Engineering Commons^™

Anaerobic Digestion Of Brewery Waste Including Spent Yeast And Hops, Dhanashree Rawalgaonkar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida is home to more than 300 craft breweries, that brew over a million barrels of beer annually. Brewing is an energy intensive process and produces large quantities of high strength waste including spent grains, yeast, hops, and high strength wastewater. Brewery wastewater, and spent yeast have high Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) concentrations between 5000 mg/L – 10,000 mg/L, and 200,000 mg/L – 300,000 mg/L respectively. Brewery effluent wastewater is sent to Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs) which implement high surcharges based on the strength of brewery effluent (COD concentration). While some of the spent yeast and hops can be …

Fabric-Based Organic Electrochemical Transistor Towards Wearable Ph Sensing Electronics, Nestor Osvaldo Marquez Rios

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wearable electronics interest has attracted the attention of a few sectors because of their applicability in different areas like healthcare, military, and our daily basis. Still building circuits on fabrics to make these wearable electronics is challenging. As transistors are the building blocks of electronic circuits and most of the biosensors, recently, fiber-shaped electrochemical transistors have been studied extensively for a lot of applications including bioelectronics. Fiber-based devices are getting popular in different applications due to their low fabrication cost, lightweight, and flexibility without losing their properties. Additionally, they are potentially suitable for making sensors on garments.

In this work, …

On Sparse Coding As An Alternate Transform In Video Coding, Michael G. Schimpf

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

In video compression, specifically in the prediction process, a residual signal is calculated by subtracting the predicted from the original signal, which represents the error of this process. This residual signal is usually transformed by a discrete cosine transform (DCT) from the pixel, into the frequency domain. It is then quantized, which filters more or less high frequencies (depending on a quality parameter). The quantized signal is then entropy encoded usually by a context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding engine (CABAC), and written into a bitstream. In the decoding phase the process is reversed. DCT and quantization in combination are efficient tools, …

Resource Recovery From Crew Metabolic Wastes In Lunar And Martian Habitats: Reuse Of Effluent From An Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor Treating Fecal Organic Matter As Fertilizer Source For Plants, Alexandra A. Smith

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As humans set their sights on exploration of the Moon and Mars human focused challenges like providing potable water, supplying nutritious food to the astronaut crew, and managing their waste present themselves. There are no readily available resources on the Moon and Mars, therefore nothing should be considered unusable including the organic wastes (i.e., feces and urine) produced by the crew. Fecal matter is not currently recycled and is treated as solid waste. After collection, it is discarded out of the International Space Station where it is incinerated upon re-entry. This approach will not work on the Moon’s surface. There …

Characteristics And Hydraulic Behavior Of Adsorptive Media For Use In Permeable Reactive Barriers, Shelby Rocha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Cargill ditch is located on the property of Se7en Wetlands, a 1600-ac treatment wetland system in Lakeland, Polk County, Florida. The Se7en Wetlands property was previously utilized for phosphate mining prior to the construction of the system. Nonpoint nutrient sources derived from remnants of abandoned phosphate mines – known as “legacy phosphorus” – become mobilized by stormwater runoff and impair surface water bodies by promoting harmful algal blooms (HABs). Thus, the Cargill ditch likely conveys nutrient rich flow resulting from legacy phosphorus and is thought to be one contributing factor in the occurrence of HABs within the treatment wetland …

Exploring Alternative Electron Donors For Heterotrophic Denitrification At A Water Reclamation Facility In Tampa Bay, Tejas Athavale

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An excess of nitrogen in water can pose problems, ranging from algal blooms to creating toxic environments for marine life. Therefore, wastewater treatment plants need to remove nitrogen from wastewater during the treatment process. Biological nitrogen removal is one process these plants may use, which commonly involves nitrification and denitrification, converting nitrogen in the form of ammonia to nitrate, and then ultimately nitrogen gas. The process of denitrification often requires an electron donor, and methanol is a common choice. However, it is flammable, and therefore there is a need to explore alternative electron donors. Alternative donors can include manufactured chemicals …

Mechanical Response Of The Craniofacial Skeleton To Subfracture Impacts In The Time And Frequency Domains, Paige Merko

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Resonant frequencies have been suggested as a mechanism of brain injury since these vibrations can transfer energy into the brain. Study of the vibrational response of the craniofacial skeleton to impact is limited in literature. In this research, four cadaver specimens were impacted at five locations on the craniofacial skeleton. The mechanical response to each impact was compared in the time and frequency domains. Impacts to the maxilla and its associated soft tissues tended to be attenuated, while impacts to the cranial vault, specifically to the occipital, produced the most severe response. Results suggest that the facial skeleton and its …

A Novel Approach Using Integrated Greywater Treatment System Applying Net Zero Wastewater Concept For Sustainable Urban Communities, Mianda Khattab

Theses and Dissertations

We are blessed with endless resources that are naturally existing in our world and we fully rely-on without envisioning the bigger picture of what would happen if these resources came to an end, or how can we even ensure sustainable lives by regenerating or reusing or utilizing the naturally existing resources? The surrounding ecosystem, the land we live on, the air we breathe, the water we drink and use for cooking, laundry, shower, irrigation, and many other usages are examples of the resources that we, as global users, are taking for granted.

It is a common knowledge that we are …

Resources Based Planning Framework For Infrastructure Maintenance And Rehabilitation Projects, Heba Gad

Theses and Dissertations

Infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation projects involve activities scattered over a large geographical area (e.g., scattered road segments maintenance, telecom towers maintenance program, etc.). Planning such projects require a resource-based approach that accounts for the implications of resource mobility between activities’ locations in terms of time & cost. Existing scheduling techniques fall short of addressing the unique challenges of the scattered nature of these projects in combination with organization's limited resources availability. To address this need, this research presents a resources-based planning framework for infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation scattered projects with the objective of enhancing resources utilization achieving time and cost …

Spatial Autocorrelation Analysis For Construction Sites, Raghda Moharram

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the usefulness of spatial autocorrelation analysis in construction sites. The objective is to provide construction managers with insights into the site's performance, identify potential areas for improvement, and ultimately lead to cost and time savings and improved project quality. To achieve this objective, the study identifies significant spatial autocorrelation variables for various applications in construction and analyzes their impact on the site's efficiency and potential problems.

The potential applications where spatial autocorrelation analysis could be useful were identified, including schedules, progress, earned value measures, safety incidents, workers' densities, equipment densities, energy expenditure, and quality non-conformity. A framework …

Stochastic Worst-Case Test Vectors For Asic Devices In Single Event Environment, Mostafa Hemeda

Theses and Dissertations

Charged particles and energetic particles can impact the integrated circuit, referred to as single event effects (SEE). Nuclear reactors and space radiation can produce these particles. These effects can negatively affect the reliability and performance of electronics. When SEE occurs, a transient current is created, which can cause electronic devices to have incorrect outputs and ultimately fail. As a result, ensuring the reliability of ASIC circuits is a significant concern.

This thesis discusses the different fault types, then discuss the soft error and, in particular, the Single Event Transient (SET) and its causes and models. Then, this thesis proposes a …

Understanding The Flow Dynamics Of The Pearl River, Ms, Through Hydrodynamic Modeling, Nahruma Mehzabeen Pieu

Master's Theses

The Pearl River brings fresh water and nutrients into Lake Borgne regulating conditions for oyster growth in estuarine waters. However, there are no flow measurement stations installed on East Pearl or West Pearl either at the river outlets or after the upstream bifurcation of the Pearl. This study aims to model the Lower Pearl River to understand the flow dynamics in the major branches, and to determine the final outflow distribution into the Mississippi Sound, aiming to improve river forcing for ocean models studying estuarine dynamics of the Mississippi Sound.

Synthetic meandering bathymetry with updated banks is developed and applied …

User Profiling Through Zero-Permission Sensors And Machine Learning, Ahmed Elhussiny

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of mobile and pervasive computing, users are often ingesting content on the go. Services are constantly competing for attention in a very crowded field. It is only logical that users would allot their attention to the services that are most likely to adapt to their needs and interests. This matter becomes trivial when users create accounts and explicitly inform the services of their demographics and interests. Unfortunately, due to privacy and security concerns, and due to the fast nature of computing today, users see the registration process as an unnecessary hurdle to bypass, effectively refusing to provide …

Securing Wireless Communication Via Information-Theoretic Approaches: Innovative Schemes And Code Design Techniques, Morteza Shoushtari

Theses and Dissertations

Historically, wireless communication security solutions have heavily relied on computational methods, such as cryptographic algorithms implemented in the upper layers of the network stack. Although these methods have been effective, they may not always be sufficient to address all security threats. An alternative approach for achieving secure communication is the physical layer security approach, which utilizes the physical properties of the communication channel through appropriate coding and signal processing. The goal of this Ph.D. dissertation is to leverage the foundations of information-theoretic security to develop innovative and secure schemes, as well as code design techniques, that can enhance security and …

Metachronal Locomotion: Swimming, Scaling, And Schooling, Kuvvat Garayev

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with one type of underwater locomotion called metachronal swimming in which the organism sequentially beats its multiple appendages allowing phase lag between adjacent neighbors. Metachronally swimming species are widespread and include copepods, shrimp, ctenophores, and tomopterid worms to name few. First, using the high-speed recording and planar particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurement, I report on kinematics of fast metachronal swimmer and constructive vortex interactions among its appendages and discuss its implications for improved performance regarding the swimming. Second, I show how hydrodynamic performance of all metachronal swimmers (paramecia, copepods, tomopterid worms, krill etc.) can be scaled by …

Evaluating The Impact Of Oxidation On Moisture Resistance Of Asphalt Components And Mixtures, Ahmad Alfalah

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of asphalt oxidation and testing temperature on moisture damage in asphalt mixtures, using AASHTO T283 and Surface Free Energy (SFE) testing. The study assessed the impact of three asphalt binder grades (PG 64-22, PG 76-22, and PG 52-34) and three test temperatures (ALT, AIT, and CIT) on the susceptibility to moisture damage. Additionally, three oxidation levels (OTC, STOC, and LTOC) were evaluated to determine the optimal level of oxidation and testing temperature for AASHTO T283 to detect moisture damage. Load-displacement curve parameters and IDEAL-CT were analyzed to better understand the effects of oxidation and moisture …

Capturing The Social Experience Of Scu Campus Housing Options In Virtual Tours, Eva Stenberg, Kian Malakooti, Matthew Gates

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

For incoming students at Santa Clara University, it can be challenging and stressful to choose which campus housing to live in. Is it a social dorm or a quiet one? What types of students live here? Will we get along? Will I feel comfortable in the place I’ll call home for the next nine months? Santa Clara University offers very limited resources for choosing campus housing. With the overhead 2D room layouts and the “selfie stick” dorm tours that focus more on the resident director than the rooms, it is hard to discern the sociality of each space which is …

Dreamtemp: A Platform For Sleep Monitoring And Improvement, Michelle Lim, Kyle Pedersen, Will Cockrum

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

With 70 million Americans suffering from chronic sleep disorders and only 7500 board-certified sleep physicians, a clear logistical problem exists that technological solutions may be able to address. The proliferation of IoT devices in homes and on our person presents a unique opportunity to improve sleep quality by leveraging the data they produce, and the control they provide to us over our everyday lives. DreamTemp is a platform for sleep monitoring and improvement that aims to improve an individual’s quality of sleep by dynamically adjusting the room temperature based on the user’s sleep cycle using a smart wearable and thermostat. …

Improvement To An Existing Multi-Level Capacitated Lot Sizing Problem With Setup Carryover, Backlogging, And Emission Control, Rifat Bin Hasan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents a multi-level, multi-item, multi-period capacitated lot-sizing problem. The lot-sizing problem studies can obtain production quantities, setup decisions, and inventory levels in each period fulfilling the demand requirements with limited capacity resources, considering the Bill of Material (B.O.M.) structure while simultaneously minimizing the production, inventory, and machine setup costs. The paper proposes an exact solution to Chowdhury et al. (2018)'s[1] developed model, which considers the backlogging cost, setup carryover & greenhouse gas emission control to its model complexity. The problem contemplates the Dantzig-Wolfe (D.W.) decomposition to decompose the multi-level capacitated problem into a single-item uncapacitated lot-sizing sub-problem. To …

Multi-Period, Multi-Platform Design And Lot-Sizing For Hybrid Manufacturing Considering Stochastic Demand And Processing Time, Md Sadman Sakib

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the era of digitalization, customer demand has become more customized than before. For this reason, the variety of products is increasing rapidly. Manufacturing industries are experiencing extraordinary challenges due to frequent updates of customer requirements. Now the manufacturers are focusing more on mass customization than mass production to keep pace with this situation, however, managing variety using the make-to-stock strategy increases holding costs, and the make-to-order strategy increases lead time. Moreover, uncertainty in demand is making mass customization more challenging. Though hybrid manufacturing is a promising concept for variety management, very few works consider stochastic demand. The concept of …

Consumer 3d Printing For Remote Control Aircraft Wings: Development Of Novel Wingbox Structure, Ian Clark

University Honors Theses

Remote control aircraft construction and can be a very expensive and time-consuming hobby. With 3D printer consumer adoption rates skyrocketing, there is a gap between demand for RC aircraft and suitable well-designed models available to creators and hobbyists. By creating and testing two iterations of wingbox geometries, this research aims to help close that gap by producing an easily printable wing structure. While there are improvements that can be made on this work, this research has been effective in generating a novel wingbox structure for FFF 3D printing that has distinct advantages over other designs currently available.

Insect Classification And Explainability From Image Data Via Deep Learning Techniques, Tanvir Hossain Bhuiyan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, humanity has always tried to make labor more efficient and automated, and this trend is only continuing in the modern digital age. With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in the latter part of the 20th century, the speed and scale with which AI has been leveraged to automate tasks defy human imagination. Many people deeply entrenched in the technology field are genuinely intrigued and concerned about how AI may change many of the ways in which humans have been living for millennia. Only time will provide the answers. This dissertation is …

A Digital Twin Of The Scu Campus: Telling Immersive Stories About Student Life, Marianne Yamazaki Dorr, Hasmik Galstyan, Venus Li, Trisha Nguyen

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

This senior design project aims to explore the use of digital twins of physical spaces to capture the social feel of a space and in the process turning that space into a place, in order to truly convey ‘what it’s like’ to be somewhere. However, existing digital twins of physical spaces often fail to capture the social meaning and behaviors that turn a space into a place. This project aims to address this problem by using spatial capture technology to create a 3D model digital twin of the Santa Clara University campus and using it as a foundation for exploring …

Obujulizi Share - Enabling Voices For Rural Ugandan Communities, Aastha Khare, Sravani Polkampalli

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Rural communities in Uganda currently lack proper technical infrastructure to effectively communicate their issues and find support within their communities. For our project, we collaborated with Rose Academies, a nonprofit organization that aims to empower and aid impoverished communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. We intend to help them by creating a centralized, secure, and accessible system that allows members of the communities they serve to share their experiences. Our project consisted of three parts: an interview application, where Rose Academies’ creative team can take and record interviews, a content managing application to allow the creative team to select compelling interviews and …

Active Car Spoiler, Kaiden Marouf, Connor Mccabe, Shane Nelson

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This following thesis presents the development and evaluation of an active car spoiler system designed to adjust its angle of attack based on the prevailing driving conditions in real-time. The project aimed to enhance the vehicle's acceleration, handling, and braking, by actively modifying the spoiler's angle of attack to optimize downforce and drag for a variety of driving scenarios. Research was conducted using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software and vehicle dynamics modeling to collect precise calculations and results for a number of wind speeds. The analysis process incorporated iterative refinement of the airflow around the spoiler considering factors such as …

Aiaa Design, Build, Fly: Aerodynamics, Julian Brown, Victor Bueno Garcia, Kyle Lam, Keaton Viadro

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

As part of the Santa Clara University Senior Design Project, the AIAA Design, Build, Fly: Aerodynamics team was responsible for designing and testing the wings, tail, and control surfaces of an aircraft designed to participate in future AIAA Design, Build, Fly competitions. Named Evergreen in honor of professor John J. Montgomery, the unmanned aerial vehicle was designed and constructed in collaboration with the AIAA Design, Build, Fly: Structures and Controls senior design team. Aiming to construct a competitive aircraft for the competition, the team decided that a target weight of approximately 3.5 kg and a cruise speed of 25 m/s …

Aiaa Design, Build, Fly: Structures And Controls, George Simon, Peyton Clark, Gabe Shedid, Jonathan Kleinman

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

For their Santa Clara University Senior Design Project, this team chose to create an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with the intent of participating in the AIAA Design, Build, Fly competition. Divided into two subteams, Aerodynamics and Structures & Controls, the teams worked together to model and construct a working prototype aircraft. The Aerodynamics team focused on selecting adequate airfoil and wing dimensions for the main wing and tail through the use of aircraft design software and CFD simulations. Aiming at a cruise speed of approximately 25 m/s, the team decided that the NACA 4416 airfoil would be the most suitable, …

Rhea Breast Pump: Implementation Of Biomimicry Technology, Harper Daniels, Leanne James, Laini Reynolds, Courtney Rowe, Julia Yaklich

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Rhea Breast Pump is an innovative breast pump that implements biomimicry informed technology for a more efficient and comfortable breastfeeding experience. Our design implements a tongue actuator in conjunction with vacuum to mimic the suckling motion of a baby’s mouth, a heating element for pain alleviation, and a soft flange to maximize comfort. The development of this device is motivated by the goal of empowering women, specifically nursing mothers, to maintain their independence and individuality while raising a family. Our team, consisting of all female engineers, strongly believes in and supports the notion that women can and should have the …

Wyclef: A Rational Reconstruction Of Versu Social Engine, James Dameris, Rosaura Hemandez

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Video games often lack an accurate representation of the person playing the game, causing a disconnect between the player and the character’s story. With Versu, a proprietary social simulation engine, not only did choices become more connected to the player, but the player could choose to take the place of any of the characters present in the story. This allows the player to find themselves in the story, while also giving vast replayability to the game. Wyclef is an open source, rational reconstruction of Versu providing increased authoring speed of stories and availability of the social engine to more people. …

Developing An Open-Source Tool For Systematic App Reviews For Non-Technical Researchers, Lauren Xie, David Truong, Tino Theodoropoulos, Jason Vu

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Researchers in many fields, from psychology to privacy studies, want to understand the mobile app ecosystem. The process of reviewing mobile apps is called a ’systematic app review’ (SAR). In a systematic app review, researchers analyze app metadata (e.g., the description, user reviews of the app, the app’s permissions list) and/or the experience of the app itself (e.g., the user interface, the content it contains). Unfortunately, this process does not yet have clearly defined best practices and the process of scraping data from app stores is costly, challenging, and time-consuming for researchers, especially ones without a technical background. Researchers lack …