene Encapsulated Sic Nanoparticles, Alireza Fadavi Boostani, S Tahamtan, Zhengyi Jiang, Dongbin Wei, Siamak Yazdani, R Azari Khosroshahi, R Taherzadeh Mousavian, Jianzhong Xu, X M. Zhang, Dianyao Gong

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Due to a high propensity of nano-particles to agglomerate, making aluminium matrix composites with a uniform dispersion of the nano-particles using liquid routes is an exceptionally difficult task. In this study, an innovative approach was utilised to prevent agglomeration of nano-particle by encapsulating SiC nano-particles using graphene sheets during ball milling. Subsequently, the milled mixture was incorporated into A356 molten alloy using non-contact ultrasonic vibration method. Two different shapes for graphene sheets were characterised using HRTEM, including onion-like shells encapsulating SiC particles and disk-shaped graphene nanosheets. This resulted in 45% and 84% improvement in yield strength and tensile ductility, respectively. …

A Three-Dimensional-Engineered Matrix To Study The Microenvironment Of Cancer Stem Cells, Samaneh Kamali Sarvestani

Theses and Dissertations

Maintenance of cancer stem cells (CSCs) is regulated by their microenvironment. As cancer cells are affected by many factors in their microenvironment, a major challenge is to isolate the effect of a specific factor on CSCs while keeping other factors unchanged. We developed a synthetic inert 3D Poly Ethylene Glycol Di-Acrylate (PEGDA) gel culture system as a unique tool to study the effect of microenvironmental factors on CSCs response. Synthetic hydrogels provide the flexibility to design three-dimensional (3D) matrices to isolate and study individual factors in the tumor microenvironment. The first objective of this work was to investigate the effect …

Discriminative Sparse Inverse Covariance Matrix: Application In Brain Functional Network Classification, Luping Zhou, Lei Wang, Philip O. Ogunbona

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Recent studies show that mental disorders change the functional organization of the brain, which could be investigated via various imaging techniques. Analyzing such changes is becoming critical as it could provide new biomarkers for diagnosing and monitoring the progression of the diseases. Functional connectivity analysis studies the covary activity of neuronal populations in different brain regions. The sparse inverse covariance estimation (SICE), also known as graphical LASSO, is one of the most important tools for functional connectivity analysis, which estimates the interregional partial correlations of the brain. Although being increasingly used for predicting mental disorders, SICE is basically a generative …

Three-Dimensional Engineered Matrix To Study Cancer Stem Cells And Tumorsphere Formation: Effect Of Matrix Modulus, Xiaoming Yang, Samaneh Kamali Sarvestani, Seyedsina Moeinzadeh, Xuezhong He, Esmaiel Jabbari

Faculty Publications

Maintenance of cancer stem cells (CSCs) is regulated by the tumor microenvironment. Synthetic hydrogels provide the flexibility to design three-dimensional (3D) matrices to isolate and study individual factors in the tumor microenvironment. The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of matrix modulus on tumorsphere formation by breast cancer cells and maintenance of CSCs in an inert microenvironment without the interference of other factors. In that regard, 4T1 mouse breast cancer cells were encapsulated in inert polyethylene glycol diacrylate hydrogels and the effect of matrix modulus on tumorsphere formation and expression of CSC markers was investigated. The gel …

Characterizing The Relationship Between Sparse Matrix Preconditioners And The Storage Hierarchy, Diego Rivera, David Kaeli

David Kaeli

The objective of this poster is to improve the performance of preconditioning techniques codes and accelerate the memory accesses associated with these codes.

Methodology To Convert A Transportation Planning Origin-Destination Matrix Into A Microscopic Traffic Simulation Origin-Destination Matrix, Jose Osiris Vidana-Bencomo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Microscopic traffic simulation (MTS) is a cost-effective approach for the evaluation of traffic conditions in urban highways networks. In MTS models, traffic demand that is entered into the network is specified by one or several Origin-Destination (O-D) matrices. A major challenge in the application of MTS for large urban networks is the specification of the O-D matrices. This dissertation proposes a methodology that may be used to transform a O-D matrix from a transportation planning model (which is based on Traffic Analysis Zone, or TAZ, and is readily available) into a O-D matrix for a MTS model (which is traffic …

Biocomposites Developed Using Water-Plasticized Wheat Gluten As Matrix And Jute Fibers As Reinforcement, Narendra Reddy, Yiqi Yang

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Biocomposites developed from wheat gluten using water without any chemicals as plasticizer and jute fibers as reinforcement have much better flexural and tensile properties than similar polypropylene composites reinforced with jute fibers. Wheat gluten is an inexpensive and abundant co-product derived from renewable resources and is biodegradable but non-thermoplastic. Previous attempts at developing biocomposites from wheat gluten have used plasticizers such as glycerol or chemical modifications to make gluten thermoplastic. However, plasticizers have a considerably negative effect on the mechanical properties of the composites and chemical modifications make wheat gluten less biodegradable, expensive and/or environmentally unfriendly. In the research reported, …

Bcc Skin Cancer Diagnosis Based On Texture Analysis Techniques, Shao-Hui Chuang, Xiaoyan Sun, Wen-Yu Chang, Gwo-Shing Chen, Adam Huang, Jiang Li, Frederic D. Mckenzie

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present a texture analysis based method for diagnosing the Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) skin cancer using optical images taken from the suspicious skin regions. We first extracted the Run Length Matrix and Haralick texture features from the images and used a feature selection algorithm to identify the most effective feature set for the diagnosis. We then utilized a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier to classify the images to BCC or normal cases. Experiments showed that detecting BCC cancer based on optical images is feasible. The best sensitivity and specificity we achieved on our data set were 94% …

Head Pose Estimation Based On Extended Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, Ce Zhan, Wanqing Li, Philip Ogunbona

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

One popular solution to head pose estimation is to formulate it as a pattern classication problem, and treat the holistic facial appearance as the input to classiers. However, since the face appearance contains all kinds of information, the variation caused by other factors such as identity, expression and lighting may be larger than that caused by dierent head poses. Thus, the key challenge of these appearance based methods lies in constructing a feature subspace that could successfully recovers head pose while ignoring other sources of image variation. In this paper, following the intuition of combining parts to form a whole …