Engineering Commons^™

Evaluation Of Flood Routing Techniques For Incremental Damage Assessment, Enan Fakhri Jayyousi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Incremental damage assessment is a tool used to assess the justification for expensive modifications of inadequate dams. The input data to incremental damage assessment are the output from the breach analysis and flood routing. For this reason, flood routing should be conducted carefully. Distorted results from the flood routing technique or unstable modeling of the problem will distort the results of an incremental damage assessment, because an error in the estimated incremental stage will cause a certain error in the estimated incremental damages.

The objectives of this study were (1) to perform a comprehensive survey of the available dam break …

Design And Evaluation Of Stepped Spillways For High Dams, Jeffrey Scott Rau

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this research was to investigate the hydraulic performance of stepped spillways. A thorough investigation was made of all printed material on stepped spillways, and a summary of this material is presented in the text. Data from experiments in the laboratory were used to develop a design procedure for stepped spillways and hydraulic jump stilling basins. The experimental study was conducted at Utah State University - Utah Water Research Laboratory in Logan, Utah. Four models were built and tested in the laboratory under various flowrates.

The crest of the model spillway was constructed in the shape of a …

Modeling Of Natural Settling In A Trapezoidal Sedimentation Basin, Kent S. Wilkerson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The objectives of this thesis are to 1) review current theory relative to numerically modeling a trapezoidal settling basin, 2) develop a more appropriate model to better predict settling and deposition within a basin, and 3) confirm the accuracy of the model. The TSB (Trapezoidal Settling Basin) model was developed as part of this thesis. The Bureau of Reclamation's SETSIZE model performs similar analysis, but the TSB model makes significant improvements. The TSB model improves numerical modeling of a trapezoidal basin by allowing both sediment and sieve particle data, complex basin geometries with a multidimensional sediment deposition, and improved hydrograph …

Load Transfer Mechanisms For Piles In Soft Soils, Andrew L. Palmer

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The purpose of this thesis is to interpret pile load test data for several instrumented piles to determine the load transfer characteristics of driven piles in soft soils. Piles develop resistance to axial loads through two different mechanisms, side friction and end bearing. The rate that resistance develops is dependent upon soil type, pile type, and movement of the pile with respect to the soil. This thesis addresses load transfer for driven pipe piles in deep lacustrine deposits along the Wasatch Front area of Utah. The piles used in this study were installed for the support of highway structures in …

Use Of Multispectral Aerial Videography For Jurisdictional Delineation Of Wetland Areas, James A. Shoemaker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Multispectral aerial videography was used to reproduce the jurisdictional delineation of wetland area of approximately 50 hectares in Davis County, Utah Imagery from the system consisted of three-band composite with wavelengths covering 550 nm (±10 nm), 650 nm (±10 nm), and 850 nm (±10 nm). The site was overflown at three different flight dates during the 1992 growing season (June 2, July 22, October 1). Imagery resolution varied from 0.56 m to 0.81 m. Mosaiced images were analyzed with a Supervised clustering/maximum likelihood classifier, ISODATA clustering/Euclidan classifier, statistical clustering/maximum likelihood classifier, and fuzzy c-means clustering. Overall accuracies for wetland/upland designations …

Advanced Navigation For Planetary Vehicles Applying An Approximate Mapping Technique, Timothy R. Mcjunkin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis provides a method for compressing the information provided by JPL Mars rover obstacle sensors by creating an approximate map of the terrain around the vehicle. This thesis demonstrates that this method provides adequate information for a human operator to negotiate complex obstacles fields.

By dividing the area around the vehicle into regions and classifying each region as to how dangerous (impassable), the sensor data can be accumulated with minimal overhead. The terrain in each region has a number between zero and one, with zero meaning completely passable and one meaning completely impassable. A continuum of possible values between …

The Design Of An Augmentative Communications Device, Darren Blaser, Scott Sorenson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

There is an extremely large number of people in the modem world who have difficulty communicating. Among these are approximately 25 million people with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a disability that is usually caused during, or shortly after birth. Cerebral palsy usually affects a person's motor skills and sense of balance, often rendering them incapable of speaking clearly enough to be understood well. Because this group of people cannot communicate as effectively as other individuals, many uninformed people suppose they do not have as great a need to speak, to say things like, "How are you?", ''I'm Hungry", "Thank …

Developing A Benchmark For Evaluating The Performance Of Parallel Computers, D. Ladd Williamson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper discusses the development of a portable suite of benchmarking programs for parallel computers. Comparative measurement of the performance of parallel computing systems has been limited because of the great diversity of architectures and of processor interconnection schemes. One solution is to translate benchmark codes into a consistent and portable parallel language. This paper reports on progress in developing such a portable suite of benchmarks. An extensive introduction to parallel computing is included as an appendix, to provide a thorough understanding of the factors complicating development of the performance suite. Key to the development was the use of p4, …