Digital Commons Network^™

Analysis Of The Cost Effectiveness Of Combined Particle And Activated Carbon Filters For Indoor Ozone Removal In Buildings, Josh R. Aldred, Erin Darling, Glenn Morrison, Jeffrey Siegel, Richard L. Corsi

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study involved the development of a model for evaluating the potential costs and benefits of ozone control with combined particle/activated carbon filtration (referred to here as activated carbon filtration) in buildings. The modeling effort included the prediction of indoor ozone and ozone reaction products with and without activated carbon filtration in the HVAC system. Benefitto- cost ratios were estimated for various types of buildings in 12 American cities in 5 different climate zones. Health benefits were evaluated using disability-adjusted life-years attributed to the difference in indoor ozone concentration with and without activated carbon filtration and included city-specific age demographics …

Do Characteristics Of Walkable Environments Support Bicycling? Toward A Definition Of Bicycle-Supported Development, Christopher D. Muhs, Kelly Clifton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Does walkability equate with bikeability? Through a comprehensive review of studies of the built environment and bicycling, including mode choice, route choice, safety, and urban design literature, this paper addresses this question. Previous work has raised the issue that the two modes are functionally different, despite them often being combined into a nonmotorized category, and has highlighted research challenges. Existing studies of bikeability have largely focused on infrastructure. This paper contributes to the literature on bicycling and the built environment by providing a thorough review of past research with a focus on the relationships between land use, urban form, and …

Urban Resilience: The Regeneration Of The Dublin Docklands, Aoife Doyle

Conference papers

Resilience, and more specifically ‘urban resilience’, is a ‘fuzzy’ concept, which has gained increasing public, political and academic interest over the past two decades; particularly in the context of the global financial crisis of the late 2000s. This paper adopts an understanding of resilience as the ability of cities to change, adapt and, crucially, transform in response to stresses and strains. Yet how have cities – and urban planning – responded to the recent economic crisis; and how can one examine this in practice? This paper investigates the case of Dublin, Ireland. In particular, it utilises the resilience concept to …

A Simulation Of The Mississippi River Salt Wedge Estuary Using A Three-Dimensional Cartesian Z Coordinate Model, Steven K. Ayres

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The stratified flow of the lower Mississippi River due to density gradients is a well documented phenomenon. This stratification of fresh and saline water manifests itself as a heavier wedge of saline water that extends upriver and a buoyant fresh water plume extending into the Gulf of Mexico past the Southwest Pass jetties. The maximum absolute distance of saltwater intrusion observed anywhere in the world occurred on the Mississippi River in 1939 and 1940 when saltwater was observed approximately 225 km upstream from the mouth of Southwest Pass. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers now prevents the wedge from …

Seabed Scour Around A Breakwater A Case Study In Mailiao Harbor, I-Fu Lin, I-Fan Tseng, Chung-Pan Lee, Guan-Yu Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

According to a field measurement in 2012, the bathymetry in the area of Mailiao Harbor, located in the middle of Taiwan's west coast, has scouring hole with a size distribution of approximately 500 x 100 m. The maximum scour depth is 26 m (from -22 m eroded to -48 m). Although scour has become a major threat to breakwaters and navigational safety, it can be predicted cost-effectively, reliably, and rapidly by applying the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation. In this study, numerical simulation of tidal current and typhoon waves was performed to investigate the causes of the scouring hole …

A Multiphysics Modeling Of Solid Oxide Metal-Air Redox Battery, Md Ahsan Uddin

Theses and Dissertations

Cost-effective and large scale energy storage is essential for the growth of the future’s ‘‘green energy’’ infrastructure. Among the energy storage technologies currently being used, rechargeable batteries represent a class of advanced electrical energy storage (EES) mechanisms that can be valuable for the future renewable integration and smart grid. Rechargeable batteries have innumerous advantages over the conventional pumped hydro and compressed-air energy storage system. Now days, There are various types of rechargeable batteries available to work as an energy storage device in a smart grid but it still needs many breakthroughs to become commercially viable for stationary energy storage. First …

Systematic Literature Review Of The Use Of Rich Media In Stem And Related Education, Tony A. Lowe

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

The use of video in pedagogy is well established in the modern classroom with researched understanding of its benefits. Prior literature reviews provide a foundation for the impacts within a wide scope of environments and subjects. These reviews primarily have looked at students and faculty attitudes, learning outcomes, and the impact on attendance. The impact has been spread over general subject matter with little focus on the often challenging topics of STEM education. Many topics in STEM education are highly procedural, such as mathematical proofs or writing code or conducting experiments. Understanding the costs and benefits of using video to …

How Do Changes To The Railroad Causeway In Utah’S Great Salt Lake Affect Water And Salt Flow?, James S. White, Sarah E. Null, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Managing terminal lake elevation and salinity are emerging problems worldwide. We contribute to terminal lake management research by quantitatively assessing water and salt flow for Utah’s Great Salt Lake. In 1959, Union Pacific Railroad constructed a rock-filled causeway across the Great Salt Lake, separating the lake into a north and south arm. Flow between the two arms was limited to two 4.6 meter wide rectangular culverts installed during construction, an 88 meter opening (referred to locally as a breach) installed in 1984, and the semi porous material of the causeway. A salinity gradient developed between the two arms of the …

Advances In Autonomous-Underwater-Vehicle Based Passive Bottom-Loss Estimation By Processing Of Marine Ambient Noise, Lanfranco Muzi

Dissertations and Theses

Accurate modeling of acoustic propagation in the ocean waveguide is important to SONAR-performance prediction, and requires, particularly in shallow water environments, characterizing the bottom reflection loss with a precision that databank-based modeling cannot achieve. Recent advances in the technology of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) make it possible to envision a survey system for seabed characterization composed of a short array mounted on a small AUV. The bottom power reflection coefficient (and the related reflection loss) can be estimated passively by beamforming the naturally occurring marine ambient-noise acoustic field recorded by a vertical line array of hydrophones. However, the reduced array …

Effects Of A Beaver Pond In Southwestern Montana On Metals Concentration And Loads, William J. Drury, Martin Lorenzo

Environmental Engineering

A 400-m² beaver pond on Cabbage Gulch (Deer Lodge County, MT) was investigated for its retention of total recoverable (TR) and dissolved arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), and total suspended solids (TSS) during three storm water runoff events in the summer of 2013. Water samples were collected and flow rates were measured at monitoring stations above and below the pond. Decreases in TR metals concentrations were -17 percent for As (that is, As concentrations increased), 10 percent for Cu, 7 percent for Pb, and 27 percent for Zn. Total recoverable metals retained in the …

Estimating The Water Quality Condition Of River And Lake Water In The Midwestern United States From Its Spectral Characteristics, Jing Tan

Open Access Dissertations

This study focuses on developing/calibrating remote sensing algorithms for water quality retrieval in Midwestern rivers and lakes. In the first part of this study, the spectral measurements collected using a hand-held spectrometer as well as water quality observations for the Wabash River and its tributary the Tippecanoe River in Indiana were used to develop empirical models for the retrieval of chlorophyll (chl) and total suspended solids (TSS). A method for removing sky and sun glint from field spectra for turbid inland waters was developed and tested. Empirical models were then developed using a subset of the field measurements with the …

Improved Bias Correction Techniques For Hydrological Simulations Of Climate Change, David W. Pierce, Daniel R. Cayan, Edwin P. Maurer, John T. Abatzoglou, Katherine C. Hegewisch

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering

Global climate model (GCM) output typically needs to be bias corrected before it can be used for climate change impact studies. Three existing bias correction methods, and a new one developed here, are applied to daily maximum temperature and precipitation from 21 GCMs to investigate how different methods alter the climate change signal of the GCM. The quantile mapping (QM) and cumulative distribution function transform (CDF-t) bias correction methods can significantly alter the GCM’s mean climate change signal, with differences of up to 2°C and 30% points for monthly mean temperature and precipitation, respectively. Equidistant quantile matching (EDCDFm) bias correction …

The Effect Of Temperature And Relative Humidity On The Corrosion Rates Of Copper And Silver In Electronic Equipment In The Presence Of Sulfur Environment, Kanan Pujara

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Data center consume a significant amount of energy for the continuous air-conditioning of the servers with high internal heat loads and to maintain the indoor temperatures within recommended operating levels as recommended by ASHRAE. As an alternate source to air-conditioning, air-side economizers are used to reduce power consumption. However, there is a reluctance in using this technique due to undetermined equipment reliability by introducing outside air pollutants which over time could cause failures. There is a need to know the degree of reliability degradation when the equipment is operated, outside the recommended range, in the allowable temperature-humidity range in geographies …

Simulation Of Lateral Migration And Sedimentation Of A Flexible Fiber In A Vertical Weak Shear Flow, Ali Ibrahim Neamah Neamah

Masters Theses

This research is a thorough numerical investigation and critical analysis of lateral migration of a deformable particle settling in a vertical weak shear flow. Under the vertical weak shear fluid, the deformable particle may move either to the coagulation area, or the dispersion area, depending on Reynolds numbers, shear Reynolds number, fiber flexibility, and aspect ratio. In this study, a lattice Boltzmann equation is used to solve Navier-Stokes equation and a flexible particle method is employed to attack the problem of motion of a flexible fiber. A bounce-back rule is used to deal with moving boundaries interacting with fluids. Several …

Use Of Personality Profile Assessments In The Construction Industry, Brian Richard Childs

Theses and Dissertations

Various industries are using personality profile assessments as tools to help reduce employee turnover. Employee turnover is a continuing challenge in the construction industry that has negative effects on construction companies. Research found that it was difficult to know if companies in the construction industry are using personality profile assessments as a tool to help reduce employee turnover. After understanding that other industries were using personality profile assessments in their hiring, promoting, team building and leadership development to reduce turnover, it was desired to understand if the construction industry was doing the same. This research performed a survey among the …

Long-Term Winter Inversion Properties In A Mountain Valley Of The Western United States And Implications On Air Quality, Shih-Yu (Simon) Wang, Lawrence E. Hipps, Oi-Yu Chung, Robert R. Gillies, Randy S. Martin

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Because of the geography of a narrow valley and surrounding tall mountains, Cache Valley (located in northern Utah and southern Idaho) experiences frequent shallow temperature inversions that are both intense and persistent. Such temperature inversions have resulted in the worst air quality in the nation. In this paper, the historical properties of Cache Valley’s winter inversions are examined by using two meteorological stations with a difference in elevation of approximately 100 m and a horizontal distance apart of ~4.5 km. Differences in daily maximum air temperature between two stations were used to define the frequency and intensity of inversions. Despite …

Electrochemical Enhancement Of Butanol Production And Xylose Consumption In Pure And Mixed Culture Fermentations, Jovan Popovic

All Dissertations

The volatility of foreign and domestic petroleum markets has prompted initiatives for the development of alternative liquid energy carriers which have the capacity to accommodate our current transportation infrastructure. Butanol, which has an energy density similar to that of gasoline and can be produced through the fermentation of carbohydrates by solventogenic Clostridia, has been investigated as a supplement or direct replacement to gasoline. However, most butanol fermentations rely on glucose as a feedstock which is in direct competition with our food supply, and this requires the exploration of alternative fermentable substrates. This study investigates the use of electrochemical fermentation modifications …

Configuration Management In Manufacturing And Assembly: Case Study And Enabler Development, Keith Phelan

All Dissertations

The overall goal of this research is to improve the product configuration change management process. The increase in the demand for highly customizable products has led to many manufacturers using mass customization to meet the constantly changing demands of a wide consumer base. However, effectively managing the configurations can be difficult, especially in large manufacturers or for complex products with a large number of possible configurations. This is largely due to a combination of the scope of the configuration management system and the difficulty in understanding how changes to one element of a configuration can propagate through the configuration system. …

Integrating Freight Into Livable Communities, Kristine M. Williams, Alexandria Carroll

TREC Final Reports

Where livability is a goal of the planning process, freight runs the risk of not being considered except as an afterthought or as something to be excluded. Yet, freight is an integral part of local economic development. Because economic prosperity is a key characteristic of livable communities, freight must be incorporated into the planning process. This study explores the relationship between freight and livability through a comprehensive literature review and case study research. The final report includes a menu of strategies and case study perspectives that highlight the importance of transportation and land use integration, interagency coordination, and context-sensitivity in …

Quantifying The Information Habits Of High School Students Engaged In Engineering Design, Nathan Mentzer, Michael J. Fosmire

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

stract This study measured the information gathering behaviors of high school students who had taken engineering design courses as they solved a design problem. The authors investigated what types of information students accessed, its quality, when it was accessed during the students’ process, and if it impacted their thinking during the activity. Students overwhelmingly relied on internet searching to acquire information, rather than printed materials available to them. The sites they found were generally popular rather than technical, and persuasive (i.e., trying to sell something) rather than informative. The high school students understood the need for information, as they sought …

Polyolefins And Their Influence On Single Use Technology For Bioprocessing, Amy Plancon, Marnik Vaes

Single-Use Technologies: Bridging Polymer Science to Biotechnology Applications

The presentation will focus on polyolefins and their use in single use systems for bioprocessing and the manufacture of biologic drugs. The nature of polyethylene and polypropylene will be explored, as well as material properties and how those properties can be influenced by the polymer manufacturer to meet specific needs in the market. This influence might include the introduction of additives, the substitution of specific ingredients, and the promotion/development of particular processing conditions. The impact of antioxidants will be presented, along with an overview of extractables and leachables protocol as they relate to the polyolefin family.

Evaluation Of Cavity Distribution Using Point-Pattern Analysis, Raghav Ramanathan, Yongli Gao, M. Melih Demirkan, Bulent Hatipoglu, Mazen Adib, Michael Rosenmeier, Juan Gutierrez, Hesham El Ganainy

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Presence of solution cavities of different sizes poses major engineering problems in some areas of Abu Dhabi City Municipality (ADM) underlain by soluble rocks such as gypsum, calcarenite, or mudstone. This is especially critical if they are located at a relatively shallow level and are likely to cause settlement or sudden soil collapse. The Gachsaran Formation, which is composed of interlayered mudstone and gypsum, underlies all of the ADM and is known to be vulnerable to cavity formation in the area. The mudstone and gypsum beds within the upper part of the Gachsaran Formation are prone to dissolution. Numerous sinkholes …

Down The Rabbit Hole: Identifying Physical Controls On Sinkhole Formation In The Uk, Tamsin Green

Sinkhole Conference 2015

Heavy precipitation in the UK in February 2014 induced ground subsidence and consequently a rapid increase in the frequency of sinkhole occurrences. These new sinkhole collapses emphasise the need to further analyse the causes of the increased occurrence by investigating the relative importance of various surficial factors. Malham and the Mendips are two areas of particular interest, since both are underlain by limestone bedrock and are susceptible to subsidence. This is due to limestone being primarily permeable in joints, and so it dissolves to form an extensive network of karstic caves. It was therefore useful to compare two sites of …

Spatiotemporal Response Of Cvoc Contamination And Remedial Actions In Eogenetic Karst Aquifers, Ingrid Y. Padilla, Vilda L. Rivera, Celys Irizarry

Sinkhole Conference 2015

The northern karst region of Puerto Rico has a long and extensive history of toxic spills, chemical waste, and industrial solvent release into the subsurface. High potential for exposure in the region has prompted aggressive remediation measures, which have extended for over 40 years. Of particular concern is contamination with chlorinated volatile organic compounds (CVOCs) because of their ubiquitous presence and potential health impacts. This work evaluates historical groundwater quality data to assess the spatiotemporal distribution of CVOC contamination in the karst aquifer system of northern Puerto Rico, and its response to remedial action in two superfund sites contaminated with …

Numerical Modelling Of The Wave Propagation Close To The Sacalin Island In The Black Sea, Liliana Rusu, Dorin Butunoiu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The target area of the present work is the nearshore neighbouring the Sacalin Island in the Black Sea, right off the Danube Delta and close to the Saint George branch of the Danube River. Being a newly formed island, this is a very special coastal environment. Moreover, because it has a great variety of rare fauna, the area was declared as an ecological reserve. A multilevel wave modelling system, based on the Simulating Waves Nearshore (SWAN) spectral model, was focused on the target area. In the final computational domain, with the highest resolution in the geographical space, the effect of …

Research: South Dakota State University, Fall 2015, Christie Delfanian, Emily Weber

State of Discovery South Dakota State University's Research Magazine

CONTENTS:

Pine Ridge Elders to educate peers about wills, advanced care planning [Page] 2
Diversity: Teaching diverse learners requires responsiveness to students' needs [Page] 3
Renaissance writers address social values still relevant today [Page] 5
Forest fire expert helps Indonesians assess carbon emissions [Page] 7
Diagnostic tests key to controlling swine virus [Page] 9
Experience, networking fuel wastewater filtration research [Page] 9
Breast-feeding friendly climate benefits businesses, communities [Page] 10
Dairy scientist harness power of milk protein [Page] 11
Pharmacists' study helps prevent antibiotic-induced kidney failure [Page] 11
Plants exchange carbohydrates for nitrogen, phosphorus from mycorrhizal fungi [Page] 12

Improving Operator Situational Awareness With Wide Area Geographic Data View Displays Of The Electric Power Grid, Esa M. Rantanen, Limor Hochberg, Diego Klabjan, Mingyang Di

Articles

To reduce clutter on wide-area geographic data view displays of electric power systems, substations in geographically compact areas should be spread out and line overlaps and intersections minimized. Such pat- terns optimized with respect to given constraints can be modeled as a multicommodity flow problem. Due to the size of the developed model, we developed two clustering-based iterative algorithms to decompose the global network into smaller regions and then iteratively solve the subproblem in each region by readjusting some values. Three solutions were selected for experimental evaluation. The experimental results were somewhat inconclusive, due to naïve participants, simple task, and …

Network Analysis Of The Sardex Community Currency, Georgios Iosifidis, Yanick Charette, Giuseppe Littera, Leandros Tassiulas, Nicholas Christakis

Yale Day of Data

We present a transaction dataset and preliminary analysis results about Sardex, a complementary currency (CC) in Sardinia, Italy. Sardex is currently considered one of the most successful CCs in Europe, as it grows continuously in terms of transactions’ volume and membership, and has been already replicated in 8 other regions in Italy. We model Sardex as a transaction network and study its basic properties.

The Effect Of Urbanization On The Embodied Energy Of Drinking Water In Tampa, Florida, Mark Vincent Eli Santana

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increasing urbanization has serious implications for resource and energy use. One of these resources is drinking water. The increased amount of impervious surfaces associated with urban development is responsible for increased runoff during rain events, which may have a negative impact on the quality of nearby bodies of water, including drinking water sources. The growing populations associated with urbanization require a higher water demand. In addition, urban drinking water systems use energy to collect, treat, and distribute a safe reliable effluent to users. Therefore, this study focuses on the degree to which urbanization influences the embodied energy of drinking water …

Calibration And Validation Of The Rapidscat Scatterometer Using Natural Land Targets, Nathan Mark Madsen

Theses and Dissertations

RapidScat is a Ku-band scatterometer that was launched September 2014 and is currently operating on the International Space Station. It estimates ocean vector winds through accurate measurement of the normalized radar coefficient (σ⁰) of the ocean surface. In order to ensure the accuracy of σ⁰ measurements and consistency with previous Ku-band scatterometers, post-launch calibration and validation is necessary. Calibration and validation is performed using natural land targets, namely the Amazon and Congo rainforests, to complement calibration efforts over the ocean. The σ⁰ response of the targets is estimated with respect to viewing angle and time of …