Other Engineering Commons^™

Dividing And Conquering Meshes Within The Nist Fire Dynamics Simulator (Fds) On Multicore Computing Systems, Donald Charles Collins

Masters Theses

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) provides a computational fluid dynamics model of a fire, which can be visualized by using NIST Smokeview (SMV). Users must create a configuration file (*.fds) that describes the environment and other characteristics of the fire scene so that the FDS software can produce the output file (*.smv) needed for visualization.The processing can be computationally intensive, often taking between several minutes and several hours to complete. In many cases, a user will create a file that is not optimized for a multicore computing system. By dividing meshes within the …

Modelling Supercomputer Maintenance Interrupts: Maintenance Policy Recommendations, Jagadish Cherukuri

Masters Theses

A supercomputer is a repairable system with large number of compute nodes interconnected to work in harmony to achieve superior computational performance. Reliability of such a complex system depends on an effective maintenance strategy that involves both emergency and preventive maintenance. This thesis analyzes the maintenance records of four supercomputers operational at The National Institute of Computational Science located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We propose to use the generalized proportional intensities model (GPIM) to model the maintenance interrupts as it can capture both the reliability parameters and maintenance parameters and allows the inclusion of both emergency and preventive maintenance. …

Life Cycle Assessment Of The Oriented Strand Board And Plywood Industries In The United States Of America, Dominik Kaestner

Masters Theses

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology to compare and evaluate products or systems in a holistic manner. The methodology of an LCA includes the life cycle inventory (LCI), which contains inputs and outputs for a product within designated system boundaries. LCIs are used to develop impact assessments that calculate the effect of the product or system on the environment in categories such as global warming potential.

LCA has been applied for the comparison of wood products to non-wood alternatives. The results showed that wood processing is efficient and the environmental impacts are low compared to non-wood alternatives. These findings …

Synthetic Turf Surface Temperature Reduction And Performance Characteristics As Affected By Calcined Clay Modified Infill, Eric Hall Reasor

Masters Theses

Synthetic turf research plots containing crumb rubber (CR) infill were established in Knoxville, TN in 2012 and 2013. Calcined clay (CC) was amended to CR in several ratios: a 50:50 (vol vol-1) blend; a 50:50 blend with a polymer coating on CC (50 CR:50 CCC); a 15 mm layer of CC under 15 mm of CR (CR over CC); and a 15 mm layer of CC over 15 mm of CR (CC over CR). A 100% CR and a 70:30 blend of CR to sand (70 CR:30 S) were included for comparison. Surface temperature was measured in the summer of …

Development Of An Environmental Monitoring System For Greenhouse Disease Management, Crystal Marie Kelly

Masters Theses

A commercial African violet (Saintpaulia ionantha) grower experiences yield loss due to a leaf spot disease known as Corynespora casssiicola. Spotted leaves make the plants unmarketable. Outbreaks of the disease are costly and difficult to prevent. Greenhouse monitoring systems currently available on the commercial market do not have sufficient spatial or temporal resolution to be able to correlate the environmental conditions of the greenhouse with disease outbreaks. A new system was designed specifically to monitor for disease favorable conditions. The system developed for this project consists of several sensor stations and a coordinator station. The coordinator station …

Interaction Between Primary Resources And Root Causes In Lean Production Systems, Ernest Anene Iwuchukwu

Masters Theses

A model to analyze lean systems reliability is developed based on the premises that lean production systems require four primary resources; materials, equipment, personnel, and schedule (Sawhney, R., Subburaman, K., Sonntag, C., Capizzi, C. and Rao, P.V., 2009). The four primary lean resources were independently analyzed, without due consideration to underlying relationships within each other. In this research, relationships and interaction between root-causes and lean primary resources were conceptualized and developed. The development applied a five-phase approach: 1. review of related literature, 2. decompositions of lean primary resources, 3. selection of consensus root causes items and questionnaire construct, 4. survey …

Development And Application Of An Automatic System For Determining Seed Volume Kinetics During Soaking, Shan Xu

Masters Theses

Soaking is an important unit operation during the processing of seeds used for direct consumption. The change in seed volume over time during soaking (volume kinetics) relates to water uptake and the quality of final product, and affects the design of the entire processing operation. Since volume determination is labor-intensive and time consuming, volume kinetics is usually not well monitored throughout seed hydration. The first chapter of this thesis is a review on the importance of soaking and volume kinetics monitoring during seed processing, the factors affecting hydration in seeds, current volume measurement methods and models used to determine and …

The Synthesis And Characterization Of A Novel Polysaccharide Hydrogel For Biomedical Applications Including The Treatment Of Malignant Tumors And The Prevention Of Metastatic Disease, Elizabeth Diana Barker

Masters Theses

Amygel® is an injectable biodegradable controlled release drug delivery system with adjustable release kinetics determined by varying the concentrations of the polymeric components of the material. Amygel® is a starch based biodegradable hydrogel consisting of an interpenetrating network of physically entangled amylose and amylopectin polymer chains crosslinked with d-glucaric acid. Amylose and amylopectin are the two components of naturally occurring starch. The immiscibility of the amylose and amylopectin due to differences in solubility parameter and chain size induces phase separation within the network but because the chains entangled during hydrolysis an interpenetrating network is formed. The chemically reactive carboxyl groups …

Evaluation Of Engineering Plastic For Rollover Protective Structure Mounting, Robert Stephen Comer

Masters Theses

The agricultural industry has one of the highest fatality rates of any industry in the U. S. This death rate is largely due to deaths caused by roll over accidents while on agricultural vehicles. The addition of a Rollover Protective Structure (ROPS) has aided in lowering these high fatality rates on full-size tractors. Studies have shown that death rates have been reduced by as much as 98% with the addition of rollover protective structures. However, a large number of older tractors still do not utilize a ROPS. This is due to the difficulty of designing and creating a mounting structure. …

Developing An Information System To Integrate A Manufacturing Firm And Its Supplier Base, Abhishek Padiyar

Masters Theses

A manufacturing firm is encouraging their suppliers to achieve the goal of zero-defects. However, due to the high expectations set by the manufacturing firm, the suppliers are finding it quite challenging to be able to immediately react to the quality requirements of the manufacturing firm. The manufacturing firm wants to ensure that the suppliers take the necessary actions to eliminate the reoccurrence of specific non-conformities. This thesis illustrates the application of an information system that integrates the manufacturing firm with their supplier base. The information system is developed based on the framework of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). It …

The Effects Of Sediment And Nutrient Loading On Aquatic Organisms In Nails And Ellejoy Creeks, Blount County, Tennessee, Susanna Hannah Sutherland

Masters Theses

The health of an entire ecosystem is influenced by its water supply. Nonpoint source pollution, such as sediments and nutrients, cause impairment of water quality and harm aquatic diversity. This study was designed to assess the impacts of excess sediment and nutrients on aquatic health in the Nails (HUC12, 060102010105) and Ellejoy (HUC 12, 060102010104) Creeks, subwatersheds of the Little River (HUC10, 0601020101) watershed and the Watts Bar Lake watershed (HUC8, 06010201) in Blount County, Tennessee. Previous research has shown a negative correlation between these pollutants and benthic indicator species. In 2002, the 303(d) list indicated that both streams were …

Stream Water Quality Modeling In The Great Smoky Mountains National Park., Thomas Wayne Barnett

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine water quality in the acid-impacted Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM). Water samples have been collected roughly quarterly at ninety sampling sites throughout the Park. These samples were analyzed for pH, acid neutralizing capacity (ANC), conductivity, major cations, and major anions. This thesis utilizes data from samples collected from October, 1993 to November, 2002.

The trout fisheries of the GRSM are considered some of the best in the eastern United States. However, fisheries biologists at the GRSM believe that some of the streams that once supported trout populations twenty or thirty years …

Limestone Contactors As A Corrosion Control Technology For Small Public Water Systems: An Educational Module For Drinking Water Professionals, Azarina Mohd Jalil

Masters Theses

This thesis includes a review of literature of the limestone contactors technology for small water systems and discusses the process and methodology involved in developing the educational module on limestone contactors. It includes most of the narrative texts presented in the module. Both this thesis and the module are intended to be used as an educational tool by small public water system operators, owners, regulators, and engineers of limestone contactors as a corrosion control method to meet the lead and copper action level stated in the U.S. EPA’s Lead and Copper Rule. This module includes the description of the processes …

A Simulation Based Approach For Determining Maintenance Strategies, Vasanth Murthi

Masters Theses

Manufacturing organizations are continuously in the mode of identifying and implementing mechanisms to achieve a competitive edge. To this point manufacturers have recognized the critical role of equipment in the productivity of manufacturing operations. With the current trend of manufacturers attempting to lean out their production processes, primary and auxiliary equipment have become even more important to manufacturers as measured by productivity, quality, delivery, and cost metrics. As a result of the focus on lean manufacturing, maintenance management has found a new vigor and purpose to increase equipment capacity and capability. However, the most proactive maintenance strategy is not always …

Process - Structure – Property Relationships Of Electrospun Nano Fibers, Sudhakar Jagannathan

Masters Theses

Electrospinning is a process by which fibers with diameters as small as 15 nanometers are produced when a polymer solution is accelerated from a capillary towards a grounded target by an electric field. An investigation on the electrospinning process and the effect of its process variables on orientation, crystallinity, microstructure and mechanical properties of the fibers produced are made. Nylon 6, nylon 66 fibers and their blends from a solution of formic acid were produced on a stationary copper target as well as on a metal disc rotating at discrete variable speeds. The solution concentration of the polymers, distance of …

A Proposed Data Mining Methodology And Its Application To Industrial Engineering, Jose Solarte

Masters Theses

Data mining is the process of discovering correlations, patterns, trends or relationships by searching through a large amount of data stored in repositories, corporate databases, and data warehouses. Industrial engineering is a broad field and has many tools and techniques in its problem-solving arsenal. The purpose of this study is to improve the effectiveness of industrial engineering solutions through the application of data mining. To achieve this objective, an adaptation of the engineering design process is used to develop a methodology for effective application of data mining to databases and data repositories specifically designed for industrial engineering operations. This paper …

Evaluation Of Dgps Row Guidance Systems, Analyzing Operator Feedback Methods Based On Accuracy And Operator Insights, Timothy Franklin Morrow

Masters Theses

The study analyzed operator feedback methods of four guidance systems used on agricultural spraying vehicles. One system was the traditional foam marker and the three others were GPS guidance systems, manufactured by Trimble, Satloc®, and Cultiva. Twenty-one drivers participated in this study and ran four tests over a 244 m course. An RTK GPS system provided horizontal center positioning data accurate to within a centimeter. Using the center positioning data, areas of overlap and skip were found using ArcView™ 3.2. In addition, positional error terms of maximum deviation, average maximum deviation, RMS, average, starting, and ending deviation were found. After …

The Role Of Molecular Weight In Controlling The Structure And Properties Of High-Speed Melt Spun Nylon-6 Filaments, Jogendra Suryadevara

Masters Theses

A comprehensive study of the structure development during high speed melt spinning of nylon-6 was performed. The major emphasis of the research was on the effect of molecular weight in the structure development of high speed melt spun nylon-6 filaments. The various measurements done on the filaments to determine their morphology included diameter, tensions in spin-line, density as well as x-ray diffraction and birefringence measurements. The effects of mass throughputs were also studied. Tensile properties of conditioned fibers were measured and related to the spinning variables and molecular weight.

The spin-line stresses measured increased rapidly with take-up velocity and molecular …