Engineering Commons^™

Exploring Extended Reality In An Aqueous Processing Test Bed For Nuclear Material, Sam Wald

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research aided in the ongoing creation of an extended reality training experience for Beartooth, an aqueous processing test bed for nuclear material, by exploring what will be comfortable and effective for users of the experience. Participants consisted of staff members from Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and authorized members of the Augmented Learning Lab at BYU. We conducted usability testing with participants who were given extended reality (XR) equipment to explore the Beartooth virtual training system. We also performed a heuristic evaluation on the system using an augmented reality evaluation checklist. Findings were discussed with the INL team and recommendations …

Parameter Estimation For Patient Enrollment In Clinical Trials, Junyan Liu

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this paper, we study the Poisson-gamma model for recruitment time in clinical trials. We proved several properties of this model that match our intuitions from a reliability perspective, did simulations on this model, and used different optimization methods to estimate the parameters. Although the behaviors of the optimization methods were unfavorable and unstable, we identified certain conditions and provided potential explanations for this phenomenon and further insights into the Poisson-gamma model.

Radic Voice Authentication: Replay Attack Detection Using Image Classification For Voice Authentication Systems, Hannah Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Systems like Google Home, Alexa, and Siri that use voice-based authentication to verify their users’ identities are vulnerable to voice replay attacks. These attacks gain unauthorized access to voice-controlled devices or systems by replaying recordings of passphrases and voice commands. This shows the necessity to develop more resilient voice-based authentication systems that can detect voice replay attacks.

This thesis implements a system that detects voice-based replay attacks by using deep learning and image classification of voice spectrograms to differentiate between live and recorded speech. Tests of this system indicate that the approach represents a promising direction for detecting voice-based replay …

Power Profiling Smart Home Devices, Kailai Cui

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In recent years, the growing market for smart home devices has raised concerns about user privacy and security. Previous works have utilized power auditing measures to infer activity of IoT devices to mitigate security and privacy threats.

In this thesis, we explore the potential of extracting information from the power consumption traces of smart home devices. We present a framework that collects smart home devices’ power traces with current sensors and preprocesses them for effective inference. We collect an extensive dataset of duration > 2h from 6 devices including smart speakers, smart camera and smart display. We perform different classification tasks …

Mechanical Actuation Via Resorbable Materials, Bethany Parkinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Resorbable materials—or materials which diffuse into their surroundings—present a promising means of actuating mechanical systems. In current practice, such as in the realm of in vivo surgical devices, resorbable materials are often intended to perform a temporary function and completely dissolve when that function is completed (e.g. resorbable sutures). In this paper, resorbable materials are proposed for use in a different way: as a means for actuating mechanical systems. We create several prototypes which demonstrate that resorbable materials, combined with stored energy, can be used to actuate mechanical systems under several loading conditions and in various applications. We also present …

A Campus Connected: An Analysis Of University Outdoor Spaces, Skylar Wilson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to analyze the evolution of outdoor renovations on East Tennessee State University’s campus by examining the effects these renovations have had on students and faculty, and then using this data to propose possible successful renovations to the remainder of the University Commons project. To complete this project, data was obtained through East Tennessee State University administrative faculty interviews, surveys of students residing in campus resident halls, and observations. By examining the impact on behavior, designers and developers are then able to successfully determine the factors that aid in positively influencing human behaviors. Design suggestions …

Bias In Artificial Intelligence: The Morality And Motivation Behind The Algorithm, Avery Freeman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

More than 180 cognitive biases have been identified in humans, and these biases relate to feelings towards a person or a group based on perceived group membership (Dilmegani, 2020). The development of artificial intelligence has fallen into the hands of engineers and statisticians, people who work within fields that have well-established race and gender diversity disparities (Panch et al., 2019). Thus, it is no surprise that the aforementioned biases have made their way into the algorithms behind artificial intelligence. The current study explored how participants’ pre-existing biases and level of outgroup contact have the potential to affect their decision-making pertaining …

Co-Planar Waveguides For Microwave Atom Chips, Morgan Logsdon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis describes research to develop co-planar waveguides (CPW) for coupling microwaves from mm-scale coaxial cables into 50 μm-scale microstrip transmission lines of a microwave atom chip. This new atom chip confines and manipulates atoms using spin-specific microwave AC Zeeman potentials and is particularly well suited for trapped atom interferometry. The coaxial-to-microstrip coupler scheme uses a focused CPW (FCPW) that shrinks the microwave field mode while maintaining a constant 50 Ω impedance for optimal power coupling. The FCPW development includes the simulation, design, fabrication, and testing of multiple CPW and microstrip prototypes using aluminum nitride substrates. Notably, the FCPW approach …

Translating Video Recordings Of Mobile App Ui Gestures Into Replayable Scenarios For Native And Hybrid Apps, Madeleine Havranek

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Screen recordings of mobile applications are easy to obtain and capture a wealth of information pertinent to software developers (e.g., bugs or feature requests), making them a popular mechanism for crowdsourced app feedback. Thus, these videos are becoming a common artifact that developers must manage. In light of unique mobile development constraints, including swift release cycles and rapidly evolving platforms, automated techniques for analyzing all types of rich software artifacts provide benefit to mobile developers. Unfortunately, automatically analyzing screen recordings presents serious challenges, due to their graphical nature, compared to other types of (textual) artifacts. To address these challenges, this …

Grandparent-Grandchild Virtual Communication Study, Tanya Keval

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The cross generational bond between a grandparent and grandchild is extremely important. The stories, traditions, and beliefs that grandparents share with their grandchildren have the ability to shape their grandchildren’s beliefs. For grandparents, the role of being a grandparent and creating shared memories with their grandchildren leaves a positive impact on their mental health. Although the elderly population prefers to connect with others in-person, including their grandchildren, this face-to-face connection is not always possible due to schedules, distance, or health. Many products have been designed for grandparents and grandchildren to try to fill this communication gap when they are apart. …

Performance Implications Of Memory Affinity On Filesystem Caches In A Non-Uniform Memory Access Environment, Jacob Adams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Non-Uniform Memory Access imposes unique challenges on every component of an operating system and the applications that run on it. One such component is the filesystem which, while not directly impacted by NUMA in most cases, typically has some form of cache whose performance is constrained by the latency and bandwidth of the memory that it is stored in. One such filesystem is ZFS, which contains its own custom caching system, known as the Adaptive Replacement Cache. This work looks at the impact of NUMA on this cache via sequential read operations, shows how current solutions intended to reduce this …

The Role Of Spider Silk In Peripheral Nerve Regeneration, Langston Forbes-Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Spider silk neural guidance channels (NGCs) are highly important innovations in the field of regenerative medicine. This paper will discuss the evidence in the literature that supports their function in regenerative medicine and provide a template for future experiments in the field. While many studies within the past 15 years have demonstrated the validity of spider silk as a scaffold for peripheral nerve regeneration, the molecular mechanics that facilitate regeneration are poorly understood. An emphasis on using silk from orb weaving spiders in particular may have caused researchers to overlook other spiders whose silk could prove to have vastly different …

Appointment Scheduling System, Guzaloi Noori

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Appointment Scheduling System designed for universities so that students can schedule appointments with their university’s faculty and staff regarding academic, employment, immigration, or personal issues. The scheduling system has the ability of being embedded to the Computer Science Capstone project iAcademic, which I took part in as a front-end developer.

Speaker Prototyping Design, Andrew Lathe

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Audio design is a pertinent industry in today’s world, with an extremely large market including leaders such as Bose, Harman International, and Sennheiser. This project is designed to explore the processes that are necessary to create a new type of product in this market. The end goal is to have a functioning, high–quality set of speakers to prove various concepts of design and prototyping.

The steps involved in this project go through the entire design process from initial choice of product to a finished prototype. Processes include the selection of outsourced components such as drivers and necessary connectors. The design …

Technology Aiding In Neonatal Lung Developmental Care, Megan Kirk

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this paper, old as well as new technological findings to decrease premature infant mortality are reviewed. This paper discusses fetal development throughout pregnancy from conception to full-term status as well as fetal lung development specifically from conception until full-term status. Several ideas to rapidly develop and mature fetal lungs are discussed such as mothers ingesting artificial surfactant supplements, either independently or coupled with antenatal corticosteroids, as well as intra-amniotic instillation prior to 28 weeks gestational. Drawbacks regarding these two are mentioned as well such as the fetus’s lungs not being mature enough to use the artificial surfactant leading into …

Novel Methods For Composites Recycling Via Pyrolysis, Matt Jacobs

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Composites are unique materials in many respects. When fabric woven from carbon fibers is joined with a thermoset resin in a controlled environment, it results in a very strong material, especially evaluated on a pound-for-pound basis against metals and ceramics. One aspect of this construction that provides great strength lies in the fiber-matrix adhesion which facilitates load transfer to the reinforcement of the composite. This fiber-matrix adhesion is promoted by the polarity of the usual thermoset matrices, and properly designed sizing materials coating the fibers. It’s a two-edged sword, though. Although the resin and the fibers are quite strong together, …

Increasing Isolation Between Closely Spaced X-Band Planar Transmit/Receive Antennas, Jacob Bartschi

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Coupling between Tx/Rx antennas is a common and much-researched problem that is especially difficult when the antennas both placed close together and on the same plane. New systems with smaller footprints require this kind of placement while still maintaining the same levels of isolation as before. Traditional solutions for coupling involve large and heavy machined parts that are unsuited to compact systems. Many techniques have been proposed over the decades, but few have been applied to X-band antennas in closely spaced configurations. This thesis investigates those techniques, applies them to closely spaced X-band antennas, and compares them to conventional methods …

Analysis Of Feature Extraction In Knee Cartilage Semantic Segmentation Convolutional Neural Networks, Logan Thorneloe

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Recent advances in deep learning and convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown promise for automatic segmentation in magnetic resonance images. However, because of the stochastic nature of the training process, it is difficult to interpret what information networks learn to represent. This study explores multiple difference metrics between networks to determine semantic relationships between knee cartilage tissues. It explores how differences in learned weights and output activations between networks can be used to express these relationships. These findings are further supported by training multi-class networks to segment multiple tissues to compare network accuracy across different tissue combinations. This study shows …

Extending The Bandwidth Of Intensity-Based Sound Power Estimates, Michael C. Mortenson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sound power is often measured using the intensity-based engineering standard ANSI S12.12-1992:R2017. Traditional methods for intensity-based sound power estimation are limited in bandwidth at low frequencies by phase mismatch between microphones and at high frequencies by microphone spacing—with errors occurring well below the spatial Nyquist frequency. The Phase and Amplitude Gradient Estimation (PAGE) method has been used to extend the bandwidth of intensity calculations [1]. This thesis examines the efficacy of the PAGE method in overcoming bandwidth limitations in estimating sound power. Specifically, the sound fields from three sources—a blender, vacuum cleaner, and reference sound source—were measured according to ANSI …

Irregular Quadrature Amplitude Modulation For Adaptive Physical-Layer Security, Hunter Searle, Marco A. C. Gomes, Joao P. Vilela, Willie K. Harrison

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis propose adding an irregular quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation to a wireless transmission scheme in order to obtain greater control over the signal-tonoise ratio (SNR) required to successfully decode the signal. By altering the separation between adjacent symbols, the minimum required SNR is raised without degradation in the performance of the scheme. This allows the system to adapt to preferable channel conditions for the authorized user, making it harder for eavesdroppers to intercept and decode the transmission, thus making the communication safer. In addition, we show that by overlaying a coset code onto the QAM constellation, a new, …

Investigating The Impact Of Taper And Aspect Ratio On A Stalling Wing Using A Corrected Vortex Lattice Method, Ryan Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The advent of new technologies such as eVTOL vehicles is exciting. The development of fast aerodynamics models incorporating stall is one small step on the road to realizing such concepts by improving the speed of design optimization algorithms. To this end, a modified vortex lattice model was developed based on one reported by dos Santos and Marques [4]. The model was validated against experimental data found in the literature. Making use of its stall capabilities, a sample study was performed to test for any coupling effect between aspect ratio and taper ratio. This was done by calculating the lift curve …

Steering System For Sae Baja, Dallin Colgrove

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is to study the different types of steering geometry for the BYU Baja vehicle. The main steering geometries of study are Ackermann and parallel steering geometries. Ackermann steering geometry is ideal for low speed turns. During low speed turns Ackermann steering performs better than parallel steering due to a smaller radius of turn. Parallel steering ideally is better for high speed turns, because with parallel steering the slip angle is smaller than that of Ackermann geometry. A recommendation is made to the BYU Baja team to use Ackermann steering, but still do some more analysis of parallel steering …

Implementation Of Augmented Reality In Sae Mini Baja, Brady S. Hales

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Engineers often encounter difficulties in connecting digital data with its physical counterpart. This applies to processing and interpreting data as well as effectively communicating design ideas and considerations. Augmented reality has the ability to solve these problems by overlaying digital data on a physical object. This allows engineers to further explore design considerations such as ergonomics as well as communicate data such as, Finite Element Analysis. This communication may be realized in discussing and collaborating with colleagues, as well as to judges in design reviews. Augmented reality is beneficial in these cases and is further explored in this thesis, utilizing …

Dual Axis Solar Tracker: Trends, Influence & Impact, Alazone Smith

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This supplementary document examines the international relevance and impact of the device in the Central Washington University, M.E.T. Senior Project entitled, “Dual-Axis Solar Tracker”. This is done so by analyzing the data collected from the device, as well as related trends in society, and establishing connections between the device’s viability and its impact within the society. Climate change, the solar industry, technology, policy, and market are the main topics of research within this document to provide background and context for the methods of analysis. Following intensive research, two major research strategies were implemented: (1) the data collected from the device …

Design For Maintainability In Developing Communities—A Case Study On The Uros Islands, Thomas Barlow

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Designing products for developing communities has exposed many of the underlying assumptions that engineers from developed nations have during the design process. There has been much written about these underlying assumptions in order to create a better framework for designing for developing communities. One unexplored, yet important area is the universality of common maintainability principles used in developed countries when designing products used in developing communities. Such principles include: simplicity, diagnosability, standardization of parts, modular subassemblies, minimizing assembly and disassembly parts, labeling components, increased life of moving parts, manuals, and simplifying tools needed for repairs [1]–[3]. The purpose of this …

Increased Energy Yield Through Fast Pyrolysis: Empowering Malawian Villages, Diehl Mutamba

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Biomass contributes to several renewable energy technologies. This project will explore the use of fast pyrolysis to produce fuels by designing an apparatus for fast pyrolysis. Malawian people harvest firewood from the forests, which is a major contributor to deforestation. Furthermore, they convert some of it to charcoal with about 10-15% efficiency to sell to city dwellers. The project will enable herbaceous fuels to replace wood, increase charcoal yields and create new products. Firewood and charcoal produce smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) that compromises the villagers’ health.

This project will address deforestation problems, improve sustainability, decrease health hazards and improve …

Optimizing Construction Estimation: A Case Study Of The Etsu Football Stadium And The Etsu Fine Arts Center, John Paul Mitra

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Considering the complexity of the construction industry, it is vital to predict costs accurately throughout the entire planning, design, and construction process of a project. Various factors such as overhead, delays, cost variation, and program and scope play significant roles in determining the viability and profitability of a project. Thus, it is important to learn about what makes construction estimates so variable even among expert estimators within the same company. This study will look at the estimation methods used by BurWil Construction Company and Denark Construction, Inc. for the ETSU Football Stadium and the ETSU Fine Arts Center, respectively, as …

Building Data Visualization Applications To Facilitate Vehicular Networking Research, Noah Carter

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A web app was developed which allows any internet-connected device to remotely monitor a roadway intersection’s state over HTTP. A mapping simulation was enhanced to allow researchers to retroactively track the location and the ad-hoc connectivity of vehicle clusters. A performance analysis was conducted on the utilized network partitioning algorithm. This work was completed under and for the utility of ETSU’s Vehicular Networking Lab. It can serve as a basis for further development in the field of wireless automobile connectivity.

Waste Vegetable Oil Properties With Usage And Its Impact On Artisan Soap Making, Jenalyn Thorpe

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the impact of vegetable oil usage in industrial and home settings on the properties of the vegetable oil and how its usage in soap affects the final product. Waste vegetable oil (WVO) is often used to make soap as a way to be more environmentally-friendly and create soap at a low cost in developing countries. Two settings are examined: home usage (i.e. short-term, small-scale usage) and industrial (i.e. long-term, almost continuous usage). This thesis found that lightly used oil (household use) had little to no impact on the quality of the oil, except for its scent. This …

Evolution Of Mg Az31 Twin Activation With Strain: A Machine Learning Study, Andrew D. Orme

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Machine learning is being adopted in various areas of materials science to both create predictive models and to uncover correlations which reveal underlying physics. However, these two aims are often at odds with each other since the resultant predictive models generally become so complex that they can essentially be described as a black box, making them difficult to understand. In this study, complex relationships between microstructure and twin formation in AZ31 magnesium are investigated as a function of increasing strain. Supervised machine learning is employed, in the form of J-48 decision trees. In one approach, strain is incorporated as an …