Engineering Commons^™

Pyrolysis Of Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (Abs) Under High Heat Flux Conditions, James R. Wilson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) is a common industrial plastic that is widely used for structural and piping applications. Additionally, within the past decade ABS has become the most popular material used in a type of rapid prototyping known as fused- deposition modeling (FDM). Within the past three years, ABS plastic blends have also been investigated as a potential fuel for hybrid- and solid-propelled rocket systems, exhibiting promising results. Because the use of ABS as a rocket propellant is very recent, a pyrolysis database, describing how ABS will burn, at the temperatures and heating rates experienced by rocket systems does not exist. Previous …

Impacts Of Climate Change On Water Resources And Corresponding Adaptation Strategies Of The Nam Ngum River Basin, Laos, Dumindu Lasitha Jayasekera

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Nam Ngum River Basin (NNRB) in Laos has received attention of foreign investors due to high hydropower development potential and low per capita electricity consumption. The NNRB is rapidly developing due to its hydropower generation potentials while water demands will increase for agricultural and domestic purposes due to population increase and land-use changes. Water availability conditions will be affected with the increasing water demand and climate change may worsen the water availability conditions. Climate is often defined as the weather averaged over time whereas weather describes atmospheric conditions at a particular place and time in terms of air temperature, …

An Analysis On Soil Properties On Predicting Critical Hydraulic Gradients For Piping Progression In Sandy Soils, Tammy Jacobson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Piping is a form of internal erosion in which soil particles are eroded at a seepage exit location due to the forces imposed on the particles by seeping water. Laboratory testing was performed on a variety of soils in order to assess a correlation between unit weight, angle of internal friction, grain size, gradation, and void ratio and the critical hydraulic gradient at which piping initiates and progresses. A multi-variable regression analysis was used to form equations to predict critical hydraulic gradient based upon each of these soil parameters. Variations in the accuracy of these equations are thought to be …

Design And Construction Of An Omni-Directional Soccer Ball Thrower, Andrew James Marquette

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Introduction

We are ODST the Omni-Directional Soccer Ball Thrower team which designed the soccer ball launching machine. Working in direct correlation with the project sponsor John Meade from Athlonic Sports this is the report outlining the soccer ball thrower. John from Athlonic Sports came up with the overall project and initial project vision. There are soccer ball launching machines on the market but lacking mobility, not amiable and are heavy. The design needed to be mobile, amiable, lightweight, and have a soccer ball capacity incorporated into the machine. This will allow coaches to repeatability place the soccer ball in certain …

An Algorithm To Recognize Multi-Stable Behavior From An Ensemble Of Stochastic Simulation Runs, Eduardo Monzon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Synthetic biological designers are demanding tools to help with the design and verification process of new biological models. Some of the most common tools available aggregate multiple simulation results into one “clean” trajectory that hopefully is representative of the system’s behavior. However, for systems exhibiting multiple stable states, these techniques fail to show all the possible trajectories of the system. This work introduces a method capable of detecting the presence of more than one “typical” trajectory in a system, which can also be integrated with other available simulation tools.

Alternative Steel Reinforcement In Mechanically Stabilized Earth (Mse) Walls, Daniel T. Pond

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Mechanically Stabilize Earth (MSE) is a method in which soil tensile strength and shear resistance is increased by using reinforcement. The traditional forms of reinforcement include bars, galvanized strips, welded wire mats or steel grids, and geosynthetics.
When steel is used as reinforcement in MSE walls, it gets corroded or decayed. Certain shapes of reinforcement will have less corrosion because less surface area is exposed. Pullout resistance is the ability to resist a tensile force. This can be affected by the design and shape of the steel. This study simulates different overburden depths or pressures for pullout resistance and evaluates …

Computer Self-Efficacy, Cognitive Actions, And Metacognitive Strategies Of High School Students While Engaged In Interactive Learning Modules, Harry Budi Santoso

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this research was to investigate high school students’ computer self-efficacy, cognitive actions, and metacognitive strategies in a self-regulated learning (SRL) framework while utilizing an interactive learning module. The researcher hypothesized that computer self-efficacy is correlated positively with cognitive actions and metacognitive strategies while the students are engaged with interactive learning modules. This research used a mixed-methods approach to answer the research questions. Two research questions guided this research: (1) How is students’ computer self-efficacy related to cognitive actions and metacognitive strategies while using interactive learning modules?; and (2) How do students plan monitor their cognitive actions, and …

Development Of A Coupled Fluid And Colloidall Particle Transport Model, Scott Ripplinger

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A colloidal system usually refers to when very small particles are suspended within a solution. The study of these systems encompasses a variety of cases including bacteria in ground water, blood cells and platelets in blood plasma, and river silt transport. Taking a look at these kinds of systems using computer simulation can provide a great deal of insight into how they work. Most approaches to date do not look at the details of the system, however, and are specific to given system. In this study a program called OpenFOAM is used as a basis to build a computer simulation …

Conventional And Catalytic Pyrolysis Of Pinyon Juniper Biomass, Bhuvanesh Kumar Yathavan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Pinyon and juniper are invasive woody species which has occupied more than 47 million acres of land in Western United States. Pinyon juniper woodlands domination decreases the herbaceous vegetation, increase bare lands which in turn increases soil erosion and nutrition loss. Thus, The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has focused on harvesting these woody species to make room for herbaceous vegetation. The major application of harvested pinyon-juniper (PJ) is low value firewood. Thus, there is a need to develop new high value products from this woody biomass to reduce the cost of harvesting. In this study pyrolysis was carried …

Evapotranspiration Modeling And Forecasting For Efficient Management Of Irrigation Command Areas, Roula Bachour

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

It has become very crucial to manage water resources to meet the needs of the growing population. In irrigation command areas, and in order to build a better plan to manage service delivery from canals and reservoirs, it is important to build appropriate knowledge of water needs on a field basis. There is often a lag between the order and delivery of water to the field. Knowledge of the crop water requirement at the field level helps the decision maker to make the right choices leading to more efficient handling of the available water. The purpose of this study was …

The Benefits Of Using Building Information Modeling In Structural Engineering, Cesar Augusto Hunt

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This paper explores how the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) can be a beneficial platform for structural engineers. The current state of BIM is analyzed, giving a general overview on how architectural; engineering and construction firms are applying it on their projects. The applicability of BIM to structural engineering is discussed, and how it impacts the structural design and its workflow. The benefits of using BIM in structural engineering are then analyzed, in the areas of productivity, coordination, and visualization, and a case study is developed to test the interoperability between BIM software and structural analysis software. The findings …

Utilizing Municipal And Industrial Wastes For The Production Of Bioproducts: From Metagenomics To Bioproducts, Joshua T. Ellis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Developing renewable sources of energy is gaining interest due to limited supplies, rising costs, and environmental impacts of exploiting fossil fuels. Biosolvents such as acetone, butanol, and ethanol are attractive sources of fuel which can aid in replacing our dependence on foreign oil. Butanol is of particular interest due to its ability to directly replace gasoline, thus considered a drop-in-fuel. Biological hydrogen and methane gas are also attractive energy sources that can lower dependence on fossil energy.

This research focused on incorporating DNA sequencing technologies in parallel with fermentation methods for understanding and producing energy. The natural environment provides diverse …

Nutrient And Carbon-Dioxide Requirements For Large-Scale Microalgae Biofuel Production, Benjamin K. Shurtz

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Ever-increasing fuel prices and a limited supply of oil worldwide are threatening our economy and way of life in both the near and distant future. In order to reduce oil
dependence, the US Department of Energy (DOE) has established a goal that by the year 2030, 30% of the US transportation fuel will be renewable. The goal equates to
approximately 60 billion gallons per year of renewable fuel.

In an effort to reach the DOE renewable fuel goal, numerous types of plants are being studied, whose oil can be harvested and refined to serve as replacement fuel.
Among the various …

Transparent Antennas For Solar Cell Integration, Tursunjan Yasin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Transparent patch antennas have a certain level of optical transparency. Highly transparent patch antennas can be integrated with the solar panels of small satellites, which are becoming increasingly important in space exploration. Traditional patch antennas, which are not transparent, are employed on small satellites and compete with solar cells for surface area. But a transparent patch antenna can be placed directly on top of the solar cells and alleviate the issue of limited surface real estate. For such an integration, a high optical transparency of the patch antenna is required from the solar cells’ point of view since the solar …

Functional Ontologies And Their Application To Hydrologic Modeling: Development Of An Integrated Semantic And Procedural Knowledge Model And Reasoning Engine, Aaron Range Byrd

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In hydrology we straddle the domains of science and engineering. As hydrologists our goal is to predict the movement and volume of water. As scientists we seek to improve our understanding of water-related processes and how to model them. As engineers we seek to be able answer specific water-related questions to provide protection and an essential resource for the people we serve. Underlying all of our work is a body of knowledge that we have developed and continue to develop. This knowledge involves many aspects, such as the role of various hydrologic processes, how to obtain data, computational models that …

Geosynchronous Earth Orbit/Low Earth Orbit Space Object Inspection And Debris Disposal: A Preliminary Analysis Using A Carrier Satellite With Deployable Small Satellites, Derick A. Crockett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

From communication to weather prediction, to national security, geosynchronous satellites play an important role in our society. Geosynchronous satellites are about 35,786 km (22,236 miles) from the surface of the earth. Getting a satellite to this altitude is very expensive, making geosynchronous satellites highly valued assets. Ground-based observation of these satellites is very limited and provides little insight when failures or anomalies occur. To provide detailed images and information of these critical satellites, highly functioning smaller satellites can be employed. This study explores the potential benefits of using these smaller satellites to perform on-orbit proximity inspections of geosynchronous satellites. The …

Effects Of Communication Delay And Kinematic Variation In Vehicle Platooning, Megan R. Emmons

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Vehicle platoons are efficient, closely-spaced groups of robotically controlled vehicles which travel at high speeds down the road, similar to carts in a train. Within this thesis, a promising control algorithm for vehicle platooning is explored. The control algorithm was previously demonstrated in a sterile setting which significantly reduced the challenges facing full-scale implementation of platoons, most notably loss of shared data and imprecision within the data.

As found within this work, transmission loss and imprecise position, velocity, and acceleration data significantly degraded the control algorithm's performance. Vehicles in the platoon became more closely spaced, changed speeds more frequently, and …

Shear And Flexural Capacity Of High Strength Prestressed Concrete Bridge Girders, Arek Tilmann Higgs

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The section of highway over the 400 South roadway in Orem, Utah is made up of two separate three span bridges. The bridges were originally constructed in 1960 and were expanded in 2004 to accommodate for one extra lane per bridge. During the fall of 2012 both bridges were scheduled for demolition and four girders were salvaged from the southernmost span of the 2004 expansion. These girders were transported to the Structural Materials And Systems Health Lab (SMASH Lab) where a series of tests were performed to determine the prestressing losses, flexural, shear, and shear-flexure capacity of the girders. The …

Digital Microfluidics As A Reconfiguration Mechanism For Antennas, Yasin Damgaci

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The properties of conventional antennas are fixed by the initial design and cannot be changed. A reconfigurable antenna, on the other hand, can dynamically change its properties, and it can adjust its behavior for a given propagation condition. This dissertation work concentrates on novel reconfiguration technologies, including design, microfabrication, and characterization aspects with an emphasis on their applications to multifunctional reconfigurable antennas. In the literature, reconfigurable antennas have made use of various reconfiguration techniques. The most common techniques utilized revolved around switching mechanisms. Other techniques such as the incorporation of variable capacitors, varactors, and physical structure manipulation surfaced recently to …

Effective Thermal Conductivity Of Carbon Nanotube-Based Cryogenic Nanofluids, Lucas Samuel Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Heat removal and management is a concern for any technology that deals with high power, small size, or a lack of convenient thermal transport methods. A potential solution to this heat crisis lies in the field of nanofluids, which consist of colloidal suspensions of nanometer (one billionth of a meter) sized particles within a host fluid. Nanofluids have been of particular interest since their creation due to their exciting, unique, and often times anomalous thermal transport behavior. In many cases, a nanofluid can be custom made to fit a particular need and can act as a flexible cooling method, adapting …

The Design And Implementation Of The Dynamic Ionosphere Cubesat Experiment (Dice) Science Instruments, Steven Reed Burr

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Dynamic Ionosphere Cubesat Experiment (DICE) is a cubesat satellite project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study the ionosphere. Cubesats are small satellites in the shape of a cube around 10cm on a side, and allow better access to space. Three main properties of the ionosphere are measured by the DICE mission, which are electric field, magnetic field, and plasma density with an instrument for each. The limitation of power, mass, and volume contributes to the difficulty of cubesat design. Mission and instrumentation requirements must be carefully planned to ensure mission success. Each instrument’s requirements and design are …

Experimental Analysis Of The Effects Of Manipulations In Weighted Voting Games, Ramoni Olaoluwa Lasisi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation investigates weighted voting games and three methods of manipulating those games, called splitting, merging, and annexation. The manipulations involve an agent or some agents misrepresenting their identities in anticipation of gaining more power over the outcomes of games. Indeed, in open anonymous environments, manipulation can be easy and cheap to achieve. We provide clear and sufficient discussion on related work and backgrounds to motivate this research topic, which certainly deserves attention. Weighted voting games are among key cooperative games, and the manipulations considered in this dissertation are natural, and have practical applications, that are likely …

Linear Covariance Analysis For Gimbaled Pointing Systems, Randall S. Christensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Linear covariance analysis has been utilized in a wide variety of applications. Historically, the theory has made significant contributions to navigation system design and analysis. More recently, the theory has been extended to capture the combined effect of navigation errors and closed-loop control on the performance of the system. These advancements have made possible rapid analysis and comprehensive trade studies of complicated systems ranging from autonomous rendezvous to vehicle ascent trajectory analysis. Comprehensive trade studies are also needed in the area of gimbaled pointing systems where the information needs are different from previous applications. It is therefore the objective of …

Design And Testing Of A Turbidity Sensor For Grain Size Measurements, Sara Rebeca Martin Cid

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Grain-size analysis is a measurement of the size distribution of individual particles in a soil sample. The major features of grain-size analysis are the destruction or dispersion of soil aggregates into discrete units by chemical, mechanical, or ultrasonic means and the separation of particles according to size limits by such means as sieving and sedimentation, as well as other methods.

Soil particles span a large size range, varying from boulders (exceeding 0.25 m in size) down to submicron clays (Grain-size distribution curves are used extensively by civil engineers to evaluate materials used for foundations, road fills, and other construction purposes. …

Miniature Wire Boom System For Cubsat Application, Keith R. Bradford

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Small satellites and especially CubeSats are becoming more widely used to study the space environment. The Ionosphere is one region of particular interest, more specifically the altitude region of 85 km to 600 km. Small satellites are particularly useful for studying this region of the Earth’s atmosphere since the effects of aerodynamic drag on a CubeSat are much less than those on a larger more traditional satellite, thus the lifespan of a CubeSat in this region is much longer. In order to observe the electric field in space, the electric potential between various points needs to be measured. These measurements …

Modeling The Liquid, Nasal, And Vowel Transitions Of North American English Using Linear Predictive Filters And Line Spectral Frequency Interpolations For Use In A Speech Synthesis System, Jacob G. Nieveen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

A speech synthesis system with an original user interface is being developed. In contrast to most modern synthesizers, this system is not text to speech (TTS). This system allows the user to control vowels, vowel transitions, and consonant sounds through a simple 2-d vowel pad and consonant buttons. In this system, a synthesized glottal waveform is passed through vowel filters to create vowel sounds. Several filters were calculated from recordings of vowels using linear predictive coding (LPC). The rest of the vowels in the North American English vowel space were found using interpolation techniques with line spectral frequencies (LSF). The …

Optimization Of Polyhydroxybutyrate Production In Recombinant Escherichia Coli Through Metabolic Modeling And Simulation, Yoshitaro Heshiki

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The objective of this study is to optimize the growth media and genes to maximize PHB production computer simulations, and to evaluate the simulation results through experiments. In order to achieve this objective, the metabolism of E. coli that produces PHB was modeled using the existing E. coli genome-scale metabolic networks. To identify the best additional nutrient for PHB production, carbon sources, minerals, amiano acids, nitrogen sources, and sulfur sources were examined by production potential analysis. Strain design was conducted to find the unwanted reactions to overexpress PHB synthesis pathway.

Optical Sensors For Mapping Temperature And Winds In The Thermosphere From A Cubesat Platform, Stephanie Whalen Sullivan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the same way that mariners desire to know the weather their ships are about to encounter, satellite owners would like to know the conditions along their satellites' orbits. Accurate forecasts would allow operators to secure sensitive components prior to passing through a storm to reduce the risk of damage. Large solar arrays, which can act like sails, can be re-oriented to prevent the satellite from being moved out of its desired orbit. While terrestrial weather forecasters have thousands of sensors with continuous data streams available to generate weather models, very few sensors exist for space weather. Cost of sensing …

Applications Of Bayesian Statistics In Fluvial Bed Load Transport, Mark L. Schmelter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The science of fluvial sediment transport studies the processes involved in the movement of river sediments. It is commonly understood that when rivers flood they have a great capacity to move sand, gravel, and even larger cobbles and boulders. This process is not only limited to the big floods that usually attract so much attention, but also the more common river flows play a very important role in forming a river. As engineers and scientists, we like to be able to develop equations and relationships that describe some natural phenomenon—in this case, fluvial sediment transport. While we are able to …

Enhance Variational Asymptotic Method For Unit Cell Homogenization (Vamuch) For Real Engineering Structures And Materials, Zheng Ye

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The applications of heterogeneous materials and other materials with engineered microstructures growth rapidly in all industries to achieve better performance. These materials and structures are defined such as composites and nanotube. With the increasing of computing power, though the well-established commercial finite element analysis (FEA) has the ability to analyze such material of a small portion. It is not feasible for the structure level, since the computing requirements of a finite element model can easily exceed the bearable time in analysis or the capability of the best mainstream computers. To reduce the computational efforts, an efficient way is to use …