Engineering Commons^™

Considerations For The Tornado-Resilient Structural Design Of Low-Rise Buildings, Cody J. Van Der Kooi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Building codes and standards have begun to incorporate tornado-specific loads to help protect community infrastructure against these potentially devastating storms, with a specific focus on low-rise buildings. The current tornado design loads are derived from atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) winds, even though it is relatively unclear to what extent tornado and ABL wind loads are equivalent for a given intensity. This research focuses on the tornado-resilient design of the main wind force resisting system (MWFRS) and component and cladding (C&C) elements of a low-rise gable roof building. Tornado loads derived from the results of experiments completed in a vortex simulator …

Modelling And Investigating The Impact Of Thermal Hydrolysis Pretreatment On The Anaerobic Co-Digestion Of Sewage Sludges And Food Waste, Amr Ismail

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this study, the impact of thermal hydrolysis pretreatment (THP) on the mono- and co-digestion of thickened waste activated sludge (TWAS) and food waste (FW) was carried out at temperatures of 150, 170, 190, and 210 ˚C for a contact time of 30 min and mixing ratios of 90:10, 70:30, and 50:50 on a volumetric basis in batch anaerobic tests. Thermal hydrolysis influenced the solubilization of the particulate organic constituents of TWAS, reduction in volatile suspended solids (VSS) and particle size with the increase in temperature to 210 ˚C, achieving a reduction in VSS up to 62% and a reduction …

Scaled Physical Modeling Of The Dynamics Of Granular Flow In Hopper Silos, Hagos Eman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To understand the challenges on grain flow during handling in hoppers and silos require better understanding of the granular physical flow characteristics through experiments done at large scale. However, due to the complexity of the large, controlled tests, scaled models are often used to study the behaviour. Very few of these model scale studies had been done appropriately taking the effects of gravity on silo discharge into account. This subject has also been widely investigated in different areas of geotechnical engineering related to soil erosion, land slides, and dynamic liquefaction. Granular flow rate and the dynamics of the flow are …

Experimental Study And Characterization Of Bubble Behaviors In The Orifice-Induced Hydrodynamic Cavitation, Haoxuan Zheng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Experimental studies were performed to characterize the development process of orifice-induced cavitation and transitional bubble behaviors. The transition from non-cavitation to fully developed cavitation was carefully studied. Cavitation bubble clouds were observed at orifice, indicating the inception of cavitation. The number of bubbles produced were dramatically increased while the averaged sizes of bubble reduced when cavitation was initiated. Both orifice opening ratio and perimeter can affect the cavitation developing process. A long orifice perimeter promotes the production of fine bubbles. The orifice plates with the smallest opening ratio generated a desired gas-liquid interfacial area at the lowest required pressure. An …

Real-Time Parkinsonian Tremor Signal Identifier Based On Internal Model Principle, Jian Dong

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Parkinsonian tremor is one of the clinical hallmarks of Parkinson's disease. Since the traditional medical treatments are not effective, many wearable devices are developed to help suppress the tremor. In order to suppress the tremor, a well-designed tremor estimator is needed. Previous tremor estimators treat a 3-D tremor signal as three independent 1-D signals. Moreover, they did not consider the real-life characteristics of tremor signals. For instance, the tremor does not always exist in the postural tremor signal, and the patient's voluntary motion can be included in the kinetic tremor signal. This paper presents a real-time adaptive parkinsonian tremor signal …

Hydrogen Production Via Photocatalytic Water Splitting Under Near-Uv And Visible Light Using Doped Pd Tio2, Bianca Rusinque

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The present PhD thesis reports the modification of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) with palladium (Pd), to enhance hydrogen production via water splitting, using 2.0v/v% ethanol as a scavenger. Titanium dioxide was used as photocatalyst, given its ability to absorb photons, producing e^-/h⁺ pairs. Mesoporous TiO₂ was synthesized using a soft template, following the sol-gel method, to modify its morphological properties. Palladium was used as co-catalyst doping TiO₂ agent, narrowing the band gaps down to 2.51 eV, and creating additional active metal sites.

Water splitting experiments under near-UV and visible light irradiation were carried out …

Leveraging Machine Learning Techniques Towards Intelligent Networking Automation, Cesar A. Gomez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, we address some of the challenges that the Intelligent Networking Automation (INA) paradigm poses. Our goal is to design schemes leveraging Machine Learning (ML) techniques to cope with situations that involve hard decision-making actions. The proposed solutions are data-driven and consist of an agent that operates at network elements such as routers, switches, or network servers. The data are gathered from realistic scenarios, either actual network deployments or emulated environments. To evaluate the enhancements that the designed schemes provide, we compare our solutions to non-intelligent ones. Additionally, we assess the trade-off between the obtained improvements and the …

Novel Zcs Pwm Methods For Industrial Applications, Ramtin Rasoulinezhad

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Pulse width modulation (PWM) converters that consist of two or more interleaved boost/buck converter modules are used widely in industry. Soft-switching approaches for these converters can either be zero-voltage switching (ZVS) if implemented with MOSFETs or zero-current switching (ZCS) if implemented with IGBTs. The main idea of this thesis is to implement ZCS for IGBT turn-on and turn-off. Most converters use an auxiliary circuit that is activated whenever a main converter switch is about to be turned off, gradually diverting current away from the switch so that it can turn off with ZCS.

ZCS-PWM converters that use an auxiliary circuit …

Mechanical Design And Development Of A Compliant 5-Dof Manipulator Using Magneto-Rheological Actuators, Sergey Pisetskiy

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Compliance in robotic systems became a very important and desirable characteristic in recent years. Existing compliant actuation approaches have either limited performance or significant mechanical and control complexity. Keeping high performance while maintaining the necessary level of compliance at low cost and minimum complexity is a challenging goal that should be achieved to boost the propagation of human-safe robots and systems capable to perform delicate tasks in an unknown environment.

This study presents a novel five degrees-of-freedom compliant manipulator. The compliancy of the manipulator is achieved using antagonistically working pairs of magneto-rheological (MR) clutches in each joint of the robot. …

Visual Cues For Semi-Autonomous Control Of Transradial Prosthetics, Mena S.A. Kamel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Upper-limb prosthetics are typically driven exclusively by biological signals, mainly electromyography (EMG), where electrodes are placed on the residual part of an amputated limb. In this approach, amputees must control each arm joint iteratively, in a proportional manner. Research has shown that sequential control of prosthetics usually imposes a cognitive burden on amputees, leading to high abandonment rates. This thesis presents a control system for upper-limb prosthetics, leveraging a computer vision module capable of simultaneously predicting objects in a scene, their segmentation mask, and a ranked list of the optimal grasping locations. The proposed system shares control with an amputee, …

Urban Heat Mitigation For Current And Future Conditions: A Case Study For Downtown London On, Maryam Shams

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The urban heat island is a phenomenon wherein urban areas experience warmer temperatures than their surrounding rural areas. Techniques to reduce excess heat in urban environments are known as heat mitigation or heat island mitigation solutions, with the intent that they reduce urban temperatures. This research presents an investigation on the impacts and effectiveness of urban heat mitigation techniques on improving the outdoor thermal conditions of downtown London, Ontario. The impact of increasing vegetated areas and applying higher albedo materials for road pavements is assessed with ENVI-Met software for current and future summer weather. Furthermore, investigations were conducted for current …

Inherently Porous Atomically Thin Membranes For Gas Separation, Harpreet Atwal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Membranes made from atomically thin materials promise hundreds of times higher production rates than conventional polymer membranes for separation applications. Graphene is impermeable to gases but becomes selectively permeable once pores are introduced into it but creating trillions of nanopores over large areas is difficult. By instead choosing an inherently porous two-dimensional material with naturally identical pores repeated at high density, we may circumvent this challenge. In this work, we explore the potential of two candidate materials, 2D polyphenylene and graphdiyne. We synthesize cyclohexane-m-phenylene, a monomer of 2D polyphenylene. We then develop an atomic force microscopy technique for measuring the …

Significance Of The Neck In Concussive Head Impacts – A Computational Approach, Sakib Ul Islam

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

With the rising concern of concussions in contact sports, it is believed that cervical muscles could play a vital role in attenuating force to the head. However, the biomechanical effect of cervical muscles on head and brain response is not clearly understood. This study adopted a finite element head and neck model to replicate football impacts under various loading conditions to study the effect of neck muscles on head kinematics. Our results indicate that neck muscles have the highest amount of internal energy absorption in early impact, particularly at the time when peak head kinematics develop. Both deep and superficial …

Uncertainties In Internal Pressure Of Oil Pipelines And Implications For The Reliability Analysis, Yue Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The internal pressure is the most important operational load for oil and gas pipelines. The maximum operating pressure (MOP) is the maximum pressure the pipeline is qualified to be operated according to a given standard. In deterministic fitness-for-service (FFS) assessment of in-service pipelines containing flaws such as corrosion defects and cracks, the remaining pressure containment capacity of the pipeline is evaluated and compared with MOP multiplied by a factor of safety to determine if immediate rehabilitation actions for the pipeline are necessary. However, the actual internal pressure of an in-service pipeline is however uncertain and fluctuates with time. Due to …

Generative Learning In Smart Grid, Samer M. El Kababji

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

If a smart grid is to be described in one word, that word would be ’connectivity’. While electricity production and consumption still depend on a limited number of physical connections, exchanging data is growing enormously. Customers, utilities, sensors, and markets are all different sources of data that are exchanged in a ubiquitous digital setup. To deal with data complexity, many researchers recently focused on machine learning (ML) applications in smart grids. Much of the success in ML is attributed to discriminative learning where models define boundaries to categorize data. Generative learning, however, reveals how data is generated by learning the …

A Multi-Level Mechanical Assessment Of The Shoulder Coupled With Evaluation Of Upper Extremity Predictive Finite Element Models, Jonathan Kusins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Research involving joint mechanics is typically conducted at the macroscopic level. However, joints and joint replacements often fail because load transfer at the microscopic level is not well understood. This gap in knowledge reduces our ability to preoperatively predict patient outcomes and assess irreversible failure modes for a variety of surgical interventions prior to clinical adoption. The present work aims to advance full-field experimental measurement techniques applied to better understand the internal load transfer of the human shoulder joint by simultaneously combining mechanical testing protocols, microCT imaging, and digital volume correlation (DVC) methods.

A CT-compatible loading apparatus was fabricated to …

Deep Learning For High-Impedance Fault Detection And Classification, Khushwant Rai

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

High-Impedance Faults (HIFs) are a hazard to public safety but are difficult to detect because of their low current amplitude and diverse characteristics. Supervised machine learning techniques have shown great success in HIF detection; however, these approaches rely on resource-intensive signal processing techniques and fail in presence of non-HIF disturbances and even for scenarios not included in training data. This thesis leverages unsupervised learning and proposes a Convolutional Autoencoder framework for HIF Detection (CAE-HIFD). In CAE-HIFD, Convolutional Autoencoder learns only from HIF signals by employing cross-correlation; consequently, eliminating the need for diverse non-HIF scenarios in training. Furthermore, this thesis proposes …

3d Printing Technology Applied In Lithium Metal Batteries: From Liquid To Solid., Xuejie Gao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Li-metal batteries are strongly considered to be one of the most promising candidates for high energy density energy storage devices in our modern society. However, the state-of-the-art Limetal batteries are still limited by several challenges including 1) low energy/power density; 2) Li dendrite growth; 3) low coulombic efficiency, and 4) safety concerns within the liquid electrolyte. This thesis mainly focuses on addressing these challenges by using a 3D printing technique to realize high energy/power density Li-metal batteries.

A self-standing high areal energy density cathode for Li-S battery was developed by the 3D printing method in the first part. The optimized …

Biomaterial For Cervical Intervertebral Disc Prosthesis, Helium Mak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recent long-term follow-up studies have shown that the cervical disc arthroplasty treatment have potentials in developing surrounding heterotopic ossification (HO). While its cause requires further investigation, this thesis has hypothesized that it may be the result of the continual remodeling of the injured vertebrae caused by the prostheses with smaller footprints introducing abnormal stresses. The research objective of this thesis is to develop a new prosthesis material that can be molded into any form conforming to the size and shape of the end-plates of the affected patient vertebrae. For prototype development, a composite material consisting of 10wt% polyvinyl alcohol cryogel …

Frequency Dependent Diffusion Kurtosis Measurement In The Human Brain With Oscillating Gradients, Kevin B. Borsos

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Oscillating gradient spin-echo (OGSE) is an implementation of diffusion MRI that enables shorter effective diffusion times than the conventional pulse gradient spin-echo (PGSE) by periodically modulating the diffusion gradient. Measurements of the diffusion kurtosis, which reflects the degree of restricted diffusion, have previously been prohibited with OGSE due to technical limitations of clinical gradient systems. This thesis presents a novel oscillating gradient waveform that enables the measurement of kurtosis using OGSE without requiring advanced gradient hardware. Decreases of kurtosis are observed in OGSE acquisitions of healthy human subjects relative to PGSE, demonstrating the dependence of the kurtosis on oscillation frequency. …

Rational Design Of Highly Efficient Electrocatalysts Using Atomic Layer Deposition: From Nanoparticle To Single Atom, Junjie Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have been attracted significant attention due to their high energy efficiency. The electrocatalyst is one of the most important parts. However, state-of-the-art electrocatalysts suffer from several challenges, including 1) low stability under harsh working conditions; 2) low atomic utilization efficiency, especially for noble metals. This thesis, therefore, focuses on the design of highly efficient and stable electrocatalysts from nanoparticles down to single atoms using atomic layer deposition (ALD) and further understand the insight mechanisms.

Firstly, Pt nanoparticles are selectively deposited on the TiO₂ modified N-doped carbon nanotubes. The strong metal-support interactions between Pt …

An Anomaly Detection System For Smart Manufacturing Using Deep Learning, Tareq Tayeh

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The smart manufacturing evolution enables financial and operational improvements across the manufacturing industry. However, smart manufacturing encompasses complex, interconnected systems which can fail at any time. To address this challenge, a novel, two-part anomaly detection system for robotic processes, with an application focus on robotic surface finishing, is presented. The first part proposes an unsupervised Attention-based Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder with Dynamic Thresholding (ACLAE-DT) framework for anomaly detection and diagnosis in multivariate time series of robotic surface finishing components. The second part proposes a deep residual Convolutional Neural Network-based triplet model for anomaly detection in the produced robotic surface …

Diffusion Kurtosis Imaging In Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, Loxlan W. Kasa

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Epilepsy constitutes one of the most common neurological clinicopathological entities affecting approximately 1% of the general population. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) represents by far the most common form of medically intractable focal epilepsy in adults. Surgical resection is the common form of treatment when lesions are clearly delineated, either from patient’s magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) structural scans or by invasive seizure monitoring techniques (e.g., intracranial EEG) for patients with non-lesional MRI scans. Increasing numbers of studies have suggested that TLE is more of a network disorder, therefore full delineation of pathological tissue is difficult resulting in incomplete resection, possibly contributing …

Development Of Advanced Solid-State Electrolytes And Interfaces For High-Performance Sulfide-Based All-Solid-State Lithium Batteries, Feipeng Zhao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

All-solid-state lithium batteries (ASSLBs) have become increasingly attractive due to the demand of high-energy-density and high-safety lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). As the core component of ASSLBs, solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) are regarded as essential to determine the electrochemical performance of ASSLBs. The inorganic SSEs is one of the most important categories in all developed SSEs, representing the advance of superionic lithium conductors as well as the cornerstone to construct flexible polymer/inorganic composite SSEs. The sulfide-based inorganic SSE is one of the most promising SSEs that is receiving a lot of attentions, because only sulfide SSEs can show ultrahigh ionic …

Nonlinear Dynamics Of A Class Of Ring-Based Angular Rate Sensing And Energy Harvesting Systems, Ibrahim F Abdelhamid Gebrel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This research is classified into two broad sections: ring-based MEMS (Micro-electro Mechanical Systems) and macro gyroscopes and novel bi-stable/monostable nonlinear energy harvesting systems. In both cases, models and solution methods are based on ring structural dynamics considering comprehensive nonlinear formulations. The investigation of nonlinear and linear dynamic response behavior of MEMS and macro ring gyroscopes forms the basis of the first study. This class of MEMS/macro ring-based vibratory gyroscopes requires oscillatory nonlinear electrostatic/electromagnetic excitation forces for their operation. The partial differential equations that govern the ring dynamics are reduced to a set of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations by assuming …

Consensus-Enabled And Value-Oriented Collaboration In Distributed Iot Systems: Mechanisms, Design, And Implementation, Ruitao Chen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The ongoing convergence of Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence and big data analytics has inspired many innovative IoT applications. Enabling these new applications requires accurate and reliable capabilities in data sensing, exchange and processing, which can be best fulfilled by collaborative IoT systems. Nevertheless, the dynamic condition of IoT networks may lead to ever-changing demand and objectives among devices, making it difficult for reliable and efficient collaboration. To overcome these challenges, this thesis develops a new framework on consensus-enabled and value-oriented collaboration, which resolves two critical technical challenges, i.e., low latency consensus creation and value-oriented decision-making, to enable collective …

A Black-Box Approach For Containerized Microservice Monitoring In Fog Computing, Shi Chang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The goal of the Internet of Things (IoT) is to convert the physical world into a smart space in which physical objects, called things, are equipped with computing and communication capabilities. Those things can connect with anything, anyone at any time, any space via any network or service. The predominant Internet of Things (IoT) system model today is cloud centric. This model introduces latencies into the application execution, as data travels first upstream for processing and secondly the results, i.e., control commands, travel downstream to the devices. In contrast with the cloud-model, the cloud-fog-based model pushes computing capability to the …

Investigation Of Small Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (Srpas) To Human Head Impact, Yuhu Weng

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Small remotely piloted aircraft system (sRPAS) to ground human head impact could cause injuries to the public. Skull fractures and brain injuries have been observed in sRPAS-related impacts, which varied in angles, locations and velocities. This study developed a representative quadcopter sRPAS finite element model and incorporated it with THUMS ver 4.02 50^th percentile male and 5^th percentile small female models to simulate sRPAS to human head impacts. The simulations were validated with cadaver experiments. The common injury metrics such as head injury criteria (HIC) and brain injury criterion (BrIC) were correlated with head injury-related responses such as …

Developing Multi-Species Brain-Strain-Based Scaling Law Using Finite Element Analysis., Xingyu Liu

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To better understand traumatic brain injury (TBI), various laboratory animal experiments have been developed. However, there lacks an effective scaling to connect animal TBI models with human brain injuries. With the help of the finite element (FE) model, brain mechanical responses such as strains can be predicted, and hence can serve as a parameter to facilitate animal to human scaling, as these tissue-level strains directly link to neuronal damage. In this thesis, first, a comprehensive comparison of brain strains between animal TBI models and human TBI cases was conducted. Then, a brain-strain-based scaling law between mouse and human was developed, …

Impact Of Local Fluidized Bed Hydrodynamics On The Distribution Of Liquid Sprayed Into The Bed, Yuan Li

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In Fluid Coking, heavy oil is sprayed into a fluidized bed of hot coke particles that provide heat for the reaction and vaporization of the products, using nozzles located at different radial and axial locations of the reactor. In industrial units, imperfect initial liquid-solid contact results in the formation of wet agglomerates, which have been shown to cause fouling of the stripper sheds.

This thesis aims to reduce agglomerate formation by modifying the bed hydrodynamics in the spray region by adjusting the initial fluidization gas distribution or using a baffle.

Experimental methods were developed to study local gas flow, solids …