Engineering Commons^™

Modelling Of Dreissenid Mussel Impacts On Lake Michigan, Chunqi Shen

Theses and Dissertations

Invasive dreissenid mussel appear to have profoundly altered Great Lakes food webs and nutrient cycles during the past several decades. Recent declines of phytoplankton were supposed to be highly related with the increase of mussel population. These phytoplankton declines were further found to be coincident with declines in the abundance of planktivorous fish. In addition, the resurgence of Cladophora in Great lakes was estimated to be associated with the high density colonization of mussels. More light is available at lake bottom due to the mussels’ graze effect. The mussels further promote Cladophora growth by fertilizing it with nutrient-rich excrement. And …

Phase Sensitive Thermography Of Magnetostrictive Materials Under Periodic Excitations, Peng Yang

Theses and Dissertations

The use of giant magnetostrictive materials in actuator and sensor applications is still relatively new. Giant magnetostrictive materials, such as Terfenol-D, are unique in producing large deformation under a magnetic field. Applications of these materials in solid state actuators and transducers may require more knowledge on the interaction between geometry and material properties for a specific design. In order to gain more understanding of the magnetostriction mechanism, phase sensitive or lock-in thermography has been used to study Terfenol-D. Thermography is useful in that it allows for full field measurement of the surface of an object with a relatively simple setup. …

Wireless Power Transfer Using Class-De Converter Via Strongly Coupled Two Planar Coils, Ayetullah Bahadir Biten

Theses and Dissertations

WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER USING CLASS-DE CONVERTER

VIA

STRONGLY COUPLED TWO PLANAR COILS

by

Ayetullah Bahadir Biten

The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, August 2016

Under the supervision of Professor Adel Nasiri

Wireless power systems are getting popular with the improvement in the technology not just because it is a fancy and cool conception but also because it is more convenient and safer in some applications. For example, this project aims to help high power data center design to be changed to wirelessly powered center to provide a safe and hands-on work environment even under different load conditions. Thinking of the …

The Study Of Locating Ground Faults In Dc Microgrid Using Wavelet Transform, Ruijing Yang

Theses and Dissertations

As the proliferations of distributed generation and power electronic equipment in power systems, direct current (DC) microgrid emerged and attracted more and more researchers’ attentions. Protection of DC microgrid is a big challenge and to build a well-function protection system, locating the faults accurately is a critical issue. It is easy to find the location of short circuit faults in DC microgrid. However, it is difficult to locate ground faults in DC microgrid because of the spray capacitors and the large amount of distributed resources.

In this thesis, Wavelet Transform is applied to decompose the common mode currents that is …

Assessing The Remanufacturability Of Office Furiniture: A Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach, Po-Hsun Chen

Theses and Dissertations

While the average life cycle of consumer goods is continuously decreasing, the amount of used product at their end-of-life (EOL) is accumulating fast at and at the same pace. Most EOL products end up in landfills, and many of which are not biodegradable. These two challenges have necessitated renewed global interest in product EOL management strategies by manufacturers, third party companies, consumers and governments. Remanufacturing is one of the EOL strategies which is highly environmental-friendly. Additionally, remanufacturing is seen as one of the highly profitable re-use business strategies. The selling price of remanufactured products is usually about 50—80% of a …

Manufacturing Site Selection In The Global Context, Mahsa Mardikoraem Mardikoraem

Theses and Dissertations

The decision making regarding global site selection has been always a challenging and strategic problem. Recently, due to the globalization of the problem many new factors such as political, social, regulatory, government, environmental consideration, etc. gained importance in the decision making process. One of the goals in this thesis is to identify the relevant factors in manufacturing site selection and incorporate them into the data analysis. The collection of a wide range of factors that impact the manufacturing site selection problem at a country level, the quantification of these factors, and incorporation of them into the decision making process needs …

An Energy Efficient, Load Balancing, And Reliable Routing Protocol For Wireless Sensor Networks, Kamil Samara

Theses and Dissertations

AN ENERGY EFFICIENT, LOAD BALANCING, AND RELIABLE ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

by

Kamil Samara

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016

Under the Supervision of Professor Hossein Hosseini

The Internet of Things (IoT) is shaping the future of Computer Networks and Computing in general, and it is gaining ground very rapidly. The whole idea has originated from the pervasive presence of a variety of things or objects equipped with the internet connectivity. These devices are becoming cheap and ubiquitous, at the same time more powerful and smaller with a variety of onboard sensors. All these factors with the availability of …

Nano-Crystalline Metal Matrix Nano-Composites Reinforced By Graphene And Alumina: Effect Of Reinforcement Properties And Concentration On Mechanical Behavior, Meysam Tabandeh Khorshid

Theses and Dissertations

Metal matrix composites (MMCs) and Metal Matrix Nano-composites (MMNCs) are promising materials for a number of aerospace, defense, and automobile applications. Among all MMCs and MMNCs, aluminum is the most widely used matrix due to its low density coupled with high stiffness, high specific strength, high specific modulus and low thermal expansion coefficient. While high strengths have been shown in MMCs, they are known to have very limited ductility. However, there are indications that reducing reinforcement size to the nanoscale may improve strain to failure in addition to increase strength. Reducing grain size to the nanoscale has been found to …

Usage Trends And Biomechanical Evaluation Of Tethered Tools, Maria Carroll Wiener

Theses and Dissertations

Struck-by injuries and death caused by dropped objects continue to be a prevalent problem in industries where work is conducted at height. Securing objects from height with tethers, especially hand tools used to conduct work, and an increase in regulatory oversight would reduce these incidences. To date, no research has been conducted to investigate tethered tool usage patterns in industry to include user preference, task performance and the biomechanical impact of using tethered tools in lieu of their untethered counterparts. Due to the lack of information on tethered tool usage, it was necessary to develop and distribute a survey to …

Deep Tissue Light Delivery And Fluorescence Tomography With Applications In Optogenetic Neurostimulation, Mehdi Azimipour

Theses and Dissertations

Study of the brain microcircuits using optogenetics is an active area of research. This method has a few advantages over the conventional electrical stimulation including the bi-directional control of neural activity, and more importantly, specificity in neuromodulation. The first step in all optogenetic experiments is to express certain light sensitive ion channels/pumps in the target cell population and then confirm the proper expression of these proteins before running any experiment. Fluorescent bio-markers, such as green fluorescent protein (GFP), have been used for this purpose and co-expressed in the same cell population. The fluorescent signal from such proteins provides a monitory …

Rational Design Of Cathode Materials For High Performance Lithium-Sulfur Batteries, Xi Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Sulfur, one of most promising cathode candidates for next-generation lithium ion batteries, shows a limited cycling performance due to its shuttling effect, low conductivity, self-discharge and volume expansion during lithiation and delithiation process. According to the operation principles, failure mechanism, and recent progress on lithium-sulfur batteries, here we developed several scalable and rational synthesis methods for high performance cathode materials. We dissolved commercial sulfur to anhydrous ethylenediamine (EDA) to form an EDA-S precursor, and then we reduced the sulfur particles size at conductive carbon black substrate. The 70% theoretical capacity of sulfur cathode battery was obtained. We also melted commercial …

Dynamic Mechanical Analysis Of Kissing Bonds In Bonded Joints, Tasha Graciano Graciano

Theses and Dissertations

Inspection of kissing bond defects in composite structures is a challenge for traditional nondestructive testing (NDT) methods. A kissing bond (KB) is a bondline defect where two surfaces are in intimate contact with each other but with little to no bond strength. New nondestructive testing methods need to be developed that can detect adhesive kissing bonds, and areas within a composite joint where the bondline is compromised. The primary goal of this thesis is to explore if a NDT technique based on Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) can be established which is capable of detecting kissing bonds within bondlines in composite …

Brain Mechanism For Enhanced Hand Function With Remote Sensory Stimulation, Kishor Lakshminarayanan

Theses and Dissertations

The neurological bases for remote vibration enhanced sensory feedback and motor function are yet poorly understood. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and examine the effect of vibration on finger tactile sensation in healthy adults and how imperceptible random vibration applied to the wrist changes cortical activity for fingertip sensation and precision grip. In a series of studies on healthy adults, white-noise vibration was applied to one of four locations (dorsum hand by the second knuckle, thenar and hypothenar areas, and volar wrist) at one of four intensities (zero, 60%, 80%, and 120% of the sensory threshold for …

Impact Location In An Isotropic Plate Without Training, Prasanna Rajbhandari

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

IMPACT LOCATION IN AN ISOTROPIC PLATE WITHOUT TRAINING

by

Prasanna Rajbhandari

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016

Under the Supervision of Professor Dr. Nathan Salowitz

Unexpected impacts are major concerns in the aerospace industry that can cause difficulty to detect damage. Techniques have been developed to determine the impact location using piezoelectric sensors. Most existing systems require training data to develop a database of known structural responses and properties that can be referenced for location of impacts. This data collection is time consuming and if an impact and corresponding sensor data is outside the range of training data, the system …

Experimental, Analytical And Numerical Characterization Of Effects Of Fiber Waviness Defects In Laminated Composites, Seyedmohammadsadegh Shams

Theses and Dissertations

Fiber waviness is one of the most common defects observed in reinforced laminated composites which can occur during manufacturing. The effects of waviness on the mechanical responses of laminated composites under the standard mechanical testing are investigated with proposed experiments, analytical and numerical approaches. The damage consequences including kink band formation, crack onset, delamination and fiber fractures are characterized by means of full field digital imaging and acoustic emission techniques. The notch and waviness size effects on the notched composite compressive and tensile strength are studied using a progressive damage approach using the finite element method. A numerical approach based …

A New Paradigm Of Maximizing The Wind And Solar Penetration– A Economical Assessment, Yuming Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Wind and solar energies are the most potential and widely-used renewable energies. But in most cases these energies cannot be maximized because of transmission line capacity and their remote location. Therefore, this thesis proposes a new paradigm which using battery transportation and logistics instead of transmission line, to maximize wind and solar energies. The main focus of this work is to investigate the economical feasibilities of this new paradigm.

In the first part, different models and application are presented. The purpose is finding an appropriate model which can make full use of existing grid resources such as transmission line and …

Strategic Inventories In A Supply Chain With Vertical Control And Downstream Cournot Competition, Vijayendra Viswanathan

Theses and Dissertations

Strategic Inventory (SI) has been an area of increased interest in theoretical supply chain literature recently. Most of the work so far however, has only considered a supply chain without downstream competition between retailers. Competition is ubiquitous in most market situations, hence, interactions between SI and retailer competition merits study as a first step in bringing the conversations and insights from this stream of literature to the real world.

We present here a two-period and a three-period model of one manufacturer supplying an identical product to two retailers who form a Cournot duopoly. We also study a Commitment contract, where …

Monitoring Cellular Metabolism With Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, Jeffrey Jay Sugar

Theses and Dissertations

Aims: Although NIRS oximetry has been widely used in clinical and research settings to monitor oxygen consumption in muscles (1), it is not necessarily able to obtain cellular metabolic levels directly. Oxygen saturation will only change with aerobic metabolism (2); however, anaerobic metabolism cannot be assessed by monitoring oxygen saturation. This work aims to measure cell oxygenation and blood oxygenation, simultaneously, by applying oximetry to hemoglobin/deoxyhemoglobin and to cytochrome c oxidase (CCOX). A custom build NIRS device called the cytoximeter was constructed to achieve this goal. This work could have important impacts on monitoring neurological diseases, Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), …

A Novel Energy Storage Allocation Planning Method For Microgrid, Bin Chen

Theses and Dissertations

This paper proposes a novel energy storage system planning method with real time control. Sensitivity analysis is used to linearize the real power change in each certain generator brought by wind and ESS power change in system. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is modified to include the real power change percentage as a constraint, and used to determine optimum ESS size and location. After extensive tests, it shows that this method can determine the optimum sizes and locations for ESS which can effectively keep the disturbance on generators in a system to the minimum while maintaining an acceptable system voltage profile …

Covert Contrast: The Acquisition Of Mandarin Tone 2 And Tone 3 In L2 Production And Perception, Liya Mar

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the occurrence of an intermediate stage, termed a covert contrast, in the acquisition of Mandarin Tone 2 (T2) and Tone 3 (T3) by adult speakers of American English. A covert contrast is a statistically reliable distinction produced by language learners that is not perceived by native speakers of the target language (TL). In second language (L2) acquisition, whether a learner is judged as having acquired a TL phonemic contrast has largely depended on whether the contrast was perceived and transcribed by native speakers of the TL. However, categorical perception has shown that native listeners cannot perceive a …

Experimental And Numerical Characterization Of Scalable Cellulose Nano-Fiber Composite, Bamdad Barari Barari

Theses and Dissertations

Fiber-reinforced polymer composites have been used in recent years as an alternative to the conventional materials because of their low weight, high mechanical properties and low processing temperatures. Most polymer composites are traditionally made using reinforcing fibers such as carbon or glass fibers. However, there has been recent interest in making these reinforcing fibers from natural resources. The plant-derived cellulose nano-fibers (CNF) are a material with remarkable mechanical properties at the nano-scale that are much superior to the mechanical properties of the traditional natural fibers (such as jute, hemp, kenaf, etc) used in the natural-fiber based polymer composites. Because CNF …

Integrated Special Event Traffic Management Strategies In Urban Transportation Network, Peng Li

Theses and Dissertations

How to effectively optimize and control spreading traffic in urban network during the special event has emerged as one of the critical issues faced by many transportation professionals in the past several decades due to the surging demand and the often limited network capacity. The contribution of this dissertation is to develop a set of integrated mathematical programming models for unconventional traffic management of special events in urban transportation network. Traffic management strategies such as lane reorganization and reversal, turning restriction, lane-based signal timing, ramp closure, and uninterrupted flow intersection will be coordinated and concurrently optimized for best overall system …

Study Of Ceria Nanoparticles Synthesis And The Performance Of Nano-Ceria Coating For High Temperature Oxidation Resistance In Combustion Atmosphere, Lingke Mao

Theses and Dissertations

Ceria (CeO2 ) nanoparticles were synthesized by the microemulsion method with Bis(2-ethylhexyl) Sulfosuccinate Sodium Salt (AOT) as the surfactant. Stirring speed during synthesis was used to optimize the process and a precipitation process was applied to dilute the surfactant. The prepared ceria nanoparticles were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). As the result, non-agglomerated and time-stable ceria nanoparticles were obtained with the average particles size of 2-3 nanometers. Stainless steel 316L substrates were coated by a dipping method with the help of a slide motor which provided constant speed and uniform coating layers. Both coated and …

The Effects Of Geomagnetic Disturbances On Electrical Power Systems, Benjamin J. Hynes

Theses and Dissertations

Solar storms that generate coronal mass ejections are a cause for concern due to the damage that they cause in high voltage power grids. Geomagnetically induced currents can be introduced onto the grid and cause many adverse effects. The vulnerability of the bulk electric power systems to such events has increased during the past few decades because the power system transmission lines have become more interconnected and have increased in length. Real and reactive power flows, voltage fluctuations, frequency shifts, undesired relay operations, higher order harmonic currents, undesired damage to assets and failure of assets are all possible outcomes from …

Coding Strategies For Cochlear Implants Under Adverse Environments, Qudsia Tahmina

Theses and Dissertations

Cochlear implants are electronic prosthetic devices that restores partial hearing in patients with severe to profound hearing loss. Although most coding strategies have significantly improved the perception of speech in quite listening conditions, there remains limitations on speech perception under adverse environments such as in background noise, reverberation and band-limited channels, and we propose strategies that improve the intelligibility of speech transmitted over the telephone networks, reverberated speech and speech in the presence of background noise. For telephone processed speech, we propose to examine the effects of adding low-frequency and high- frequency information to the band-limited telephone speech. Four listening …

Room Temperature Gas Sensing Using Pure And Modified Metal Oxide Nanowires, Yale Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, various quasi 1D metal oxide semiconductor nanostructures (nanorods, nanowires, nanotubes, nanobelts) of various binary oxides have been found to be excellent materials for gas sensing. However, some of the sensitive gas sensors can work only at elevated temperatures. The sensing performance can be further improved when these oxides are doped with noble metal nanoparticles and form hetero-junction with other oxides, especially different types of metal oxide. These modifications can substantially change the surface properties as well as electronic properties due to their enhancement of the depletion layer at the metal nanoparticle-metal oxide nanowire and homo/hetero-interfaces.

The objective of this …

The Effective Use Of Coal Combustion Products (Ccps) In Ashphalt Pavements, Clayton J. Cloutier

Theses and Dissertations

Hot-Mix Asphalt (HMA) is one of the most widely used construction materials. The National Asphalt Paving Association (NAPA) estimated that there are over 2.6 million miles of roadway surfaces paved in the United States and 94% of these roads are paved with asphalt. NAPA also estimates that approximately 550 million tons of asphalt worth over $30 billion a year is produced in the United States. At such a huge production rate, innovative solutions need to be developed so that asphalt pavements last longer and can also reduce the production and maintenance costs. Producing sustainable asphalt materials can provide for improved …

Influence Of Permeate From Domestic Reverse Osmosis Filters On Lead Corrosion And Leaching From Plastic Pipes, Jyotsna Shrestha

Theses and Dissertations

Reverse Osmosis filters are gaining popularity nowadays, in domestic water supply system, to meet the increasing demand of pure and improved drinking water. There are various types of domestic RO filters with varying sizes, capacities, and treatment stages available. However, there exist a few concerns regarding the RO treatment system. One of the major issues in the quality and distribution of drinking water is the corrosive water that the RO system produces. Therefore, this research herein tends to focus on the corrosive effect of the permeate water on lead metal, as lead is considered a serious problematic drinking water contaminant. …

Synthesis And Performance Analysis Of Polyurethane Foam Nanocomposite For Arsenic Removal From Drinking Water, Faten Bakri Hussein

Theses and Dissertations

Water contamination by various heavy metal pollutants such as, Lead, Arsenic, Cadmium, and Mercury, have severe toxic effects on living organisms and humans. High concentrations of arsenic in drinking water cause serious damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems, as well as, the dermal, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and respiratory systems. Arsenic contamination of ground water poses a substantial concern in many countries throughout the world, including the United States.

Considerable research work, aimed at finding and developing various separation and treatment techniques, has been conducted over the past few decades. The conventional treatment methods of arsenic involve coagulation with ferric …

A Physicochemical Prediction Of Prolonged Natural Co2 Leakage In The Little Grand Wash Fault Zone, Green River, Utah, Kyungdoe Han

Theses and Dissertations

Physicochemical investigation on a natural CO2 system and the accommodated fault-controlled fluids using a geochemical modeling method provides important information regarding the security assessment for geological carbon sequestration (GCS), which is the most promising method for enhancing our knowledge of the side effects of GCS. By employing an utilized series of regional fluid chemistry and hydrogeologic parameters, this study investigated the consequences caused by migration of CO2 in a naturally leaking CO2 system that developed in normal faults in the southwestern U.S. 1-D and 2-D models were conducted using the multi-phase, multi-component reactive transport simulator, TOUGHREACT, to establish sets of …