Engineering Commons^™

Micro-Mechanics Simulation Tool Optimization, Ruixuan Ren, Marisol Koslowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Crystalline films grown epitaxially on substrates consisting of a different crystalline material are of considerable interest in optoelectronic devices and the semiconductor industry. One way to progress in this field is to develop simulation tools based on specially designed numerical method. A nanoHUB simulation tool was developed based on the phase field theory, which considers the propagation of dislocations inside the crystalline film. However, the current tool needs several improvements to be more realistic and user-friendly. First, the inputs of the simulation tool are adjusted so that the user can use this tool directly without any additional calculation. The output …

Double-Pulse Nd:Yag-Co2 Libs Excitation For Bulk And Trace Analytes, Jason R. Becker, Patrick Skrodzki, Prasoon Diwakar, Sivanandan Harilal, Ahmed Hassanein

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy [LIBS] is a commonly used technique for multi-element analyses for various applications such as space exploration, nuclear forensics, environmental analysis, process monitoring. The advantages of the LIBS technique include robustness, ease of use, field portability, and real-time, non-invasive multi-element analyses. However, in comparison to other lab based analytical techniques, it suffers from low precision and low sensitivity. In order to overcome these drawbacks, various approaches have been used, including double-pulse LIBS [DPLIBS]. Typically, various wavelength combinations of two Nd: yttrium aluminum garnet [YAG] lasers have been used for DPLIBS. However, the use of long wavelength (CO_{2 …}

Preliminary Testing Of Plasma-Induced Combustion, Ahmed Thalib Razi, Carson Slabaugh, Robert Lucht

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Plasma-induced combustion (PIC) has been shown to improve the reliability, efficiency, and delay time of ignition in flight systems like augmentors and scramjets. These high-velocity systems are mostly used in military applications, and improvement may help commercial viability. To understand this chemical process, the concentration of radicals, particularly H radicals, must be tracked through the flame using laser diagnostics. This requires a steady source of plasma-assisted combustion to be secured and well-understood. A plasma torch flowing partially premixed air and methane was installed and successfully operated, and preliminary testing was carried out. Primarily it was observed that PIC created stable …

Vast 2014, Challenge One: Event Analysis Within Big Data, Isaac C. Sheeley, Jieqiong Zhao, Jing Xia, Shehzad Afzal, Joseph Christopher, David Ebert Dr.

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

News articles and email conversation data could be very useful in the analysis of developing and ongoing events, such as preventing a potential threat or possibly even locating a missing person. There is currently no “one-size-fits-all” solution to visualizing diverse forms of datasets and their sheer sizes are far too great to efficiently analyze by brute force methods. However, using principles of Visual Analytics, it is possible to take this information overload and transform it into a useful tool to help increase the efficiency of event analysis. A visualization system was developed for email conversation networks using web technologies. An …

The Role Of Surface Area In Catalytic Gasification Of Biomass, Elizabeth A. Wachs, Nitish Kumar, Indraneel Sircar, Prithviraja Basak, Jay P. Gore Phd

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Gasification of biomass has the potential to provide a carbon-negative source of liquid fuels. The current limited use of gasification is due in part to the high temperatures necessary to achieve high conversion levels. These temperatures can be lowered by the use of catalysts, but the mechanisms by which catalysts affect the reaction rate are not fully understood. Here, the structural component of potassium carbonate’s role in the gasification process was examined. Samples of pinewood sawdust were impregnated with potassium carbonate, then pyrolyzed with N2 in a fixed bed reactor at 750°C (heater thermocouple reading). Half of the char was …

The Influence Of Lightweight Aggregate On Internal Curing And Its Impact On Autogenous Shrinkage Of High-Performance Concrete, Neil J. Hartman, Timothy J. Barrett, Jason Weiss

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In bridge deck construction high performance concrete is often desirable, however in practice it is generally susceptible to early-age shrinkage cracking resulting in an overall reduction in service life. This research seeks to assess the potential for reducing early-age shrinkage in new bridge deck construction through the use of internal curing, a process in which internal reservoirs supply water to the hydrating cement paste during the early stages of cement hydration. In North America, internal curing is typically achieved by replacing a portion of the normal fine aggregate with an expanded fine lightweight aggregate (LWA). For this study, the free …

Roundabout Maintenance Manual, Emily A. Bonini, Pat Conner P.E., John Haddock Phd, P.E., Yu Tian

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In recent years, roundabouts have been rapidly growing in popularity. As a result, many communities are installing them in their roadways; however, they are encountering difficulties in maintaining them. Uneducated workers can cause damage to roundabouts and to themselves, costing cities time and money. This project aims to create a guide for communities new to roundabouts in order to reduce damages and unnecessary maintenance costs. Data was gathered by determining the most common maintenance questions and problems along with what information was already available on roundabout maintenance. Next, agencies most experienced with roundabouts were surveyed on the best maintenance practices. …

Chronological And Pedagogical Analysis Of Global Real-Time Assessment Tool For Teaching Enhancement (G-Rate), Syafiah Mahfuzah Johari, Monica Cox, Nikitha Sambamurthy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Global Real-Time Assessment Tool for Teaching Enhancement (G-RATE) serves as a pedagogical feedback tool to assess teaching performance in learning environments. This tool is developed based on How People Learn (HPL) framework, which specifically identifies four dimensions which are essential elements of an effective learning environment which are community-centeredness, learner-centeredness, assessment-centeredness and knowledge-centeredness. However, there are no succinct and meaningful representations for frequency and chronological observational data and no interpretation has been made from the collected observation data so far. This study addresses two different methods to observe the patterns from the observation data. First, observation data is compared …

He+ Ion Irradiation On Tungsten Surface In Extreme Conditions, George I. Joseph, Jitendra Tripathi, Sivanandan S. Harilal, Ahmed Hassanein

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Higher melting point (3695K), lower sputtering yield and most importantly, lower in-bulk, and co-deposit retention at elevated temperature makes tungsten (W) as a potential candidate for plasma-facing component (PFC) in the international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER)-divertor. Helium ion (He⁺) bombardment on W can cause wide variety of microstructural evolution, such as dislocation loops, helium holes/bubbles and fibre-form nanostructures (Fuzz) etc. In this work, 100 eV He⁺ ion irradiation, at temperature ranges from 500°C to 1000°C, will be performed on mechanically polished mirror like W surfaces. The surface modification and compositional analysis, due to ion irradiation, will be …

Visual Feedback On The Effects Of Temperature, Moisture, Relative Humidity, Solar Radiation, Wind And Precipitation On Growth And Production Of Grapes., Justus Karenzi, Calvin Yau, Sunghan Ko, David Ebert

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Weather conditions such as Temperature, Relative Humidity, Solar Radiation, and wind have reportedly been the primary cause to the significant difference in the growth of grape vines across the world. Past research findings have clearly studied the underlying effects of these weather parameters on the growth of grapes, but minimum work has been done on how to accurately turn this data into useful information. This paper aims at providing an overview on how to manage, analyze, and finally visualize the weather data in a way that is convenient to the farmers and can therefore help in the growth of grapes. …

A Wind-Derived Upwelling Index For Lake Michigan, Stephen B. Davis, Rebecca Essig, Cary Troy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Coastal upwelling is a phenomenon that occurs along coastlines throughout the world, and has been shown to be strongly correlated with large fish populations in these areas. Coastal upwelling occurs when strong coastal winds drive water transport away from the coast, causing colder, often nutrient-rich water to upwell in its place. While coastal upwellings can be detected with satellite imagery or in situ temperature measurements, these datasets are neither continuous nor long-term. A wind-derived upwelling index was created for Lake Michigan to continuously quantify upwellings over multiple decades, and to allow for further understanding of the impact of upwelling in …

Investigation Of Fracture And Healing Behavior Of Thermoreversible Gels Via Oscillation Rheology, Krithika Subramaniam, Travis Thornell, Kendra Erk

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Thermoreversible gels have the unique ability to self-heal, or repair themselves, once they are fractured. They are physically cross-linked, thus providing them with the capability to reform their broken bonds as a function of temperature. The objective of this project is to determine the extent of the gels’ recovery. If self-healing does in fact occur, these gels can be applied in various industries, including medicine for drug delivery or paints and coatings. The tri-block polymer poly(methyl methacrylate)-poly(n-butyl acrylate)-poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA-PnBA-PMMA) was heated and stirred with 2-ethyl-1-hexanol to create a polymer gel. Through the use of a rheometer, a shear stress …

Synthesis And Thermoelectric Properties Of Cusbs2, Tianyue Gao, Haiyu Fang, Yue Wu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Copper antimony sulfide, CuSbS2 nanoparticles have a large potential of being a good thermoelectric material because they are made up of earth abundant elements. Thermoelectric materials can convert thermal energy into electricity, so that the wasted energy can be saved. Also, by using this earth abundant material, we can make thermoelectric materials much cheaper. The hypothesis of this study is that CuSbS2 could have a large Seebeck coefficient, one of the most important factors of thermoelectric materials, because of the complexity of its band structure. The other hypothesis is that thermal transport could be significantly suppressed through nanostructuring. There are …

Model-Free Method Of Reinforcement Learning For Visual Tasks, Jeff S. Soldate, Jonghoon Jin, Eugenio Culurciello

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

There has been success in recent years for neural networks in applications requiring high level intelligence such as categorization and assessment. In this work, we present a neural network model to learn control policies using reinforcement learning. It takes a raw pixel representation of the current state and outputs an approximation of a Q value function made with a neural network that represents the expected reward for each possible state-action pair. The action is chosen an \epsilon-greedy policy, choosing the highest expected reward with a small chance of random action. We used gradient descent to update the weights and biases …

Development Of Combined Dual-Pump Vibrational And Pure-Rotational Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering (Dpvcars And Prcars) System, Shenli Yuan, Aman Satija, Robert Lucht

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) [1,2] is a spatially-resolved, time-resolved spectroscopic technique for quantitative measurements in reacting flows [3 – 6]. This work demonstrates a combination of N₂/O₂/CO₂ dual-pump vibrational coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (DPVCARS) system and two-beam pure-rotational coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (PRCARS) system. It is based on the previous development of combined VCARS and PRCARS system which was used to obtain temperature measurements in non-premixed H₂-air flames. The new combined system will be used to measure the temperature profiles and major species concentrations such as N₂/O₂/CO_{2 …}

Using Collagen Binding Poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) Nanoparticles To Prevent Intravascular Platelet Adhesion And Activation, Anna E. Searle, Alyssa Panitch, James Mcmasters

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Balloon angioplasty, the most prevalent non-surgical treatment for Atherosclerosis, damages the endothelial layer of the artery, baring an underlying collagenous layer, which causes platelet adhesion and activation and eventual thrombosis and intimal hyperplasia. Previous work in our lab has used a collagen-binding peptidoglycan, dermatan-sulfate-SILY (DS-SILY), that has been shown to bind to type I collagen and prevent platelet adhesion and activation. Our goal is to fabricate nanoparticle-SILY by cross-linking SILY to a poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (NIPAm) nanoparticle instead of a DS backbone, while retaining the SILY’s high collagen binding affinity and platelet inhibition capacity observed in DS-SILY. Using a biotin-streptavidin assay, we …

Optimizing Neutron Yield For Active Interrogation, Amanda M. Loveless, Allen L. Garner, Robert D. Bean, Nader Satvat

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Neutrons are commonly used for many applications, including active interrogation and cancer therapy. One critical aspect for active interrogation efficiency is neutron yield, which is more important for successful resolution than the energy spectrum. The typical approach for improving neutron yield entails producing more neutrons, which has motivated multiple studies using the interaction of increasingly more powerful tabletop lasers with plastic targets to generate protons or deuterons that are absorbed by another target to create neutrons [1]. Alternatively, one may use lenses to focus the neutrons to increase yield rather than simply generating more neutrons with more powerful lasers [2]. …

Finite Element Analysis Of Bolted Connections Under Fire, Ke Liu, Qiaqia Zhu, Amit H. Varma

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Over the course of human history, fire disasters are one of the major catastrophes that causes loss of lives and properties. In order to ensure building safety against fire, civil engineers seek to understand the behavior of structures at high temperatures. Moreover, they need to study the behavior of bolted connections, given the important role it plays in steel structures. Sarraj (2007) proposed a plate-bearing computational model used to describe this behavior; however, it has never been experimentally verified. Prior to this specific project, a series of single-bolted connection tests at 400°C and 600°C were conducted in the Bowen Laboratory …

Thin-Film Sol-Gel As Controlled Delivery Platform For Neural Microelectrodes, Margaret A. Harden, Matthew D. Mcdermott, Kevin J. Otto

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Long-term efficacy of neural implantation devices is a persisting challenge in neural engineering and rehabilitation. Upon implantation of a neural device, the foreign body response (FBR) is triggered and glial cells form a sheath around the electrode array. This sheath isolates the array from the rest of the brain both mechanically and electrically. Tetramethyl orthosilicate (TMOS), a thin-film polymer, has been shown to not negatively impact the impedance and charge-carrying capacity, as well as offer a controlled delivery method to deliver pharmaceuticals to mitigate inflammation without significant effect to device design. Using an in vitro protein delivery model to analyze …

Designing Constructed Wetlands For Water Purification In Tanzania, Danielle Mcneely, Michael Sheehan, John Lumkes

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In Tanzania half of households have unsafe drinking water (Nkonya, 2010) and many diseases arise from poor water quality, including meningitis, hepatitis A and E, and salmonella (Kusiluka et al., 2004). One cost-effective way of cleaning water is by passing it through a wetland. This research is focused on simplifying the process of horizontal subsurface flow wetland construction for the villagers of Endallah. The outcome is an Excel tool that standardizes methodology for building wetlands that can then be applied to Endallah. Rainfall data from the Arusha region of Tanzania was used to make a rainfall estimation grid. From this …

Polymer-Based Thermoelectric Devices, Stuart W. Hilsmier, Edward P. Tomlinson, Bryan Boudouris

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Currently, over 50% of all energy generated in the US is lost as waste heat, and thermoelectric generators offer a promising means to recoup some of this energy, if their efficiency is improved. While organic thermoelectric materials lack the efficiency of their inorganic counterparts, they are composed of highly abundant resources and have low temperature processing conditions. Recently, a new class of redox-active polymers, radical polymers, has exhibited high electrical conductivity in an entirely amorphous medium. In addition, these radical polymers have a simple synthetic scheme and can be highly tunable to provide desired electrical properties. In this study, the …

Design Of A Small Scale Roll To Roll Device, Amon A. Pereira, Edward White, Rebecca Krone Kramer

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In the soft robotics field, hyperelastic polymer films are used in conjunction with eutectic gallium indium to create flexible strain gages. However, rapid large scale manufacturing methods of such sensors have yet to be developed.

Developing new manufacturing methods will allow for researchers to build and test new soft sensor concepts faster but also pave the way for future mass-production of these sensors for consumer or industrial consumption.

One of those methods would be a Roll to Roll System (R2R) similar to those used to in the publication industry. In this context, Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film rolls will be used …

Multi-Channel Analysis For Gradient Artifact Removal From Concurrent Eeg-Fmri Studies, Miguel R. Castellanos, Zhongming Liu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Concurrent electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings are susceptible to large amounts of noise due to the static and dynamic magnetic fields present inside the MR scanner. EEG-fMRI studies are conducted to provide better spatial and temporal resolution for each recording, respectively, but the artifacts found in the EEG render the data impossible to interpret. Past studies have focused on signal post-processing techniques which are able to effectively remove noise upon the completion of a study, but there are no techniques able to process the data in real-time without extensive calibration. This research addresses this issue by …

The Simulation Of Resonant Tunneling Diodes, Woodrow A. Gilbertson, Pengyu Long, Jim Fonseca, Gerhard Klimeck

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The goal of this project is to improve the simulation of an electrical device known as a Resonant Tunneling Diode (RTD). Diodes are in most electronic devices today, but RTDs have 10 times greater switching speeds than regular diodes. This increase in efficiency would have impacts from supercomputers to the next big cell phone. The increased functionality of the simulation tool will come from implementing more recent mathematical solvers and modeling techniques. The simulation tool makes use of a variant of Non-Equilibrium Green Functions (NEGF) with an effective mass approximation. The two contacts are treated as equilibrium regions and the …

Portable Pneumatic Demonstrator For Stem Education, Joe Chege, Tyler Helmus, John Lumkes

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

This project involves the development of a compact and portable pneumatic demonstrator. Using two pneumatic actuators and four solenoid valves, we are able to move an arm on both the X and Y-axes; one actuator for each range of motion. The setup also employs an air pump and a tank to maintain pressure for the actuators. On the actuators there is an arm that holds a camera, a stepper motor and an electromagnet. The stepper motor raises and lowers the electromagnet which is used to pick up objects. The camera is used to automatically identify objects for when the demonstrator …

Chronic Brain Stimulation Using Micro-Ecog Devices, Hayden C. Carney, Roy Lycke, Kevin J. Otto, Amelia A. Schendel, Justin Williams

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Recording and stimulating brain activity has had great success both as a research tool and as a clinical technique. Neural prosthetics can replace limbs, restore hearing, and treat disorders like Parkinson’s and epilepsy, but are relatively crude. Current neural prosthetic systems use penetrating electrodes to achieve high precision, but the invasive nature of these devices provoke a strong immune response that limits chronic use. (Polikov et al) In our study we evaluate micro-electrocortiographic (micro-ECoG) devices which sit under the skull and on the surface of the brain for stimulation over chronic timescales. We anticipate these devices with their less invasive …

Characterization Of Mechanical Properties Displayed In Body Armor Ballistic Fibers, Dawei Li, Matthew Hudspeth, Weinong Wayne Chen

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The current body armor systems manufactured using ballistic fibers are not performing as theoretical results predict and are causing injuries. The actual maximum projectile penetration speed that the body armor can endure is significantly lower than the theoretical maximum speed, thus causing a costly build-test relationship that is not aided with modeling design efforts. The main aim of this research is to determine the maximum penetration speeds for ballistic yarns and fabrics. Secondary aim is to examine the common assumption that during transverse impact, single fiber is under pure tension and shear stress is negligible. To examine aforementioned assumption, fibers …

Wirelessly Powered And Transmitting Current Sensing Device, Christopher Quinkert, Steven Lee, Pedro Irazoqui

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

As the rate of incidence of diabetes increases in the modern world, more accurate and reliable methods of glucose detection must be developed for patients with diabetes. Currently, 25.8 million people have diabetes in the United States alone and account for $174 billion in healthcare costs annually [1]. Devices that can be used without the need for as much patient interaction, regular replacement, or great patient expenses would be a large step forward in the ability of doctors and patients to effectively manage diabetes. To measure glucose concentrations in vivo, a biosensor is used to transduce glucose to an electrical …

Effect Of Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate And Sodium Chloride On The Stability Of Aqueous Dispersions Of Tio2 Particles Against Aggregation And Sedimentation, Xilan Zhu, Guanrong Bai, Elias I. Franses, David S. Corti, Yung-Jih Yang

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Dispersions of TiO₂ particles are widely used as the main pigment in white inks for inkjet printers due to its brightness and high opacity. The TiO₂ particles, however, have a high density, and so the possible fast settling of these particles can cause maintenance problems for the printers and lower the printing quality. We studied the effect of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), a commonly used dispersant, on the stability of 1 wt% TiO2 aqueous dispersions, both with and without NaCl, against aggregation and sedimentation. The sedimentation half time (t50), defined as the time need for the particles to …

Rheo-Piv Investigation Of Fracture And Self-Healing In A Triblock Copolymer Gel, Benjamin A. Helfrecht, Travis L. Thornell, Kendra A. Erk

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Physically associating polymer gels have shown the ability to heal after failure, making them promising candidates for various medical applications or consumer products. However, the processes by which these materials self-heal is not well-understood. This study seeks to explain the self-healing behavior of the triblock copolymer poly(methyl methacrylate)-poly(n-butyl acrylate)-poly(methyl methacrylate), or PMMA-PnBA-PMMA, by probing the material’s post-fracture behavior with rheometry and particle image velocimetry (PIV). The self-healing behavior was studied by deforming each gel in shear until failure multiple times with “recovery” periods in-between. PIV was used to verify the occurrence of each fracture in both time and space. Stress …