Engineering Commons^™

Characterization Of Steel Corrosion In An Aggressive Environment, Sung Min Maeng

Theses

As part of the Sustainable Green Manufacturing Program, the corrosion resistance of sputtered tantalum is being studied in order to evaluate it as a replacement coating for electroplated chrome. To accomplish this, studies were conducted to evaluate corrosion properties of the gun barrel steel by employing corrosion rate and bulk measurements including x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM)/energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and x-ray fluorescence (XRF), as well as synchrotron-based x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS).

Corrosion behavior of steel immersed in an aggressive environment of 37.8 % hydrochloric acid at room temperature was investigated as a function of time from …

Computer Automated Experimentation For The Control And Assessment Of The Classically Conditioned Eyeblink Response, Michael Terrence Bergen

Theses

The use of the classically conditioned eyeblink response, a form of associative learning, is a growing method of experimentation in modem science. This type of associative learning, has many features that make it useful for applications in the study of specific neurological functions. The goal of this project was to design and implement a software system for the automated control and on-line evaluation of a classical conditioning experiment for use with human subjects. A program was developed in the LabVIEW programming environment by National Instruments. Basic hardware components produce acoustic signals, deliver airpuffs, and sense and condition physiological responses. Safety …

Measurements Of The Effects Of Colored Light On The Body, Lynne Hendrickson

Theses

Colored light is used in movies, restaurants, and other situations to create particular environments. It creates a mood and sets a stage for specific events.

This study used colored light to create relaxation and stress in order to evaluate physiological reactions in the human body. In all four studies of this paper, EEG, EKG, and peripheral blood flow were recorded and observed and in the latter two studies peripheral temperature and conductance were also recorded. An audio stressor was introduced in the first three studies to evaluate the stability of the altered mood of the individuals.

Considerable mood alterations were …

Study Of The Effects Of Deuterium Implantation Upon The Performance Of Thin-Oxide Cmos Devices, Sumit Kishore

Theses

The use of ultra thin oxide films in modem semiconductor devices makes them increasingly susceptible to damage due to the hot carrier damage. Deuterium in place of hydrogen was introduced by ion implantation at the silicon oxide-silicon interface during fabrication to satisfy the dangling bonds. Deuterium was implanted at energies of 15, 25 and 35 keV and at a dose of 1x10¹⁴/cm². Some of the wafers were subjected to N₂O annealing following gate oxide growth. It was demonstrated that ion implantation is an effective means of introduction of deuterium. Deuterium implantation brings about a …

Emissivity Measurements And Modeling Of Silicon Related Materials, Vijay Krishnamurthy

Theses

The objective of the thesis was to study the radiative properties of silicon related materials for applications in rapid thermal proceesing. In particular, three distinct materials have been considered - Silicon, SIMOX and Tantalum.

The research highlights are Establishment of spectral emissometry as a novel, reliable and reproducible technique for a) Determination of wavelength and temperature dependent reflectivity, transmissivity, emissivity of silicon related materials and structures. The emissometer operates in the wavelength range of 1-20µm and temperature range of 300-1200K. b) Establishment of methodoligies to obtain the frnndemental constants. Effects of wavelength, temperature, total available free carriers by doping types …

Mutual Interference Investigation Of Cebus And X-10 Powerline Signaling, Sajid Pallithotungal

Theses

Powerline control signaling using CEBus has great potential towards inexpensive home automation. CEBus transmits at 10 kBps using spread spectrum in the 100-400 kHz band while X-l0 sends 60 Bps using bursts of 120 kHz carrier on the power line. However, these two signals may destructively interfere when present simultaneously. X-10 is narrow band and interferes with the CEBus spread spectrum signal. This thesis looks into the mutual interference patterns of Power Line CEBus communication in the presence of X-l0 module signaling and visa versa. The investigation encompasses a series of tests and measurements on a Power Line CEBus-X10 test …

Chemical Volatilization Of Heavy Metals For Waste Separation And Real Time Metals Analysis, Mohammad Nasr Ul-Alam

Theses

One of the major challenges in environmental analysis concerns the rapid and sensitive detection of metals emitted from combustion stacks. An interesting concept for real time analysis is to convert airborne metal oxide particles in a flow reactor into relatively volatile compounds of a single class, and then analyze in the gas phase. In this project, kinetics of chemical volatilization reaction between Sb₂O₃ and HCl was investigated. To achieve this a laboratory volatilization flow reactor was built and data was collected for the volatilization reaction in terms of conversion, inlet and outlet concentrations and flow rates. A …

Analysis Of Long-Term Heart Rate Variability Using Labview, Daniel Yang

Theses

Long-term heart rate variability measurement is important in understanding the activities of the autonomic nervous system. Many methods and implications of long-terrn HRV were available in the literature. The first two studies focused on two data analysis techniques that were used on a normal subject. The first study focused on the 1/f fluctuations. For this analysis, three 1 1h heart rate variability data sets were collected with the Polar Vantage NV. A LabVIEW program was used to calculate the power spectrum of the heart rate, and then the 1/f line was calculated by taking the log of the power spectrum …

Interventions Of Water Jet Technology On Skin Surgery, Kittipat Vichyavichien

Theses

The perfect and precise surgical cut, similar to today's laser one, is very important in many surgeries, especially in dissection and to recanaize arterial occlusive lessions. Causing no coagulation is one of the advantages of water jet because it generates no heat. It also provides omni-directional cutting capabilities at very high speeds, resulting edge quality that is usually superior to other existing conventional cutting processes. Debris is always carried away from incisions by jet stream and less damaged tissue, than mechanical incisions. In addition, water jet exerts minimal contact pressure on the tissue being cut due to the small diameter …

Biomechanical Study Of Performance Of A Plugged Femoral Implant Coupled With A Trochanter Cable System Using Finite Element Analysis, Deanna Yvonne Carstarphen

Theses

A Finite Element Analysis was conducted to determine the effect of a plug on the performance of the critical section of a femoral implant coupled with a trochanter cable grip system. The critical section was defined near the proximal end of the stem where a hole was designed for the purpose of attaching the cable grip system. Two models were generated for the analysis. One consisted of the critical section with the grip cables and a plug filled in the hole and the other was without the plug. The models were based on design specifications provided by Howmedica Incorporated. Two …

Modeling Of A Permeable Reactive Barrier, Guatam C. Ijoor

Theses

The focus of the presentstudy was centered on the modeling analysis to support the Permeable Reactive Barrier (PRB) design. The flow model formulated to simulate the Permeable Reactive Barrier System integrated the available geologic, hydro geologic and geo-chemical data from numerous recent installations to simulate a subsurface ground water scenario.

Different generic cases that a PRB system would fall into were identified based on its utility and aquifer conditions and then employed to produce different model adaptations. The different simulation codes and interfaces were evaluated, and the most expedient of them was used to simulate the Model.

The simulations were …

Variable Gain Control Of Brushless Dc Motor Control With Low Resolution Sensors, Chung-Hsiang Wang

Theses

In this work, feasibility of using low cost, low resolution sensor for high performance brushless dc (BLDC) motor speed control is investigated. Conventional control, using a tachometer or high resolution encoder, suffers from drawbacks such as high cost, large physical volume, and high sensor processing bandwidth. On the other hand, sensorless BLDC motor, appealing in its hardware simplicity, does not provide sufficient fast performance. Using a standard low resolution sensor, such as a hall sensor or commutation encoder, a compromise between cost and performance can be obtained. However, the use of a low resolution sensor does pose a challenge to …

Development Of Icejet Machining Technology, Dimitri V. Shishkin

Theses

This work was concerned with the application of ice powder for material processing. Material cutting and surface cleaning were also studied. As a result, innovative cleaning and etching technology was pioneered. The corresponding technology was designed and demonstrated.

The study involved investigation of water freezing, crushing of generated ice, ice transportation, formation of ice water and ice air streams and, finally, use of this stream for material cutting and cleaning. The theoretical work included investigation of the phase change in water and ice formation, effect of ice temperature on particles behavior and entrainment of ice particles by the water stream. …

Fundamentals Of Dry Coating In Fluidized Bed, Rakesh Iyer

Theses

This thesis is devoted to the study of a novel dry coating method in fluidized bed - Dry Coating of Particles in Spouted bed (DCPS). The main objectives of this work were to study the feasibility of the process, both quantitatively and qualitatively, and to compare the results with coating by conventional mechanical mixing. Aerosol mechanics is applied to account for the following: 1) collision between the guest and host particles in a spouted bed (analysis of guest-host particle inertial fluid-dynamic interaction), and 2) to show how collision efficiency of guest particles with host particles affects the coating efficiency. An …

Multi-Lifecycle Assessment Design Tools And Software Development, Ji Jin

Theses

This thesis introduces the concept of Multi-lifecycles and a Multi-lifecycle assessment (MLCA) methodology for evaluating the energy consumption and environmental emissions of a product. MLCA quantifies materials, energy, and environmental burdens associated with end-of-life options, as well as obtains the value of returning parts and materials back to use, through demanufacturing, reengineering and remanufacturing.

A Multi-lifecycle Assessment software is developed as a tool to implement MLCA methodologies. By this software, one can practice a full life-cycle analysis on a product, or compare the environmental impacts of different products. Detailed designs on MLCA software including the databases, user interfaces, and algorithm …

Graphical User Interface For The Dsp : Using Texas Instruments Tms320c31 And Labview, Tahir Nazir

Theses

Digital Signal Processors (DSP's) have become very popular due to their ease of operation, economic value, adaptability and availability. However, the development environments for the DSP are still the archaic Assembly and C language programming. It is tedious, error prone and time consuming to develop and use DSP applications using these compared to Graphical User Interface development tools if available. In the modern age programming is very heavily done in object oriented graphical languages like the Visual C++ and Visual Basic. Windows also gives a good graphical user interface.

LAB VIEW with its readily available ensemble of good analysis, programming …

Effect Of Postural Tilt On The Autonomic Nervous System In Gulf War Veterans, Shrenik Dagli

Theses

Time-frequency signal representations characterize signals over a joint time-frequency plane. They combine time-domain and frequency-domain analysis to yield a potentially more revealing picture of the temporal localization of a signal spectrum. Time-frequency distributions (TFDS) of signals map a one-dimensional function of time, x (t), into a two-dimensional function of time and frequency, p(t, f). Most TFDs are "time-varying representations' which are similar conceptually to a musical score with time running along one axis and frequency along the other axis.

Many Gulf War Veterans complained of symptoms like unexplainable tiredness. This condition is known as the Gulf War Syndrome. The purpose …

Production Of Submicron Aerosols By Powder Depressurization, Amit Haryani

Theses

Disaggregation of dry powders in shear flow has limitations in producing submicron particles. This study explores a new method for the production of submicron particles by the depressurization of powder aerosols. The depressurization mechanism is based on the rapid depressurization of the aggregated powder through a specially designed nozzle. As the pressure suddenly decreases from very high values inside the aggregates (800 psi) to ambient at the surface of such aggregates, disaggregation takes place due to the force exerted by the gas escaping through their pore structure.

he effect of various process parameters, namely: nozzle diameter, pressure and pretreatment with …

Dual Frequency Bi-Othogonally Polarized Antennas For Gps Applications, Anand Arun Mahale

Theses

Dual frequency bi-orthogonally polarized antenna to be used in Global Positioning System applications operating in Li (1575.42 ± 10.23 MHz) and L2 (1227.60 ± 10.23 MHz) Bands has been studied. To ensure compatibility with existing applications, the antenna size is limited in dimensions to 4.120" x 4.680" x 1.250" including the radome. Orthogonally placed two dual frequency probe excited patches were designed using a high dielectric constant substrate (ε r = 9.8 and thickness of 250 mils, Rogers TMM10i material) to obtain vertical and horizontal polarization for each band. The measured performance of this antenna showed good agreement with the …

Design Of Components For A Generic Microprocessor Architecture, Pradnesh R. Mohare

Theses

The objective of this thesis was to develop a generic microprocessor design that can be adapted to many of the existing 16 bit microprocessors. Common features of various microprocessors were used to develop the design of many generic components which can then be used to design the required microprocessors instead of custom-designing each one of them separately. The components were designed using a CISC based micro-programmed design approach as that was more suitable in terms of design and verification time for generic implementation. The generic parts designed include the Register File for temporary data storage, the Effective Address Calculator that …

Handoff Effect On Prma (Packet Reservation Multiple Access) In Micro-Cellular System, Dongsuk Park

Theses

PRMA(Packet Reservation Multiple Access) has been proposed for third generation wireless information network by Goodman et al. [5] [4]. Due to small micro cell radius mobile initiated handoff has been proposed to disperse the burden of BS(Base Station) [14]. Even though these frequent handoffs will not burden on BS, increased contends due to handoff will affect the over all performance of PRMA.

In this paper, we analyze the handoff effect on PRMA performance under micro-cellular system. Steady state speech terminal model with handoff is proposed.. Stabilities are derived based on proposed steady state terminal model[F(c_s)=M] and also increased …

In Situ Aortic Root In Vitro Testing Of The Stented And Stenless Porcine Aortic Heart Valves, Sean Parker

Theses

Background - The stent, Delrin® support frame, for porcine heart valves has been blamed for reduced durability of these valves due to the additional stress caused by the relative stiffness of the stent. There is a tendency among surgeons to do away with the stent in the aortic position and use porcine stentless valves which are sewn directly in the aortic position after removing diseased valve. These stentless valves are extremely difficult to test and no appropriate holder has been designed for this purpose. New approach for in vitro testing of these valves has been developed at Sheihigh, Inc., Millburn …

Computer Simulation Of Cerebrovascular Responses During Induced Hypotension, John A. Schalago

Theses

The purpose of this project was to develop a computer model of cerebrovascular hemodynamics interacting with a pharmacodynamic drug model to examine the effects of three commonly used anti-hypertensive drugs upon intracranial pressure and cerebral blood flow. The model is used to predict cerebrovascular response during the administration of commonly used anti-hypertensive agents.

The mathematical model of intracranial hemodynamics is a seven compartment constant volume system. A series of resistances relate blood and cerebrospinal fluxes to pressure gradients between compartments. Arterial, venous and tissues compliance are included. Autoregulation is modeled by transmural pressure-dependent arterial-arteriolar resistance. The effects of three drugs …

Radiative Properties Of Ir Materials, Manish R. Babladi

Theses

The objective of this thesis is to study the radiative properties of materials of interest in the infrared range of wavelengths. In particular, three distinct materials have been considered here - Erbium oxide, alumina and quartz. Erbium oxide has unique selective line emission, which gives a high emittance at a particular wavelength and low emittance in the rest of the infrared spectrum. It has applications in the design and development of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) generators. Because of its selective emission properties, erbium oxide assists in concentrating the radiant energy into a narrow band near the bandgap energy of the TPV cell, …

Design And Engineering Of A Tensile Fabric Structure, Jairo Rios

Theses

Fabric structures are designed in an iterative process between architect and engineer, analysis input and output, and detail and patterning. There are three main steps in designing a fabric structure: shape finding, loading, and patterning/ detailing.

Shapefinding consists of finding the shape of the fabric where the fabric forces are in equilibrium. This type of structure is geometrically nonlinear which require iterative analysis to converge on a unique solution.

The loading of the structure is similar to that of any conventional structures. The departure is in the major effects that suction and ponding have on fabric surfaces.

Usually the details …

Coagulation And Disinfection By-Products Formation Potential Of Dissolved Organic Matter Fractions, Neeraj S. Pipada

Theses

Both the proposed United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Disinfectants- Disinfection By-Products and Enhanced Surface Water Treatment rules have provisions for minimizing the formation of undesirable precursors of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water Natural Organic Matter (NOM) contains many of the precursors to the DBPs formed following disinfection of drinking water. DAX-8 resin procedures were used to isolate and fractionate NOM into six dissolved organic matter (DOM) fractions; Hydrophobic acid (FA), base (FB), neutral (FN), and hydrophilic acid (PA), base (PB) and neutral (PN). Aluminum sulfate (alum) jar coagulation tests were performed to determine the optimum coagulation ranges of …

Vibration Control Of Ultra-High Precision Magnetic Leadscrew Using Recurrent Neural Network, Bhaskar Vinayak Dani

Theses

Ultra-high precision positioning is of strategic importance to modern industrial processes such as semiconductor manufacturing. Traditional drives with mechanical transmission elements exhibit nonlinearities such as friction, backlash and hysteresis which limit the system performance significantly. The magnetic leadscrew in this work belongs to the class of contactless drives which overcome the above mentioned limitations of contact-type drives. The operation is based on leadscrew/nut coupling but unlike mechanical Ieadscrews, the threads of the nut and the leadscrew are aligned magnetically and do not come in contact. Thus, "hard" nonlinearities are substantially reduced resulting in high precision and high resolution.

The dynamics …

A Signal Conditioning Approach For The Extraction Of The Oscillatory Petential From The Electroretinogram, Peter Haines Derr

Theses

The oscillatory potential (OP), a signal component of the electroretinogram (ERG), was investigated to determine correlation of the OP and pathological conditions of the inner retina. Large transients characterize the ERG. Such transients stimulate a filter's natural response. Since these responses can co-occur with the OP, a distorted OP will be extracted. A proposed signal windowing and padding technique for conditioning the ERG signal has been implemented for the extraction of a ntnimally distorted OP.

Windowing is used to capture only the OP period. The windowed ERG signal is then signal conditioned to generate initial values for the filter's state …

Development Of An Ion Source For Implantation Of Decaborane, Ravidath Gurudath

Theses

Future generations of Si technology will require ultra shallow junctions (tens of nm) in the drain and source regions of MOS transistors. Fabrication of such shallow p-type junctions requires implantation of boron at ultra low energies (≡1keV), below the limits of standard ion implantation technology. A proposed solution involves implantation of B₁₀H_X⁺ ions in which boron atoms carry less than 10% of the beam energy. Thus shallow implantation may be possible with standard ion implanters operating at tens of kV.

This thesis is a part of the feasibility study of this novel technology. The ionization of …

Vibration Control On Linear Robots With Digital Servocompensator, Roger Kobla Kwadzogah

Theses

Control application for active damping of structural vibrations and acoustic noise in mechanical systems is one of the engineering fields that can benefit from advances made in digital signal processors. This thesis project is one such application. It is about a vibration control at the loading point of a high speed linear robotic workcell. A lead zirconate titanate piezoelectric ceramic is used as the actuator and an accelerometer provides the sensing. From experimentally measured frequency response of this system, a shaping filter is designed and added on. The reshaped system is fitted with a third order transfer function design model. …