Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Understanding Biomass Upgrading Through Hydrogenolysis Reactions: Kinetics And Mechanism, Jalal Tavana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation involves several hydrogenolysis reactions but is mainly focused on hydrodechlorination (HDC) of chlorobenzene (PhCl) and hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of 2-furancarboxylic acid (FCA). Hydrodechlorination of PhCl has been the subject of research for some time. Here, we used a Pd/C catalyst to study this reaction though rigorous kinetics and mechanistic analyses in a CSTR reactor. The H₂/D₂ kinetic isotope effect (KIE) experiment revealed that H₂ is not involved in a rate controlling step. The kinetics data are in agreement with similar systems reported before and follow a first-order dependence on chlorobenzene, half order for hydrogen and …

Inter-Annual To Inter-Decadal Spatiotemporal Effects Of Storm And Nourishment Events In North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Christina Mary Boyce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Uav 6dof Simulation And Kalman Filter For Localizing Radioactive Sources, John G. Goulet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) expand the available mission-space for a wide range of budgets. Using MATLAB, this project has developed a six degree of freedom (6DOF) simulation of UAV flight, an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), and an algorithm for localizing radioactive sources using low-cost hardware. The EKF uses simulated low-cost instruments in an effort to estimate the UAV state throughout simulated flight.

The 6DOF simulates aerodynamics, physics, and controls throughout the flight and provides outputs for each time step. Additionally, the 6DOF simulation offers the ability to control UAV flight via preset waypoints or in realtime via keyboard input.

Using …

Particle Injection Simulation On Cold Spray Technology, Christopher A. Santini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a useful tool when it comes to research in the fields of Aerodynamics, Turbomachinery, and is used in several other fields of research. CFD is an important tool in the engineering industry because it allows for understanding and evaluation of a new design, this can lead to advancements in developing a more efficient and effective design. This tool helps in the understanding of the flow phenomena and how it can interact with its surroundings. One of the main reasons in the use of CFD is to reduce the cost of testing a design by running …

Investigating New Methods To Develop Perovskite Solar Cells, Amani Hussain Alfaifi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Discovering the potential of organic-inorganic metal halide perovskites (MHP) as a harvesting material in solar cells has strongly affected the research direction in solar energy. The fascinating optical and electronic properties offered by MHP combined with tremendous effort from scientists around the world have improved the efficiency to about 25% in a decade.

In the first part of the dissertation, we studied the lamination process as a new fabrication method for producing self-encapsulated perovskite solar cells based on laminating half stacks,as opposed to the conventional layer-by-layer method. Our work focused on optimizing the lamination process of complex triple cations perovskite …

Deep Siamese Neural Networks For Facial Expression Recognition In The Wild, Wassan Hayale

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The variation of facial images in the wild conditions due to head pose, face illumination, and occlusion can significantly affect the Facial Expression Recognition (FER) performance. Moreover, between subject variation introduced by age, gender, ethnic backgrounds, and identity can also influence the FER performance. This Ph.D. dissertation presents a novel algorithm for end-to-end facial expression recognition, valence and arousal estimation, and visual object matching based on deep Siamese Neural Networks to handle the extreme variation that exists in a facial dataset. In our main Siamese Neural Networks for facial expression recognition, the first network represents the classification framework, where we …

Automated Recognition Of Facial Affect Using Deep Neural Networks, Behzad Hasani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Automated Facial Expression Recognition (FER) has been a topic of study in the field of computer vision and machine learning for decades. In spite of efforts made to improve the accuracy of FER systems, existing methods still are not generalizable and accurate enough for use in real-world applications. Many of the traditional methods use hand-crafted (a.k.a. engineered) features for representation of facial images. However, these methods often require rigorous hyper-parameter tuning to achieve favorable results.

Recently, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have shown to outperform traditional methods in visual object recognition. DNNs require huge data as well as powerful computing units …

Deep Reinforcement Learning For The Optimization Of Building Energy Control And Management, Jun Hao

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Most of the current game-theoretic demand-side management methods focus primarily on the scheduling of home appliances, and the related numerical experiments are analyzed under various scenarios to achieve the corresponding Nash-equilibrium (NE) and optimal results. However, not much work is conducted for academic or commercial buildings. The methods for optimizing academic-buildings are distinct from the optimal methods for home appliances. In my study, we address a novel methodology to control the operation of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system (HVAC).

We assume that each building in our campus is equipped with smart meter and communication system which is envisioned in …

Satellite Constellation Deployment And Management, Joseph Ryan Kopacz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper will review results and discuss a new method to address the deployment and management of a satellite constellation. The first two chapters will explorer the use of small satellites, and some of the advances in technology that have enabled small spacecraft to maintain modern performance requirements in incredibly small packages.

The third chapter will address the multiple-objective optimization problem for a global persistent coverage constellation of communications spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit. A genetic algorithm was implemented in MATLAB to explore the design space – 288 trillion possibilities – utilizing the Satellite Tool Kit (STK) software developers kit. …

Real-Time Detection Of Demand Manipulation Attacks On A Power Grid, Srinidhi Madabhushi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An increased usage in IoT devices across the globe has posed a threat to the power grid. When an attacker has access to multiple IoT devices within the same geographical location, they can possibly disrupt the power grid by regulating a botnet of high-wattage IoT devices. Based on the time and situation of the attack, an adversary needs access to a fixed number of IoT devices to synchronously switch on/off all of them, resulting in an imbalance between the supply and demand. When the frequency of the power generators drops below a threshold value, it can lead to the generators …

Instrument And Application Development In Saturation Recovery And Rapid Scan Electron Paramagnetic Resonance, Joseph E. Mcpeak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Enhanced signal sensitivity by the use of Rapid Scan (RS) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), a technique that allows for much faster magnetic field scans than traditional field-swept techniques, has facilitated improved data acquisition for many types of samples. For example, irradiated fingernails for radiation dosimetry have been studied using RS-EPR, which resulted in substantial decreases in detection limits. Samarium-mediated reduction mechanisms in organic synthesis have been investigated by RS-EPR providing evidence for a radical intermediate. Spectra of organic radicals exhibiting both narrow lines and closely spaced hyperfine interactions have been recorded via RS-EPR. Well-resolved spectra can be recorded at a …

Facial Action Unit Detection With Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Siddhesh Padwal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The facial features are the most important tool to understand an individual's state of mind. Automated recognition of facial expressions and particularly Facial Action Units defined by Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is challenging research problem in the field of computer vision and machine learning. Researchers are working on deep learning algorithms to improve state of the art in the area. Automated recognition of facial action units has man applications ranging from developmental psychology to human robot interface design where companies are using this technology to improve their consumer devices (like unlocking phone) and for entertainment like FaceApp. Recent studies …

Monitoring Methods And Performance Assessment For Implementation Of Low Impact Development Practices In South Dakota, Farhana Akhter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Urbanization increases impervious surface area, which changes the hydrology of a watershed. Impervious surfaces prevent the infiltration of stormwater water into the ground surface which results in a higher volume of stormwater runoff and higher peak flow. Low Impact Development (LID) practices help to restore pre-development hydrology by increasing infiltration, evaporation, and transpiration. While the hydrologic performance of LID practices has been studied extensively and continues to be an area of active research, there has been very limited monitoring or demonstration of LID practices in South Dakota. In addition, municipalities in South Dakota and elsewhere that implement new LID practices …

Pig Pose Estimation Based On Extracted Data Of Mask R-Cnn With Vgg Neural Network For Classifications, Sang Kwan Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper proposes a pig pose estimation operating with Region Proposal Network (RPN) of Mask Region based Convolutional Neural Network (Mask R-CNN) and Visual Geometry Group (VGG) Neural Network (NN). Object pose estimations generates from the associations of different key points. Key points could be explained as specific location of an object such as different joints of a human body or joints of different object. Hourglass network is one of a NN delivering key points of an object. Associating the different key points with the hourglass network results could be represented as instance-level detection [3]. However, the instance-level detection shows …

Public Perception Of Different Planting Techniques Using Augmented Reality, Sultana Quader Tania

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to measure public perception of the different planting techniques (block and matrix), which are used at visitor information centers (VICs) and other rights of way (ROW) areas. The main factors that affect public perception of planting techniques were identified through an extensive literature review and qualitative survey from four welcome centers in the state of Georgia. The ranking of those indicators, based on public preferences, was discovered through a quantitative survey. During the first phase of the quantitative survey, images of block and matrix were used. An iOS-based user-friendly and cost-effective augmented reality (AR) …