Engineering Commons^™

A New Evolutionary Algorithm For Mining Noisy, Epistatic, Geospatial Survey Data Associated With Chagas Disease, John P. Hanley

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The scientific community is just beginning to understand some of the profound affects that feature interactions and heterogeneity have on natural systems. Despite the belief that these nonlinear and heterogeneous interactions exist across numerous real-world systems (e.g., from the development of personalized drug therapies to market predictions of consumer behaviors), the tools for analysis have not kept pace. This research was motivated by the desire to mine data from large socioeconomic surveys aimed at identifying the drivers of household infestation by a Triatomine insect that transmits the life-threatening Chagas disease. To decrease the risk of transmission, our colleagues at the …

Application Of Electrokinetics In Subsurface Energy Extraction, Maria Peraki

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The world’s growing population results in increased energy needs that cannot yet be fully supported by the renewable sources of energy. These modern conditions and restraints have created the need to further research methods to enhance the recovery of resources previously unavailable due to technical and/or economic reasons and to reduce the environmental impacts of using fossil fuels. In this dissertation, applications of electrokinetic phenomena for the improvement of subsurface energy resource extraction are investigated using experimental and numerical tools.

Electrodialysis is proposed as a method of pre-treatment of the flow-back water produced during fracturing stage of shale gas extraction. …

Assessing The Probability Of Fluid Migration Caused By Hydraulic Fracturing; And Investigating Flow And Transport In Porous Media Using Mri, James Montague

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Hydraulic fracturing is used to extract oil and natural gas from low permeability formations. The potential of fluids migrating from depth through adjacent wellbores and through the production wellbore was investigated using statistical modeling and predic-tive classifiers. The probability of a hydraulic fracturing well becoming hydraulically connected to an adjacent well in the Marcellus shale of New York was determined to be between 0.00% and 3.45% at the time of the study. This means that the chance of an in-duced fracture from hydraulic fracturing intersecting an existing well is highly dependent on the area of increased permeability caused by fracturing. …

Sediment Mobilization From Streambank Failures: Model Development And Climate Impact Studies, Jody Juniper Stryker

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This research incorporates streambank erosion and failure processes into a distributed watershed model and evaluates the impacts of climate change on the processes driving streambank sediment mobilization at a watershed scale. Excess sediment and nutrient loading are major water quality concerns for streams and receiving waters. Previous work has established that in addition to surface and road erosion, streambank erosion and failure are primary mechanisms that mobilize sediment and nutrients from the landscape. This mechanism and other hydrological processes driving sediment and nutrient transport are likely to be highly influenced by anticipated changes in climate, particularly extreme precipitation and flow …