Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

State Level Trends In Renewable Energy Procurement Via Solar Installation Versus Green Electricity, Eric Michael Hanson

Masters Theses

“In the past 5 years, consumer options for procuring renewable energy have increased, ranging from rooftop solar installation to utility green pricing to Community Choice Aggregation. These options vary in terms of costs and benefits to the consumer as well as grid integration implications. However, little is known regarding how the presence of a wide range of options for utility-scale renewable procurement affects demand for distributed residential solar installations. In theory, there are three possible relationships, (1) positive correlation, where utility-scale and distributed resources complement each other to increase overall production, (2) negative correlation, where utility-scale and distributed resources are …

A Variable Node Optimization Model For Byzantine Fault Tolerant Systems, Ian Robert Fulton

Masters Theses

“Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) has been a major subject of study over the last two decades with increasing societal dependance on secure, correct, and reliable computer systems and online services. This research presents a model for high-level optimization of emerging systems that rely on these BFT algorithms and use a variable numbers of decision nodes. The model highlights the relationship between the security of a system and its efficiency. Two experiments were performed to determine system performance by varying the number of compromised nodes, decision nodes, and total nodes. They examine the probability that a transaction will be compromised based …

Analyzing Sensor Based Human Activity Data Using Time Series Segmentation To Determine Sleep Duration, Yogesh Deepak Lad

Masters Theses

"Sleep is the most important thing to rest our brain and body. A lack of sleep has adverse effects on overall personal health and may lead to a variety of health disorders. According to Data from the Center for disease control and prevention in the United States of America, there is a formidable increase in the number of people suffering from sleep disorders like insomnia, sleep apnea, hypersomnia and many more. Sleep disorders can be avoided by assessing an individual's activity over a period of time to determine the sleep pattern and duration. The sleep pattern and duration can be …

Computational Intelligence Methods For Predicting Fetal Outcomes From Heart Rate Patterns, Vinayaka Nagendra Harikishan Gude Divya Sampath

Masters Theses

"In this thesis, methods for evaluating the fetal state are compared to make predictions based on Cardiotocography (CTG) data. The first part of this research is the development of an algorithm to extract features from the CTG data. A feature extraction algorithm is presented that is capable of extracting most of the features in the SISPORTO software package as well as late and variable decelerations. The resulting features are used for classification based on both U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) categories and umbilical cord pH data. The first experiment uses the features to classify the results into three different …

Data Classification And Forecasting Using The Mahalanobis-Taguchi Method, Adebolaji A. Jobi-Taiwo

Masters Theses

"Classification and forecasting are useful concepts in the field of condition monitoring. Condition monitoring refers to the analysis and monitoring of system characteristics to understand and identify deviations from normal operating conditions. This can be performed for prediction, diagnosis, or prognosis or a combination of any these purposes. Fault identification and diagnosis are usually achieved through data classification, while forecasting methods are usually used to accomplish the prediction objective. Data gathered from monitoring systems often consists of multiple multivariate time series and is fed into a model for data analysis using various techniques. One of the data analysis techniques used …

Modeling Forward Base Camps As Complex Adaptive Sociotechnical Systems, Lori Ann Miller

Masters Theses

Work for this thesis focuses on managing complexity within complex adaptive sociotechnical systems by using model based systems engineering and virtual engineering tools. The hypothesis of the work is that integrated virtual models can be used to increase the understanding of these complex adaptive sociotechnical systems, resulting in a reduction in the perceived complexity. This was tested by the use of a two factor survey given to experts of a system (the customer and members of the model design team) and to a target user-group. This group received a demonstration and had hands on experience with a preliminary model of …

Dynamic Model-Based Systems Engineering Using Xml Metadata Interchange, Dustin Scott Nottage

Masters Theses

"Designing systems presents an engineer with numerous design choices based on multiple conditions and constraints. Base camp planning must take into account the number of soldiers, the permanency of the base, the location of the base, etc. To help alleviate the complexity of constructing a base camp, a model-based systems engineering approach is used. This method creates and integrates models for all of the facilities that can make a base camp, as well as interactions between facilities and required utilities for each. The goal is to have a camp design, and then solve a system of equations to solve for …

Design And Analysis Of A Speed-Aware Routing Protocol For Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, Kirthana Akunuri

Masters Theses

"The flexibility of movement for the wireless ad hoc devices, referred to as node mobility, introduces challenges such as dynamic topological changes, increased frequency of route disconnections and high packet loss rate in Mobile Ad hoc Wireless Network (MANET) routing. This research proposes a novel on-demand routing protocol, Speed-Aware Routing Protocol (SARP) to mitigate the effects of high node mobility by reducing the frequency of route disconnections in a MANET. SARP identifies a highly mobile node which forms an unstable link by predicting the link expiration time (LET) for a transmitter and receiver pair. When the nodes have high relative …

Quantifying The Carbon Footprint Of Lean Waste, Kristen Donovan Balinski

Masters Theses

"The objective of this paper is to provide a method of quantifying lean wastes in terms of carbon dioxide emissions by using value stream mapping. Lean manufacturing, a process based on waste identification and reduction, is a growing trend in industry and a proven method of lowering costs. The environmental impact of these wastes can be quantified by identifying the metrics associated with them, and using existing reports to convert those metrics into measurements of carbon dioxide. Growing environmental concerns are prompting federal government regulation of greenhouse gas or carbon dioxide emissions, as seen in the American Clean Energy and …

Integration Of Model-Based Systems Engineering And Virtual Engineering Tools For Detailed Design, Akshay Kande

Masters Theses

"Design and development of a system can be viewed as a process of transferring and transforming data using a set of tools that form the system's development environment. Conversion of the systems engineering data into useful information is one of the prime objectives of the tools used in the process. With complex systems, the objective is further augmented with a need to represent the information in an accessible and comprehensible manner. The importance of representation is easily understood in light of the fact that the stakeholder's ability to make prompt and appropriate decisions is directly related to his understanding of …

Synergy Between Biology And Systems Resilience, Ashik Chandra

Masters Theses

"Resilient systems have the ability to endure and successfully recover from disturbances by identifying problems and mobilizing the available resources to cope with the disturbance. Resiliency lets a system recover from disruptions, variations, and a degradation of expected working conditions. Biological systems are resilient. Immune systems are highly adaptive and scalable, with the ability to cope with multiple data sources, fuse information together, makes decisions, have multiple interacting agents, operate in a distributed manner over a multiple scales, and have a memory structure to facilitate learning. Ecosystems are resilient since they have the capacity to absorb disturbance and are able …

A Hybrid Problem-Based And Just-In-Time Inductive Teaching Method For Failure Analysis Instruction, Ryan Michael Arlitt

Masters Theses

"When engineers retire, they take their expert knowledge with them. Preservation of this expert knowledge in a usable form is beneficial for the advancement of any engineering field. Risk in Early Design (RED) is one method for preserving expert risk analysis knowledge. The first purpose of this paper is to examine the usability of RED when incorporated with a hybrid problem-based and just-in-time inductive teaching method for failure analysis instruction. The second purpose of this paper is to propose and perform steps toward verification and validation of the RED methodology and implementation. Evaluation metrics were developed, and several of these …

Improving Resiliency Using Graph Based Evolutionary Algorithms, Jayakanth Jayachandran

Masters Theses

"Resiliency is an important characteristic of any system. It signifies the ability of a system to survive and recover from unprecedented disruptions. Various characteristics exist that indicate the level of resiliency in a system. One of these attributes is the adaptability of the system. This adaptability can be enhanced by redundancy present within the system. In the context of system design, redundancy can be achieved by having a diverse set of good designs for that particular system. Evolutionary algorithms are widely used in creating designs for engineering systems, as they perform well on discontinuous and/or high dimensional problems. One method …

Detection Of Explosive Threats By Using Embedded Wireless Sensor Based Networks, Jake Daniel Hertenstein

Masters Theses

"This thesis focuses on the development of novel schemes for the detection of unintended electromagnetic emissions (UEE) from passive radio frequency (RF) receivers and chemical and biological (CB) agents for the purpose of locating explosive threats (ET) to improve survivability for equipment and personnel in the surrounding environment. The methods and architectures used in this work were developed for use with wireless sensor networks (WSNs). While previous work has shown that highly sensitive equipment is capable of long-range detection of UEE the intention of this work is to develop a network of small, low cost smart sensor nodes (SSNs) capable …

Communication Models For Monitoring And Mobility Verification In Mission Critical Wireless Networks, Maheswaran Thiagarajan

Masters Theses

"Recent technological advances have seen wireless sensor networks emerge as an interesting research topic because of its ability to realize mission critical applications like in military or wildfire detection. The first part of the thesis focuses on the development of a novel communication scheme referred here as a distributed wireless critical information-aware maintenance network (DWCIMN), which is presented for preventive maintenance of network-centric dynamic systems. The proposed communication scheme addresses quality of service (QoS) issues by using a combination of a head-of-the-line queuing scheme, efficient bandwidth allocation, weight-based backoff mechanism, and a distributed power control scheme. A thorough analysis of …

On The Effects Of Small-Scale Fading And Mobility In Mobile Wireless Communication Network, Bandana Paudel

Masters Theses

"In this study, a comprehensive analysis of the impact of mobility on end-to-end performance measures of Mobile Ad Hoc Network is performed by using small-scale fading models. Network simulation is performed in order to study a wide range of phenomena occurring during MANET communication. The effectiveness of three reactive routing protocols against different level of mobility is observed under varying network parameter like the network size, number of nodes and network connectivity. The study reveals that the network sparseness or density favors one or the other routing mechanism under varying mobility. Outcome of the simulation also provides a great deal …

Preventing Chemical Product Failure, Kenneth Ombete

Masters Theses

"The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate a research methodology to prevent chemical product failures. This methodology extends the risk in early design (RED) method for prevention of failure in electromechanical products to include products with chemical subsystems. Inclusion of this domain is demanded by the ever-growing semiconductor and energy industries. The RED method was extended by first identifying principal chemical failure modes and adding them to the failure mode taxonomy. The RED database was then augmented with historical failures of products that included chemical subsystems. Finally, the extension was validated with a case study of a fuel cell"--Abstract, …

Application Of Artificial Neural Networks And Colored Petri Nets On Earthquake Resilient Water Distribution Systems, Nandini Kavanal Balakrishnan

Masters Theses

"Water distribution systems are important lifelines and a critical and complex infrastructure of a country. The performance of this system during unexpected rare events is important as it is one of the lifelines that people directly depend on and other factors indirectly impact the economy of a nation. In this thesis a couple of methods that can be used to predict damage and simulate the restoration process of a water distribution system are presented. Contributing to the effort of applying computational tools to infrastructure systems, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used to predict the rate of damage in the pipe …

Wireless Mote-Based In-Process Diagnostics Using Hand-Held Tools In Network Enabled Manufacturing Environments, Reghu Anguswamy

Masters Theses

"When complex manufacturing systems are considered, post process inspection can be a very time consuming and costly. In addition, no inspection data is typically collected unless a major problem is encountered. Real-time monitoring of the manufacturing processes and verification of its product quality are two important factors to reduce the manufacturing lead time and to ensure safety and quality.

In this thesis, a diagnostics and root-cause analysis scheme with a single channel wireless routing protocol for real-time monitoring of process quality of pull-type fastening operations is first presented. The overall architecture has been implemented on a Huck45 pull-type tool, which …

Formulating Hedging Strategies For Financial Risk Mitigation In Competitive U.S. Electricity Markets, Karthik Viswanathan

Masters Theses

"The challenges currently facing participants in the competitive electricity markets are unique and staggering: unprecedented price volatility, fluctuations in the demand, a lack of historical market data on which to test the new modeling approaches, increased competition and continuously changing regulatory structure...Electricity plant owners and purchasers of electricity may benefit from various techniques to manage price volatility. For electricity, however, no futures market is actively traded. The electricity forward market in NYMEX is in its nascent stage and is low in liquidity. Producers and purchasers of electricity may find cross-hedging electricity with natural gas futures contracts to be effective in …

Quantifying The Desired Degree Of Supply Chain Flexibility, Poorna Marappa

Masters Theses

"The dynamic nature of today's market drives the need for flexibility in supply chains. The ever-growing need for and importance of flexibility in supply chains has motivated researchers to develop frameworks to achieve supply chain flexibility. Much of the research on supply chain flexibility focuses on drivers of the need for flexibility and classification of supply chain flexibility. Existing frameworks for determining the desired degree of flexibility in supply chains give an overview methodology; however, a comprehensive framework is absent. This research proposes a comprehensive framework to quantify the desired degree of flexibility in supply chains and accordingly determine its …

Enhanced Functional Analysis System Technique For Managing Complex Engineering Projects, Sofia Tan

Masters Theses

"This study presents an Enhanced Functional Analysis Systems Technique (EFAST) tool to facilitate communication amongst various stakeholders such as the customers, program managers, systems architects, and systems engineers. the EFAST maps the customer requirements to downstream system functions and subsystem/component requirements, and outlines the interactions between various system and subsystem level and activities using a top-down approach. A bottom-up approach is used to populate the system element cost and time estimates. The EFAST tool compares the budgeted development resources with the estimated development resources to provide a realistic picture for realizing project in terms of performance, cost, and schedule. The …

Executable System Architecting Using Systems Modeling Language In Conjunction With Colored Petri Nets - A Demonstration Using The Geoss Network Centric System, Renzhong Wang

Masters Theses

"Models and simulation furnish abstractions to manage complexities allowing engineers to visualize the proposed system and to analyze and validate system behavior before constructing it. Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its systems engineering extension, Systems Modeling Language (SysML), provide a rich set of diagrams for systems specification. However, the lack of executable semantics of such notations limits the capability of analyzing and verifying defined specifications. This research has developed an executable system architecting framework based on SysML-CPN transformation, which introduces dynamic model analysis into SysML modeling by mapping SysML notations to Colored Petri Net (CPN), a graphical language for system …

Cognitive Biases In Risk Management, William Thomas Siefert

Masters Theses

"This thesis contends that most Risk Management/Mitigation programs fail to be as effective as they could be due to a number of mostly overlooked drivers, such as motivation and cognitive biases. The issue of cognitive biases is very seldom addressed. When questioned, most engineers purport to not have any biases. They insist that they use only logic, reasoning, and math to make decisions. A set of data was collected and reviewed for this thesis. The data presented shows that cognitive biases do affect the risk management/mitigation process. Knowledge of these biases and their potential impact on a project will lead …

Modular Architecting For Effects Based Operations, Emel Meteoglu

Masters Theses

"Effects Based Operations (EBO) is a way of thinking for planning, executing and assessing any operations for the effects they produce, rather than dealing with actions, targets or even objectives. The literature on EBO has been growing day by day; however, there is still a need for modeling techniques and tools that provide more efficient and effective effects based assessment, planning and analysis in order to further develop the capabilities of the operations. In this context, this thesis presents an introduction to EBO by focusing on its methodology, its challenges and also its applicability in different systems. Moreover, this thesis …

Security Architecture Methodology For Large Net-Centric Systems, Njideka Adaku Umeh

Masters Theses

"This thesis describes an over-arching security architecture methodology for large network enabled systems that can be scaled down for smaller network centric operations such as present at the University of Missouri-Rolla. By leveraging the five elements of security policy & standards, security risk management, security auditing, security federation and security management, of the proposed security architecture and addressing the specific needs of UMR, the methodology was used to determine places of improvement for UMR"--Abstract, page iii.