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Career: Advocating For Engineering Through Hidden Curricula: A Multi‐Institutional Mixed Method Approach, Idalis Villanueva

Funded Research Records

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Investigating The Highest Melting Temperature Materials: A Laser Melting Study Of The Tac-Hfc System, Omar Cedillos-Barraza, Dario Manara, K. Boboridis, Tyson Watkins, Salvatore Grasso, Daniel D. Jayaseelan, Rudy J. M. Konings, Michael J. Reece, William E. Lee

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Student Publications and Presentations

TaC, HfC and their solid solutions are promising candidate materials for thermal protection structures in hypersonic vehicles because of their very high melting temperatures (>4000 K) among other properties.  The melting temperatures of slightly hypostoichiometric TaC, HfC and three solid solution compositions (Ta1−xHfxC, with x = 0.8, 0.5 and 0.2) have long been identified as the highest known. In the current  research, they were reassessed, for the first time in the last fifty years, using a laser heating technique.  They were found to melt in the range of 4041–4232 K, with HfC having the highest and TaC the lowest. …

Ncer Assistance Agreement Annual Progress Report For Grant #83582401 - Assessment Of Stormwater Harvesting Via Manage Aquifer Recharge (Mar) To Develop New Water Supplies In The Arid West: The Salt Lake Valley Example, Ryan Dupont, Joan E. Mclean, Richard C. Peralta, Sarah E. Null, Douglas B. Jackson-Smith

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The aims of the original proposed project remain the same, that is, to test the hypothesis that Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) for stormwater harvesting is a technically feasible, socially and environmentally acceptable, economically viable, and permittable option for developing new water supplies for arid Western urban ecosystems experiencing increasing population, and climate change pressures on existing water resources. The project is being carried out via three distinct but integrated components that include: 1) Monitoring of existing distributed Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) harvesting schemes involving a growing number of demonstration Green Infrastructure (GI) test sites; 2) Integrated stormwater/vadose zone/groundwater/ ecosystem services …

Importance Of Heat And Pressure For Solubilization Of Recombinant Spider Silk Proteins In Aqueous Solution, Justin A. Jones, Thomas I. Harris, Paula F. Oliveira, Brianne E. Bell, Abdulrahman Alhabib, Randolph V. Lewis

Biology Faculty Publications

The production of recombinant spider silk proteins continues to be a key area of interest for a number of research groups. Several key obstacles exist in their production as well as in their formulation into useable products. The original reported method to solubilize recombinant spider silk proteins (rSSp) in an aqueous solution involved using microwaves to quickly generate heat and pressure inside of a sealed vial containing rSSp and water. Fibers produced from this system are remarkable in their mechanical ability and demonstrate the ability to be stretched and recover 100 times. The microwave method dissolves the rSSPs with dissolution …

Hydrodeoxygenation Of Pinyon Juniper Catalytic Pyrolysis Oil To Hydrocarbon Fuels, Hossein Jahromi, Foster Agblevor

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

As a renewable source, biomass is an essential option for diminishing dependence on conventional fossil fuel energy sources. Pyrolysis is a promising technology for the conversion of biomass into liquid fuels. However, several challenges associated with using pyrolysis oils such as their high acidity and low energy content inhibit their direct use as transportation fuels. We conducted a batch hydrodeoxygenation of pinyon juniper catalytic pyrolysis oil using Ni/SiO2-Al2O3 catalyst to improve the following properties of the oil: heating value, acidity, oxygen content, water content, and viscosity. During the hydrogenation process, the influence of four experimental factors; temperature, catalyst loading, residence …

Boostnoc: Power Efficient Network-On-Chip Architecture For Near Threshold Computing, Chidhambaranathan Rajamanikkam, Rajesh Jayashankarashridevi, Koushik Chakraborty, Sanghamitra Roy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

While near threshold design space provides a promising approach towards energy-efficient computing, it is plagued by sub-optimal performance. Application characteristics and hardware non-idealities of conventional architectures (optimized for the nominal voltage) prevent us from fully leveraging the potential of NTC systems. Further, the popular approach of increasing the computational core count to compensate for the performance loss severely burdens the on-chip communication fabric with an increased communication demand. In this work, we quantitatively analyze the performance bottleneck createdby a conventional NoC architecture in many-core NTC systems. To reclaim the performance lost due to a sub-optimal NoC, we propose BoostNoC - …

Hydroshare – A Case Study Of The Application Of Modern Software Engineering To A Large Distributed Federally-Funded Scientific Software Development Project, Ray Idaszak, David G. Tarboton, Hong Yi, Laura Christopherson, Michael J. Stealey, Brian Miles, Pabitra Dash, Alva Couch, Calvin Spealman, Jeffery S. Horsburgh, Daniel P. Ames

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

HydroShare is an online collaborative system under development to support the open sharing of hydrologic data, analytical tools, and computer models. With HydroShare, scientists can easily discover, access, and analyze hydrologic data and thereby enhance the production and reproducibility of hydrologic scientific results. HydroShare also takes advantage of emerging social media functionality to enable users to enhance information about and collaboration around hydrologic data and models. HydroShare is being developed by an interdisciplinary collaborative team of domain scientists, university software developers, and professional software engineers from ten institutions located across the United States. While the combination of non–co-located, diverse stakeholders …

Analysis Of The Electric Vehicles Adoption Over The United States, Ali Soltani-Sobh, Kevin Heaslip, Aleksandar Stevanovic, Ryan Bosworth, Danilo Radiviojevic

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

Increasing the use of electric vehicles (EVs) has been suggested as a possible method to decrease fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in an effort to mitigate the causes of climate change. In this study, the relationship between the market share of electric vehicles and the presence of government incentives, and other influential socio-economic factors were examined. The methodology of this study is based on a cross-sectional/time-series (panel) analysis. The developed model is an aggregated binomial logit share model that estimates the modal split between EV and conventional vehicles for different U.S. states from 2003 to 2011. The results …

Propulsion Theory Of Flapping Airfoils, Comparison With Computational Fluid Dynamics, Doug F. Hunsaker, W. F. Phillips

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

It is shown that the time-dependent aerodynamic forces acting on a flapping airfoil in forward flight are functions of both axial and normal reduced frequencies. The axial reduced frequency is based on the chord length, and the normal reduced frequency is based on the plunging amplitude. Furthermore, the time-dependent aerodynamic forces are related to two Fourier coefficients, which are evaluated here from computational results. Correlation equations for these Fourier coefficients are obtained from a large number of grid- and time-step-resolved inviscid computational-fluid-dynamics solutions, conducted over a range of both axial and normal reduced frequencies. The correlation results can be used …

Enhanced Thermal Conductance Of Polymer Composites Through Embedding Aligned Carbon Nanofibers, David S. Wood, Dale K. Hensley, Nicholas A. Roberts

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The focus of this work is to find a more efficient method of enhancing the thermal conduc-tance of polymer thin films. This work compares polymer thin films embedded with randomly oriented carbon nanotubes to those with vertically aligned carbon nanofibers. Thin films embedded with carbon nanofibers demonstrated a similar thermal conductance between 40–60 µm and a higher thermal con-ductance between 25–40 µm than films embedded with carbon nanotubes with similar volume fractions even though carbon nanotubes have a higher thermal conductivity than carbon nanofibers.

Summer Ozone Concentrations In The Vicinity Of The Great Salt Lake, John Horel, Erik Crosman, Brian Blaylock, Seth Arens, Ansley Long, John Sohl, Randy S. Martin

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Residents near the Great Salt Lake in northern Utah, USA have been exposed to ozone levels during recent summers exceeding the current United States National Ambient Air Quality Standard. Accurately forecasting those exceedances has been difficult as a result of the complex meteorological and photochemical processes fostering them. To help improve such forecasts, a low-cost field study was conducted during summer 2015 to provide comprehensive observations of boundary-layer ozone concentrations in the context of the prevailing meteorological conditions. A network of surface ozone sensors was supplemented by sensors mounted on vehicles, a public transit light-rail car, news helicopter, tethered sonde, …

A Tool For Downscaling Weather Data From Large-Grid Reanalysis Products To Finer Spatial Scales For Distributed Hydrological Applications, Avirup Sen Gupta, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

A downscaling tool was developed to provide sub-daily high spatial resolution surfaces of weather variables for distributed hydrologic modeling from NASA Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications reanalysis products. The tool uses spatial interpolation and physically based relationships between the weather variables and elevation to provide inputs at the scale of a gridded hydrologic model, typically smaller (∼100 m) than the scale of weather reanalysis data (∼20–200 km). Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) measures greater than 0.70 were obtained for direct tests of downscaled daily temperature and monthly precipitation at 173 SNOTEL sites. In an integrated test driving the Utah Energy …

Deposition Of Carbon Nanotube Films On Polyamide And Polypropylene Substrates: A Computer Simulation Approach, Alejandro Heredia, Maria Colin-Garcia, Maria Del Pilar Carreon-Castro, Debarati Mukherjee, Bruno Abreu, David William Britt, Joana Catarina Mendes

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

In this work we study hydroxylated carbon nanotube (CNT) assembly on polyamide (PA) and polypropylene (PP) polymers activated by UV radiation from a theoretical and experimental perspective. Molecular computer simulation was done to understand the stable conformations and bulk properties (molecular dynamics) of the polymers before and after exposure to UV radiation at the molecular level. Our experiments suggest that PA presents more -OH active groups, producing a more hydrophilic surface, whereas PP exhibits less potential UV activation. These results suggest that it is possible a facile covalent functionalization method to tune organic polymer surface properties through SWCNT anchoring for …

Swiftgpu: Fostering Energy Efficiency In A Near-Threshold Gpu Through A Tactical Performance Boost, Prabal Basu, Hu Chen, Shamik Saha, Koushik Chakraborty, Sanghamitra Roy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we investigate the challenges of preserving energy-efficiency in a Near-Threshold Computing (NTC) GPU. Two key factors can significantly undermine the efficacy of GPUs at NTC: (a) elongated delays at NTC make the GPU applications severely sensitive toMulti-cycle Latency Datapaths (MLDs) within the GPU pipeline; and (b) process variation (PV) at NTC induces a substantial performance variance. To address these emerging challenges, we propose SwiftGPU - -an energyefficient GPU design paradigm at NTC. SwiftGPU dynamically adjusts the degree of parallelization, and the speed of the MLDs within each stream core of the GPU. The proposed scheme achieves an …

Characterization Of Geolocation Accuracy Of Suomi Npp Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder Measurements, Yang Han, Fuzhong Weng, Xiaolei Zou, Hu Yang, Deron Scott

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) onboard Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite has 22 channels at frequencies ranging from 23 to 183 GHz for probing the atmospheric temperature and moisture under all weather conditions. As part of the ATMS calibration and validation activities, the geolocation accuracy of ATMS data must be well characterized and documented. In this study, the coastline crossing method (CCM) and the land-sea fraction method (LFM) are utilized to characterize and quantify the ATMS geolocation accuracy. The CCM is based on the inflection points of the ATMS window channel measurements across the coastlines, whereas the LFM collocates …

Estimation Of Surface Soil Moisture In Irrigated Lands By Assimilation Of Landsat Vegetation Indices, Surface Energy Balance Products, And Relevance Vector Machines, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Andres M. Ticlavilca, Roula Bachour, Mac Mckee

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Spatial surface soil moisture can be an important indicator of crop conditions on farmland, but its continuous estimation remains challenging due to coarse spatial and temporal resolution of existing remotely-sensed products. Furthermore, while preceding research on soil moisture using remote sensing (surface energy balance, weather parameters, and vegetation indices) has demonstrated a relationship between these factors and soil moisture, practical continuous spatial quantification of the latter is still unavailable for use in water and agricultural management. In this study, a methodology is presented to estimate volumetric surface soil moisture by statistical selection from potential predictors that include vegetation indices and …

Potential Effects Of Climate Change On Ecologically Relevant Streamflow Regimes, Sulochan Dhungel, David G. Tarboton, Jiming Jin, Charles P. Hawkins

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

We assessed the climate-driven changes in ecologically relevant flow regimes expected to occur by the year 2100 in streams across the conterminous United States. We used long-term daily flow measurements from 601 gauged streams whose watersheds were in relatively natural condition to characterize spatial variation in 16 flow regime variables selected for their ecological importance. Principal component analysis of these 16 variables produced five uncorrelated factors that described patterns of spatial covariation in flow regimes. These five factors were associated with low flow, magnitude, flashiness, timing, and constancy characteristics of the daily flow regime. We applied hierarchical clustering to the …

Automatic Surface Crack Detection In Concrete Structures Using Otsu Thresholding And Morphological Operations, Sattar Dorafshan, Marc Maguire, Xiaojun Qi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Concrete cracking is a ubiquitous phenomenon, present in all types of concrete structures. Identifying and tracking the amount and severity of cracking is paramount to evaluating the current condition and predicting the future service life of a concrete asset. Concrete cracks can indicate reinforcement corrosion, the development of spalls or changing support conditions. Therefore, monitoring cracks during the life span of concrete structures has been an effective technique to evaluate the level of safety and preparing plans for future appropriate rehabilitation.

One growing technique are unmanned inspections using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). UAVs are drones equipped with cameras, sensors, GPS, …

An Overview Of Current Applications, Challenges, And Future Trends In Distributed Process-Based Models In Hydrology, Simone Fatichi, Enrique R. Vivoni, Fred L. Ogden, Valeriy Y. Ivanov, Benjamin Mirus, David Gochis, Charles W. Downer, Matteo Camporese, Jason H. Davison, Brian Ebel, Norm Jones, Jongho Kim, Giuseppe Mascaro, Richard Niswonger, Pedro Restrepo, Riccardo Rigon, Chaopeng Shen, Mauro Sulis, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Process-based hydrological models have a long history dating back to the 1960s. Criticized by some as over-parameterized, overly complex, and difficult to use, a more nuanced view is that these tools are necessary in many situations and, in a certain class of problems, they are the most appropriate type of hydrological model. This is especially the case in situations where knowledge of flow paths or distributed state variables and/or preservation of physical constraints is important. Examples of this include: spatiotemporal variability of soil moisture, groundwater flow and runoff generation, sediment and contaminant transport, or when feedbacks among various Earth’s system …

Prada: Combating Voltage Noise In The Noc Power Supply Through Flow-Control And Routing Algorithms., Prabal Basu, Rajesh Jayashankarashridevi, Koushik Chakraborty, Sanghamitra Roy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Network-on-Chip (NoC) has become the de-facto standard for on-chip communication in MPSoCs. The growing NoC power footprint, increase in the transistor current, and high switching speed of the logic devices, exacerbate the peak power supply noise (PSN) in the NoC power delivery network (PDN). Hence, preserving power supply integrity in the NoC PDN is critical. In this work, we propose PRADA (PSN-aware Runtime Adaptation)-a collection of a novel flow-control protocol (PAF) and an adaptive routing algorithm (PAR), to mitigate PSN in NoCs. Our best scheme achieves 14% and 12% improvements in the regional peak PSN and energy efficiency, with an …

Logan River Restoration Draft Conservation Action Plan, Logan River Task Force

All In-stream Flows Material

The Logan River, an integral part of the greater Bear River ecosystem, originates within the Bear River Mountains in the headwaters of Logan Canyon and terminates at its confluence with the Little Bear River in Cutler Reservoir. The river is an asset to residents of Logan City and Cache County and has historically supported many beneficial uses. The Logan River was an important resource for Native Americans and pioneers, and it remains valuable today. Cache Valley citizens are attracted to the river and enjoy the aesthetics, recreational values, and wildlife resources associated with this high-quality river, which supports fish, wildlife, …

Beyond The Fiber: Novel Spider Silk Coatings And Adhesives, Danielle A. Gaztambide, Breton A. Day

Research on Capitol Hill

Natural spider silks have long been recognized for their combination of incredible strength and elasticity. Spider silk is more elastic than nylon, tougher than Kevlar, and stronger than steel by weight. Due to an inability to farm spiders, much work has been done to produce spider silks in transgenic hosts for large -scale production. Our work was done using recombinant spider silk proteins produced in transgenic goats and the bacteria E. coli.

More recently spider silks have also been recognized for their biocompatibility and lack of immunogenicity. Spider silks' incredible strength and ability to be implanted safely within the body …

Simple Landscape Irrigation Demand Estimation: Slide Rules, Roger Kjelgren

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Irrigated urban landscapes must increasingly maintain economic and ecosystem value with less water in response to drought amplified and shifted by climate change. Efficient landscape water management requires estimating water amount demanded by plants that can be replaced by irrigation to meet minimum performance expectations. The extant approach to estimating landscape water demand is conceptually muddled and often regionally inappropriate. Simplified Landscape Irrigation Demand Estimation (SLIDE) Rules distills scientifically credible assumptions about urban landscape biological and physical complexity into guidelines for estimating water demand that are conceptually accessible and operationally useful. SLIDE Rules are: 1) oasis urban reference evapotranspiration (ETo) …

A Research Experiences For Undergraduates (Reu) Site Program On Engineering Education Research, Ning Fang, Oenardi Lawanto, Wade H. Goodridge, Idalis Villanueva, Kurt Becker

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

This paper describes a U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site program that aims to provide undergraduate students with experiences in engineering education research (i.e., education research in the context of engineering). This paper provides an overview of the program and briefly describes the common intellectual focus of this REU Site program. Over the past two years, a total of 16 undergraduate students, seven graduate mentors, and five faculty mentors have actively participated in the program. Four important components of the program are described in this paper, including student recruitment and selection, REU seminars, weekly reflections, and …

Water Resources Systems Analysis: A Bright Past And A Challenging But Promising Future, David E. Rosenberg, Kaveh Madani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Our field of water resources systems analysis is now experiencing one of its most exciting eras where scientists, decision makers, and funding agencies want to apply systems approaches to solve varied, complex, uncertain, and interdisciplinary resource management problems. Solving these problems presents great opportunities for us to engage in complex, real-world decision-making and make positive changes. However, to capitalize on these opportunities, we as a field must also overcome several large challenges related to problem identification, integration, blind use of systems tools, a focus on optimality, and harnessing big data. To overcome, we must look back to find what we …

Road Scholars For The Western States: Protecting Natural Areas By Improving Road Management Research, Brian Cooke, Charlie Luce, Tom Black, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

A poorly placed or unsuitably designed road can result in landslides, flooding, gullies, stream damage, and wildlife habitat destruction. Particularly in natural areas, benefits of roads, such as accessibility and convenience, must be weighed against potential water quality degradation, scenic and wildlife habitat destruction, and hazardous driving conditions.

Scientists at the Rocky Mountain Research Station helped create two free tools—GRAIP (Geomorphic Road Analysis and Inventory Package) and GRAIP-Lite—to help land managers make better decisions about road management in environmentally sensitive areas. GRAIP helps land managers analyze and predict surface erosion, gully risk, landslide risk, stream crossing failure risks, and other …

Fluorescent Nanocomposite Of Embedded Ceria Nanoparticles In Crosslinked Pva Electrospun Nanofibers, Nader Shehata, Soha Gaballah, Effat Samir, Aya Hamed, Marwa Saad

Biology Faculty Publications

This paper introduces a new fluorescent nanocomposite of electrospun biodegradable nanofibers embedded with optical nanoparticles. In detail, this work introduces the fluorescence properties of PVA nanofibers generated by the electrospinning technique with embedded cerium oxide (ceria) nanoparticles. Under near-ultra violet excitation, the synthesized nanocomposite generates a visible fluorescent emission at 520 nm, varying its intensity peak according to the concentration of in situ embedded ceria nanoparticles. This is due to the fact that the embedded ceria nanoparticles have optical tri-valiant cerium ions, associated with formed oxygen vacancies, with a direct allowed bandgap around 3.5 eV. In addition, the impact of …

Large Eddy Simulation Of Turbulence And Solute Transport In A Forested Headwater Stream, A. Khosronejad, A. T. Hansen, J. L. Kozarek, K. Guentzel, M. Hondzo, M. Guala, Peter Wilcock, J. C. Finlay, F. Sotiropoulos

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The large eddy simulation (LES) module of the Virtual StreamLab (VSL3D) model is applied to simulate the flow and transport of a conservative tracer in a headwater stream in Minnesota, located in the south Twin Cities metropolitan area. The detailed geometry of the stream reach, which is _135 m long, _2.5 m wide, and _0.15 m deep, was surveyed and used as input to the computational model. The detailed geometry and location of large woody debris and bed roughness elements up to _0.1 m in size were also surveyed and incorporated in the numerical simulation using the Curvilinear Immersed Boundary …