Digital Commons Network^™

Investigating Accident-Tolerant Cladding In A Molten Salt-Cooled Micro-Reactor Using Multi-Physics Analysis And Uncertainty Quantification, Alexander Niles Foutch

Masters Theses

"Renewed interest in nuclear safety has resulted in development of accident-tolerant materials, such as cladding. Although developed for light water reactors, their use in more advanced reactors would save time and development costs for other new materials. This paper performed a Multiphysics investigation into the power profile, thermodynamics, heat transfer, and tensor mechanics of four candidate materials (Haynes 230, Zircaloy-4, FeCrAl, and SiC-SiC), using the highly benchmarked Kilo power design as an example of a high-temperature, highly enriched, sodium-cooled microreactor environment.

From neutronic code MCNP, no significant difference in power profile was found among the four. Using finite element software …

Discrete Event Simulation (Des) In Swapping/Charging Of Battery Electric Vehicles In Underground Mining, Albert Einstein Amponsem

Masters Theses

"With climate change concerns escalating, international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, the US Presidential Policy, and the Paris Agreement aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, targeting significant reductions by 2050. The mining sector, a notable contributor to GHG emissions primarily through diesel-powered material haulage, emits approximately 68 million tons of CO₂ annually. Transitioning to Battery Electric Trucks (BETs) presents a viable mitigation strategy by replacing diesel trucks with electric alternatives, thus eliminating CO₂ emissions.

However, the effectiveness of BETs hinges on optimized battery swapping and charging procedures. This study employs Discrete Event Simulation (DES), a computational …

Development Of A Particulate Matter Sensor Network For Air Quality Monitoring In Indoor Settings And In Mines, Abdulrahman Bani

Masters Theses

"The importance of indoor air quality (IAQ), especially concerning particulate matter (PM), has become increasingly recognized due to its substantial impact on public health. Individuals spend a significant portion of their time indoors, where PM concentrations can exceed that of outdoors, leading to potential adverse health effects ranging from immediate irritation to long-term respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The dynamic nature of indoor environments, combined with the diversity of PM sources, presents considerable challenges for effective IAQ monitoring and management. Traditional approaches to IAQ assessment often fall short, lacking the granularity and immediacy required to address these challenges adequately.

This abstract …

Comparative Study Of Crypto Volatility And Price Forecasting Using A Mixture Of Time Series And Machine Learning Models, Abhishek Kafle

Masters Theses

"Forecasting financial product volatility and price is crucial for informed decision-making in investment and risk management. The models considered include GARCH, LSTM, GRU, BiLSTM, and hybrid models that incorporate various combinations of these models. We present a comparative analysis of forecasting volatility and price using the aforementioned models.

We also introduce a user-friendly dashboard for model training and evaluation, enabling users to upload datasets and customize model parameters. The dashboard allows users to select the type of model, specify the dataset range for training, determine the number of epochs, adjust the number of layers for deep …

Environmental Health And Impact Of Workload On Errors For Wildland Fire Personnel, Michael Bryan Held

Masters Theses

"This thesis offers an analysis of how environmental health and workload affect wildland fire dispatchers and firefighters, combining results from two studies. The first study, "Environmental Health of Wildland Firefighters: A Scoping Review," performs a scoping review of scientific literature that examines the unique environmental health challenges wildland firefighters face. The review points out the increased risks to safety, health, and well-being from more exposure to natural hazards, identifying key research gaps and priorities. It stresses the need to broaden the geographic and demographic scope of studies, improve analytical methods, and increase research funding and focus for wildland firefighters.

The …

The Graduation Walk: Pareto Optimization Of Degree Paths, Arianna Gail Sy Chaves

Masters Theses

"A student’s academic history, course availability at their institution, and the overall degree of difficulty of the schedule for each semester are all critical factors in their academic success and experience. This thesis proposes an advanced recommendation algorithm that considers these real and conflicting factors that are involved in identifying a prudent degree path - a semester-by-semester course schedule to graduation - for each student. The original contribution of this work is the use of weighted-sum multi-objective constraint programming to minimize an increased number of optimization criteria and identify Pareto-optimal degree paths to be recommended to the student. The conflicting …

Ontogenetically Driven Changes In The Endocranial Anatomy Of Maiasaura Peeblesorum And Its Implications For Sensory Functions, Emma Puetz

Masters Theses

"Hadrosaurids exhibited extreme morphological diversity and behavioral characteristics that can be compared with other, closely related members of Dinosauria – particularly through the study of neuroanatomy. X-ray CT generated endocrania of the Late Cretaceous saurolophine hadrosaur Maiasaura peeblesorum, known as the “good mother” dinosaur, offers a unique opportunity to compare complex ecological behaviors between non-avian dinosaurs and their modern archosaur relatives. The 3D reconstruction software ORS Dragonfly provided linear and volumetric measurements taken from the digital cranial endocast and endosseous labyrinths of three ontogenetically varied M. peeblesorum specimens from the Two Medicine Formation in Montana that were used to …

Learn From The Past: Using Peer Data To Improve Course Recommendations In Personalized Education, Colton Walker

Masters Theses

"This work describes a recommendation approach designed to enhance student success by identifying semester schedules and graduation paths. The primary objective is to provide personalized graduation path recommendations rooted in individual student performance and draw insights from the academic journeys of similar students who successfully graduated. The original research contribution of this work lies in the development of a graduation path recommender system that leverages a combination of Markov Decision Process, Q-Learning, and collaborative filtering techniques to pinpoint graduation paths with a higher likelihood of leading students to success based on their academic progress thus far. The effectiveness of the …

Metal-Ion Doped Borate Bioactive Glasses- A Novel Direction In Minimizing Nosocomial Infections And Antibiotic Resistance, Sarah Fakher

Masters Theses

"Nosocomial infections represent a formidable challenge and induce a substantial burden on patients and healthcare systems. These infections result from the interaction of numerous pathogenic microorganisms, particularly bacteria, and lead to increased morbidity, mortality, and healthcare costs. Extensive research has been carried out to devise innovative solutions, mainly focusing on antimicrobial natural and synthetic substances. However, the proclivity of bacterial strains to form biofilms complicates treatment and elevates antibiotic resistance, prompting research into pioneering more effective and versatile antibacterial strategies. Borate bioactive glasses (BBGs) are the latest, remarkable classes of biomaterials with a wide array of medical applications, owing to …

Evaluating Electromagnetic Interference On Gnss Receivers, Giorgi Tsintsadze

Masters Theses

"Due to high power and efficiency requirements of modern electrical drive system, inverters are utilizing fast-edge pulses as a drive signal. The high frequency pulses contain higher order harmonics can radiate electromagnetic interference above accepted levels. Modelling and understanding the mechanism that causes the radiation is studied, modelled and presented as gray-box model which contains circuit level modelling of coupling between electrical machine phase windings and low power sensor harness. The thesis consists of two main papers. In the first paper, radiated emissions from an electrical drive system is charac- terized thru gray-box modelling where coupling between electrical machine phase …

Human Arm Stiffness Estimation Method Developed For Overground Physical Interaction Experiments: Experimental Validation And Perspectives For Future Applications, Tarani Kanth Kamma

Masters Theses

"To build a physically interactive robot for overground applications, it is crucial to first understand the biomechanics of humans underlying overground physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) tasks. Estimating human arm stiffness during overground interactive tasks is a promising first step toward this goal. For this, an arm stiffness estimation technique was developed in our previous works that consider the unique challenges involving overground pHRI, such as the need to estimate the arm stiffness from a short duration of data with fewer repetitions. In this work, our stiffness estimation method is further validated with a passive spring setup with known stiffness values, …

Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis Of Thermal-Hydraulic Phenomena In Nuclear Reactor Systems, Mehedi Hasan Tusar

Masters Theses

"A computational analysis of thermal-hydraulic processes in nuclear reactor systems is performed, leveraging Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to advance the design and ensure the safety of nuclear reactors. Divided into two primary sections, the initial part examines thermal-hydraulic behavior in the Replacement Research Reactor (RRR) operating at 20 megawatts and evaluates potential enhancements for the Missouri University of Science and Technology Reactor (MSTR) to operate at an increased capacity of 2 megawatts from the existing 0.2 megawatts. Detailed simulations reveal insights into flow characteristics, temperature distributions, and pressure drops, highlighting the effective use of realistic and porous media modeling techniques …

Sub-Critical Crack Growth And Fatigue Behaviour Of Alkali Silicate Glass, Noah Weyrauch

Masters Theses

"Delayed failure in silicate glasses can be linked to subcritical crack growth (SCCG) where surface defects grow over time until catastrophic failure. This phenomenon originates from stress-enhanced chemical interactions between the environment (e.g. water) and the strained silicate bonds at the crack tip. SCCG must be accounted for to predict the long-term survivability of silicate-glass components. This study compares two methods to measure SCCG parameters for a commercial alkali silicate sealing glass and for a series of binary xNa₂O-(1-x)SiO₂ glasses, where 0.15 ≤ x ≤ 0.35. A constant moment double cantilever beam (DCB) technique was used to …

Protein Turnover Rate And Life History As An Explanation Of The Extreme Difference In Cost Of Biosynthesis In Cockroach Nymphs And Painted Lady Butterfly Larva, Kyara Nicole Holloway

Masters Theses

The cost of biosynthesis in painted lady caterpillars is far lower than that of a red runner cockroach. A promising explanation for this phenomenon is the protein turnover rate for the animal during biosynthesis and tissue maintenance. Previous research has shown that, per gram of body weight, the painted lady butterfly can synthesize a biomass using up to 15x less energy and resources than the cockroach, even under similar conditions. The resulting ratios, especially in respect to growth rate, show a wide disparity between species in such a manner that does support a protein synthesis and degradation rates as a …

A Gat-Bilstma Model For Weather-Aware Prediction Of Traffic Speed, Bikis Muhammed

Masters Theses

This thesis presented a method for incorporating the effect of weather conditions in the prediction of the average speed of vehicular traffic for each segment of a road network. The proposed approach utilized two different deep learning methods: graph attention networks and bidirectional long short-term memory with attention layers. The accuracy of predictions is increased by considering the real-world driving distance between road segments, in contrast to the Haversine distance used in several existing prediction methods. Categorization of input data as weekend or weekday further increased the prediction accuracy. The proposed approach was validated using two data sets published by …

In Situ High Temperature Fiber-Optic Raman Sensor For Industrial Applications, Bohong Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

"Continuous casting in steel production uses specially developed oxyfluoride glasses (mold fluxes) to lubricate a mold and control the solidification of the steel in the mold. The composition of the flux impacts properties, including basicity, viscosity, and crystallization rate, all of which affect the stability of the casting process and the quality of the solidified steel. However, mold fluxes interact with steel during the casting process, resulting in flux chemistry changes that must be considered in the flux design. Currently, the chemical composition of mold flux must be determined by extracting flux samples from the mold during casting and then …

Design And Development Of Biocompatible Mofs And Silica-Based Nanocarriers With Controlled Pharmacokinetics For Drug Delivery Applications, Neila Pederneira

Doctoral Dissertations

"In the past decade, a big interest has drawn into nanoporous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and silica-based materials as nanocarriers for drug delivery applications, owing to their exceptionally high surface area and highly structured porous network. The overall goal of this research was to optimize the pharmacokinetic behavior of several highly porous biocompatible drug carriers that have the potential to carry Ibuprofen, 5-Fluorouracil, and Curcumin to the desired tissue without creating a burst effect and minimizing the amount of dosage and size that conventional capsules require. The specific objectives of this study are to (i) assess the effect of drug solubility …

Improving Decision-Making Processes In Construction And Infrastructure Bidding: Qualitative And Quantitative Approaches Including Graph Theory, Game Theory, And Machine Learning, Muaz Osman Elzubeir Ahmed

Doctoral Dissertations

"Construction and infrastructure bidding is a highly competitive process that entails various uncertainties faced by contractors. Contractors weigh various factors to determine the expected benefits of a construction project and decide their bid value. However, the situation is more complex in multi-stage bidding (MSG), where general contractors must account for the bids of their subcontractors and face a greater threat of the winner’s curse (i.e., situation where the winning contractor underestimates the actual cost of the project). As such, bidding-related complexities, risks, and uncertainties, if uncontrolled, can lead to the rise of claims and disputes between stakeholders. Existing research falls …

In-Depth Characterization Of The Selective Oxidation Products Of Hafnium Carbide, Jonathan Allen Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

"Materials capable of withstanding oxidative environments at temperatures >2000°C are necessary for hypersonic applications. Hafnium carbide (HfC) shows a combination of properties that lends itself toward these applications; however, its oxidation behavior is poorly understood. At 1300°C, HfC was found to oxidize via the following mechanism: 1) Initial oxidation of both C and Hf present in the system, 2) Formation of an interconnected pore network, whose size is related to the volume of gases being generated during the oxidation process, 3) Growth of the oxide scale to become sufficiently protective, 4) Formation of an initially amorphous “HfO₂C” at …

Pseudo-Three-Dimensional Back-Analysis Of Rainfall-Induced Landslides In Utuado, Puerto Rico, Mirna Kassem, Weibing Gong, Dimitrios Zekkos, Marin Clark, Stephen Hughes

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Regional slope stability analyses can provide a system-level assessment of landslide susceptibility. This study aims to develop a regional back-analysis model for rainfall-induced landslides to compute ground shear strength that can be used for landslide prediction. Most commonly, mechanistic-based models for regional slope stability consist of simplified one-dimensional (1D) analyses compared to more realistic three-dimensional (3D) procedures. A pseudo-3D methodology is applied on 788 landslides over two 2.5 km2 areas in the plutonic rocks of the Utuado Batholith. First, an infinite slope stability triggering model is applied on a 1 m-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) to identify the triggering grid …

Experimental Study: Evaluating The Effect Of Low High Viscosity Friction Reducer Concentrations To Transport Proppant Across Static And Dynamic Models, Ghith Biheri, Abdulmohsin Imqam, Shari Dunn-Norman, Khaled Elmaleh

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Hydraulic fracturing treatments may significantly improve the oil production from wells in unconventional reservoirs by enhancing the fracture conductivities. Fracture conductivity can be improved by efficiently transporting and distributing the proppant through the lengths of the fractures. The main target of this study is to evaluate the viscosity and elasticity of high viscosity friction reducer (HVFR) for the purpose of transport and suspend the proppant at a temperature of 25°C. This study an alyzes the settling of proppant across HVFR using two different concentrations, 0.5 and 1 gallon per thousand of gallon (gpt). The tests were conducted using two static …

Incivility In Open Source Projects: A Comprehensive Annotated Dataset Of Locked Github Issue Threads, Ramtin Ehsani, Mia Mohammad Imran, Robert Zita, Kostadin Damevski, Preetha Chatterjee

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the dynamic landscape of open-source software (OSS) development, understanding and addressing incivility within issue discussions is crucial for fostering healthy and productive collaborations. This paper presents a curated dataset of 404 locked GitHub issue discussion threads and 5961 individual comments, collected from 213 OSS projects. We annotated the comments with various categories of incivility using Tone Bearing Discussion Features (TBDFs), and, for each issue thread, we annotated the triggers, targets, and consequences of incivility. We observed that Bitter frustration, Impatience, and Mocking are the most prevalent TBDFs exhibited in our dataset. The most common triggers, targets, and consequences of …

Trusted Digital Twin Network For Intelligent Vehicles, Asad Malik, Ayan Roy, Sanjay Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) infrastructure facilitates wireless communication among vehicles within close proximity. This allows sharing of contextual information such as speed, location, direction, traffic, route closures, human behavior mental conditions to improve traffic flow, reduce collisions, and enhance safety on the road. However, the assumption of honest peers along with the over-reliability on the information shared in the network can pose a serious threat to human safety. A digital twin is a concept that enables a system to develop a virtual environment that mimics the real-life scenario for any situation. The availability of powerful computing equipment inside vehicles can be leveraged …

Eye-Gaze Guided Multi-Modal Alignment For Medical Representation Learning, Chong Ma, Hanqi Jiang, Wenting Chen, Yiwei Li, Zihao Wu, Xiaowei Yu, Zhengliang Liu, Lei Guo, Dajiang Zhu, Tuo Zhang, Dinggang Shen, Tianming Liu, Xiang Li

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the medical multi-modal frameworks, the alignment of cross-modality features presents a significant challenge. However, existing works have learned features that are implicitly aligned from the data, without considering the explicit relationships in the medical context. This data-reliance may lead to low generalization of the learned alignment relationships. In this work, we propose the Eye-gaze Guided Multi-modal Alignment (EGMA) framework to harness eye-gaze data for better alignment of medical visual and textual features. We explore the natural auxiliary role of radiologists' eye-gaze data in aligning medical images and text and introduce a novel approach by using eye-gaze data, collected synchronously …

Evaluating Friction Characteristics Of High Friction Surface Treatment Application Under Varied Polishing And Slippery Conditions, Alireza Roshan, Magdy Abdelrahman

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The frictional attributes of high friction surface treatment (HFST) play a crucial role in ensuring optimal traffic safety, particularly in wet weather conditions. Friction consists of two important components: adhesion and hysteresis. This research focuses on evaluating these essential factors in HFST using two different aggregates and two distinct sizes by considering various abrasion and polishing methods. To isolate these components for assessment, testing was carried out under various slippery conditions, including dry, wet with water, and wet with water + soap. The inclusion of liquid hand soap in the test procedure effectively minimized or even eliminated the adhesion component's …

A Review Of Dielectric Barrier Discharge Cold Atmospheric Plasma For Surface Sterilization And Decontamination, Kolawole Adesina, Ta Chun Lin, Yue-Wern Huang, Marek Locmelis, Daoru Frank Han

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Numerous investigations have shown that non-equilibrium discharges at atmospheric pressure, also known as "cold atmospheric plasma" (CAP) are efficient to remove biological contaminants from surfaces of a variety of materials. Recently, CAP has quickly advanced as a technique for microbial cleaning, wound healing, and cancer therapy due to the chemical and biologically active radicals it produces, known collectively as reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS). This article reviews studies pertaining to one of the atmospheric plasma sources known as Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) which has been widely used to treat materials with microbes for sterilization, disinfection, and decontamination purposes. To …

In Vitro Assessment Of The Anti-Biofilm Effectiveness Of Copper And Zinc Enhanced Borate Bioactive Glass Using Processed Microscopic Images, Sarah Fakher, David J. Westenberg

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

The escalating burden of nosocomial infections presents a formidable challenge to healthcare systems worldwide, leading to increased morbidity, prolonged hospital stays, and elevated healthcare costs. These infections are often resistant to conventional antibiotic therapies due to their association with biofilms which contribute to the persistence and resistance of pathogens. In addressing the challenge of biofilm-associated nosocomial infections, borate bioactive glasses (BBGs) have emerged as promising biomaterials. Doping these glasses with antimicrobial metals could potentially harness their antibacterial properties to prevent biofilm formation. This study undertakes a rigorous evaluation of the anti-biofilm efficacy of copper and zinc-doped BBGs by employing processed …

Advanced Detection Of Sars-Cov-2 And Omicron Variants Via Mxene-Graphene Hybrid Biosensors Utilizing Nucleic Acid Probes, Jiaoli Li, Yuwei Zhang, Congjie Wei, Yanxiao Li, Zhekun Peng, Hsin Yin Chuang, Logan Pearce, Adrianus Boon, Yue-Wern Huang, Dong Hyun Kim, Risheng Wang, Chenglin Wu

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Low-cost biosensors that can rapidly and widely detect viruses are critical for faster diagnosis and treatment decision-making, especially for infections. The commonly used field-effect transistor is sensitive to the biomarker's detection but struggles with precise detection, particularly of nontargets such as ions and proteins. To overcome this limitation, we developed a field-effect transistor biosensor design based on MXene-graphene materials to increase the accuracy and sensitivity of virus detection. Based on the hybridization process between two complementary DNA strands, single-stranded nucleic acids were immobilized on the sensing surface via 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane and glutaraldehyde to capture the nucleic acids of the target virus. …

Agent-Based Modeling For Understanding Incentives Associated With Distributed Solar Generation, Gasser Ali, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Distributed solar generation (DSG), such as residential photo-voltaic (PV) solar panels, offers many benefits to consumers and can improve the sustainability and resilience of the electric power infrastructure. As such, many local and national authorities implemented policy incentives, such as rebates and loans with reduced interests, to promote the adoption of DSG. However, the increasing penetration of DSG is creating new obstacles for system operators due to the uncertainty in forecasting electrical power demand. There is a need to investigate how incentives affect DSG adoption. To achieve that goal, a complex system-of-systems (SoS) model is developed using agent-based modeling (ABM). …

System Dynamics Modeling For Investigating The Retention Of Skilled Labor In The Construction Market, Tamima Elbashbishy, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Limited skilled labor has been one of the greatest challenges facing the construction industry, especially after COVID. In 2019, around 80% of contractors in the US reported problems in hiring enough skilled workers. Labor retention has been one of the major contributors to skilled labor shortages in construction. The goal of this paper is to study the impact of key construction industry characteristics and economic conditions on skilled labor shortages. This goal is achieved by simulating the flow of skilled workers throughout the construction industry. To this end, a system dynamics (SD) model was developed to represent skilled labor and …