Digital Commons Network^™

The Viability Of Advantg Deterministic Method For Synthetic Radiography Generation, Andrew Albert Bingham

Masters Theses

"Time sensitive and high resolution image simulations are needed for synthetic radiography generation. The standard stochastic approach requires lengthy run times with poor statistics at higher resolutions. The investigation of the viability of a deterministic approach to synthetic radiography image generation was explored. The aim was to analyze a computational time decrease over the stochastic method. ADVANTG was compared to MCNP in multiple scenarios including a Benchtop CT prototype, to simulate high resolution radiography images. By using ADVANTG deterministic code to simulate radiography images the computational time was found to decrease over 10 times compared to the MCNP stochastic approach"--Abstract, …

Survey And Data Analysis Of Weak Gel Treatments In Injection Wells, Zhuxing Chen

Masters Theses

"Excessive water production is a major concern in mature reservoirs. Weak gels have been applied in injection wells for in-depth profile modification. However, the data range and distribution of each parameter that affects performance of weak gels have not been studied thoroughly.

China has the largest amount of chemical-based conformance control treatments. This paper presents a summary of comprehensive data ranges and distributions for weak gel treatments based on the laboratory experiments and field applications in China from 2001 to 2010. The data set includes 76 cases compiled from China Academic Journals papers. In this study, reservoir properties, gel properties …

Cyber-Physical Security Of A Chemical Plant, Prakash Rao Dunaka

Masters Theses

"The increasing number of cyber attacks on industries demands immediate attention for providing more secure mechanisms to safeguard industries and minimize risks. A supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system employing the distributed networks of sensors and actuators that interact with the physical environment is vulnerable to attacks that target the interface between the cyber and physical subsystems. These cyber attacks are typically malicious actions that cause undesired results in the cyber physical world, for example, the Stuxnet attack that targeted Iran's nuclear centrifuges. An attack that hijacks the sensors in an attempt to provide false readings to the controller …

Design And Analysis Of A Passive Heat Removal System For A Small Modular Reactor Using Star Ccm+, Raymond Michael Fanning

Masters Theses

"Next generation nuclear power plants, specifically small modular reactor designs, are the best alternative to fossil fuels for power generation due to their power density and low carbon emissions and constant awareness of safety concerns. A promising safety feature of new designs is the removal of heat by passive systems in accident scenarios. The passive systems require no moving parts and no intervention by personnel. These systems must be accurately simulated for better understanding of the heat transport phenomena: natural convection cooling. Due to the fact that most work developing these passive heat removal systems are proprietary information, a passive …

The Use Of Ceramic Water Filters Under Pressure In An In-Line Water Pumping System, Travis Dean Gardner

Masters Theses

"Ceramic pot filters (CPFs) have proven an effective point of use (POU) filter due to their relative low cost, ease to manufacture, and effectiveness at treating contaminated water. These filters are used by individual homes, and sometimes multiple filters are needed for each home in order to produce enough water for the family's household. If these filters could be used in-line with a pumping system or elevated storage tank, water could be filtered and used on demand for a community in an economically feasible way. However, CPFs are too fragile to use under pressure due to the weak points where …

Micro-Grid Implementation Of A Rooftop Photovoltaic System, Pranav Nitin Godse

Masters Theses

"In recent years, solar power has been a popular form of renewable energy. This research conducts a cost analysis in implementing a rooftop photovoltaic system as part of an energy management schema for a university campus. The proposed system would be installed on the roof of one of the largest buildings on campus at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Toomey Hall; the objective function of the research involves reducing dependence on conventional energy sources on campus. Toomey Hall houses the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) and is the largest academic unit on campus. Considering the vast expanse …

Provenance And Depositional Environments Of Fluvial-Lacustrine Deposits In A Non-Marine Rift Basin, Lower-Triassic Jiucaiyuan And Shaofanggou Low-Order Cycles Bogda Shan, Nw China, Jaimeson Grigaitis Fredericks

Masters Theses

"The uppermost Carboniferous to Lower Triassic eolian-fluvial-lacustrine deposits of Turpan-Junggar Basin, NW China, record the non-marine sediment-filling processes in a continental rift basin in mid-latitude NE Pangea. This study focuses on the fluvial-lacustrine strata of the Lower Triassic Jiucaiyuan (JCY) and Shaofanggou (SFG) low-order cycles (LCs) in multiple half grabens at the southern and northern foothills of Bogda Shan. Outcrop, paleocurrent, and petrographic analyses indicate a southern provenance. Intermediate to felsic volcanic lithics and metamorphic lithics are interpreted as being derived from Tian Shan to the south while the sedimentary lithics originate from the local rift shoulders. The basaltic lithics …

The Pantograph Equation In Quantum Calculus, Thomas Griebel

Masters Theses

"In this thesis, the pantograph equation in quantum calculus is investigated. The pantograph equation is a famous delay differential equation that has been known since 1971. Till the present day, the continuous and the discrete cases of the pantograph equation are well studied. This thesis deals with different pantograph equations in quantum calculus. An explicit solution representation and the exponential behavior of solutions of a pantograph equation are proved. Furthermore, several pantograph equations regarding asymptotic stability are considered. In fact, conditions for the asymptotic stability of the zero solution are derived and subsequently illustrated by examples. Moreover, an explicit solution …

High Speed Serial Link Design With Multi-Level Signaling And Characteristic Impedance Extraction From A Transmission Line With Meshed Ground Planes, Jiayi He

Masters Theses

"Channel bandwidth and manufacturing process have become two limitations in today's high speed designs. In order to overcome the channel bandwidth limitation, multilevel signaling is seen as one of the ways to achieve higher data rates. Using multilevel signaling as the coding scheme will impose new challenges in high speed serial link design. Due to manufacturing limitations, only transmission lines with meshed ground planes are allowed in some applications. Meshed power and ground planes have been widely used in today's flexible PCB designs to satisfy repeatability installation and reliability requirements.

In Section 1, high speed serial link design with PAM4 …

Bio-Inspired Flow Fields For Pem Fuel Cells- Decoupling Pressure And Distribution Effects On Performance And Identifying Design Opportunities, Joshua David Heck

Masters Theses

"The performance of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) is significantly impacted by flow distributor geometry. The effects of flow distributor geometry on PEMFCs was explored in two ways in this study. Firstly, the relative effects of pressure and distribution characteristics of different flow fields on fuel cell unit and system level performance were considered. A method of decoupling these effects was proposed and demonstrated by application to the traditional serpentine and parallel flow field designs.The performance of these two designs were modeled computationally and it was shown that, of the 17% better performance of the serpentine design, 12% was …

Personalizing Education With Algorithmic Course Selection, Tyler Morrow

Masters Theses

"The work presented in this thesis utilizes context-aware recommendation to facilitate personalized education and assist students in selecting courses (or in non-traditional curricula, topics or modules) that meet curricular requirements, leverage their skills and background, and are relevant to their interests. The original research contribution of this thesis is an algorithm that can generate a schedule of courses with consideration of a student's profile, minimization of cost, and complete adherence to institution requirements. The research problem at hand - a constrained optimization problem with potentially conflicting objectives - is solved by first identifying a minimal sets of courses a student …

Leveraging Knowledge At Startups, Amruta Anil Ranade

Masters Theses

"Startups contribute to the economy and job creation in the United States. One of the primary assets of startups is tacit knowledge of the employees of the startup. Technical communicators can help startups capture, share, and leverage the tacit knowledge at startups. Technical communicators could benefit from learning how knowledge management initiatives at startups work. The current study is an ethnographic case-study that was conducted at a fast-growing startup in California.

The data for the study was collected through observations, informal and semi-structured formal interviews with participants, and feedback from customers of the startup. The collected data was analyzed based …

Novel Approaches For Efficient Stochastic Computing, Ramu Seva

Masters Theses

"This thesis is comprised of two papers, where the first paper presents a novel approach for parallel implementation of SC using FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). This paper makes use of the distributed memory elements of FPGAs (i.e., look-up-tables -LUTs) to achieve this. An attempt has been made to build the stochastic number generators (SNGs) by using the proposed LUT approach. The construction of these SNGs has been influenced by the Quasi-random number sequences, which provide the advantage of reducing the random fluctuations present in the pseudo-random number generators such as LFSR (Linear Feedback Shift Register) as well as the …

Decodable Network Coding In Wireless Network, Junwei Su

Masters Theses

"Network coding is a network layer technique to improve transmission efficiency. Coding packets is especially beneficial in a wireless environment where the demand for radio spectrum is high. However, to fully realize the benefits of network coding two challenging issues that must be addressed are: (1) Guaranteeing separation of coded packets at the destination, and (2) Mitigating the extra coding/decoding delay. If the destination has all the needed packets to decode a coded packet, then separation failure can be averted. If the scheduling algorithm considers the arrival time of coding pairs, then the extra delay can be mitigated. In this …

Evaluation Of Swelling And Re-Swelling Of Preformed Particle Gels (Ppg) When Exposed To Co₂, Sujay Suresh

Masters Theses

"Long term water/gas flooding induces high permeability channels in reservoirs. Reservoir heterogeneity becomes the most prominent challenge faced in mature oil fields. Gel treatment has been a proven solution to counter the problem of reservoir heterogeneity, to provide in-depth treatment and improve the sweep efficiency for reservoirs. Preformed particle gels (PPGs) were developed as an alternative to in-situ gels as they preferentially penetrate and shutoff high permeability zones, leaving the low permeability zones undamaged. These gels have been predominantly used in water flooding projects, but have not been employed in carbon dioxide (CO₂) flooding projects. CO₂ Resistant …

Characterization Of The Rectification Behaviour Of In-Amps And Estimating The Near Field Coupling From Smps Circuits To A Nearby Antenna Using Dipole Moments, Chunyu Wu

Masters Theses

"This thesis discusses two parts.

In the first part, the rectification behavior of popular instrumentation amplifiers is measured in both common mode and single-ended RF noise injection. It is recommended that AD8221 be used in common mode RF noise injection environment. And AD8220 and AD8429 are recommended in single-ended RF noise injection environment. The mechanism of RF noise rectification inside in-amps is also discussed. It is verified that rectification mainly happens at the non-inverting input of two op-amps in the first stage of an in-amp. The DC voltage difference between inverting input and non-inverting input of the in-amp is further …

Comparison Of Voltage Regulation Between Sst And Conventional Transformers In High Penetration Pv Power Systems, Gautham Ashokkumar

Masters Theses

"Solid state transformers (SST) are power electronic transformers combined with high-frequency conventional transformers and control circuitry capable of delivering high performance and flexible power control capabilities. This thesis focuses on analyzing the performance of SSTs in a distribution system with photovoltaic (PV) injection. In order to validate the performance of SSTs, average value models are used on the IEEE 34 bus distribution feeder network scaled to 12.47 kV. SST voltage profiles on the load side are analyzed and the unity power factor capabilities are demonstrated. This is followed by the study of voltage profiles on the primary side of the …

Study Of Surface Complexation And Mineral Dissolution During Water-Rock Interaction In High Salinity Waterflooding At Elevated Temperatures, Sameer Salasakar

Masters Theses

"High salinity waterflooding for carbonate reservoirs is efficient and cheap method used for improved oil recovery. Various mechanisms have been proposed including adsorption/desorption on rock surface, mineral dissolution and precipitation, multicomponent ion exchange, interfacial tension reduction, fine migration and double layer expansion. These all process alter the wettability which leads to improved oil recovery.

Objective of this study was to understand processes that occur during water-rock interaction when high salinity water is flooded into the reservoir. In this work, effect of temperature on water-rock interaction is studied along with effect of pH and specific surface areas of calcite at normal …

Effect Of Fracture Heterogeneity On Proppant Transport And Settling Mechanism, Dhurgham Abdulameer Kadhim

Masters Theses

"Proppant transport modeling through fractures with slickwater fluid systems assumes uniform and homogeneous fracture widths by implying constant fluid behavior at wall boundaries. Hydraulic fracturing mineback operations have demonstrated that induced fractures are heterogeneous and varying in width. This work investigates the impact of fracture width heterogeneity, roughness, and leak-off on ceramic proppant transport and settling, using proppant distribution concepts of Equilibrium Dune Level (EDL) and equilibrium Dune Length (EDX). Experimental work was conducted to investigate the impact of fracture width heterogeneity by varying fracture width along two plexiglass sheets. To mimic actual hydraulic fractures, the injection side was designed …

Analysis Of Outsourcing Data To The Cloud Using Autonomous Key Generation, Mortada Abdulwahed Aman

Masters Theses

"Cloud computing, a technology that enables users to store and manage their data at a low cost and high availability, has been emerging for the past few decades because of the many services it provides. One of the many services cloud computing provides to its users is data storage. The majority of the users of this service are still concerned to outsource their data due to the integrity and confidentiality issues, as well as performance and cost issues, that come along with it. These issues make it necessary to encrypt data prior to outsourcing it to the cloud. However, encrypting …

Multiple Security Domain Model Of A Vehicle In An Automated Vehicle System, Uday Ganesh Kanteti

Masters Theses

"This thesis focuses on the security of automated vehicle platoons. Specifically, it examines the vulnerabilities that occur via disruptions of the information flows among the different types of sensors, the communications network and the control unit in each vehicle of a platoon. Multiple security domain nondeducibility is employed to determine whether the system can detect attacks. The information flows among the various domains provide insights into the vulnerabilities that exist in the system by showing if an attacker’s actions cannot be deduced. If nondeducibility is found to be true, then an attacker can create an undetectable attack. Defeating nondeducibility requires …

Quantifying Ceramic Proppant Transport In Complex Fracture Networks, Vivekvardhan Reddy Kesireddy

Masters Theses

"Water fracs have become an essential part of unconventional reservoirs to create deeper fracture networks. Proppant transport in water fracs is challenging in terms of fluids ability to carry the proppant deeper into these fracture networks. This experimental study investigates the impact of the flow rates, fracture widths and complexity controlling the ability of proppant to flow into complex fracture networks. This research attempts to nullify the knowledge gap in understanding width heterogeneity in primary and secondary fractures. This study speaks for settling pattern and proppant transport through a slot flow model with a unique approach to understand stage wise …

Overview Of Co₂ Leakage Problems And Sealants For Co₂ Leakage Remediation, Shudai Peng

Masters Theses

"Excessive Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emission has become a serious issue and caused lots of environmental problems. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) program has been developed to reduce the CO₂ content in the atmosphere. CO₂ storage has been targeted mainly on depleted oil or gas reservoirs and deep saline aquifers. However, leakage could occur through wellbores, cap rocks, formation faults, and fractures during and after CO₂ injection. To minimize the risk, different types of sealants have been investigated to prevent CO₂ leaks. The aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive review of the materials which could be used as …

Sparse Emission Source Microscopy For Rapid Emission Source Imaging, Ling Zhang

Masters Theses

"In Paper I, Sparse Emission Source Microscopy (ESM) methodology will be introduced and discussed for the localization of major EMI radiation sources in complex and large systems. Traditional ESM method takes abundant and uniformly-distributed scanning points on the scanning plane using a robotic system, which can provide high-quality source images but consumes too much time. This section presents a sparse and nonuniform sampling technique for ESM, which is more time-efficient in identifying major radiation sources, even though the image quality is sacrificed. The feasibility of sparse sampling is mathematically proved, and it is shown that increasing number of points increases …

A Bounded Actor-Critic Algorithm For Reinforcement Learning, Ryan Jacob Lawhead

Masters Theses

"This thesis presents a new actor-critic algorithm from the domain of reinforcement learning to solve Markov and semi-Markov decision processes (or problems) in the field of airline revenue management (ARM). The ARM problem is one of control optimization in which a decision-maker must accept or reject a customer based on a requested fare. This thesis focuses on the so-called single-leg version of the ARM problem, which can be cast as a semi-Markov decision process (SMDP). Large-scale Markov decision processes (MDPs) and SMDPs suffer from the curses of dimensionality and modeling, making it difficult to create the transition probability matrices (TPMs) …

Dynamic Electromechanical Characterization Of Ferroelectrics At Cryogenic Temperatures, William Kent Hays

Masters Theses

"Electromechanical coupling in ferroelectric materials has given rise to a myriad of technological applications. Through the complex domain structure of ferroelectrics materials, which are typically stiff and have low damping, can exhibit significant structural damping. The applications for a material with a relatively large Young’s modulus and the ability to damp out vibrations would be useful for structures, more specifically, aerospace structures. The dynamic mechanical properties of ferroelectrics, particularly mechanical properties while an electric field is applied, are not well understood. This is due in part to the lack of experimental methods to measure such properties. Even with recent advancements …

Wrinkling Of Functionally Graded Sandwich Structures Subject To Biaxial And In-Plane Shear Loads, Harold Costa

Masters Theses

"Benefits of a functionally graded core increasing wrinkling stability of sandwich panels have been demonstrated in a recent paper [1] where a several-fold increase in the wrinkling stress was observed, without a significant weight penalty, using a stiffer core adjacent to the facings. In the present paper wrinkling is analyzed in case where the facings are subject to biaxial compression and/or in-plane shear loading and the core is arbitrary graded through-the-thickness. Two issues addressed are the effect of biaxial or in-plane shear loads on wrinkling stability of panels with both graded and ungraded core and the verification that functional grading …

Design And Modeling Of An Aluminum Smelting Process To Analyze Aluminum Smelter And Identify The Alternative Uses Of Nuclear Power Small Modular Reactor, Rajesh Ramkrushna Patharabe

Masters Theses

"This thesis focuses on design and analysis of an Aluminum Smelting process using computer simulation which performs a dynamic state computation. The objective is to develop a Dynamic Simulation Model of an Aluminum Smelter using Mimic Simulator to analyze the dynamic behavior of an Aluminum Smelter to evaluate strategies for alternative design or uses of Nuclear Power Small Modular Reactor to improve the efficiency of the process and to reduce the heat losses.

Increasing energy needs, decrease of the availability of cheap electricity and the need to reduce the greenhouse gases emissions are the biggest hurdles for running Aluminum smelters …

Recovery Of Phosphate Minerals From Plant Tailings Using Direct Froth Flotation Process, Ashraf Alsafasfeh

Masters Theses

"The wastes produced from phosphate industry presents many challenges due to the economic and environmental impacts of their disposal. In the meantime, scarcity of high-grade phosphate ores persuades researchers to find novel methods of upgrading these wastes (secondary sources) and recycling them in the production plant circuit. The goal of this study is to investigate the potential to upgrade the phosphorus content in the tailing produced from a phosphorous production plant using direct froth flotation process. Characterization studies such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and mineral liberation analysis (MLA) were first conducted to identify the mineralogical and …

Comparison Of ²⁵²Cf Time Correlated Induced Fission With Amli Induced Fission On Fresh Mtr Research Reactor Fuel, Jay Prakash Joshi

Masters Theses

"The effective application of international safeguards to research reactors requires verification of spent fuel as well as fresh fuel. To accomplish this goal various nondestructive and destructive assay techniques have been developed in the US and around the world. The Advanced Experimental Fuel Counter (AEFC) is a nondestructive assay (NDA) system developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) combining both neutron and gamma measurement capabilities. Since spent fuel assemblies are stored in water, the system was designed to be watertight to facilitate underwater measurements by inspectors. The AEFC is comprised of six ³He detectors as well as a shielded …