Engineering Commons^™

Examining Bicycle And Motorized Vehicle Speeds And Their Relationships In The Context Of Urban Roadways, Jaclyn Sue Schaefer

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis presents a compilation of papers exploring passenger car and bicycle speeds through their interactions with each other and with urban roadway factors.

First, following a concern raised in part of the traffic literature that a large mode shift toward bicycling may cause travel time delays and potentially exacerbate congestion instead of alleviate it unless bicycle lanes are installed, an empirical study detailing how the presence of bicycles on urban roads without bicycle lanes may affect passenger car speeds is presented. Pneumatic tube data from six predominantly low speed, low volume roads in Portland, Oregon were utilized to identify …

Relationships Between In-Situ Tests And Soil Cyclic Strength For Earthquake Hazard Characterization In The Pacific Northwest, Tanner Scott Bryantt

Dissertations and Theses

Strong earthquake shaking is a natural hazard threat in the Pacific Northwest. Soil failure due to strong earthquake shaking -- known as cyclic soil failure or liquefaction -- is expected to cause large ground deformations and damage to roads, bridges, and other civil infrastructure. Cyclic soil strength (CRR) is often characterized with in-situ geotechnical tests including the cone penetration test (CPT). Relationships between CRR and in-situ test data are not well established for soils in the Pacific Northwest. Portland State University, in partnership with New Albion Geotechnical has compiled a database of cyclic lab tests for Pacific Northwest soils to …

Vessel Trajectory Prediction Using Historical Ais Data, Jagir Laxmichand Charla

Dissertations and Theses

Maritime vessel position coordinates are important information for maritime situational planning and organization. A better estimate of future locations of the maritime vessels, from their current locations, can help maritime authorities to make planned decisions, which can be helpful to avoid traffic congestion and longer waiting times. This thesis develops a method for estimating future locations of the vessels using their current and previous locations and other data.

The motivating scenario for this work is that of determining the future locations of the vessels based on their current location and previous locations for accurate modelling of underwater acoustic noise. As …

Achieving High Reliability Organizations Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps - The Case Of Offshore Oil And Gas, Ahmed A. Alibage

Dissertations and Theses

The safety culture of so-called high-reliability organizations (HROs) encompasses values, routines, and work processes that allow an organization to prevent mistakes and quickly bounce back if unexpected events occur. It is said to provide a model for improving organizational resilience in the offshore oil and gas industry, where small errors can grow into accidents with devastating environmental, social, and economic impacts. To date, such a transfer of successful practices is impeded by a lack of system perspective that would allow researchers and practitioners to fully understand the safety dynamics in HROs, adjust them to the unique setting of offshore oil …

Clustered Hyperspectral Target Detection, Sean Onufer Stalley

Dissertations and Theses

Aerial target detection is often used to search for relatively small things over large areas of land. Depending on the size and signature of the target, detection can be a very easy or very difficult task. By capturing images with several hundred color channels, hyperspectral sensors provide a new way of looking at this task, both literally and figuratively. Hyperspectral sensors can be used in many aerial target detection tasks such as identifying unhealthy trees in a forest, searching for minerals at a mining site, or finding the sources of chemical leaks at a factory. The high spectral resolution of …

Entrainment Processes For A Jet In Cross-Flow: The Quantification Of Turbulent Contributions And Their Importance On Accurate Modeling, Graham Asher Freedland

Dissertations and Theses

A jet in cross flow (JICF) is examined experimentally by injecting a stream of air into crossing fluid with an aim into quantifying entrainment process and downstream evolution. The behavior of JICF is important to fields ranging from turbine-blade cooling to smokestack pollution and volcanic eruption dynamics. Existing simplified volcanic plume models are tested; most importantly, the near-field contributions of complex interconnected vortex systems, which present significant uncertainties because they assume negligible turbulence. While jets in irrotational cross-flow have been investigated, this analysis has focused on the interaction between a turbulent jet in low and highly turbulent cross-flow created by …

Methodologies To Quantify Transit Performance Metrics At The System-Level Using High-Resolution Gps, Stop-Level, And Gtfs Archived Transit Data, Travis Bradley Glick

Dissertations and Theses

Performance metrics have typically focused at two main scales: a microscopic scale that focuses on specific locations, time-periods, and trips; and, a macroscopic scale that averages metrics over longer times, entire routes, and networks. When applied to entire transit systems, microscopic methodologies often have computational limitations while macroscopic methodologies ascribe artificial uniformity to non-uniform analysis areas. These limitations highlight the need for a middle approach.

This dissertation presents a mesoscopic analysis based around timepoint-segments, which are a novel application of an existing system for many transit agencies. For this research, routes are divided into a consecutive group of bus stops …

Use Of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (Cfrp) Including Sheets, Rods, And Ropes In Strengthening And Repairing Long Reinforced Concrete Columns, Yasir Matloob Saeed

Dissertations and Theses

The use of FRP materials in strengthening and repairing of reinforced concrete (RC) structures has increased in the past two decades. Recently, FRP materials have become one of the most used materials in rehabilitation engineering. For seismic retrofitting of RC structures, usually the process involves strengthening or repairing the vertical support elements of the buildings or bridges. Several studies focused on the use of FRP materials in strengthening and repairing RC columns. Externally bonded (EB) FRP sheets or laminates and near-surface-mounted (NSM) FRP rods have been used for enhancing the strength and ductility of RC columns. Although glass FRP (GFRP) …

Approximate Pattern Matching Using Hierarchical Graph Construction And Sparse Distributed Representation, Aakanksha Mathuria

Dissertations and Theses

With recent developments in deep networks, there have been significant advances in visual object detection and recognition. However, some of these networks are still easily fooled/hacked and have shown "bag of features" kinds of failures. Some of this is due to the fact that even deep networks make only marginal use of the complex structure that exists in real-world images. Primate visual systems appear to capture the structure in images, but how?

In the research presented here, we are studying approaches for robust pattern matching using static, 2D Blocks World images based on graphical representations of the various components of …

Indoor Air Quality Impacts Of A Woodstove Exchange Program In Washington County, Oregon, Matthew Forrest Survilo

Dissertations and Theses

More than six million people in the United States use wood stoves as their primary heat source. Wood stoves emit air pollutants that may impact health, e.g., wood combustion products are associated with premature death and aggravation of pulmonary and cardiovascular conditions. There are few studies investigating the efficacy of wood stove exchange programs (WSEPs) as a method to improve indoor air quality (IAQ). In partnership with Washington County Department of Health and Human Services we conducted an air quality study to measure the impact of a WSEP on indoor and neighborhood levels of wood combustion products. Twenty households engaged …

Theoretical And Experimental Validation Of A Cubesat's L-Band Communication System, Evangelos Mastrogiannis

Dissertations and Theses

An L-band uplink communication system was designed and validated in the lab for a CubeSat satellite operating in low Earth orbit (LEO). This paper investigates communication link analysis, discusses the design strategy for an inexpensive CubeSat receiver operating in L-band with a moderate power Earth station transmitter, and validates the link budget with prototype hardware using an anechoic chamber.

A receiver's required carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) establishes the basis for a link budget. The requirement for a digital communication link is set by the bit-error-rate (BER) requirement of a chosen communication protocol which is inversely related to the energy per bit …

A Scoring Model To Evaluate Offshore Oil Projects: Case Of Eni And Mellitah Oil & Gas, Abdulhakim Giadedi

Dissertations and Theses

Offshore oil projects have many different and unique characteristics, such as larger project size, higher number of scopes, and higher complexity. In fact, offshore oil projects described as mega projects are ones that require significant assessment and acquisition methods in order to reduce risks and failures. Traditionally, cash flow analysis and return on investment are the most known factors to evaluate offshore oil projects. However, there are several other internal and external factors that affect the overall performance of offshore oil projects. A comprehensive approach and advanced tools are required to evaluate these factors that can have a significant impact …

Analog Statistical Design For Manufacturability, Yu-Shan Wang

Dissertations and Theses

The manufacturing yield, overkill, and defect level limit the feasibility of analog circuits in SoCs. The conventional method of handling process and environmental variation is to assign a design margin such that the design meets specifications at several processes and environmental corners. However, checking only extreme corners limits performance in comparison to the more rigorous statistical approach of the computing manufacturing and quality figure of merit. The statistical approach requires transistor-level simulation of hundreds or even thousands of samples, not just a few corners, and thus is very time consuming.

This research offers a method for reducing the time required …

Dynamic Through-Silicon Via Clustering In 3d Ic Floorplanning For Early Performance Optimization, Sucheta Mohapatra

Dissertations and Theses

Through-silicon via (TSV)-based three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) are expected to be the breakthrough technology for keeping up with the scaling trends of Moore's law, while also offering the unique opportunity for functional diversification through heterogenous integration. TSVs are vertical metal interconnects enabling communication across stacked and thinned dies. The dramatic reduction in global wirelength and chip footprint in 3DICs, directly improves delay, device density, bandwidth and routing congestion. Even with the current maturation of TSV process, the roadmap for industry adoption of 3DICs remains largely uncertain due to lack of standardized 3D tools capable of handling the sheer complexity …

Synthesis And Assessment Of Radiotherapy-Enhancing Nanoparticles, Hayden Winter

Dissertations and Theses

Radiation Therapy (RT) is a common treatment for cancerous lesions that acts by ionizing matter in the affected tissue, causing cell death. The disadvantage of RT is that it is most often delivered via an external beam of radiation which must pass through healthy tissues to reach the target site, ionizing matter within healthy tissues as well. To address this drawback, techniques are being developed for increasing RT-induced cell death in a target tissue while minimizing cell death in surrounding tissues. This effect is known as radiation dose enhancement or RT enhancement.

The approach to RT enhancement studied in this …

Synthesizing Expressive Behaviors For Humanoid Robots, Mathias Irwan Sunardi

Dissertations and Theses

Humanoid robots are expected to be able to communicate with expressive gestures at the same level of proficiency as humans. However, creating expressive gestures for humanoid robots is difficult and time consuming due to the high number of degrees of freedom (DOF) and the iterations needed to get the desired expressiveness.

Current robot motion editing software has varying levels of sophistication of motion editing tools ranging from basic ones that are text-only, to ones that provide graphical user interfaces (GUIs) which incorporate advanced features, such as curve editors and inverse kinematics. These tools enable users to create simple motions; but …

Statistical Modeling Of Historical Daily Water Temperatures In The Lower Columbia River, Malia Hanae Scott

Dissertations and Theses

Water temperature affects numerous aspects of aquatic life, and its stability is critical to cold water fish such as salmonids. With rising anthropogenic influence in natural environments, the future existence of these organisms is becoming less certain. In this study, I examined the evolution of historical water temperatures in the lower Columbia River by creating a statistical model to estimate daily historical water temperatures between the 1850s and 2010s. Daily air temperature and river flow measurements were used as inputs to the model, which estimated daily water temperatures at Bonneville Dam. The model used time lags between air temperature and …

Determinants Of Student Information Technology Adoption, Hans P. Vanderschaaf

Dissertations and Theses

Innovating service delivery in higher education is central to supporting institutional and societal goals of increasing the numbers of college graduates and for transforming higher education institutions to center on the needs of today's students. Within this context, technology plays a critical role. This research seeks to contribute to institutional, academic and educational technology sector efforts to dramatically enhance service quality, in support of improving undergraduate student outcomes (student success), by identifying the determinants of student information technology adoption and removing barriers to accessing higher education.

Using a mixed-methods and empirical approach based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and …

Dynamic Effects Of Inertial Particles On The Wake Recovery Of A Model Wind Turbine, Sarah E. Smith

Dissertations and Theses

Impacting particles such as rain, dust, and other debris can have devastating structural effects on wind turbines, but little is known about the interaction of such debris within turbine wakes. This study aims to characterize behavior of inertial particles within the turbulent wake of a wind turbine and relative effects on wake recovery. Here a model wind turbine is subjected to varied two-phase inflow conditions, with wind as the carrier fluid (Re_λ = 49 - 88) and polydisperse water droplets (26 to 45µm in diameter) at varied concentrations (Φ_v=0.24 x 10^-5 - 1.3 …

Exploring Policies And Strategies For The Diffusion Of Remote Patient Monitoring (Rpm) For The Care Of Senior Population, Hamad Asri Alanazi

Dissertations and Theses

Telemedicine offers great promise in addressing some of the healthcare challenges such as the increase of healthcare expenditure, a growing population, and a projected physician shortage; telemedicine is increasingly being included in the discussion of medicine's future. Telemedicine offers the capabilities to deliver healthcare across distances at reduced costs while maintaining or even increasing the quality of treatment and services.

The objective of this research is to develop a model to evaluate alternative solutions to increase the adoption of RPM for the senior population. Also, the research provides a systematic approach for a comprehensive assessment of teleconsultation adoption, develop a …

Droplet Ejections During Wet Lab Operations Aboard Spacecraft, Caleb Cushman Turner

Dissertations and Theses

The breakup and rupture of liquid bridges, thin films, bubbles, droplets, rivulets, and jets can produce satellite droplets that are subsequently ejected into their surrounding environment. For example, when any solid object is withdrawn from a liquid bath, the formation of an ever-thinning columnar liquid bridge eventually ruptures along the axis of the bridge. When rupture occurs under typical pipetting conditions the dynamics governing the rupture almost always produce at a minimum a satellite droplet. When these droplets occur they are often too small and too fast to be observed by the human eye. In a terrestrial environment they are …

Memristive Architectures And Algorithms For Approximate Graph-Based Inference, Mohammad M.A. Taha

Dissertations and Theses

The goal of this thesis is to design fast, low-power, robust graph-based inference systems. Our approach to this is by using (1) in-memory computing, (2) approximate computing principles, and (3) memristive devices.

This work is motivated by the fact that conventional von Neumann architectures are not efficient for inference applications, mainly due to the data transfer bottleneck. Adding cache memories and using GPUs is a remedy, however, does not eliminate this bottleneck. In-memory computing is an alternative approach that performs all computations inside the memory, thus eliminating the data transfer bottleneck.

The memristor, which is a passive two-terminal device, is …

Evaluating R&D Projects In Regulated Utilities: The Case Of Power Transmission Utilities, Edwin Garces

Dissertations and Theses

R&D project selection is essential for many organizations; however, it is a complex decision since it is affected by many factors. These factors vary among organizations because of their different objectives and conditions. There are limited budgets for the investments, and the current R&D project selection methods are focused on financial analysis or complex mathematical probabilistic calculations. Therefore, the main motivation of this research is to create a method to help improve the ex-ante selection of R&D projects in regulated organizations. More importantly, the case application is the electric transmission utilities sector, which plays one of the most critical roles …

A Market Diffusion Potential (Mdp) Assessment Model For Residential Energy Efficient (Ee) Technologies In The U.S., Momtaj Khanam

Dissertations and Theses

The Diffusion of Residential Energy Efficient (EE) Technologies has been studied for many years. Finding ways to bridge the energy efficiency gap and increase the diffusion of these technologies have been of much interest to researchers and practitioners alike. However, in most studies, diffusion is equated to adoption of EE technologies by consumers. The present study tries to break this mindset and develops a model to assess the diffusion of residential EE technologies from the market's perspective. The model assesses diffusion of an EE technology based on the market's ability to provide benefits to customers that are identified to be …

Ce-Qual-W2 Hydrodynamic And Water Quality Model Of The Cedar River Municipal Watershed, Amory Spencer Cervarich

Dissertations and Theses

The laterally averaged, two-dimensional model CE-QUAL-W2 was used to develop a water quality model of the Cedar River Municipal Watershed as a reservoir management and climate change scenario tool. The 90,638-acre watershed, located 56 kilometers southeast of Seattle, WA, provides drinking water to over 1.4 million people. The watershed relies on two waterbodies for storage, Chester Morse Lake and the Masonry Pool. The Masonry Dam is the main storage structure in the watershed. The Cedar River flows downstream from the Masonry Dam for 57 kilometers to Lake Washington. The reservoir model simulated Chester Morse Lake and the Masonry Pool. The …

Dynamic Response Of Highway Bridge Superstructures Subjected To Wave Action: Experimental Analysis And Numerical Modeling, Alaa Waleed Hameed

Dissertations and Theses

Bridges are critical lifeline components of the infrastructure network, enabling economies to function under normal conditions and disaster response and recovery missions to take place after extreme events. Therefore, ensuring satisfactory performance increases community resilience and minimizes both human and economic losses. Coastal bridges, which are the focus of this PhD dissertation, are vulnerable to coastal storms. High failure rates of these bridges during two major hurricane events in the mid-2000s have spurred research activities to better understand the wave-induced forces of coastal bridges.

This PhD research represents a continuation effort to build, implement, and introduce new fundamental concepts and …

An Assessment Of The Decision-Making Units' Efficiency In Service Systems, Maoloud Yakhlif Dabab

Dissertations and Theses

Most tools and models of performance and quality of service management are generic and do not solve complex technical systems. The critical components of the system need such tools to assess their efficiency to make a better decision about them. One of the primary objectives in the service systems is to improve the ability of efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of critical assets. One of the challenges with improving critical assets is the amount of major capital spending needed to upgrade a technology infrastructure with a high obsolescence rate. This along with usage and reliability issues, makes evaluating mobile cells to …

Design Of A 7-Mhz Portable Direct Conversion Transceiver With Digitally Controlled Keying, Abram Morphew

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis outlines the design of a portable direct conversion transceiver system for the 7-MHz (or 40m) band. This band is popular due to its propagation characteristics which allow for world-wide communication with very low power. The transceiver utilizes a crystal-stabilized local oscillator optimized for frequency agility, low power consumption, and an optimal drive level of +7 dBm. A low power 8-bit microcontroller acts as an interface for either a straight key providing manual Morse code operation or digital logic control from a personal computer. It also acts as a side tone oscillator providing audio feedback to the operator during …

Designing Gates And Architectures For Superconducting Quantum Systems, Sahar Daraeizadeh

Dissertations and Theses

Large-scale quantum computers can solve certain problems that are not tractable by currently available classical computational resources. The building blocks of quantum computers are qubits. Among many different physical realizations for qubits, superconducting qubits are one of the promising candidates to realize gate model quantum computers. In this dissertation, we present new multi-qubit gates for nearest-neighbor superconducting quantum systems. In the absence of a physical hardware, we simulate the dynamics of the quantum system and use the simulated environment as a framework for test, design, and optimization of quantum gates and architectures. We explore three different simulation-based gate design methodologies: …

Optimized Xanthene-Based Probes For Pancreatic Cancer Imaging, Ian Ruramai Munhenzva

Dissertations and Theses

Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest human malignancies with an extremely poor 5-year survival rate of below 5%. Surgical resection is the most effective treatment of choice because chemotherapy and radiation therapy do not improve life expectancy. Residual tumor after PDAC surgery is common due to a lack of PDAC targeted intraoperative contrast agents to confirm clear margins.

Fluorescence imaging has the potential to improve surgery outcome and PDAC patients' survival rate via the use of highly PDAC-specific molecular probes to facilitate tumor identification. This thesis describes the application of a focused library of benzoxanthene fluorophores for …