Engineering Commons^™

Climate Change Impact On Flood Hazard In The Grand River Basin, Ontario, Canada, Abhishek Gaur

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Rapidly changing climatic conditions across the globe are believed to have an impact on key climate variables and the hydrologic cycle. Changes in magnitude and frequency of peak flow patterns have been noted in rivers worldwide. The associated risk is projected to increase many folds during the 21^st century. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify these impacts for effective water resource planning and management in future. Methodology chosen to do so should be able to capture variations in climate variables at fine temporal, spatial and distributional scales. Also, it should be able to cover uncertainties associated with future climatic, …

Robotics-Assisted Needle Steering For Percutaneous Interventions: Modeling And Experiments, Ali Asadian

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Needle insertion and guidance plays an important role in medical procedures such as brachytherapy and biopsy. Flexible needles have the potential to facilitate precise targeting and avoid collisions during medical interventions while reducing trauma to the patient and post-puncture issues. Nevertheless, error introduced during guidance degrades the effectiveness of the planned therapy or diagnosis. Although steering using flexible bevel-tip needles provides great mobility and dexterity, a major barrier is the complexity of needle-tissue interaction that does not lend itself to intuitive control. To overcome this problem, a robotic system can be employed to perform trajectory planning and tracking by manipulation …

Novel Control Of Pv Solar And Wind Farm Inverters As Statcom For Increasing Connectivity Of Distributed Generators, Mahendra Ac

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The integration of distributed generators (DGs) such as wind farms and PV solar farms in distribution networks is getting severely constrained due to problems of steady state voltage rise and temporary overvoltages (TOV). This thesis presents a first time application of a patent-pending PV solar farm control as a dynamic reactive power compensator (STATCOM), termed PV-STATCOM, for mitigating the voltage rise and TOV issues, and significantly enhancing the connectivity of a neighbouring wind farm both during night and day in a realistic distribution feeder in Ontario. The effectiveness of PV-STATCOM is demonstrated even if the solar farm is located 30 …

Effect Of Groundwater-Lake Interactions On The Distribution Of Arsenic In A Freshwater Beach, Jacky Sk Lee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis presents field measurements and numerical modeling that provide insight into the nearshore geochemical conditions and groundwater flows controlling the mobility of arsenic (As) in a freshwater beach aquifer and its potential discharge to Lake Erie. Field measurements were performed via shore-normal monitoring transects installed at beaches (Little Beach and Main Beach) located adjacent to a brownfield industrial harbour site that has elevated sediment and groundwater As concentrations. Detailed pore water chemistry analyses revealed elevated As (up to 0.056 mg/L) 1 - 2 m below the shoreline at all transect locations. The distributions of species in the aqueous and …

An Investigation Of Subaxial Cervical Spine Trauma And Surgical Treatment Through Biomechanical Simulation And Kinematic Analysis, Stewart D. Mclachlin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In vitro biomechanical investigations can help to identify changes in subaxial cervical spine (C3-C7) stability following injury, and determine the efficacy of surgical treatments through controlled joint simulation experiments and kinematic analyses. However, with the large spectrum of cervical spine trauma, a large fraction of the potential injuries have not been examined biomechanically. This includes a lack of studies investigating prevalent flexion-distraction injuries. Therefore, the overall objective of this thesis was to investigate the changes in subaxial cervical spine kinematic stability with simulated flexion-distraction injuries and current surgical instrumentation approaches using both established and novel biomechanical techniques.

Three in vitro …

Spatial Variation And Interpolation Of Wind Speed Statistics And Its Implication In Design Wind Load, Wei Ye

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Consideration of wind load is important for design of engineered structures. Codification of wind load for structural design requires the estimation of the quantiles or return period values of the annual maximum wind speed. The extreme wind speeds are estimated based on the measured wind records at different meteorological stations and affected by the length of the wind record (i.e., sample size) and other factors such as the surrounding terrain and so on. This study is focused on 1) the spatial interpolation of wind speed statistics, 2) the potential of using regional frequency analysis in estimating the extreme wind speed, …

A Novel Mixed Metallic Oxygen Carrier For Chemical Looping Combustion: Preparation, Characterization And Kinetic Modeling, Mohammad Rezwanul Quddus

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In last decades, significant concerns have been raised regarding the global warming effect. To date, about one-third of the total anthropogenic CO₂ emission results from power generation using fossil based fuel and CO₂ is the main contributor to global warming. Therefore, technologies for efficient capture of CO₂ are becoming of great value. In this respect, Chemical-Looping Combustion (CLC) has received significant attention as a promising technology facilitating concurrent CO₂ capture and power generation. This non-conventional technique employs a solid carrier, known as oxygen carrier, to supply oxygen and facilitates combustion process in absence of N_{2 …}

Particle Fluidization In Upward And Inverse Liquid-Solid Circulating Fluidized Bed, Long Sang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The fluidization of particles in upwards and inverse Liquid-Solid Circulating Fluidized Bed is carried out to investigate the hydrodynamic characteristics when using “heavy” and “light” particles, whose densities are higher and lower than that of the surrounding liquid respectively. Generally, the solids are fluidized upwards in the former case, whereas, the downwards fluidization is preferred in the latter scenario.

In the Liquid-Solid Circulating Fluidized Bed (LSCFB) riser, where the upwards fluidization takes place, the effects of particle properties on solids holdup are investigated experimentally based on three parameters: superficial liquid velocity, normalized superficial liquid velocity and excess superficial liquid velocity. …

Process-Structure Relationships Of Magnesium Alloys, Arindam Banerjee

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research study characterizes the effects of solidification conditions on the resulting microstructure of an AM60B magnesium alloy during the solidification cycle of the casting. Seventeen control points are chosen from different sections of an instrument panel beam casting and its centerline coordinates are located. These control points locations are then used by Meridian Lightweight Technology Inc. to run a simulation in a MAGMASoft casting software to obtain temperature-time specific data.

An exact analytical solution to the Stefan problem is used to compute the one dimensional heat transfer for a section of the casting and to calculate its temperature distribution …

Micro-Mechanical Assessment Of The Local Plastic Strain Invoked During A Splined Mandrel Flow Forming Operation, Meysam Haghshenas

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Splined Mandrel Flow Forming (SMFF) is a metal spinning operation that involves the application of high multiaxial compressive stress states to invoke large plastic flow in the work piece. This allows for essentially one-step fabrication of complex internally-splined shapes. In this research project, the equivalent plastic strain, invoked throughout bcc (1020 steel) and fcc (5052 and 6061 aluminum alloys, pure copper, and 70/30 brass) samples, that were made by SMFF, was measured. The objective of the research were to measure the to obtain data on the effect of microstructure and mechanical parameters on the flow formability of ductile bcc and …

Electroacoustic And Behavioural Evaluation Of Hearing Aid Digital Signal Processing Features, David J O Suelzle

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Modern digital hearing aids provide an array of features to improve the user listening experience. As the features become more advanced and interdependent, it becomes increasingly necessary to develop accurate and cost-effective methods to evaluate their performance. Subjective experiments are an accurate method to determine hearing aid performance but they come with a high monetary and time cost. Four studies that develop and evaluate electroacoustic hearing aid feature evaluation techniques are presented. The first study applies a recent speech quality metric to two bilateral wireless hearing aids with various features enabled in a variety of environmental conditions. The study shows …

Detection, Receivers, And Performance Of Cpfsk And Cpck, Mohammed Zourob

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM) is a power/bandwidth efficient signaling technique for data transmission. In this thesis, two subclasses of this modulation called Continuous Phase Frequency Shift Keying (CPFSK) and Continuous Phase Chirp Keying (CPCK) are considered and their descriptions and properties are discussed in detail and several illustrations are given. Bayesian Maximum Likelihood Ratio Test (MLRT) is designed for detection of CPFSK and CPCK in AWGN channel. Based on this test, an optimum receiver structure, that minimizes the total probability of error, is obtained. Using high- and low-SNR approximations in the Bayesian test, two receivers, whose performances are analytically …

Biofilm Control In A Fludized Bed Bioreactor (Fbbr) Treating Municipal Wastewater: Optimization, Modeling, And Nitrous Oxide (N2o) Emissions, Ahmed Eldyasti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Among the various biological wastewater treatment processes for industrial and municipal wastewater treatment, fluidized bed bioreactors (FBBR) demonstrate numerous advantages compared to suspended growth systems such as lower hydraulic retention time, high surface area and accordingly high biomass retention time, higher volumetric conversion rates, lower sensitivity to temperature, and less sludge production. Despite the numerous biofilm bioreactor configurations and system schemes that are currently available for a wide variety of environmental applications, the development and optimization of a stable biofilm that is capable of offering effective and integrated functions, i.e. biodegradation, biomass-liquid separation, and biomass retention along with a substantial …

Improving The Geotagging Accuracy Of Street-Level Images, Mehrnaz Zouqi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Integrating images taken at street-level with satellite imagery is becoming increasingly valuable in the decision-making processes not only for individuals, but also in business and governmental sectors. To perform this integration, images taken at street-level need to be accurately georeferenced. This georeference information can be derived from a global positioning system (GPS). However, GPS data is prone to errors up to 15 meters, and needs to be corrected for the purpose of geo-referencing. In this thesis, an automatic method is proposed for correcting the georeference information obtained from the GPS data, based on image registration techniques. The proposed method uses …

Experimental Investigation Of Wind Effect On Solar Panels, Ayodeji Abiola-Ogedengbe

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Photovoltaic Solar Panels for electricity generation are outdoor low-rise structures that are vulnerable to damage by the wind. The existing building codes do not contain information about the impact of the wind on these structures and hence do not provide comprehensive guidelines to mitigate such impact. The present study is a contribution to the ongoing efforts to codify the wind loading on solar panels. In this study, experimental investigations were conducted on the scaled model of a ground-mounted solar panel structure whose surface is geometrically similar to an inclined flat plate and mounted on three-legged support. The panel comprises of …

Sol-Gel Derived Biodegradable And Bioactive Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Biomaterials For Bone Tissue Engineering, Bedilu A. Allo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Treatments of bone injuries and defects have been largely centered on replacing the lost bone with tissues of allogeneic or xenogeneic sources as well as synthetic bone substitutes, which in all lead to limited degree of structural and functional recovery. As a result, tissue engineering has emerged as a viable technology to regenerate the structures and therefore recover the functions of bone tissue rather than replacement alone. Hence, the current strategies of bone tissue engineering and regeneration rely on bioactive scaffolds to mimic the natural extracellular matrix (ECM) as templates onto which cells attach, multiply, migrate and function.

In this …

A Framework For Measuring The Usability Issues And Criteria Of Mobile Learning Applications, Abdalha A. Ali

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With the continuing growth of mobile devices outpacing that of desktops and laptops, mobile devices have become the new personal computer. These devices have become increasingly sophisticated and extremely powerful in the last few years. Substantial work has been done to measure mobile applications’ level of quality; many researchers have attempted to figure out why certain applications fail and others succeed.

In this thesis, a conceptual framework for measuring the quality aspects and criteria of m-learning is produced. Furthermore, a software prototype application for smartphones to assess usability issues of m-learning applications has been designed and implemented. This prototype application …

Rigid Body Attitude Estimation: An Overview And Comparative Study, Nojan Madinehi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The attitude estimation of rigid body systems has attracted the attention of many researchers over the years. The development of efficient estimation algorithms that can accurately estimate the orientation of a rigid body is a crucial step towards a reliable implementation of control schemes for underwater and flying vehicles.

The primary focus of this thesis consists in investigating various attitude estimation techniques and their applications.

Two major classes are discussed. The first class consists of the earliest static attitude determination techniques relying solely on a set of body vector measurements of known vectors in the inertial frame. The second class …

Numerical Modelling Of Species Exchange In A 3d Porous Medium: Modelling Exchange Within The Human Lung, Chelsea E. Johnson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The volume-averaged oxygen transport equation is closed using a volume-averaged form of Fick’s law of diffusion between the air and tissue to simulate species exchange within the lungs’ alveoli using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) 3D conjugate domain model. Pore level simulations of a terminal alveolated duct are used to determine that the transport of inhaled oxygen from the cluster inlet to the alveolar walls is diffusion dominated. The resistance to oxygen diffusion into the tissue is found to be a function of the tidal volume and tissue transport properties, with a maximum respiration frequency at which the full amount …

Catalytic Conversion Of Benzothiophene Over A H-Zsm5 Catalyst, Reactivity And A Kinetic Model, Saad A. Al-Bogami

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Nowadays and due to environmental legislations, a world-wide attention has been given towards clean transportation fuels with emphasis on sulfur contents reduction. These efforts on the other hand are challenged by the poor qualities of crude oils. The existing desulfurization technologies such as hydrodesulfurization are not capable to cope with new firm standards. Hence, it is extremely desirable to develop a catalytic desulfurization process to meet both sulfur limits and refining economics. As one aspect of this objective, it is of great importance to study and comprehend the behaviour and chemistry of individual sulfur species present in transportation fuels cuts. …

Objective And Subjective Evaluation Of Wideband Speech Quality, Nazanin Pourmand

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Traditional landline and cellular communications use a bandwidth of 300 - 3400 Hz for transmitting speech. This narrow bandwidth impacts quality, intelligibility and naturalness of transmitted speech. There is an impending change within the telecommunication industry towards using wider bandwidth speech, but the enlarged bandwidth also introduces a few challenges in speech processing. Echo and noise are two challenging issues in wideband telephony, due to increased perceptual sensitivity by users.

Subjective and/or objective measurements of speech quality are important in benchmarking speech processing algorithms and evaluating the effect of parameters like noise, echo, and delay in wideband telephony. Subjective measures …

Fuzzy Expert-Cocomo Risk Assessment And Effort Contingency Model In Software Project Management, Ekananta Manalif

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Software development can be considered to be the most uncertain project when compared to other types of projects due to the uncertainty in the customer requirements, the complexity of the process, and the intangible nature of the product. In order to increase the likelihood of success in managing a software project, the project manager(s) must invest more time and effort in the project planning phase. The two main activities in project planning phase are effort estimation and risk management which has to be executed together because the accuracy of the effort estimation is highly dependent on the size and nature …

Flow Enhancement Of Ginseng And Other Fine Powders With Rotating And Conventional Fluidized Bed, Sima Manifar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With increasing of the market for Ginseng products, further improvements in Ginseng technology are required in order to meet the increasing demand, while maintaining a superior quality and adequate volume. The most commercial ginseng products are made from ginseng powder. In addition, for some applications such as tablet and capsule formulation, it is crucial to control and monitor powder flow for product quality assurance. However, although fine powders are preferred by many applications across industries given their many advantages such as relatively larger specific area, the difficulties encountered in powder handling processes due to the cohesive nature of fine powders …

Decentralized Resource Scheduling In Grid/Cloud Computing, Ra'afat O. Abu-Rukba

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the Grid/Cloud environment, applications or services and resources belong to different organizations with different objectives. Entities in the Grid/Cloud are autonomous and self-interested; however, they are willing to share their resources and services to achieve their individual and collective goals. In such open environment, the scheduling decision is a challenge given the decentralized nature of the environment. Each entity has specific requirements and objectives that need to achieve. In this thesis, we review the Grid/Cloud computing technologies, environment characteristics and structure and indicate the challenges within the resource scheduling. We capture the Grid/Cloud scheduling model based on the complete …

Effects Of Additive Modification On Flow Properties Of Fine Coating Particles, Danni Bao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The major challenge in fine powder coating technology is to improve the flowability of powders, so that the fine particles can be fluidized, pneumatically transported and then sprayed onto substrates homogenously. Although this can be achieved by adding commercial inorganic nanoparticles as flow additives, it also causes problems including film defects (seeds and fish eyes), because the inorganic additives are not fully compatible with the organic fine powder coating materials during curing. In this study, the concept of modified additives were exploited to improve the film quality and to enhance the performance of the modified additives on improving the flowability …

Carbon Nitride And Conjugated Polymer Composite Materials, Josh Byers

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The semiconductor and photovoltaic properties of carbon nitride (CNx) thin films prepared using a reactive magnetron sputtering technique were investigated both individually and as composites with the organic conjugated polymers polybithiophene (PBT) and poly(3-hextlthiophene) (P3HT). At low nitrogen content, the film structure was dominated by graphitic sp² percolation networks, whereas at higher nitrogen contents CNx films started to demonstrate semiconductor properties, as evidenced by the occurrence of photoconductivity and the development of a space charge region. When CNx was deposited onto a PBT substrate, it was found to function as an acceptor material improving the photocurrent generation both in …

Design And Optimization Of Efficient Wireless Power Transfer Links For Implantable Biotelemetry Systems, Shawon Senjuti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Wireless power transmission is a technique that converts energy from radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic (EM) waves into DC voltage, which has been used here for the purpose of providing a power supply to bio–implantable batteryless sensors. The main constraints of the design are to achieve the minimum power required by the application, by still keeping the implant size small enough for the living subject’s body. Resonance–based inductive coupling is a method being actively researched for the use in this type of power transmission, which uses two pairs of inductor coils in the external and implant circuits.

In this work, we …

Simulation Of Mobility And Retention Of Selected Engineered Nanoparticles Beneath Landfills, Shumsun N. Siddique

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Engineered Nanoparticles (ENPs) have generated significant public and scientific excitement due to their unique physical, chemical, and electrical properties which has led to their application in a wide variety of industries. Landfills are a likely disposal site for ENPs at the end of their useful life, either encapsulated in a product as discrete nanoparticles or in nanoparticle agglomerates. Most countries and jurisdictions have landfill design regulations to provide an effective impermeable barrier between a landfill and soil/groundwater, however, landfills are still of concern due to the potential threat to groundwater resources. This study assesses the fate of selected ENPs (multi-walled …

Semantics-Based Automated Quality Assessment Of Depression Treatment Web Documents, Yanjun Zhang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The past decade has witnessed a dramatic expansion in the amount of publicly available health care information on the Web. The health care information on the web, however, is of extremely variable quality. The evaluation of content quality is a big challenge because non-automated methods for information content rating can be easily overwhelmed by the huge data volume. This study proposes an automated approach for assessing the quality of web health care information through comparing the text content with evidence-based health care recommendations. This method relies on semantic analysis and text classification to identify the presentation of evidence-based recommendations in …

Personal Smart Assistant For Digital Media And Advertisement, Ali Hussain

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The expansion of the cyberspace and the enormous process in computing and software applications enabled technology to cover every aspect of our life, therefore, many of our goals are now technology driven. Consequently, the need of intelligent assistance to achieve these goals has increased. However, for this assistance to be beneficial for users, it should be targeted to them based on their needs and preferences. Intelligent software agents have been recognized as a promising approach for the development of user-centric, personalized, applications.

In this thesis a generic personal smart assistant agent is proposed that provides relevant assistance to the user …