Engineering Commons^™

To Research, Analyse And Install An Optimised Maintenance Management System For A Medium Sized Manufacturing Company: A Textile Company Case Study, Christopher O'Donoghue

Theses

Modern manufacturing is continually striving to ensure that products are made to higher levels of quality with faster lead times and at the lowest possible costs. Manufacturing production has never been more reliant on machines and automated processes than it is today. This thesis investigates the management philosophies that are in existence, which cater specifically for maintenance and maintenance related issues. Management philosophies such as Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), Profit Centred Maintenance (PCM), asset management (AM), Predictive Maintenance (PdM), Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) and World Class Maintenance (WCM) have increased company profits by drastically reducing maintenance …

Dynamic Performance Of Isolated Power Converters, David Badia

Theses

Isolated power converters are primarily used in applications where electrical galvanic isolation is required for safety purposes. They are also used in applications, which require various output voltages level. They have been studied from many different aspects, but in this thesis the fundamental circuits of the flyback, the forward and the half-bridge converters are studied and compared extensively, with regard to their dynamic performance.

This analysis will lead us to a better understanding of their behaviour, that is a crucial point in the selection of each topology for a particular application. Moreover, the dynamic response of each converter is different; …

Analysis And Synthesis Of Primary Side Cycle By Cycle Control Of Isolated Flyback Converters, Radoslaw Nalepa

Theses

This work presents the analysis and design of an isolated flyback converter, without feedback from the load side. The converter is controlled from the primary side using the switch voltage and innovative control circuit topologies.

A detail study of the flyback circuit is undertaken including all known parasitics. Besides the standard parasitics, for example the capacitor resistive effect, other more subtle effects are included in the model development such as inter coil couplingj source capacitance etc. Development of these models has provided information about circuit simplifications without losing accuracy of the model. As a consequence of this model development, it …

Teaching Computing To Engineering Freshmen Through A High Tech Tools And Toys Laboratory, S. Mcknight, G. Tadmor, E. Carr Everbach, W. E. Cole, M. Ruane

Engineering Faculty Works

Freshman engineering courses in computing applications and programming often lack applications that are sufficiently engaging without being overwhelming. Program outputs and graphics within the reach of beginning students are often woefully primitive compared to computer graphics that are available in commercial gaming software. The students’ lack of background in engineering subjects commonly leads to applications that are simplistic, mechanical (e.g., number sorting), or heavily flavored toward mathematics or physics concepts (such as fluid friction) that student have only an uneasy grasp on. We have developed a two- quarter-hour freshman computing course taught entirely in a “High Tech Tools and Toys …

Use Of Incremental Adaptation And Habituation Regimens For Mitigating Optokinetic Side-Effects, David A. Graeber

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

The use of incremental and repeated exposures regimens have been put forth as effective means to mitigate visually induced motion sickness based on the Dual Process Theory (DPT) (Groves & Thompson, 1970) of neural plasticity. In essence, DPT suggests that by incrementing stimulus intensity the depression opponent process should be allowed to exert greater control over the net outcome than the sensitization opponent process, thereby minimizing side-effects. This conceptual model was tested by empirically validating the effectiveness of adaptation, incremental adaptation, habituation, and incremental habituation regimens to mitigate side-effects arising from exposure to an optokinetic drum. Forty college students from …

A Framework For The Implementation Of An Iso 9000 Based Certification Program For Printed Circuit Board Manufacturers, Adam Y. Maamoun

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

ISO 9000:2000 is the newest version of the ISO 9000 family of standards. Unlike the 1994 version, it does not distinguish between servicing, testing and designing standards. It emphasizes quality improvement rather than quality control and briefly explains how to implement the Plan-Do-Check- Act (PDCA) cycle for improvement and the use of statistical techniques to improve the quality of process and product instead of controlling the quality of the output. The thesis explains why companies need to be certified and how to implement quality improvement programs.

The objective of this thesis is to provide generic certification guidelines for printed circuit …

Computing A Diameter-Constrained Minimum Spanning Tree, Ayman Mahmoud Abdalla

Retrospective Theses and Dissertations

In numerous practical applications, it is necessary to find the smallest possible tree with a bounded diameter. A diameter-constrained minimum spanning tree (DCMST) of a given undirected, edge-weighted graph, G, is the smallest-weight spanning tree of all spanning trees of G which contain no path with more than k edges, where k is a given positive integer. The problem of finding a DCMST is NP-complete for all values of k; 4 ≤ k ≤ (n - 2), except when all edge-weights are identical.

A DCMST is essential for the efficiency of various distributed mutual exclusion algorithms, where …

Electrodeposition Of Niw Alloys Into Deep Recesses, Lakshmikanth Namburi

LSU Master's Theses

Pulse electrodeposition has been investigated as a general technique for the electrodeposition of nickel-tungsten alloys in deep recesses for MEMS. Ni-W exhibits an induced codeposition mechanism, where the Ni reaction rate enhances the codeposition of W. Electrodeposition of this alloy has been achieved into recesses of 500 micron deep. The challenges that have been encountered are those related to gas evolving side reactions, local pH rises, diffusional limitations of the soluble species and long times required for filling the recesses. Electrodeposition on cylinder electrodes at different rotation rates was also carried out in order to obtain data on composition of …

Resonant Energy Transfer From Argon Dimers To Atomic Oxygen In Microhollow Cathode Discharges, M. Moselhy, R. H. Stark, K. H. Schoenbach, U. Kogelschatz

Bioelectrics Publications

The emission of atomic oxygen lines at 130.2 and 130.5 nm from a microhollow cathode discharge in argon with oxygen added indicates resonant energy transfer from argon dimers to oxygen atoms. The internal efficiency of the vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) radiation was measured as 0.7% for a discharge in 1100 Torr argon with 0.1% oxygen added. The direct current VUV point source operates at voltages below 300 V and at current levels of milliamperes.

Self-Consistent Simulations Of Electroporation Dynamics In Biological Cells Subjected To Ultrashort Electrical Pulses, R. P. Joshi, Q. Hu, R. Aly, K. H. Schoenbach, H. P. Hjalmarson

Bioelectrics Publications

The temporal dynamics of electroporation of cells subjected to ultrashort voltage pulses are studied based on a coupled scheme involving the Laplace, Nernst-Plank, and Smoluchowski equations. A pore radius dependent energy barrier for ionic transport, accounts for cellular variations. It is shown that a finite time delay exists in pore formation, and leads to a transient overshoot of the transmembrane potential V_mem beyond 1.0 V. Pore resealing is shown to consist of an initial fast process, a 10⁻⁴s delay, followed by a much slower closing at a time constant of about 10 ⁻¹s. This establishes a …

A Proposal For A Scalable Internet Multicast Architecture, Sherlia Shi

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We propose a new network and system architecture for multicast in the Internet. Our main objectives are to find a cost-effective way to scale to a large number of multicast groups whose members are geographically dispersed, and to enable small and less capable devices to participate in group communications. In order to preserve the efficiency of data distribution gained by multicast, while avoiding the control complexity previously exhibited by IP multicast, we propose the use of an overlay network for multicast services. We construct "virtual" multicast trees, which consist of unicast connections joining multicast servers in the network. These servers …

Aggregated Hierarchical Multicast For Active Networks, Tilman Wolf, Sumi Y. Choi

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Active Networking is the basis for a range of new and innovative applications that make use of computational resources inside network routers. One such application is Aggregated Hierarchical Multicast, which aims at implementing efficient many-to-many communication. In certain scenarios it is possible to transmit less accurate, aggregated data and thus achieve better scalability. Using Active Networks, this aggregation computation can be done transparently by network routers without end system support. We present how aggregated data streams can be structured in a hierarchical fashion to allow easy access of data at the desired aggregation level. We introduce two application examples to …

Dres: Internet Resource Management Using Deferred Reservations, Samphel Norden

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

In this proposal, we consider the problem of resource reservation for Integrated Services (IntServ) and Differentiated Services (DiffServ) networks. Current approaches for resource reservation in INtegrated Service Networks adopt an all-or-nothing approach, where partially acquired resources must be released if resources are not available at all routers on the chosen path. Furthermore, under high load, end-systems must retry requests repeatedly leading to inefficient allocation and increased traffic. We propose a new approach called Deferred REServation (DERS) that substantially improves performance (reduces the overall cell rejection probability and increases link utilization) over the all-or-nothing reservation approach. Call admissibility is increased by …

Fast Incremental Crc Updates For Ip Over Atm Networks, Florian Braun, Marcel Waldvogel

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

In response to the increasing network speeds, many operations in IP routers and similar devices are being made more efficient. With the advances in other areas of packet processing, the verification and regeneration of cyclic redundancy check (CRC) codes of the data link layer is likely to become a bottleneck in the near future. In this paper, we present a mechanism to defer CRC verification without compromising reliability. This opens the possibility of incremental updates of the CRC. We introduce a new high-speed technique and present efficient implementation, speeding up CRC processing by a factor of 15. Although the paper …

A Distributed Annotation System, Robin Dowell

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

One goal of any genome project is the elucidation of hte primary sequence of DNA contained within a given species. While the availability ot the primary sequence itself is valuable, it does not reach its full potential until i has been annotated. Generally defined, annotation is descriptive information or commentary added to text, in this case genomic sequence. Without a mechanism for collecting, recording, and disseminating community-based annotation, a valuable source of information is severely diminshed. In this report I outline the design and implementation of a Distributed Annotation System (DAS). DAS allowes sequence annotations to be decentralized among multiple …

Layered Protocol Wrappers For Internet Packet Processing In Reconfigurable Hardware, Florian Braun, John Lockwood, Marcel Waldvogel

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The ongoing increases of line speed in the Internet backbone combined with the need for increased functionality of network devices presents a major challenge. These demands call for the use of reprogrammable hardware to provide the required flexible, high-speed functionality, at all network layers. The Field Programmable Port Extender (FPX) provides such an environment for development of networking components in reprogrammable hardware. We present a framework to streamline and simplify networking applications that process ATM cells, AAL5 frames, Internet Protocol (IP) packets and UDP datagrams directly in hardware.

Implementation Of An Open Multi-Service Router, Fred Kuhns, John Dehart, Ralph Keller, John Lockwood, Prashanth Papu, Jyoti Parwatikar, Ed Spitznagel, David Richard, David Taylor, Jon Turner, Ken Wong

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper describes the design, implementation, and performance of an open, high-performance, dynamically reconfigurable Multi-Service Router (MSR) being developed at Washington University in St. Louis. This router provides an experimentation platform for research on protocols, router software, and hardware design, network management, quality of service and advanced applications. The MSR has been designed to be flexible, without sacrificing performance. It support gigabit links and uses a scalable architecture suitable for supporting hundreds or even thousands of links. The MSR's flexibility makes it an ideal platform for experimental research on dynamically extensible networks that implement higher level functions in direct support …

Routing In Overlay Multicast Networks, Sherlia Y. Shi, Jonathan S. Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Multicast servises can be provided either as a basic network service or as an application-layer service. Higher level multicast implementations often provide more sophisticated features, and since they don't require network supoprt for multicast, they can provide multicast services, where no network layer support is available. Overlay multicast networks offer an intermediate option, potentially combining the flexibility and advanced features of application layer multicast with the greater efficiency of network layer multicast. Overlay multicast networks play an important role in the Internet. Indeed, since Internet Service Providers have been slow to enable IP multicast in their networks, Internet multicast is …

A Termination Detection Protocol For Use In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Gruia-Catalin Roman, Jamie Payton

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

As computing devices become smaller and wireless networking technologies improve, the popularity of mobile computing continues to rise. In today's business world, many consider devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops as essential tools. As these and other devices become increasingly independent of the wired infrastructure, new kinds of applications that assume an ad hoc network infrastructure will need to be deployed. Such a setting poses new challenges for the software developer, e.g., the lack of an established network topology, bandwidth limitations, and frequent disconnections. In this paper, we begin to explore design strategies for developing applications over ad …

Relying On Safe Distance To Ensure Consistent Group Membership In Ad Hoc Networks, Qingfeng Huang, Christine Julien, Gruia-Catalin Roman, Ali Hazemi

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The design of ad hoc mobile applications often requires the availability of a consistent view of the application state among the participating hosts. Such views are important because they simplify both the programming and verification tasks. Essential to constructing a consitent view is the ability to know what hosts are within proximity of each other, i.e., form a group in support of the particular application. In this paper we propose a protocol that allows hosts within communication range to maintain a consistent view of the group membership despite movement and frequent disconnections. The novel features of this protocol are its …

Scheduling Processing Resources In Programmable Routers, Prashanth Pappu, Tilman Wolf

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

To provide flexibility in deploying new protocols and services, general-purpose processing engines are being placed in the datapath of routers. Such network processors are typically simple RISC multiprocessors that perform forwarding and custom application processing of packets. The inherent unpredictability of execution time of arbitrary instruction code poses a significant challenge in providing QoS guarantees for data flows that compete for such processing resources in the network. However, we show that network processing workloads are highly regular and predictable. Using estimates of execution times of various applications on packets of given lengths, we provide a method for admission control and …

Scalable Ip Lookup For Programmable Routers, David E. Taylor, John W. Lockwood, Todd Sproull, David B. Parlour

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Continuing growth in optical link speeds places increasing demands on the performance of Internet routers, while deployment of embedded and distributed network services imposes new demands for flexibility and programmability. IP adress lookup has become a significant performance bottleneck for the highest performance routers. New commercial products utilize dedicated Content Addressable Memory (CAM) devides to achieve high lookup speeds. This paper describes an efficient, scalable lookup engine design, able to achieve high-performance with the use of a small portion of a reconfigurable logic device and a commodity Random Access Memory (RAM) device. Based on Eatherton's Tree Bitmap algorithm [1] the …

Design Of Wavelength Converting Switches For Optical Burst Switching, Jeyashankher Ramamirtham, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is an experimental network technology that enables the construction of very high capacity routers, using optical data paths and electronic control. In this paper, we study two designs for wavelength converting switches that are suitable for use in optical burst switching systems and evaluate their performance. Both designs use tunable lasers to implement wavelength conversion. One is strictly nonblocking design, that also requires optical crossbars. The second substitutes Wavelength Grating Routers (WGR) for the optical crossbars, reducing cost, but introducing some potential for blocking. We show how the routing problem for the WGR-based switches can be …

Efficient Queue Management For Tcp Flows, Anshul Kantawala, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Packets in the Internet can experience large queueing delays during busy periods. Backbone routers are generally engineered to have large buffers, in which packets may wait as long as half a second (assuming FIFO service, longer otherwise). During congestion periods, these bufferfs may stay close to full, subjecting packets to long delays, even when the intrinsic latency of the path is relatively small. This paper studies the performance improvements that can be obtained by using more sophisticated packet schedulers, than are typical of Internet routers. The results show that the large buffers found in WAN routers ocntribute only marginally to …

Relationship Between Two Generalized Images For Discrete And Differential Camera Motions, Robert Pless

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The recent popularity of catadioptic and multi-camera imaging systems indicates a need to create formal models for general, non-perspective camera geometries. Development of algorithmic tools for interpreting images from a generalized camera model will lead to a better understanding of how to design camera systems for particular tasks. Here we define the corollary to epi-polar constraints for standard cameras - the relationship between two images of a scene taken by generalized cameras from viewpoints related by discrete or differential motions.

Indra: A Distributed Approach To Network Intrusion Detection And Prevention, Qi Zhang, Ramaprabhu Janakiraman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

While advances in computer and communications technology have made the network ubiquitous, they ahve also rendered networked systems vulnerable to malicious attacks orchestrated from a distance. These attacks, usually called cracker attacks or intrusions, start with crackers infiltrating a network through a vulnerable host and then going on to launch further attacks. Crackers depend on increasingly sophisticated techniques like using distributed attack sources. On the other hand, software that guards against them remains rooted in traditional centralized techniques, presenting an easily-targetable single point of failure. Scalable, distributed network intrusion prevention software is sorely needed. We propose Indra - a distributed …

Evaluation Of Motion-Jpeg2000 For Video Processing, Wei Yu, Ruibiao Qiu, Jason Fritts

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The new ISO/ITU-T standard for still image coding, JPEG2000, has been shown to provide superior coding efficiency to the previous standard, JPEG. Because of the superb performance of JPEG2000, it is reasonable to argue that Motion-JPEG2000, the corresponding moving picture coding standard of JPEG2000, has equally outstanding performance. However, there has not been a sufficient performance evaluation of Motion-JPEG2000. To this end, we have studied the potential of Motion-JPEG2000 for video processing. Our experiments show that Motion-JPEG2000 provides high compression performance, strong error resilience, and good perceptual image quality. Together with a rich set of features inherited from JPEG2000, Motion-JPEG2000 …

Polyurethane Foam Based Packing Media For Biofilters Removing Volatile Organic Compounds From Contaminated Air, Felipe A. Martinez

LSU Master's Theses

In recent years, biofiltration technology has gained acceptance worldwide as an economical and reliable air pollution control technology for treating gases contaminated by low concentrations of biodegradable volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Important applications include control of odors generated by wastewater treatment plants and control of VOC emissions from industrial sources. Although there have been many successful applications, several operational problems have been reported in the literature. These include difficulty in control over bed moisture content, high head loss caused by excessive biomass production, and inability to maintain removal efficiency during transient periods of high concentration loading. Use of a superior …

A Dynamic Programming-Based Approach To Microarray Image Comparison And Registration, Sunil Bosco Rodrigues

Masters Theses

"Microarray technology is increasingly used as a means of high throughput analysis of human, non-human and plant genomes. Manual methods of array production have inherent imperfections and variations of the quality of output data derived from these arrays. A dynamic programming-based approach is presented to validate the quality of such data prior to insertion into evolving databases in order to assign reliably, genetic aberrations to bio-medical functions. Dynamic programming is used for comparing normal and tumor microarray image pairs and a cost function is developed which gives a value representing the difference between the images. Quality of the image pairs …

Modal Rules Are Co-Implications, Alexander Kurz

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

In [13], it was shown that modal logic for coalgebras dualises—concerning definability— equational logic for algebras. This paper establishes that, similarly, modal rules dualise implications:It is shown that a class of coalgebras is definable by modal rules iff it is closed under H (images) and Σ (disjoint unions). As a corollary the expressive power of rules of infinitary modal logic on Kripke frames is characterised.