Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

Rice Hull Bioreactor For Recirculating Aquaculture, Marlon A. Greensword

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The engineering of floating media biofilters has been optimized over the years. The backwashing process has made them more energy and water efficient. Likewise, moving bed bioreactors (MBBR) are gaining interest and popularity because they are relatively affordable to build. Yet, developing countries’ aquaculture production remains largely excluded from the advances made in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). This discrepancy is partially driven by the high costs of media such plastic beads and Kaldnes (KMT) media, commonly used in MBBR.

This dissertation evaluates the usability and profitability of rice hulls (RH), an abundant by-product in many developing nations, as a sinking …

Integration Of Shape-Memory Alloys And Self-Healing Microcapsules To Enhance Concrete Durability, Luis Adolfo Bonilla

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Self-healing is a term that has not been used for building material until a few decades ago. The concept of developing a material that mimics what living organisms do, such as identify and repair damage, rather than interesting, constitutes a necessity in today’s deteriorated infrastructure. Concrete is one of the main building blocks that support our society’s roads, buildings, and dams. Increasing the service life of such structures will have an important socio-economic benefit in our society. Self-healing methods in concrete have been studied in order to minimize human intervention in maintenance procedures. Previous research in this area has provided …

Tribological And Dynamical Study Of An Automotive Transmission System, Meng Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The transmission system is critical for automotive and heavy duty equipment due to its prominent role in the powertrain system, which is often challenged with degraded torque capacity and harsh dynamic response. Simulation-guided design can provide appropriate guidelines to resolve these problems with virtual analyses. In current study, the tribological and dynamical study of an automatic transmission is performed at two levels: a wet clutch and powertrain. In this dissertation, tribological study is performed for a wet clutch based on the thermohydrodynamic (THD) analysis that takes the following factors into account. • The groove effect (depth, area, and pattern) is …

Performance Evaluation And Characterization Of Encapsulated Calcium Nitrate For Self-Healing Concrete Applications, Jose Eduardo Milla

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Self-healing concrete through microencapsulated calcium nitrate is a novel approach to enhance durability and decrease the costs associated with maintenance and repairs. However, to fully assess the potential of this technology, there are many questions to be answered, ranging from identifying the microcapsule properties that are successfully carry the healing agent, to the effect of the microcapsule size, concentration (by weight of cement), and morphology have on the intrinsic concrete material properties and self-healing potential. Hence, the objectives of this study were to: (a) Develop a microencapsulation procedure for calcium nitrate as the healing agent; (b) Measure the short-term healing …

Healing Mechanism Investigation Of Self-Healing Concrete By Microencapsulated Calcium Nitrate, Gabriel Andres Arce Amador

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Durability of reinforced concrete structures depends highly on the integrity of the concrete which protects the structure from the environment. However, concrete is a brittle material and as such it is prone to cracking which allows for detrimental agents to penetrate the structure and produce early deterioration. Embedding microcapsules with chemical healing agents in concrete materials for self-healing applications as well as implementing SMAs as reinforcement of concrete structures for self-closing of cracks are both state-of-the-art techniques with enormous potential for enhancement of concrete infrastructure durability. In this work, both techniques are combined as an alternative for superior self-healing of …

Computational Studies On Fluid And Particle Dynamics, Chenguang Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part includes chapter 2 to 4, which focus on development and application of numerical algorithm on particle and fluid simulation. Starting with a pure granular system in a driven cavity setup (Chapter 2), we move on to the immersed boundary simulation of fluid solid interaction (Chapter 3). This part ends with a coupled immersed boundary-discrete particle implementation. The second part includes Chapter 5 and Appendix A, each deals with an independent problem and focuses more on the theoretical aspects. Chapter 5 deals with a classic fluid dynamics problem of thermal wave …