Engineering Commons^™

Rails To Resilience: Evaluating New Orleans And Baton Rouge Rail Terminals And Transit Links, Tara M. Tolford, James Amdal, Guang Tian, Alahna Moore, Marin Tockman

Data

This study evaluates the multimodal linkages to and opportunities for proposed terminal sites for a potential future passenger rail connection between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. The project included a comprehensive analysis of recent planning processes and documents and distribution of a statewide survey aimed at understanding ridership potential (including non-work trips) and the needs of likely users, the results of which were modeled to illuminate key considerations for service design and station area planning. This study finds a strong foundation for, and support of, the proposed rail service, but distinct deficiencies in the current multimodal transportation environment connecting …

Rails To Resilience: Evaluating New Orleans And Baton Rouge Rail Terminals And Transit Links, Tara M. Tolford, James Amdal, Guang Tian, Alahna Moore, Marin Tockman

Publications

This study evaluates the multimodal linkages to and opportunities for proposed terminal sites for a potential future passenger rail connection between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. The project included a comprehensive analysis of recent planning processes and documents and distribution of a statewide survey aimed at understanding ridership potential (including non-work trips) and the needs of likely users, the results of which were modeled to illuminate key considerations for service design and station area planning. This study finds a strong foundation for, and support of, the proposed rail service, but distinct deficiencies in the current multimodal transportation environment connecting …

Neuromotor Control Of The Hand During Smartphone Manipulation, Prasanna Kumar Acharya

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The primary focus of this dissertation was to understand the motor control strategy used by our neuromuscular system for the multi-layered motor tasks involved during smartphone manipulation. To understand this control strategy, we recorded the kinematics and multi-muscle activation pattern of the right limb during smartphone manipulation, including grasping with/out tapping, movement conditions (MCOND), and arm heights.

In the first study (chapter 2), we examined the neuromuscular control strategy of the upper limb during grasping with/out tapping executed with a smartphone by evaluating muscle-activation patterns of the upper limb during different movement conditions (MCOND). There was a change in muscle …

Investigation Of Optimization Targets For Predictive Simulation Of Human Gait With Model Predictive Control, Jessica Brianne Thayer

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The design and development of gait-related treatments and devices is inhibited by anabsence of predictive gait models. Understanding of human gait and what motivates walkingpatterns is still limited, despite walking being one of the most routine human activities. While asignificant body of literature exists on gait modeling and optimization criteria to achievesimulated, normal gait, particularly with neuromuscular models, few studies have aimed to applyoptimization targets which approximate metabolic cost to mechanical gait models. Even fewerhave attempted this predictively, with no joint angle data specified a priori. The Sunmodel [31], [32] is one such …

Utilizing Neural Networks And Wearables To Quantify Hip Joint Angles And Moments During Walking And Stair Ascent, Megan V. Mccabe

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

Wearable sensors were leveraged to develop two methods for computing hip joint angles and moments during walking and stair ascent that are more portable than the gold standard. The Insole-Standard (I-S) approach replaced force plates with force-measuring insoles and achieved results that match the curvature of results from similar studies. Peaks in I-S kinetic results are high due to error induced by applying the ground reaction force to the talus. The Wearable-ANN (W-A) approach combines wearables with artificial neural networks to compute the same results. Compared against the I-S, the W-A approach performs well (average rRMSE = 18%, R^{2 …}

Walking Kinematics In Young Children With Limb Loss Using Early Versus Traditional Prosthetic Knee Prescription Protocols, Mark Daniel Geil, Zahra Safaeepour, Brian Giavedoni, Colleen Coulter

Faculty and Research Publications

The traditional treatment protocol for young children with congenital or acquired amputations at or proximal to the knee prescribes a prosthesis without a working knee joint, based in part on the assumption that a child learning to walk cannot properly utilize a passively flexing prosthetic knee component. An alternative to this Traditional Knee (TK) protocol is an “Early Knee” (EK) protocol, which prescribes an articulating prosthetic knee in the child’s first prosthesis, during development of crawling and transitioning into and out of upright positions. To date, no study has compared samples of children with limb loss at or proximal to …