Digital Commons Network^™

Uncertainty Estimation For Stereo Visual Odometry, Derek W. Ross

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Over the past few decades, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been increasingly popular for use in locations that are lacking, or have unreliable global navigation satellite system (GNSS) availability. One of the more popular localization techniques for quadrotors is the use of visual odometry (VO) through monocular, RGB-D, or stereo cameras. With primary applications in the context of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) and indoor navigation, VO is largely used in combination with other sensors through Bayesian filters, namely Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) or Particle Filter. This work investigates the accuracy of two standard covariance estimation techniques for a feature-based …

Evaluation Of Various Separation Techniques For The Removal Of Actinides From A Rare Earth-Containing Solution Generated From Coarse Coal Refuse, Deniz Talan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Rare earth elements have emerged as a vital commodity due to their significance in the production of high-tech devices as well as their utilization in defense and military systems. They are deemed critical due to potential scarcity, supply constraints, and the lack of minable concentrations. Therefore, alternative sources are needed to meet the demand and continue manufacturing rare earth-required products. Coal and coal by-products, in that regard, have presented a significant opportunity and proven to contain a considerable amount of rare earths. However, toxic elements such as thorium and uranium are frequently seen in the same mineralization as rare earths. …

Models And Solution Approaches For Integrated Student To School Assignment And School Bus Routing Problem Focusing On Special Needs Students, Azadeh Ansari

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation addresses the integrated problem of assigning students to schools and generating school bus routes particularly focusing on the special needs students is addressed. Special needs students generally require supplementary accommodations and must be picked up from and dropped off at their home addresses. This will increase the number of nodes in the network and therefore introduces additional complexities to the problems of assignment and routing for students. An integrated single objective mathematical model is first developed that simultaneously assigns the students to schools based on their needs and generates efficient bus routes to deliver the students to their …

Metal Supported Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Using Proton Conducting Electrolyte For Direct Ammonia Utilization, Edwin Vega Hiraldo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Transportation represents about 27% of global warming greenhouse gas emissions nowadays. To reduce these emissions, fuel cell electric vehicles have been poised to be a new trend to provide zero-emission transportation. Among them, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) offer efficient, clean energy, especially when powered by carbon-free fuel, such as ammonia. To enable onboard ammonia-fed SOFCs, a metal-supported, proton-conducting SOFC is investigated in this study. The metal support would provide physical robustness for thermal shock during vehicles’ quick start-up and shutdown, reduce internal temperature gradients due to the greater thermal conductivity of the metal, and enable conventional metal joining for …

Recovery Of Phosphorus From Florida Phosphatic Waste Clay, Amir Eskanlou

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This MS thesis examines the recovery of phosphorus (P) from Florida waste clay (WC). A comprehensive literature review revealed that: (i)-The most important values being lost to WC are P and rare earth elements (REEs). For the recovery of these values from WC, two crucial attempts are the removal of extremely fine-sized clays, followed by the recovery of phosphate content, which can pave the path for the recovery of REEs; (ii)-Any scientific/ technological solution should, at the same time, be economically and environmentally attractive to the industry. As such, moving from mostly chemical separation processes to the primarily physical/ physicochemical …

Planetary Rover Inertial Navigation Applications: Pseudo Measurements And Wheel Terrain Interactions, Cagri Kilic

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Accurate localization is a critical component of any robotic system. During planetary missions, these systems are often limited by energy sources and slow spacecraft computers. Using proprioceptive localization (e.g., using an inertial measurement unit and wheel encoders) without external aiding is insufficient for accurate localization. This is mainly due to the integrated and unbounded errors of the inertial navigation solutions and the drifted position information from wheel encoders caused by wheel slippage. For this reason, planetary rovers often utilize exteroceptive (e.g., vision-based) sensors. On the one hand, localization with proprioceptive sensors is straightforward, computationally efficient, and continuous. On the other …

Searching Harder, Localizing Better, Classifying Faster: Optimizing Fast Radio Burst Detection And Analysis, Kshitij Aggarwal

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Fast Radio Bursts (or FRBs) are millisecond-duration transients of extragalactic origin. They exhibit dispersion caused by propagation through an ionized medium, and quantified by Dispersion Measure (DM). Around 800 FRBs (24 repeaters) have been discovered; so far, 24 FRBs have been confidently associated with a host galaxy. In this thesis, we discuss multiple new FRB search and analysis techniques and the corresponding tools that enable us to search for FRBs harder, localize them better, and classify candidates faster.

We discuss five open-source software suites that can be used in FRB analysis. These suites are used to distinguish between FRBs and …

Multivariate Time Series Classification Of Sensor Data From An Industrial Drying Hopper: A Deep Learning Approach, Md Mushfiqur Rahman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In recent years, the advancement of industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing has made a large number of industrial process data attainable with the use of sensors installed in the machineries. This thesis proposes an experimental predictive maintenance framework for an industrial drying hopper so that it can detect any unusual event in the hopper which reduces the risk of erroneous fault diagnosis in the manufacturing shop floor. The experimental framework uses Deep Learning (DL) algorithms in order to classify Multivariate Time Series (MTS) data into two categories- failure or unusual events and regular events, thus formulating the problem as binary …

Productivity Index For Unconventional Gas Wells, Yousef Khajah

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Productivity Index reflects the ability of a well to produce hydrocarbons and is often used to analyze the well's performance. Productivity Index is the ratio of the flow rate to the drawdown pressure under pseudo-steady state flow conditions. The unconventional gas formation such as shale are the main target of the gas exploration and production. The application of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies have been instrumental in development of shale gas resources. The evaluation of the productivity index for unconventional gas wells is however challenging because the production mainly occurs under the transient conditions.

This research aims to evaluate …

Designs And Practical Control Methods For Soft Parallel Robots, Benjamin T. Buzzo

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The use of soft robotics is becoming an increasingly researched topic, since they can provide more flexibility in movements and increase safety when working with humans. However, they are more susceptible to modeling and manufacturing errors in the design.

The objective of this thesis is two-fold, the first objective is to determine the benefits and limitations of using calibration tables that rely on the PWM signals instead of modeling as a control method. If calibration tables are not adequate to achieve a high level of precision. The second objective is to determine if using a tethered mobile robot in unison …

Sustainability Key Performance Indicators For Mass Customization, Md Fahid Hasan Pulak

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Today’s manufacturers are striving towards a more sustainable and customized product offering in their value chain to satisfy customer demand and compete on the marketplace. By adopting sustainability practices, companies are not only complying with environmental regulations but are strategically addressing the triple bottom line (TBL) of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic). Similarly, mass customization allows a company to better satisfy their customers by creating individualized products economically. Moving forward, it is important to better understand the relationship of these two competitive strategies. In order to assess the sustainability performance of mass customization, it is important to understand the appropriate …

Evaluating Social Media As A Medium Of Private Communication Through Steganographic Images, Kendall Weldon Coles

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Social media is a vastly used communication tool with billions of users worldwide. These social networks provide users the ability to share their ideas and thoughts through the messages, videos, and images that they post. The images that are shared can possibly be embedded with private messages through the use of a steganographic tool. The messages are embedded in a fashion that doesn’t change the visual appearance of an image. This allows for these types of images to hide in plain sight, which creates the possibility of someone communicating privately in a public social media setting. This project proved how …

Meeting The Mental Health Needs Of Student-Athletes: A Descriptive Study Of Practitioners And Their Perspectives, William C. Way Iii

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Efforts are being made to promote mental health awareness and destigmatize help-seeking behavior among student-athletes (e.g., Kern et al., 2017). The availability and visibility of practitioners with specialized training in sport psychology can facilitate these efforts (e.g., Flowers, 2007; Carr, 2007; McDuff et al., 2005). However, some student-athletes have observed that the clinical sport psychology (CSP) practitioners who are available to them are being stretched thin (Way et al., 2020). In the context of collegiate mental health more broadly, many campus counseling centers are struggling to meet the demand for clinical services (e.g., Kafka, 2019). Research on the experiences and …

Iot Malicious Traffic Classification Using Machine Learning, Michael Austin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Although desktops and laptops have historically composed the bulk of botnet nodes, Internet of Things (IoT) devices have become more recent targets. Lightbulbs, outdoor cameras, watches, and many other small items are connected to WiFi and each other; and few have well-developed security or hardening. Research on botnets typically leverages honeypots, PCAPs, and network traffic analysis tools to develop detection models. The research questions addressed in this Problem Report are: (1) What machine learning algorithm performs the best in a binary classification task for a representative dataset of malicious and benign IoT traffic; and (2) What features have the most …

Deep Models For Improving The Performance And Reliability Of Person Recognition, Sobhan Soleymani

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Deep models have provided high accuracy for different applications such as person recognition, image segmentation, image captioning, scene description, and action recognition. In this dissertation, we study the deep learning models and their application in improving the performance and reliability of person recognition. This dissertation focuses on five aspects of person recognition: (1) multimodal person recognition, (2) quality-aware multi-sample person recognition, (3) text-independent speaker verification, (4) adversarial iris examples, and (5) morphed face images. First, we discuss the application of multimodal networks consisting of face, iris, fingerprint, and speech modalities in person recognition. We propose multi-stream convolutional neural network architectures …

Effect Of Diet, Age, And Genetics On Rainbow Trout Growth And Fillet Quality, Bahareh Adami

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In this study, analyses were conducted to compare fillet quality attributes of 4 rainbow trout families (40, 102, 159, and 187) fed fish meal (FM) and a fishmeal free diet (FMF), to two age endpoints, 9 and 11 months.

Previous studies with rainbow trout have evaluated the effect of age, diet, and family on growth performance and fillet quality. However, a comprehensive analysis of variables is lacking for rainbow trout, one of the main aquatic foods for domestic and international consumers.

Separable muscle as a percent whole body weight was not affected by diet, family, age, and the interaction of …

Application Of 3d Seismic Signal And Geomechanical Attributes For Subsurface Fracture Characterization: A Case Study In Clearfield County, Central Pennsylvania, Iman F. Zulkapeli

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Hydrocarbon exploration in unconventional reservoirs is highly risky due to the nature of the reservoirs and the variability in fractures and reservoir geomechanical properties in the subsurface. The reservoir needs to be fully characterized to avoid any complication such as frac hit, wellbore failure, blowout, or even a dry hole. The Clearfield reservoir produces an exceptionally low amount of gas, compared to the neighboring region in the proximity, which has been poorly understood. This raises the question as to what causes the reservoir to have low productivity.

This study focuses on the natural fracture characterization using high-quality 3D seismic signal …

Erosion And Sediment Controls On Reclaimed Mine Refuse Impoundments, Sara Dalen

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

To ensure the sustainable use of one of West Virginia’s precious resources, conscientious long-term management of residual waste is of immense importance. This thesis examined two main topics: i) the dewatering process of acid mine drainage (AMD) sludge, and ii) an investigation of soil loss predictions of a reclaimed coal refuse impoundment.

The first aspect of this thesis addresses clarification and remediation of AMD prior to disposal is a prominent component to preventing runoff and seepage of environmentally detrimental byproducts. To examine the effects of flocculation and dewatering more closely by means of geotextiles, an AMD sludge was analyzed. The …

The Energy Efficiency And Living Comfort Of A Stabilized Rammed Earth Dwelling In Comparison With A Traditional Stud Frame Building, David C. Johnson Iii

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

During the last several decades, rammed earth construction has received renewed attention due to its many desirable characteristics. For construction, use, and end of life treatment, rammed earth construction has shown in research to reduce the embodied energy of residential building construction by 66-85% compared to building methods that use fired brick and concrete members. Research thus far also indicates that rammed earth construction may indeed be more energy efficient since the building material has a very high thermal inertia, henceforth, the rammed earth walls absorb thermal energy from the sun and release it into the building to reduce the …

Review Of Modern Nondestructive Testing Techniques For Civil Infrastructure, Shabnam Khanal

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The repair and maintenance of aging infrastructures, in the United States alone, are estimated to have backlogs of trillions of dollars. This has posed widespread concerns about the existing and proposed infrastructures to adequately sustain the quality of life in the near future. Efficient and cost-effective approaches, such as nondestructive testing (NDT), are therefore required to better shape our future. Various NDT techniques have been developed over the past two decades with cutting-edge advances towards investigation and condition assessment of civil infrastructures. While the performance of NDT techniques has reached unparalleled heights, limitations remain. On one side, are the instrument …

Innovative Fe(Iii)-Dosed Anaerobic Biological Treatment System: From Fe And S Biogeochemical Reactions To Engineering Process, Musfique Ahmed

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In moving toward more sustainable wastewater management, anaerobic treatment is gaining increasing popularity due to its simplicity, low energy requirement, low sludge production and less emission of greenhouse gases compared to typical aerobic wastewater treatment systems. Electron acceptors such as nitrate, sulfate, and CO₂ have been used in various anaerobic processes for removal of organic matters from wastewater under anoxic or anaerobic environments. In energy producing regions, ferric iron, Fe(III), is a predominant element in iron containing wastes such as acid mine drainage (AMD) and coal ash, which can potentially be used as a source of iron in novel …

International Students’ Adjustment Challenges In The United States: A Case Study Of West Virginia University, Lawrencia Baaba Okai

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

International students face challenges as they endeavor to study abroad ranging from host government policies to the host country’s attitudes vis-à-vis foreign students and immigration. In some instances, they also face obstacles leaving their country of origin. The United States is the largest destination country with 24% of all international students worldwide, followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and Germany. In the United States, international students make up about 6% of all college students. They make significant contributions to the United States economy and bring several benefits, particularly to federal and state governments. They contribute to the federal government’s …

Semi Analytical Approach For Binary Mixture Conductivity In Hydraulic Fracturing, Vuong V. Pham

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In hydraulic fracturing, a proppant injection schedule practice typically applies a binary proppant mixture (for example: 100 Mesh sand following by 40/70 Mesh sand in well MIP-3H, Marcellus Shale). The former injection agent is finer in size or less resistant to stress, whereas the latter injection agent is coarser in size or more resistant to stress. This practice creates a special region inside the fracture, in which two injected proppant types co-exist and is defined as the mixture zone. This research concentrates on the variability of the mixture zone under impact of different factors, introduces novel semi-analytical modelling approach to …

Utilization Of A Numerical Reservoir Simulation With Water And Gas Injection For Verification Of Top Down Modeling, Ashley Konya

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The primary purpose of this thesis was to confirm the capabilities of artificial intelligence and machine learning through Top Down Modeling in history matching and predicting the oil, gas, and water production rates, reservoir pressure, and water saturation, of one limb of an anticline with water and gas injection. Several other characteristics were also applied to make the model more realistic to industry standards. The second purpose of this thesis was to determine the minimum amount of training and calibration data required in order to obtain good results for this particular dataset by increasing the blind validation in one year …

Impact Of The West Virginia University Mountaineer Success Academy Program From 2012-2015, Ashley D. Watts

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As state funding for universities decline and funding becomes based more on outcomes like retention and graduation rates, universities must focus their efforts on assessment and delve deeper into uncovering issues that prevent students from graduating. Once issues are identified, it is in the best interest of the university to develop, implement, and assess support services that may provide students with resources that could lead to their success, thus improving graduation rates. At West Virginia University, the Mountaineer Success Academy (MSA) was created to serve eligible students who were undecided or did not meet the requirements for their desired major. …

Assess The Performance Against Ets And Pm1 And Evaluate The Users’ Experiences Of Comfort Of Nasal Filters, Ibrahim Almuhaidib

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Many cities around the world experience severe air pollution. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 7 million people die annually from exposure to small airborne Particulate Matter (PM) that is found in atmospheric pollution. Particulate matter in atmospheric pollution is one of six classifications of common air pollutants and is typically referred to as PM₁ and PM_2.5. Particulates designated as PM₁ and PM_2.5 refer to particles having aerodynamic diameters of 1 or 2.5 micrometer (µm), respectively. These size ranges of particles are the most commonly found in air pollution. It is hard to differentiate …

Application Of Decline Curve Analysis To Unconventional Reservoirs, Majed Hisham Kabbani

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Supply and demand are the main key factors for oil and gas industry. Moreover, natural gas was not important until early 18^th century after the World War II. The first shale gas well was successfully drilled 27 ft deep in 1821. The well was drilled in the Devonian Dunkirk shale. Later in the 1980s producers began investigating into the more difficult tight gas sands in order to keep up with the growing market. A decade later in 1990s investors were looking at coalbed methane. Today, as demand is increasing globally, the oil and gas industry is moving toward shale. …

Video And Image Super-Resolution Via Deep Learning With Attention Mechanism, Xuan Xu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Image demosaicing, image super-resolution and video super-resolution are three important tasks in color imaging pipeline. Demosaicing deals with the recovery of missing color information and generation of full-resolution color images from so-called Color filter Array (CFA) such as Bayer pattern. Image super-resolution aims at increasing the spatial resolution and enhance important structures (e.g., edges and textures) in super-resolved images. Both spatial and temporal dependency are important to the task of video super-resolution, which has received increasingly more attention in recent years. Traditional solutions to these three low-level vision tasks lack generalization capability especially for real-world data. Recently, deep learning methods …

Assessment Of Heat Stress For Outdoor Work Conditions In Saudi Arabia, Jamal Alanazi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Outdoor workers have an increased risk of heat stress in Saudi Arabia since it is one of the hottest places in the Middle East. Recently, the government decided to limit outdoor work hours during the months of June, July, and August every year, and banned working under the direct sunlight from 12:00 to 03:00 p.m., although outdoor workers in the petroleum, natural gas, or emergency maintenance work industries are exempt from this prohibition. Traditionally, the efforts by safety and health professionals to mitigate work-related heat injury has been directed toward the assessment of environmental heat stress (e.g., wet-bulb globe temperature), …

Plasmon-Enhanced Optical Probes For Sensing Of Drug Metabolite, Jennifer Boryczka

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

An Au@SiO₂ core-shell nanostar structure was synthesized along with CuInS2 quantum dots. The quantum dots display near-infrared fluorescence. In this work, the nanostar structure was functionalized with antibodies and then was utilized as a SERS probe for drug metabolite detection. Drugs are an illicit substance that police, medics, and hospitals need to know if an individual is under the influence of but that individual will not always be willing or able to provide that information. A sensor based on this new probe has been developed for detection of drug metabolites in buffer.