Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Effects Of Perforations On Internal Cathodic Protection And Recruitment Of Marine Organisms To Steel Pipes, Alexander John Paluzzi

Theses and Dissertations

Steel monopile support structures for offshore wind turbines require protection from corrosion on their external and internal surfaces. Cathodic protection (CP) works effectively to protect the external surfaces of monopiles, but internally, byproducts from aluminum sacrificial anode CP (SACP) and impressed current CP (ICCP) induce acidification that accelerates steel corrosion. This project investigated the effects of perforations on the performance of aluminum SACP and ICCP when used inside of steel pipes. Additionally, marine growth on the external and internal surfaces of the pipes was assessed to determine if CP byproducts affect marine organism development.

Two sealed and two perforated steel …

Project Thetis: A Low-Cost, Low-Profile Inertial Data Logger, Braidan Duffy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis details the design, testing, calibration, and verification of a nine degree of freedom inertial measurement data logger for use with floating bodies. The instrument was conceived to address limitations of equipment used in classes within the Ocean Engineering department at Florida Institute of Technology. By meeting with several stakeholders and end users, a series of stakeholder requirements, capabilities, and component-level requirements were de- veloped that informed the design constraints. There were several hardware iterations of the board, culminating in Revision F5 which was extensively tested and proven. The design was inspected after testing concluded to determine which capabilities …

Underwater Image Enhancement: A Pipeline For Underwater Computer Visions, Humberto Lebron Rivera

Theses and Dissertations

Ocean exploration has surged in popularity and significance in recent years, including diverse areas like maritime archeology, underwater resources, and submerged structure inspection. The activities mentioned above heavily depend on vision and imagery, a challenge in the unpredictable marine world. This thesis presents a conditional generative adversarial network model for image-to-image translation problems. We designed and trained the model with the end goal of enhancing underwater images. Five metrics were employed for validation to quantify our model’s resulting enhanced images. By doing so, we aim to establish a pipeline that can leverage aerial computer vision algorithms for marine applications.

Our …

Construction Of A Real-Time Forecast Model With Deep Learning Techniques For Coastal Engineering & Processes: Nested In Basin Scale Suite Of Models, Md Ahsan Habib

Theses and Dissertations

The study aims to develop a robust and adaptable real-time forecasting system for coastal and estuarine regions, considering the challenges of limited or unavailable forecast data. To address the challenge of data unavailability, this study proposes the application of a deep learning model (DLM). This research involves the development of a high-resolution numerical model nested within global models. Calibration and validation are performed by comparing the model with observed data. The study explores the effects of various parameters, such as vertical resolution, wind variability, and bottom roughness, on model performance. It finds that the 10-layer model improves vertical stratification and …

Predicting Near-Bed Sediment Transport Through Particle Image Velocimetry, Caroline Hoch

Theses and Dissertations

Erosion and accretion are coastal processes that directly affect the safety of coastal communities. Dimensionless parameters, such as the Shields and Ursell number, have historically been used to predict sediment motion in the nearshore region based on shear stress and wave linearity. This study uses particle image velocimetry to measure the velocity field of sediment within a wave flume and calculate these parameters for various wave profiles. Five regular wave trials and five irregular wave trials were run within the wave flume at varying depths to model how net transport changes as waves approach the shoreline. An instantaneous Shields number …

Biomimicry Of Natural Reef Hydrodynamics In An Artificial Spur And Groove Reef Formation, Emilee Alaine Wissmach

Theses and Dissertations

Coral reef populations have rapidly been declining in coastal waters worldwide. Losing these ecosystems results not only in a loss of habitat and biodiversity, but also a loss of wave attenuation and subsequent coastal protection. Ongoing projects seek to rehabilitate and/or replace destroyed reefs with artificial structures like reef balls and rip-rap, but none perform as well as a healthy, natural reef. This project created scale modules mimicking the reef-crest and spur-and-groove (SAG) zones commonly found in natural reefs and used these models to support new efforts in artificial reef design. The modular structure consists of three different components including: …