Engineering Commons^™

Estimation Of Solute Fluxes From Ungaged Headwater Catchments In The Catskill Park Of New York State, Chris Gianfagna

Civil and Environmental Engineering - Theses

Predictions of flow and subsequent solute fluxes from ungaged basins have important implications both for water resources management and ecosystem monitoring studies. The Catskill region of New York State is one such place that requires both water resources management and ecosystem monitoring due to its strategic location as the main water-supplying region for New York City. This study examines the differences in chemical mass flux estimates made in ungaged basins using three different chemistry aggregation methods for solute concentrations determined from monthly grab samples. The efficacy of area ratios for predicting flow at the upstream location of a nested pair …

Methodology For Standby Leakage Power Reduction In Nanometer-Scale Cmos Circuits, Jae Woong Chun

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

In nanometer-scale CMOS technology, leakage power has become a major component of the total power dissipation due to the downscaling of threshold voltage and gate oxide thickness. The leakage power consumption has received even more attention by increasing demand for mobile devices. Since mobile devices spend a majority of their time in a standby mode, the leakage power savings in standby state is critical to extend battery lifetime. For this reason, low power has become a major factor in designing CMOS circuits.

In this dissertation, we propose a novel transistor reordering methodology for leakage reduction. Unlike previous technique, the proposed …

Dynamic Thermal Management For Microprocessors, Yang Ge

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

In deep submicron era, thermal hot spots and large temperature gradients significantly impact system reliability, performance, cost and leakage power. Dynamic thermal management techniques are designed to tackle the problems and control the chip temperature as well as power consumption. They refer to those techniques which enable the chip to autonomously modify the task execution and power dissipation characteristics so that lower-cost cooling solutions could be adopted while still guaranteeing safe temperature regulation. As long as the temperature is regulated, the system reliability can be improved, leakage power can be reduced and cooling system lifetime can be extended significantly.

Multimedia …

Method Of Moments Analysis Of An Aperture In A Thick Ground Plane, Ahmet Burak Olcen

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

The problem of electromagnetic scattering from and transmission through an arbitrarily shaped aperture is considered. The aperture is in a thick infinite perfectly conducting ground plane. The conducting walls of the cavity inside the ground plane are of arbitrary shape. The apertures at both ends of the cavity are also of arbitrary shape. The structure is illuminated by an incident plane electromagnetic wave. The Green's function for this complicated problem is almost impossible to determine. Therefore the surface equivalence principle is used to reduce this complex problem into three simpler ones. Each such problem consists of equivalent surface currents radiating …

Design, Modeling And Analysis Of Non-Classical Field Effect Transistors, Peijie Feng

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

Transistor scaling following per Moore's Law slows down its pace when entering into nanometer regime where short channel effects (SCEs), including threshold voltage fluctuation, increased leakage current and mobility degradation, become pronounced in the traditional planar silicon MOSFET. In addition, as the demand of diversified functionalities rises, conventional silicon technologies cannot satisfy all non-digital applications requirements because of restrictions that stem from the fundamental material properties. Therefore, novel device materials and structures are desirable to fuel further evolution of semiconductor technologies. In this dissertation, I have proposed innovative device structures and addressed design considerations of those non-classical field effect transistors …

Spatial Patterns Of Mercury In Atmospheric Deposition, Soils And Lake Biota In The Adirondack Park, New York, Xue Yu

Civil and Environmental Engineering - Dissertations

Mercury (Hg), as a trace element cycling in the environment, poses a serious health threat to both humans and wildlife due to its toxicity. Atmospheric deposition is the main source of Hg to most remote environments. The Adirondack Park in New York State of the United States receives moderate Hg deposition, and is a region characterized by relatively high concentrations of Hg in the terrestrial and especially aquatic biota. It is important to understand the mechanisms that contribute to the sensitivity of this region to Hg inputs. In my research, studies of the spatial patterns of Hg in atmospheric deposition, …

Characterization Of Polyacrylonitrile Carbon Fibers, Christian Burke Iversen

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering – Theses

Carbon fiber composites are a widely used, advanced material with exceedingly high strength to weight properties. In this thesis, a literature overview of carbon fiber manufacturing was provided, as well as a thorough analysis of in- house electrospun polyacrylonitrile fiber stabilization and surface modification of the resulting carbon fibers. In the first section, an overview of precursor fiber fabrication is provided, followed by an analysis of stabilization using surface and bulk composition, dimensional analysis, and functional group analysis via FTIR. The second section uses the current stabilization procedure to develop carbon nanofibers. Fibers first underwent a nitric acid oxidation time …

Building Envelope Wind Pressure Manipulation For Application In Streamlined High-Rise Buildings, Sivaramprasad Sivakumar

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

This research investigates methods of manipulating building envelope wind pressure distribution for application in the natural ventilation of high-rise buildings. CFD simulations are employed to predict the wind pressure distribution around the building envelope. First, a 2-D CFD study is conducted to explore various techniques of manipulating the building envelope wind pressure distribution. This study indicates that the use of externally mounted flow-resistance devices is an effective method of manipulating the wind pressure distribution. It is demonstrated that this technique is well suited for application to buildings of streamlined cross-section (e.g. elliptical planform). Next, a 3-D CFD study is conducted …

Enriching Step-Based Product Information Models To Support Product Life-Cycle Activities, Mehmet Ilteris Sarigecili

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

The representation and management of product information in its life-cycle requires standardized data exchange protocols. Standard for Exchange of Product Model Data (STEP) is such a standard that has been used widely by the industries. Even though STEP-based product models are well defined and syntactically correct, populating product data according to these models is not easy because they are too big and disorganized. Data exchange specifications (DEXs) and templates provide re-organized information models required in data exchange of specific activities for various businesses. DEXs show us it would be possible to organize STEP-based product models in order to support different …

Voltage Effects On Cells Cultured On Metallic Biomedical Implants, Seyed Morteza Haerihosseini

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering - Dissertations

Electrochemical voltage shifts in metallic biomedical implants occur in-vivo due to a number of processes including mechanically assisted corrosion. Surface potential of biomedical implants and excursions from resting open circuit potential (OCP), which is the voltage they attain while in contact with an electrolyte, can significantly change the interfacial properties of the metallic surfaces and alter the behavior of the surrounding cells, compromising the biocompatibility of metallic implants. Voltages can also be controlled to modulate cell function and fate. To date, the details of the physico-chemical phenomena and the role of different biomaterial parameters involved in the interaction between cells …

An Experimental Study On Thermal Stability Of Biodiesel Fuel, Yiying Zhu

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering – Theses

Biodiesel fuel, as renewable energy, has been used in conventional diesel engines in pure form or as biodiesel/diesel blends for many years. However, thermal stability of biodiesel and biodiesel/diesel blends has been minimally explored. Aimed to shorten this gap, thermal stability of biodiesel is investigated at high temperatures.

In this study, batch thermal stressing experiments of biodiesel fuel were performed in stainless steel coils at specific temperature and residence time range from 250 to 425 °C and 3 to 63 minutes, respectively.

Evidence of different pathways of biodiesel fuel degradation is demonstrated chromatographically. It was found that biodiesel was stable …

Champs-Multizone And Virtual Building For Integrated Building Systems Design And Performance Evaluation, Wei Feng

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

The ultimate goal of this research was to develop an integrated framework that facilitates performance-based multi-stage design of buildings and comparison between the performance predicted at the design stage and that monitored at operation stage. Such an integrated framework would not only enable design optimization, but also enable confirmation of design intent or diagnosis of performance deficiency, and thus provide feedbacks for future building design. This dissertation study represents the first step toward this ultimate goal, and had the following specific objectives:: 1) developing a combined heat, air, moisture and pollutant transport model for whole building performance simulation; 2) developing …

Shape Memory Assisted Self Healing (Smash) Polymeric And Composite Systems, Erika D. Rodriguez

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

My research aims to develop a novel approach that uses the shape memory (SM) effect to aid self healing (SH) polymeric systems that are able to simultaneously close and re-bond cracks with a single thermal stimulus. This new concept is termed shape memory assisted self healing (SMASH). Additionally, a new type of shape memory termed reversible plasticity shape memory (RPSM) was also developed where both the elastic and plastic deformation found after deformation completely recover upon a thermal stimulation. I aim to utilize a broad range of polymeric and composite systems that include a single phase semi-crystalline system, a single …

Nitric Oxide Releasing Polymers For Vascular Graft Applications, Ifeanyi U. Onyejekwe

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering - Dissertations

Nitric oxide [NO] is an endogenous gas involved in a multitude of physiological functions, ranging from vasodilatation, inflammatory response to inhibition of platelet aggregation. Significant interest exists for therapeutic application of exogenous NO, particularly for the improvement of foreign-body responses of biomaterials. One challenge amongst several others that must be taken into consideration is NO's short half-life, ranging from 2-3 s, in physiological systems. Researchers have worked on synthesizing materials, formally referred to as NO donors/NONOates capable of preserving NO and spontaneous gas release upon contact with blood under physiological conditions. Two groups of these commercially available NO donors known …

The Role Of Fluorescence And Human Factors In Quantitative Transdermal Blood And Tissue Analysis Using Nir Raman Spectroscopy, Bin Deng

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering - Dissertations

This research is part of an ongoing project aimed at the application of combined near infrared (NIR) Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy to noninvasive in vivo blood analysis including but not limited to glucose monitoring. Coping with practicalities of human factors and exploring ways to obtain and use knowledge gained about autofluorescence to improve algorithms for blood and tissue analysis are the general goals of this research. Firstly, the study investigated the various sources of human factors pertinent to our concerns, such as fingerprints, turgor, skin hydration and pigmentation. We then introduced specialized in vivo apparatus including means for precise and …

Alignment, Clustering And Extraction Of Structured Motifs In Dna Promoter Sequences, Faisal Abdulmalek Alobaid

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

A simple motif is a short DNA sequence found in the promoter region and believed to act as a binding site for a transcription factor protein. A structured motif is a sequence of simple motifs (boxes) separated by short sequences (gaps). Biologists theorize that the presence of these motifs play a key role in gene expression regulation. Discovering these patterns is an important step towards understanding protein-gene and gene-gene interaction thus facilitates the building of accurate gene regulatory network models. DNA sequence motif extraction is an important problem in bioinformatics. Many studies have proposed algorithms to solve the problem instance …

Self Similar Optical Fiber, Zheng-Xuan Lai

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

This research proposes Self Similar optical fiber (SSF) as a new type of optical fiber. It has a special core that consists of self similar structure. Such a structure is obtained by following the formula for generating iterated function systems (IFS) in Fractal Theory. The resulted SSF can be viewed as a true fractal object in optical fibers. In addition, the method of fabricating SSF makes it possible to generate desired structures exponentially in numbers, whereas it also allows lower scale units in the structure to be reduced in size exponentially. The invention of SSF is expected to greatly ease …

Exploiting Data Locality In Dynamic Web Applications, Paul Talaga

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

The Internet has grown from a static document retrieval system to a dynamic medium where users are both consumers and producers of information. Users may experience above-average website latencies due to the physical distances information must travel. Because user satisfaction is related to a website's responsiveness, e-commerce may be hindered and prevent online businesses from reaching their full potential.

This dissertation analyzes how temporal and relational dependencies in web applications limit their ability to become distributed. Two contributions are made, the first showing the location of data inside a datacenter influences the web system's performance, and secondly, that relaxing strict …

Development Of A Novel Statistical Method And Procedure For Material Characterization And A Probabilistic Approach To Assessing The Hygrothermal Performance Of Building Enclosure Assemblies, Jianhua Zhao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

In this research, a systematic approach was introduced to establish a high quality and comprehensive material database. The method was applied to a great number of materials in different material categories. The database provides a solid base for hygrothermal simulation and further research.

A method was developed to derive the generic material from the material cluster comprising specific materials with similar characteristics. A novel approach was developed by using the generic material to extrapolate less incomplete material data set to full data set that is suitable for the hygrothermal simulation. The approach extends the material database, and hence enhances the …

Intelligent Data Fusion For Applied Decision Support, Xiang Ye

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

Data fusion technologies are widely applied to support a real-time decision-making in complicated, dynamically changing environments. Due to the complexity in the problem domain, artificial intelligent algorithms, such as Bayesian inference and particle swarm optimization, are employed to make the decision support system more adaptive and cognitive. This dissertation proposes a new data fusion model with an intelligent mechanism adding decision feedback to the system in real-time, and implements this intelligent data fusion model in two real-world applications.

The first application is designing a new sensor management system for a real-world and highly dynamic air traffic control problem. The main …

Method Of Moment Analysis Of Partially Shielded Chiral Bodies Of Revolution, Khaja Qutubuddin

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

A chiral body of revolution (BOR) which is partially covered by a thin conducting shield is analyzed using the method of moments (MOM). The axisymmetric system is excited by a plane wave. The total internal fields and the far scattered fields are computed. The problem is solved using the surface equivalence principle. The scattered fields outside the structure are assumed to be produced by an equivalent magnetic surface current that exists on the unshielded part of the BOR surface and an external equivalent electric surface current that exists over all of the BOR surface . These two currents are assumed …

Arbitrarily Oriented Biaxially Anisotropic Media: Wave Behavior And Microstrip Antennas, Jennifer Warzala Graham

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Dissertations

This dissertation explores the electromagnetic behavior of arbitrarily oriented biaxially anisotropic media. An overview of wave behavior in biaxially anisotropic (or simply biaxial) media is presented. The reflection and transmission behaviors of electromagnetic waves from half-space and two-layer isotropic-biaxial interfaces are studied. The reflection and transmission coefficients are used in the formulation of eigenvector dyadic Green's functions. These Green's functions are employed in full-wave analyses of rectangular microstrip antennas printed on biaxial substrates.

The general characteristics of electrically biaxially anisotropic (biaxial) media are presented including permittivity tensors, optic axes, orientation of the medium, and birefringence. After a detailed discussion of …

Effects Of Surface Roughness On The Indoor Particle Deposition Rate Constant, Shaojie Wang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

The purpose of this work was to quantify the deposition rate constants of size-classified particles on typical indoor surface materials as affected by the degree of surface roughness. The experiments were conducted in a small-scale acrylic chamber. The particle size range was from 0.723 to 5.048 £gm with 28 size bins. The air change rates were 6, 11 and 13 h-1. The TSI large particle aerosol generator 8108 was used to generate potassium chloride as test particles, and the TSI aerodynamic particle sizer (APS3321) was used to measure the particle number concentrations. Particle deposition rate constants were determined by regression …

Modeling And Managing Engineering Changes In A Complex Product Development Process, Weilin Li

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

Today's hyper-competitive worldwide market, turbulent environment, demanding customers, and diverse technological advancements force any corporations who develop new products to look into all the possible areas of improvement in the entire product lifecycle management process. One of the areas that both scholars and practitioners have overlooked in the past is Engineering Change Management (ECM).

The vision behind this dissertation is to ultimately bridge this gap by identifying main characteristics of a New Product Development (NPD) process that are potentially associated with the occurrence and magnitude of iterations and Engineering Changes (ECs), developing means to quantify these characteristics as well as …

Functional And Behavioral Product Information Representation And Consistency Validation For Collaboration In Product Lifecycle Activities, Mehmet Murat Baysal

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

Information models that represent the function, assembly and behavior of artifacts are critical in the conceptual development of a product and its evaluation. Much research has been conducted in this area; however, existing models do not relate function, behavior and structure in a comprehensive and consistent way. In this work, NIST's Core Product Model (CPM) and the Open Assembly Model (OAM) are extended to integrate product information including function and behavior, with an emphasis on assembly, throughout all phases of product development. For function and flow classification, the NIST functional taxonomy is used to maintain consistency with the literature.

The …

Thermally Aware, Energy-Based Techniques For Improving Data Center Energy Efficiency, Dustin W. Demetriou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

This work investigates the practical implementation of so-called thermally aware, energy optimized load placement in air-cooled, raised floor data centers to reduce the overall energy consumption, while maintaining the reliability of the IT equipment. The work takes a systematic approach to modeling the data center's airflow, thermodynamic and heat transfer characteristics - beginning with simplified, physics-inspired models and eventually developing a high-fidelity, experimentally validated thermo-hydraulic model of the data center's cooling and power infrastructure. The simplified analysis was able to highlight the importance of considering the trade-off between low air supply temperature and increased airflow rate, as well as the …

Experimental Investigation Of An Actively Controlled Three-Dimensional Turret Wake, Patrick Ryan Shea

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

Hemispherical turrets are bluff bodies commonly used to house optical systems on airborne platforms. These bluff bodies develop complex, three-dimensional flow fields that introduce high mean and fluctuating loads to the turret as well as the airframe support structure which reduce the performance of both the optical systems and the aircraft. An experimental investigation of the wake of a three-dimensional, non-conformal turret was performed in a low-speed wind tunnel at Syracuse University to develop a better understanding of the fundamental flow physics associated with the turret wake. The flow field was studied at a diameter based Reynolds number of 550,000 …

Study Of Vocs Transport And Storage In Porous Media And Assemblies, Jing Xu

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

Indoor VOCs concentrations are influenced greatly by the transport and storage of VOCs in building and furnishing materials, majority of which belong to porous media. The transport and storage ability of a porous media for a given VOC can be characterized by its diffusion coefficient and partition coefficient, respectively, and such data are currently lacking. Besides, environmental conditions are another important factor that affects the VOCs emission. The main purposes of this dissertation are: (1) validate the similarity hypothesis between the transport of water vapor and VOCs in porous materials, and help build a database of VOC transport and storage …

Design And Implementation Of A Shoulder Simulator, Chelsea Lynn Kowal

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The main objective of this thesis project is to build a shoulder simulator to be able to understand the mechanics of the shoulder, specifically the rotator cuff and deltoid muscles. The shoulder simulator should be able to mimic the important motions of the human shoulder by pulling on tendons of cadaver shoulders and moving the shoulder in various specified motions. In my thesis project, I worked on creating a shoulder simulator that would control the rotator cuff muscles along with the three deltoid muscles. In order to do this, I needed to design and test the shoulder simulator using cadaver …

Escherichia Coli Hm22 Biofilm Viability When In Contact With Implant-Grade, Titanium-6aluminum-4-Vanadium Alloy Under Varied Electrochemical Conditions, Alexander Ross Weiss

Honors Capstone Projects - All

No abstract provided.