Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

Degumming Of Hemp Fibers Using Combined Microwave Energy And Deep Eutectic Solvent, Bulbul Ahmed

LSU Master's Theses

Hemp is considered as one of the sustainable agricultural fiber materials. Degumming or surface modification of hemp bast is needed to produce single fibers for ensuing textile and industrial applications. The traditional degumming process necessitates a high amount of alkali, which causes detrimental environmental pollution. This study offers a new method to degum hemp fibers with reduced use of harmful alkali and precious water resources. In this work, hemp bast fibers were degummed by using combined microwave energy and deep eutectic solvent (DES). The properties of hemp fibers manufactured by this method were investigated and compared with the traditional alkali …

Performance Evaluation Of Gas Lift Valves Using Numerical Simulation, Felipe Simoes Maciel

LSU Master's Theses

This work aimed to assess the performance of two numerical simulation methods to replicate flow capacity test (FCT) results and predict the flow coefficient (Cv) and critical pressure ratio (Rcp) of gas lift valves (GLVs). FCT's use a modified GLV with an adjustable stem positioning system to obtain pressure as a function of flow rate for different stem positions to calculate Cv and Rcp. Therefore, this study used both a one-dimensional (1D) mechanistic model and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to predict the same variable from the FCT without tests using modified GLVs. This methodology demonstrates accurate results, which were compared …

Development Of Reduced Order Models Using Reservoir Simulation And Physics Informed Machine Learning Techniques, Mark V. Behl Jr

LSU Master's Theses

Reservoir simulation is the industry standard for prediction and characterization of processes in the subsurface. However, simulation is computationally expensive and time consuming. This study explores reduced order models (ROMs) as an appropriate alternative. ROMs that use neural networks effectively capture nonlinear dependencies, and only require available operational data as inputs. Neural networks are a black box and difficult to interpret, however. Physics informed neural networks (PINNs) provide a potential solution to these shortcomings, but have not yet been applied extensively in petroleum engineering.

A mature black-oil simulation model from Volve public data release was used to generate training data …

A Modelling Study For Smart Pigging Technique For Pipeline Leak Detection, Caitlyn Judith Thiberville

LSU Master's Theses

Although leak incidents continue, a pipeline remains the most reliable mode of transportation within the oil and gas industry. It becomes even more important today because the projection for new pipelines is expected to increase by 1 billion BOE through 2035. In addition, increasing number and length of subsea tiebacks face new challenges in term of data acquisition, monitoring, analysis, and remedial actions. Passive leak-detection methods commonly used in the industry have been successful with some limitations in that they often cannot detect small leaks and seeps. In addition to a thorough review of related topics, this study investigates how …

Artificial Intelligence Based Wrist Fracture Classification, Dineep Thomas

LSU Master's Theses

The problem of predicting wrist fractures from X-rays using Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods is addressed. Wrist fractures are the most commonly misdiagnosed fractures because of the complex anatomical structure of the wrist bone which includes several different bones. This research provides a predictive solution to automate the process of wrist fracture classifications and outlines a visualization technique to identify the probable location of the fractured region on the X-rays. This thesis describes a deep learning based approach for wrist fracture classification. Deep convolutional neural network (CNN) based models have been used for wrist fracture classification by combining different optimization techniques. …

Reuse And Recycling Drill Cuttings In Concrete Applications, Maziar Foroutan

LSU Master's Theses

Drill cutting (DC) is a major waste produced during petroleum extraction, which could present a major source of contamination to soil and groundwater, if not disposed of properly. The objective of this study aims to test the hypothesis that drill cuttings can be incorporated as an aggregate in the production of concrete, and is suitable for use in controlled, low-strength material (CLSM) for non-structural applications. To achieve this objective, the physical and consensus properties of drill cuttings were characterized. Concrete mixtures were designed for CLSM applications with and without drill cuttings sampled from two sources. Prepared concrete mixes were then …

Automated Conversion Of Text Instructions To Human Motion Animation, Ravikumar Vishwanath Chimmalgi

LSU Master's Theses

Text to animation is the conversion of textual instructions to animations following and depicting those instructions. Text to animation is important to fields such as crime scene investigation, military special operations and storytelling where text is utilized. It is also useful for physical therapy where a doctor can factor in disability parameters in the 3D models and determine the safest therapy exercises for patients. It can be used in robotics, where robot assistants can be instructed to perform tasks through text instructions. In this research, a system was created to generate 3D animation of workouts from their textual instructions. An …

Evaluation Of Different Harvesting And Storage Practices: Sweet Sorghum And Energycane, Ana Lucia Amaya Arroyave

LSU Master's Theses

Two attractive potential feed stocks for biofuel production are energycane and sweet sorghum due to the environmental adaptability, sugars concentration and yield. Evaluation and development of harvesting, transportation and storage practices is critical for bringing the production of these crops to industrial levels. This research aims to analyze the supply system of energy crops and evaluate the effect of different harvesting and storage in the yields of the feedstock and the efficiencies of the processes. Harvesting trials were conducted at St. Gabriel, LA for evaluating the feasibility of using energy crops as inputs for ethanol production. The parameters that were …

Investigation Of Best Practices For Maintenance Of Concrete Bridge Railings, Angel Luis Lence

LSU Master's Theses

Biodeterioration on concrete surfaces of vertical elements of bridges represents a serious challenge to the highway infrastructure in Louisiana. This investigation aims to document the causes of biodeterioration of concrete surfaces and to document current conventional and state-of-the-art practices implemented to prevent and clean biofilm. A comprehensive literature review of previous research has been carried out in order to determine the cause and mechanisms of the biodeterioration as well as to identify current methods that state DOTs have implemented in order to maintain their bridges and allow them to function in optimal structural and performance conditions. A survey was developed …

Design Flood Elevations Beyond Code Requirements And Current Best Practices, Frank H. Bohn

LSU Master's Theses

In the United States, nearly 9 million people, 3.0% of the population, live in areas subject to the 1% annual chance (100-yr) coastal flood hazard. New construction and substantial improvements in coastal high hazard areas require structures to be elevated above the design flood elevation (DFE), without the use of fill (Bellomo et al. 1999). Building code requirements for flood elevation are linked to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) insurance policies, and represent the minimum requirement for building elevation. Current elevation procedures are limited to the 100-year base flood elevation with minimal guidance beyond the 100-year elevation in many …

Variability And Characteristics Of Recycled Asphalt Shingles Sampled From Different Sources, Aaron Lodge

LSU Master's Theses

Recent literature studies have demonstrated depletion in natural resources; therefore, making resources needed for the pavement industry is more costly. There is a need to minimize cost and to try to reduce the depletion of natural resources. While the recycling of asphalt shingles is beneficial in reducing the consumption of virgin materials, pavement performance should not be compromised. One major concern with recycled asphalt shingles (RAS) relates to the variability in the properties of the recycled materials originating from different sources. In addition, the rheological properties of RAS have not been evaluated as well as its influence on the virgin …

Controversy Trend Detection In Social Media, Rajshekhar Vishwanath Chimmalgi

LSU Master's Theses

In this research, we focus on the early prediction of whether topics are likely to generate significant controversy (in the form of social media such as comments, blogs, etc.). Controversy trend detection is important to companies, governments, national security agencies, and marketing groups because it can be used to identify which issues the public is having problems with and develop strategies to remedy them. For example, companies can monitor their press release to find out how the public is reacting and to decide if any additional public relations action is required, social media moderators can moderate discussions if the discussions …

Improving Discourse Structure Identification, Jamie Allison Guidry

LSU Master's Theses

Rhetorical Structure Theory (Mann et al. 1988), a popular approach for analyzing discourse coherence, suggests that coherent text can be placed into a hierarchical organization of clauses. Identification of a text’s rhetorical structure through automatic discourse analysis is a crucial element for many of today’s Natural Language Processing tasks, but no sufficient tool is available. The current state-of -the-art discourse parser, SPADE (Soricut et al. 2003), is limited to parsing discourse within a single sentence. HILDA (Hernault et al. 2010) extends the parsing abilities of SPADE to the document level, but with a decrease in performance. This study achieved document-level …

Hurricane Damage Assessment Process For Residential Buildings, Carol C. Massarra

LSU Master's Theses

Assessing an affected area immediately after a severe natural hazard event and saving the resulting data are vitally important in any effort to reduce future economic losses from natural hazards. These data are used as a record of buildings performance and as a major component for statistical analysis and damage modeling studies. Since these data are used as input for these studies, the data must be assessed and collected in a scientific and standardized way. Despite this requirement, neither a systematic damage assessment process nor a standardized data collection protocol is currently available in the United States to ensure that …

Quantification Of Nox Reduction Via Nitrate Accumulation On A Tio2 Photocatalytic Concrete Pavement, David James Osborn

LSU Master's Theses

Field trials of photocatalytic pavements were recently initiated and are presently being considered by many states (e.g., Virginia, Texas, New York, and Missouri). Results from this study originate from the country’s first air-purifying asphalt and concrete photocatalytic pavements, constructed on Dec. 20, 2010. The test area is a pavement site located on the LSU campus. The objective of the study is to validate field photocatalytic degradation of NOx in a field environment by measuring the day to day accumulation of the oxidized byproduct; nitrate salts. The mass of nitrates, produced by the real life photocatalytic pavement, were measured. The measurement …

The Transient Wave Effect And Real Losses Correlation-Frequency, Temporal, And Spatial Analysis, Dina Sa Knight

LSU Master's Theses

Water distribution systems are prone to transients since pumps need to be started and stopped, pumps may have sudden flow changes, human blunders can occur, equipment may fail, or other unavoidable natural events may ensue. Surge modeling techniques are available to calculate variations in pressure, under extreme or normal operating conditions, serving as a tool to predict extreme events in order to design a suitable system and, or, to aid in the implementation of proper measures to mitigate transients. However, modeling an entire water network system may not be cost effective and may require extensive research and time especially in …

Performance Of Control Room Operators In Alarm Management, Dileep Buddaraju

LSU Master's Theses

Pipelines transport millions of barrels of petroleum products every day. These systems have significant safety concerns. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, while concerned with oil and gas extraction rather than distribution, shares many of the same safety and reliability issues as distribution systems, and demonstrates the significant potential for major disasters in the pipeline industry. In this work, a research study is being conducted to further understanding of the role of operators in the management of alarm systems and to measure the performance of operators in handling abnormal situations like pressure loss, liquid inflow/outflow variation and …

Comparison Of Different Integral Histogram Based Tracking Algorithms, Sriharsha Atluri

LSU Master's Theses

Object tracking is an important subject in computer vision with a wide range of applications – security and surveillance, motion-based recognition, driver assistance systems, and human-computer interaction. The proliferation of high-powered computers, the availability of high quality and inexpensive video cameras, and the increasing need for automated video analysis have generated a great deal of interest in object tracking algorithms. Tracking is usually performed in the context of high-level applications that require the location and/or shape of the object in every frame. Research is being conducted in the development of object tracking algorithms over decades and a number of approaches …

An Euler Solver For Nonlinear Water Waves Using A Modified Staggered Grid And Gaussian Quadrature Approach, Qi Fan

LSU Master's Theses

A structured, finite-volume Euler solver for non-hydrostatic, free surface flows is developed to simulate coastal nonlinear dispersive water waves. A semi-implicit projection method which splits the pressure term into hydrostatic and non-hydrostatic parts is employed. A vertically shifted, staggered grid is designed to accommodate a new Gaussian discharge calculator and to facilitate the enforcement of a non-hydrostatic free-surface boundary condition. The Gaussian discharge calculator on the shifted grid increases the dispersion accuracy compared to traditional approaches that calculate discharges on a regular staggered grid. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the improvements of these methods.

Solving Evolution Equations For Triad Interaction Of Shallow Water Waves, Qian Zhang

LSU Master's Theses

This study focuses on solving the evolution equations for triad interaction in shallow water waves. First, the evolution equations based on Boussinesq-type equations with Pad¨¦ approximant of the exact linear phase velocity using multi-scale perturbation analysis are derived. Next, methods of solving the complex equation directly, splitting the complex function into amplitude and phase functions, and splitting complex function into real and imaginary parts are implemented to solve the evolution equations. Then the fourth-order Runge-Kutta (RK4) numerical scheme is employed to solve the evolution equations, and corresponding numerical results of three wave interaction are presented demonstrating the sensitivity of the …

Enhancing Reductive Dechlorination Of Chlorinated Ethenes And Ethanes In A Natural Treatment System, Caroline Burda

LSU Master's Theses

Chlorinated solvent contamination continues to plague sites around the world. In many cases, lower chlorinated daughter products build up and remain in ground waters and soils. A Bio-Filter/Phytobed (BFP) system has been developed to replace a traditional pump and treat technology currently operating at the ReSolve Superfund site in North Dartmouth, MA. Pilot scale testing at the facility displayed a significant acclimation period prior to microbial dechlorination, as well as delayed degradation of chlorinated ethanes. Microcosm studies suggest that acidic conditions, possibly created by the peat mixture used to construct the bio-filter, inhibited bacterial growth. The neutralization of trench pH …

Development And Thermal Characterization Of Cellulose/Clay Nanocomposites, Christopher D. Delhom

LSU Master's Theses

Cotton is the most important textile fiber for apparel use and is preferred to synthetic fibers for reasons such as comfort and feel. Cotton may also be used to produce the regenerated cellulose fibers, such as lyocell and viscose, which have numerous textile applications. A major drawback of cotton, and other cellulosic fibers, is its inherent ability to burn. Many finishes have been developed to impart flame resistance to cotton. These finishes have limited use in textiles for apparel due to problems with the finish not being durable during laundering and increasing the susceptibility of the fabric to wear. Most …

Optimization For Software Release And Crash, Tanvir Khan

LSU Master's Theses

Software testing is a process to detect faults in the completeness and quality of developed computer software. Testing is a key process in assuring quality by identifying defects in software, and possibly fixing them, before it is delivered to end-users. A major decision to make during this software testing is, to determine whether to continue testing and eventually releasing the software, or when to stop the test and ‘crash’ it. Such a decision needs to be made to optimally balance the tradeoff between the cost of development and the reliability of the software. In this paper, a new optimal strategy …

Development Of A Biomass Transducer For Automated Microalgal Bioreactors, Amar Shivaram Hegde

LSU Master's Theses

A highly sensitive miniaturized biomass transducer is necessary for continuous and reliable monitoring of the microalgal biomass in a computer controlled, automated microalgal bioreactor. Previous known methods to determine microalgal biomass applicable in these bioreactors are based on single wavelength turbidimetric or fluorescence. The objectives of this research were to (1) determine the light absorption characteristics of some commercially applicable microalgae in the electromagnetic wavelength range of 200-800 nm (2) design and construct a new miniaturized biomass transducer (3) process the transducer output to correlate with the biomass. Wavelength sensitivity analysis was conducted on the commercially important microalgal species - …

A Tablet Pc Application For Construction Site Safety Inspection And Fatality Prevention, Prabhu Sunkara

LSU Master's Theses

Construction industry accounts for the largest number of occupational injuries and fatalities every year. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is an organization responsible for regulating and enforcing standards for various occupations to ensure safe working conditions including construction industry. As an OSHA requirement, every construction employer should employ a safety program that involves both training of the employees and frequent site inspections. OSHA has provided an online ‘construction eTool’ as a training tool which also aids in the development of safety inspection procedures. Traditionally, safety inspections are paper based and usually designed to address a specific work area or …

Purification And Structural Characterization Of Caged Dna Oligonucleotides, Brendan Michael Mcadams

LSU Master's Theses

“Cage” molecules reversibly block the bioactivity of a target substrate molecule by a photolyzable covalent bond formed at a functional site of the target molecule. The attachment of cage molecules to DNA oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) to transiently block bioactivity, and site-specific restoration of bioactivity using targeted light exposure, would enable a new method of control for use in gene therapy, molecular/DNA computing, molecular biology, and drug delivery. The reaction of the cage molecule 1-(4,5-dimethoxy-2-nitrophenyl)diazoethane (DMNPE) with DNA ODNs in an batch reaction yields a mixture of products with varying degrees of caging. Purification and verification of the hypothesized site of DMNPE …

The Electrodeposition And Property Study Of Nickel-Rhenium Alloy, Shirong Wen

LSU Master's Theses

The electrodeposition of nickel-rhenium alloys from Ni(II) and Re(VII) solution was studies in an aqueous acidic solution. Different plating current density and pH have been carried out, and the effect of them on the composition of the deposited Ni-Re alloy was studied. Wavelength-dispersive spectrometer (WDS) was used to measure the composition of Ni-Re alloy. The thermal stability of nickel-rhenium alloy system has been investigated. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) tests have been conducted for the electroplated Ni-Re samples in order to find the possible heating initiated interactions at elevated temperatures. To investigate the thermal stability of Ni-Re alloys, the samples were …

Evidence Of Neotectonic Activity In Southwest Louisiana, Jordan Oliver Heltz

LSU Master's Theses

A methodology that combines high-resolution topographic mapping, field observations, subsurface evaluation, and geodetic data analysis has successfully located several fault-related geomorphic steps in an area of southwestern Louisiana once thought to be relatively devoid of such features. Comparison of height differences of benchmarks straddling these suspected fault-related steps shows that vertical displacement rates on faults in the study area ranged from about 2 mm/yr to as much as 6 mm/yr during the 1960’s and 1970’s. However, leveling data obtained as recently as January 2005 reveals that the majority of these faults are currently moving at rates of less than 1 …

Evolution Of Base Substitution Gradients In Primate Mitochondrial Genomes, Sameer Raina

LSU Master's Theses

The availability of large amounts of genetic data from the mitochondrial DNA of species has created an unprecedented opportunity for the study of evolutionary processes. Being our closest relatives on the evolutionary tree the primates are a prime candidate for the study of evolutionary processes. The availability of large amounts of genetic data from the primates allows us to study and compare results from different phylogenetic reconstruction methods and to study and trace rudimentary evolutionary processes within the primate lineage. The evolutionary process studied here is the response of the nucleotide frequency ratios to single-strandedness of sites during mitochondrial DNA …

Freeway Accident Analysis Using Second Order Statistics, Khasim Khasimul Shaik

LSU Master's Theses

This research focuses on the use of historical freeway traffic data for comparison of the precursory traffic conditions to that accident occurrence by using 15-minute traffic speed contour maps. The second order statistics measures, namely angular second moment (ASM), contrast and entropy were used as the traffic performance measures in order to compare the two situations. The data used is from I-4 freeway traffic condition database, stored in a SQL server and 1999 year accident database for the same I-4 freeway. The study section is located in Orlando, Florida. The approach shows an approach to understand the performance of the …