Engineering Commons^™

Elevate Hardcase, Caleb J. Bailey, Colby M. Cordoba, Marissa Mccleod, Shaan Sandhu

Mechanical Engineering

The Elevate Hardcase project developed a portable mechanical elevation system that allows users to access rugged hard cases at a comfortable working height without needing a separate table or placing the case on uneven ground. The design focuses on improving ergonomics, portability, stability, and quick setup for users in field environments such as photography, hunting, and maintenance. Through customer research, concept development, prototyping, analysis, and testing, the final system was designed to support a loaded hard case, provide height adjustability, remain stable on uneven terrain, and be deployed by a single user in under five minutes. The final prototype demonstrates …

Design And Production Of A Carbon Fiber Longboard, John R. Beebe, Jacob Williams, Julia Stradinger, Vince Fitchtel, Jordan Cochran

Honors Theses

This thesis contains an overview of the design, prototyping, and manufacturing of a carbon fiber long board. The purpose of this capstone was to create a viable product for the real-world market and then determine how to manufacture it at scale with sustainable financial practices. In order to accomplish this task, engineering, accounting, and manufacturing challenges had to be overcome throughout all stages. The production process involved the carbon fiber layup, baking, water jet cutting, and assembly of the carbon fiber longboard. In order to optimize this process, continuous improvement and lean manufacturing problem solving techniques were applied. After a …

What Types Of Uncertainty Emerge In Instructional Aviation Incidents?, Abigail Henson

Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study utilized narrative reports from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) database to examine the types of uncertainty present in near-miss instructional aviation incidents occurring within the United States between 2015 and 2025. The final dataset consisted of 86 reports, with each report containing a set of narrative accounts from both the student pilot and the flight instructor operating under Part 91 regulations. Each instructional event was classified using a combined framework incorporating uncertainty categorizations and the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS). Results indicate that epistemological uncertainty was the most common …

Simulation-Based Assessment Of Operational And Retrofit Solutions For Effluent Compliance Of A Capacity-Limited Oxidation Ditch Wwtp, Ahmed Sameh Harash

Theses and Dissertations

Oxidation-ditch wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) across Egypt's Nile Delta are increasingly carrying hydraulic and organic loads beyond what they were designed for. This work can be considered pioneering as this work compared operational and structural retrofit alternatives for such a plant within a single verified simulation framework. The present study fills that gap by building a digital twin of the Qaha WWTP, a dual-train Carrousel oxidation ditch in Qalyubia Governorate, calibrated to a baseline flow of 7,420 m³/day in the SUMO24 platform (a third-generation, open-source wastewater treatment process simulation software) using the SUMO2c biokinetic model (a simplified variant of Activated …

Dynamic Baseline Schedule Updates Using Digital Twinning: A Case Study On Aluminum Formwork Construction, Ahmed Hamdi Sweilam

Theses and Dissertations

Repetitive high-rise construction using aluminum formwork couples consecutive floor cycles through a reused panel set and a floor-level inspection and pour barrier, so productivity loss compounds upward rather than being absorbed locally. The baseline schedule is nevertheless fixed before execution and is not revised as evidence of realized productivity accumulates. This thesis develops a simulation-based digital twin that updates the baseline from observed as-built durations and acts on its own forecast. A discrete-event simulation of a ten-story residential tower is built in AnyLogic® and verified analytically at 180.00 hours per floor. After each completed floor the twin infers activity productivity …

A Maximum Energy Release Rate Computational Framework For Fatigue Crack Trajectory And Life Prediction Under Mixed-Mode Proportional And Nonproportional Loading, Nahla Helmy Matar

Theses and Dissertations

The problem of mixed-mode fatigue crack growth has been a persistent research challenge. The determination of fatigue crack propagation direction directly impacts the safety and integrity of components and structures, making it crucial in various industrial applications, including welded drilling pipes, aerospace, and automotive engineering. Unlike uniaxial loading, mixed-mode cracks tend to change direction frequently (kinking), and nonproportional loading adds to the complexity of the problem. This research aims to estimate the crack propagation direction and fatigue crack life in linear elastic materials subjected to mixed-mode (I+II) loading conditions under proportional or non-proportional cyclic loading. Numerical software was developed based …

Sustainable – Low-Cost - Upgrade Of Activated Sludge Process For Nitrogen And Phosphorus (N&P) Removal From Wastewater, Abanoub N. Basta

Theses and Dissertations

Many municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in developing countries were designed primarily for organic matter and suspended solids removal and therefore face increasing difficulty in meeting modern nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) discharge requirements. Conventional biological nutrient removal upgrades commonly require additional reactor volume, recirculation systems, aeration energy, and capital investment. Accordingly, sustainable retrofit strategies that improve nutrient removal within existing treatment footprints are increasingly needed, particularly in water-scarce and land-constrained regions.

This study investigated the integration of water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) into the aeration stage of an activated sludge process as a hybrid nature-based enhancement for nitrogen and phosphorus …

A Comparative Study: Force Majeure And The Theory Of Unforeseen Circumstances Across Different Jurisdictions In The Middle East, Omar Hamed Sawan

Theses and Dissertations

The motivation behind this study stems from recent global disruption events that impact construction projects worldwide. These events vary across a wide spectrum, whether they are political events such as the Russo-Ukraine war or the war in the Middle East, economic events such as inflation or currency devaluations; or environmental events such as climate change and the emergence of public health crises like the Covid-19 pandemic. These series of events underscore the growing importance of understanding how the different legal frameworks address unforeseeable events in the construction industry. In this context, force majeure and the theory of unforeseen circumstances (also …

Port And Vessel Communication Traffic Intrusion Detection: A Variational Autoencoder‑Enhanced Multilayer Perceptron Approach, Chien-Lin Chiang, Hsien-Cheng Chou, Ming-Yuan Peng, Yi-Yuan Chiang, Yu-Shun Liu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Port and vessel networks increasingly operate on IP/Ethernet backbones with high‑noise, high‑dimensional traffic. We present a lightweight hybrid intrusion‑detection model that couples a variational autoencoder (VAE) with a multilayer perceptron (MLP) and augments training with a boundary‑oriented latent‑space mixup strategy. The VAE models the distribution of normal traffic and identifies anomalies through reconstruction errors. Subsequently, it generates robust latent vectors, enabling the MLP to perform highly accurate supervised classification. On the UNSW‑NB15 dataset, the proposed pipeline attains ≥97% accuracy and an outstanding recall of 99.56% in binary intrusion detection, and visualization of the latent space (PCA) together with reconstruction‑error analyses …

Sar Ship Detection Based On Shallow Feature Guidance, Chenxu Xia, Peng Chen, Ya Zhang, Ying Li

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Maritime ship detection is of great significance for both military security and civilian applications. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), with its all-weather and all-day imaging capability, plays a vital role in maritime surveillance. Nevertheless, SAR ship targets typically appear small in scale, embedded in complex backgrounds, blurred at boundaries, and easily confused with near-shore features, which pose substantial challenges for accurate detection. To address these issues, we propose a SAR ship detection network that integrates dual enhancements of small-object representation and edge information. The network introduces two key components: the Small Target Refine Pyramid (STRP) to strengthen shallow feature representation for …

Enhancing Shipboard Safety Management Under The Ism Code: An Innovative Risk Assessment Framework With A Stern Tube Case Study, Pi-Yen Lin

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The shipboard safety management system (SMS) is designed to enhance safe operations, risk management, and emergency response to improve overall ship safety and efficiency. This paper demonstrates the use of an engine room simulator (ERS) for collecting failure modes and applies it to a comprehensive failure analysis of the stern tube lubricating oil system. A new risk closeness coefficient method was developed, integrating expert background knowledge and weighted risk assessments. The analysis, based on multiple expert evaluations, covered five subsystems, eight main components, 23 failure modes, and 112 failure causes. This study presents 26 recommendations for maritime practitioners and onboard …

Comparative Assessment Of Agmd And Vmd Systems Configured With Flat Sheet And Hollow Fibre Membranes: An Energy And Exergy, Thermo-Economic, And Environmental Analysis, Hamed Kariman, Mehdi Khiadani

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Membrane Distillation (MD) systems, particularly Air Gap Membrane Distillation (AGMD) and Vacuum Membrane Distillation (VMD) in Flat Sheet (FS) and Hollow Fibre (HF) configurations, demonstrate strong potential for freshwater production, Yet, there remains a lack of comparative studies evaluating their energy, exergy, economic and environmental performance under similar conditions. This study presents a comparative analysis of four MD systems under similar operating conditions: FS-AGMD, HF-AGMD, FS-VMD and HF-VMD, and considers their respective costs and operation in Western Australia. The analysis was performed for single-stage and multi-stage configurations of up to ten modules, both with and without Heat Recovery (HR), to …

Long Range Battery-Free Wireless Power Transfer Testbed For Underground Mines Iot And Lpwan Devices, Anabi Hilary Kelechi, Samuel Frimpong, Sanjay Madria

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Underground mines are susceptible to occasional roof falls and cave-ins, temporarily destroying the existing wireless communications and telemetry infrastructure. During this temporary outage, intermittent provision of electrical energy wirelessly to the already deployed low-power wireless area networks (LPWAN) and Internet of Things (IoT) devices assumes a fundamental requirement. In this article, we propose and design a long-range far-field radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) testbed to power LPWAN and IoT devices at 35 m in an underground mines facility. Class AB external power amplifier (PA) was introduced to achieve a long-distance RF WPT, in the 880 MHz band. Thus, …

Evaluating The Impact Of Research Equipment Availability On Scientific Rigor, Reproducibility, And Innovation Across Stem Disciplines, Lyndi G. Hraban

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Research infrastructure plays a central role in shaping the quality and innovative capacity of scientific research. This study evaluates how the availability of research equipment influences scientific rigor, reproducibility, and innovation across STEM disciplines. Drawing on literature from science-to-science research, policy studies, and discipline-specific analyses, this project synthesizes existing scholarship to explore the relationship between access to infrastructure and key research outcomes. Findings across the literature indicate that access to advanced and well-maintained equipment can strengthen scientific rigor by enabling more precise measurements, improved experimental control, and the implementation of standardized research protocols. Shared and centralized facilities are also associated …

Power At Sea Develop Phase, Jake Lauer, Isabella Heinemann, Bailey Gargasz, Zachery Boyer

Mechanical Engineering

This project develops a renewable, wave-powered charging system designed to extend the mission duration of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles by eliminating the need for frequent manual battery replacement. Building upon a prior oscillating water column prototype from the CONCEPT phase, the team redesigned and tested an improved system capable of converting wave-induced air motion into electrical power using a Wells turbine. Key enhancements include doubling the column diameter to increase displaced air volume, integrating a flared inlet and bi-directional nozzle to improve airflow, and selecting corrosion-resistant materials suitable for long-term deployment in marine environments. Multiple prototypes were constructed and evaluated through …

Green Waste Biochar And Plant Growth-Promoting Bacteria Enhance Tomato Growth Under Combined Nutrient Deficiency And Salinity Stress, Soumaya Tounsi-Hammami, Munawwar Ali Khan, Mahra Alqemzi, Salama Ali Almehairi, Aneesa Rasheed Anwar

All Works

This study characterized a green-waste-derived biochar from date palms and ghaf trees and investigated its potential as a soil amendment with halotolerant Bacillus spp. to improve tomato seedling quality under dual stress of salinity and nutrient deficiency. Biochar was produced through pyrolysis at 450 °C and then characterized for yield, pH, electrical conductivity, proximate analysis, surface morphology, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and heavy-metal content. Its effectiveness was tested both alone and in combination with a Bacillus sp. mix, using a completely randomized design with varying NPK fertilizer levels and saline irrigation. Tomato seedlings were evaluated 45 days after planting for various …

Engineering Sulfur Concrete Mixes: A Data-Driven Approach To Aggregate Packing And Binder Efficiency, Vasilia Al Khaldi, Abdel Hamid I. Mourad, Maisa El Gamal

All Works

Processing window (mass loss < 3%). A first-order, order-of-magnitude carbon-footprint estimate—presented with explicit caveats rather than as a full life-cycle assessment—indicates that replacing Portland cement with by-product sulfur is the dominant contributor to a substantial reduction in embodied CO₂ per cubic metre relative to equivalent-strength Portland cement concrete. The valorization of steelmaking by-products aligns with circular economy principles, enabling high-performance, recyclable, and low-carbon construction materials without chemical binder modification.

Reimagining Sustainable Sulfur Concrete: A Systematic Review Of Sulfur, Waste Integration, And Durability, Vasilia Al Khaldi, Abdel Hamid I. Mourad, Maisa Elgamal

All Works

Sulfur concrete (SC) - a thermoplastic, waterless composite in which molten sulfur-based binder replaces Portland cement - is attracting growing research attention as a sustainable construction alternative capable of superior performance in chemically aggressive environments. This systematic literature review synthesises evidence from 127 sources (2000–2025), examining three interlinked dimensions: (i) the role of waste and industrial by-product materials as aggregate and filler substitutes; (ii) the influence of aggregate type, morphology, and grading on mechanical and microstructural performance; and (iii) durability under acid, saline, and freeze-thaw exposures. A transparent, PRISMA-aligned screening and classification protocol - here used as a structured review …

Comparative Performance Of Physiological Vital-Sign Forecasting Under Random And Patient-Wise Splitting Using Deep Learning, Lavanya Vasavi Chittem Reddy

Theses and Dissertations

Physiological vital-sign forecasting estimates future measurements based on recent temporal patterns and can support analysis of continuously recorded monitoring data. This study comparatively evaluated deep feedforward, recurrent, bidirectional recurrent, long short-term memory, and bidirectional long short-term memory architectures for one-step-ahead forecasting of peripheral oxygen saturation, heart rate, and pulse rate. Each model received consecutive observations of peripheral oxygen saturation, heart rate, pulse rate, respiratory rate, and age, while separate single-output models predicted the next value of the selected target.

Random and patient-wise data splitting were compared using identical input definitions, preprocessing procedures, model architectures, and training hyperparameters. The strongest architecture …

Extending Geometric Acoustic Ray Tracing To Multi-Room Environments: A Case Study On Gunshot Sound Transmission Between Adjacent Rooms, Tyler Ton

Theses and Dissertations

Accurate localization of gunshots in multi-room building environments remains a challenging problem in acoustic forensics and public safety applications. Existing approaches model sound propagation within a single room, neglecting the transmission of acoustic energy through walls and other building materials. This thesis presents a study on modeling multi-room gunshot acoustic transmission, combining geometric ray tracing with structural acoustic transmission-loss modeling to generate impulse responses for two horizontally adjacent rooms separated by a shared wall, providing a foundation for future inter-room gunshot localization work. The proposed system uses GSound-SIR, a geometric acoustics engine, to simulate sound propagation in both of the …