Engineering Commons^™

Exploring The Feasibility Of Introducing Alternative Fuel Vehicles Into Fleet, Samia Rubaiat

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Transportation is one of the most significant contributing sectors to emissions and consequently air pollution in the United States. Many state and private fleet agencies have announced their visions of zero-emission fleet programs. Adopting alternative fuel vehicle (AFV) is a viable option for achieving this objective. AFVs offer lower emissions along with low operating and maintenance costs, and higher fuel economy. The advancement of technologies has provided several AFV options, such as hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), electric vehicles (EV), compressed natural gas vehicles (CNGV), and liquefied petroleum gas vehicles (LPGV). The main challenges in adopting AFVs are the high purchasing …

Coin Recovery Ii, Carly Lofthouse

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Western Metals Recycling (WMR), a subsidiary of NUCOR Steel, is a metals recycling company with a location in Plymouth, Utah. At Plymouth, a 50 NT/hr. non-ferrous recovery plant uses eddy current technology to generate a non-ferrous product called zorba. Zorba is a mix of aluminum, copper, brass, zinc, printed circuit boards, coins, lead, and the like. (Figure 1) The market value of zorba varies but generally ranges from $0.30 to $0.50 per pound. The value of the coins (not including pennies) is much higher than zorba price. The team's objective is to upgrade and optimize the existing trommel equipment to …

Hardware Implementations Of Ccsds Deep Space Ldpc Codes For A Satellite Transponder, Dana R. Sorensen

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

Error-correction coding is a technique that adds mathematical structure to a message, allowing corruptions to be detected and corrected when the message is received. This is especially important for deep space satellite communications, since the long distances and low signal power levels often cause message corruption. A very strong type of error-correction coding known as LDPC codes was recently standardized for use with space communications. This project implements the encoding and decoding algorithms required for a small satellite radio to be able to use these LDPC codes. Several decoder architectures are implemented and compared by their performance, speed, and complexity. …

Hydraulic Analysis Of Coupling A Labyrinth Weir With A Steep Stepped Chute, Tucker J. Jorgensen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

There are many considerations involved in the design of a dam structure. A few of these include minimizing upstream flooding (and risk of embankment overtopping), economical construction, and downstream erosion. Addressing these concerns has, in part, led to a recent increase in the use of more efficient and economical hydraulic. Complex hydraulic structures such as labyrinth weirs and stepped chutes require extensive study to establish design methods. Combining two complex structures can result in dramatic changes in flow characteristics. This is particularly true in the case of combining a labyrinth weir with a stepped chute. Flow from the labyrinth weir …

Systems Thinking In Engineering Design: Differences In Expert Vs. Novice And Relationship To Personality Traits, Yuzhen Luo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Systems thinking is the ability to see the big picture and the related elements when designing, and how these relationships form the big picture. In engineering design, systems thinking is valuable to both industry, as well as engineering education. As such, it creates opportunities for researchers to better understand systems thinking of both professional engineers in industry, who are assumed to be the experts, and engineering students in higher education, who are assumed to be the novices. The purpose of this study was to compare and identify the differences between expert and novice systems thinking in engineering design. Additionally, the …

Effects Of Short Season Irrigation On Pasture Yield And Predicting Yield With Sentinel-2 Satellite, Ihsan Bugra Bugdayci

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Deficit irrigation can reduce agriculture water use making additional water available for other uses. This study looked at multi-year impacts of deficit irrigation on pasture yield. The results show that that early irrigation provides the most benefit to cool season pastures and late season irrigation only had small impacts on yield. According to this research, irrigation water can be saved without impacting the yield importantly.

Remote sensing techniques are becoming a part of agriculture. Yield predictions are important for the farmers and others involved with agriculture. In this research, relationships between the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) calculated from remotely …

Closed-Loop Propulsive Control For Very Low Perigee Orbit Energy Management And Stabilization, Tyler J. Gardner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Within the past decade, the United States Air Force has begun exploring options for using smaller satellites, known as SmallSats and CubeSats, to decrease the time it takes to design and build new satellites. If used properly, a rapid development environment for satellites could improve the Air Force's ability to respond to new technologies and threats. Other organizations such as NASA and universities have been using SmallSats and CubeSats for research and development missions.

While smaller satellites are usually much cheaper to develop and require less time to create, limited volume strictly constrains the size of instrumentation and avionics that …

"You Can Tell They Care": A Phenomenographic Study Of Student Experiences With Empathic Concern Expressed By Professors In Engineering, Kate Youmans

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In order to address the increasingly complex challenges of the 21st century, there is a need to continue to grow the technical workforce by improving graduation rates of engineering students. To accomplish this, the culture of engineering programs must shift from demanding or intimidating to more inclusive and supportive. Professors can play a critical role in creating these cultures by building relationships with students. Empathic concern is essential in building relationships that can encourage student growth and development. This form of empathy, sometimes referred to as care or concern, is expressed through actions of understanding, compassion, and non-judgement. While research …

Formal Verification Of The Adversarial Robustness Property Of Deep Neural Networks Through Dimension Reduction Heuristics, Refutation-Based Abstraction, And Partitioning, Joshua Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Neural networks are tools that are often used to perform functions such as object recognition in images, speech-to-text, and general data classification. Because neural networks have been successful at approximating these functions that are difficult to explicitly write, they are seeing increased usage in fields such as autonomous driving, airplane collision avoidance systems, and other safety-critical applications. Due to the risks involved with safety-critical systems, it is important to provide guarantees about the networks performance under certain conditions. As an example, it is critically important that self driving cars with neural network based vision systems correctly identify pedestrians 100% of …

Soft-Switched Resonant Dc-Dc Converter In Underwater Dc Power Distribution Network, Tarak Saha

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Power distribution with DC source is advantageous over its AC counterpart in long distance distribution network due to the absence of effects of reactive components. Long distance power distribution with traditional voltage source suffers from drop in voltage over the length of the cable due to its impedance and forces the converters in the network to be over-designed with higher power rating than needed. In underwater power distribution network such as ocean observatory, marine sensors on the sea-bed etc., power conversion modules are situated at a distance far away from the shore, ranging from tens of kilometers to hundreds of …

System Level Characterization Of The Gridded Retarding Ion Drift Sensor (Grids) For The Petitsat Mission, Benjamin B. Oborn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Weather prediction, wherever people live, serves as a beneficial part of everyday life. Weather in the upper portions of Earth’s atmosphere also impacts life on Earth but it is not able to be predicted as well as its terrestrial counterpart. PetitSat is a cube satellite (CubeSat) mission proposed to help remedy this issue. It will collect measurements of charged particles in the upper atmosphere called a plasma. The measurements taken by PetitSat will facilitate better prediction of upper-atmospheric weather. Prediction of when and where weather phenomenon will occur will allow avoidance of negative consequences that can result. Once such negative …

Fate Of Pharmaceuticals And Personal Care Products In Duckweed And Waste Activated Sludge Under Aerobic And Anaerobic Solids Stabilization Conditions, Kwame Tweneboah Duodu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Twelve commonly used pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs)(acetaminophen, β-Estradiol, caffeine, carbamazepine, DEET, estrone, gemfibrozil, triclosan, TCEP, sulfamethoxazole, progesterone, fluoxetine) were investigated to determine their fate in biosolids. These compounds were selected due to their wide usage, and varying properties, that makes them representative of many other PPCPs.

Commonly used PPCPs (caffeine commonly found in tea, coffee, chocolate and soda, the pain reliever acetaminophen, and the pesticide DEET) were detected in high amounts in the influent of the Hyrum WWTP and Wellsville sewage lagoons. Although conventional WWTPs are not designed to remove PPCPs from wastewater, some PPCPs, such as acetaminophen, …

The Effect Of Weather On Pedestrian Activity At Signalized Intersections In Utah, Ferdousy Runa

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The weather has a significant influence on pedestrian activity. Profound knowledge and research can identify how weather variables impact and why people change their travel patterns. This study aims to assess the relationship of weather (snowfalls, snow depth, precipitation, maximum and minimum temperature) with pedestrian activity at 49 signalized intersections in Cache County, Utah. This study uses pedestrian actuation (push-button) data as a proxy for pedestrian activity and collects weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA).

Using 15 months of daily time-series data, this study applied log-linear time series models in the analysis. To account for non-linear …

Analytic Guidance Strategies For Passively Safe Rendezvous And Proximity Operations, Simon Shuster

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A safety ellipse is a type of relative motion trajectory that is commonly used for unmanned rendezvous and proximity operations. As the name suggests, safety ellipses are passively safe relative motion trajectories, which means that their natural motion inherently maintains a low collision risk. The focus of this dissertation is the derivation, analysis, and application of guidance strategies that reconfigure, establish, and exit a safety ellipse. The guidance strategies consist of a set of ∆v vectors and impulse times, all written in closed form. Through applications of optimal control theory and parameter optimization, it is shown that these maneuver …

Characterizing Water And Water-Related Energy Use In Multi-Unit Residential Structures With High Resolution Smart Metering Data, Joseph C. Brewer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

As urban populations continue to grow and expand, localized demands on water supplies continue to increase as well. These water supplies, which have been historically stable, are also threatened by an increasingly erratic climate. Together, these two factors have significantly increased the likelihood of long-term drought conditions in the American West. In response, water suppliers are investigating new ways to record water use in urban areas to better understand how water is used. One of these methods is smart meters; advanced devices that can record and transmit water use information directly to the water supplier. However, these devices can produce …

Transfer Of Learning For K-12 Stem Teachers: From The Gear Up Engineering Camp Professional Learning Experience To The Classroom, Ryan F. Barlow

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Because of the new Utah Science with Engineering Education (SEEd) standards, which are based on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Utah science teachers in K-12 schools are now being asked to incorporate engineering into their science classes. Many science teachers in the State of Utah do not have a background in engineering and have not received training in how to incorporate engineering into their classes. To help remedy this problem, six STEM teachers from the State of Utah, and one STEM teacher from Nevada, came to the campus of Utah State University in July 2019 to participate with a …

Emerging Works On Wireless Inductive Power Transfer: Auv Charging From Constant Current Distribution And Analysis Of Controls In Ev Dynamic Charging, Anindya Chitta Bagchi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wireless power transfer through inductive coupling, termed as inductive power transfer (IPT), is one of the important technologies in power electronics that enable transfer of power between entities without physical connections. While it has seen significant growth in the areas such as electric vehicle charging, phone charging and biomedical implants, its emerging applications include charging of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and dynamic charging of electric vehicles from the roadway. This dissertation addresses a few key challenges in these areas of IPT applications, paving the way for future developments.

For the WPT for AUV, the recently developing sea-bed installed marine systems …

A Study In Gps-Denied Navigation Using Synthetic Aperture Radar, Colton P. Lindstrom

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In modern navigation systems, GPS is vital to accurately piloting a vehicle. This is especially true in autonomous vehicles, such as UAVs, which have no pilot. Unfortunately, GPS signals can be easily jammed or spoofed. For example, canyons and urban cities create an environment where the sky is obstructed and make GPS signals unreliable. Additionally, hostile individuals can transmit personal signals intended to block or spoof GPS signals. In these situations, it is important to find a means of navigation that doesn’t rely on GPS.

Navigating without GPS means that other types of sensors or instruments must be used to …

Self-Describing Fiducials For Gps-Denied Navigation Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Amanda J. Strate

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Accurate estimation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s (UAV’s) location is critical for the operation of the UAV when it is controlled completely by its onboard processor. This can be particularly challenging in environments in which GPS is not available (GPS-denied). Many of the options previously explored for estimation of a UAV’s location without the use of GPS require more sophisticated processors than can feasibly be mounted on a UAV because of weight, size, and power restrictions. Many options are also aimed at indoor operation without the range capabilities to scale to outdoor operations. This research explores an alternative method of …

Molecular Mechanisms And Design Of Hydrogen-Bonded Materials For Thermal Applications, Jinlong He

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Heat transfer at the nanoscale plays an important role in determining the reliability and performance of many innovative advanced materials technologies such as nanoelectronics, semiconductor, biomedical devices, polymers, and composites. Extensive efforts have been made to design materials with extraordinary thermal properties. However, fundamental understanding of heat transfer in many of these materials is still not lacking, because the thermal transport processes are governed by several factors including molecular morphology and chemical bonding. Among these factors, the atomic bonding between two dissimilar materials or within single materials is of particular interest due to its ubiquity and importance in physical processes. …

Impacts Of Beaver Dams On Mountain Stream Discharge And Water Temperature, Timothy R. Clark

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

Beaver dam complexes have been shown to affect the hydrologic processes controlling river systems. These processes include surface and groundwater exchanges, water chemistry and temperature variations, and river discharge magnitudes. Majerova et al. (2015) explored the effects of beaver dams on surface and groundwater exchanges and water temperature by evaluating three years of water discharge and temperature data recorded at multiple locations within a small stream in northern Utah. They found that beaver dams increase the water surface elevation and force water into the floodplain resulting in increased inundation and groundwater recharge. They additionally found that beaver dams increase residence …

Weber Basin Water Conservancy District Bottom-Up Climate Vulnerability Study Using Riverware, Jacob Everitt

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

With so much uncertainty of what the future has in store for us, how can we prepare for what lies ahead? The Weber Basin Water Conservancy District (WBWCD) needs to know how they can best prepare for future climate changes and future growth, and where their water system is vulnerable. A bottom-up approach can be used to consider how factors and subfactors effect the vulnerability of their water system's storage and delivery. This approach is accomplished with the use of RiverWare, an advanced water system modeling program. Scenarios to represent the factors are as follows: range of future stream flows, …

Trisiloxane Surfactant Adjuvants In Pollen, Autumn Slade

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Chemicals are often added to agricultural pesticide mixes to help increase the efficiency of the field spray solution, and one of the main groups of chemicals used for this purpose are trisiloxane surfactants (TSSs). Normally TSSs are considered non-toxic, but recent studies have shown TSSs to have negative impacts on organisms like honey bees. Though TSSs have recently been found in environmental sources like water, pollen, and beeswax, little is known about how TSSs behave in the environment or affects active ingredients, like pesticides.

To help determine the environmental prevalence and fate of TSSs, several studies were performed. Pollen was …

Characterization Of Chinese Hamster Ovary Cell Performance With Pentanoic Acid And N-Acetyl Cysteine Treatment, Joseph Camire

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

To improve the cost of producing protein therapeutics manufacturers can attempt to increase the amount of protein produced per unit volume. Some small fatty-acids have shown the ability to increase protein concentrations in some manufacturing systems. An example system is in the industrially important cell line derived from a Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO). A drawback of adding these fatty-acids is they can increase the rate of cell death.

A potential way to minimize the cell death rate, caused by adding fatty-acids, is to also add additional anti-oxidants. Through a series of studies, we demonstrate production with different fatty-acids, butanoic acid …

Study Of Levee Underseepage Through Abandoned Channels And Point Bars On Curved Levee Sections Using The Response Surface-Monte Carlo Method, Tomsen Reed

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The current procedures for calculated the probability of failure of levees (earthen structures designed to prevent flooding of important locations) all have their own unique limitations. Some methods are very simplistic, and either ignore or do not allow for inclusion of complex geometries. Other methods allow for complex geometry, but do not lend themselves to large quantities of analysis because of the amount of time it takes to create or modify a model. For these reasons, previous research performed by Lourdes Polanco and Dr. John Rice developed the preliminary stages of a new method called the Response Surface-Monte Carlo method. …

Benchmarking Of A Mobile Phone Particle Image Velocimetry System, David Armijo

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

One of the most important tools in a fluid dynamics laboratory is a particle image velocimetry (PIV) system. This system can measure the speed of a fluid flow simply by taking high-speed images of the motion of the fluid, then applying PIV cross-correlation software to calculate speed from the resulting images. The mI-PIV project is in the process of designing a new method of performing PIV by putting the cross-correlation software on a mobile phone application, called mobile Instructional PIV (mI-PIV). This system is an innovative stepping stone in making PIV systems more widely available. It is designed to be …

Protecting Crops From Abiotic Stress: Copper Oxide Nanoparticle Effects On Wheat And A Beneficial Rhizobacterium, Matthew Potter

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nanoparticles (NPs) are defined as particles less than 100 nm in at least one dimension. CuO NPs have possible applications in agriculture as micronutrient sources, pesticides, and enhancers of crop stress tolerance. Here, three aspects of CuO NP agricultural applications are studied: 1) the potential of CuO NPs to prevent wheat lodging-when crops irreversibly fall over; 2) CuO NP-induced drought tolerance in wheat seedlings; and 3) the effects of CuO NPs on outer membrane vesicle (OMV) production by Pseudomonas chlororaphis O6 (PcO6), a plant-health promoting bacterium.

Wheat grown 7 d exposed to CuO NPs in the growth matrix …

Formation Control Using Vehicle Operational Envelopes And Behavior-Based Dual-Mode Model Predictive Control, Brian Merrell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis presents a control framework for formation control. Given an initial desired trajectory, a framework is presented to generate trajectories for each vehicle within the formation. When combined with an operational envelope, a designated area for each vehicle to maneuver, for each vehicle the multi-vehicle formation control problem can be redefined into a single vehicle problem. A single vehicle framework is presented to track the respective trajectory when possible, or stay near it when it passes through previously unknown obstacles. Arc-based motions are used to rapidly produce desirable robot controls while a trajectory tracking motion is used to ensure …

Cytomegalovirus Inhibition By Pluronic-Encapsulated Quercetin And Synergy With Ganciclovir, Ian Wadsworth

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the leading viral cause of birth defects worldwide and leads to a variety of complications. Ganciclovir is the most common anti-CMV drug used but often causes severe side effects. Quercetin, a plant pigment, shows anti-CMV activity that may provide a less toxic alternative to ganciclovir, or when co-administered, reduce ganciclovir treatments. However, a drug carrier is needed to deliver quercetin for CMV treatment. In this study, three Pluronic polymers (P123, F127, and F68) were investigated as a quercetin drug delivery system (DDS) for CMV treatment.

All selected Pluronics successfully encapsulated quercetin at varying degrees of efficacy. …

A General Approach To Lifting-Line Theory, Applied To Wings With Sweep, Jackson T. Reid

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Lifting-line theory is one simple method of predicting the lift produced by a wing. The traditional implementation of lifting-line theory, developed in 1918, is limited to predicting the lift of traditional straight wings. In this work, lifting-line theory is extended to predict the lift produced by modern swept (or "v-shaped") wings by strategically handling the singularities inherent to the theory. The resulting formulation is shown to be both accurate and computationally inexpensive, when compared to experimental and higher-fidelity computational results, demonstrating the method's usefulness as an aerodynamic design tool. Because of the low computational cost and accuracy of the method …