Digital Commons Network^™

Identification Of Svc Dynamics Using Wide Area Signals In A Power System, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, Sandhya R. Jetti

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the design of a wide area monitor (WAM) using remote area signals, such as speed deviations of generators in a power network, for identifying online the dynamics of a static var compensator (SVC). The design of the WAM is studied on the 12 bus FACTS benchmark system recently introduced. A predict-correct method is used to enhance the performance of the WAM during online operation. Simulation results are presented to show that WAM can correctly identify the dynamics of SVC in a power system for small and large disturbances. Such WAMs can be applied in the design of …

International Working Group On Assurance Cases (For Security), S. Guerra, M. Masera, Ann K. Miller, C. B. Weinstock, R. E. Bloomfield

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Critical systems are aptly named - from electric power to water and gas to the telephone system and the Internet, they're all critical to some aspect of our daily lives. We''re a networked society and as such, it's important to both know whether critical systems are trustworthy and be able to communicate, review, and debate the level of trust achieved in them. In the safety domain, explicit safety cases are increasingly required by law, regulations, and standards. In this article, we outline what a small, international group of experts, spanning various disciplines in safety, security, reliability, and critical infrastructure, been …

Multiple Statcom Allocation And Sizing Using Particle Swarm Optimization, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, J. C. Hernandez, Yamille Del Valle, Ronald G. Harley

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Nanoporous Zeolite Thin Film-Based Fiber Intrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometric Sensor For Detection Of Dissolved Organics In Water, Ning Liu, Juan Hui, Cunqiang Sun, Junhang Dong, Luzheng Zhang, Hai Xiao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A fiber optic intrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric (IFPI) chemical sensor was developed by fine-polishing a thin layer of polycrystalline nanoporous MFI zeolite synthesized on the cleaved endface of a single mode fiber. The sensor operated by monitoring the optical thickness changes of the zeolite thin film caused by the adsorption of organic molecules into the zeolite channels. The optical thickness of the zeolite thin film was measured by white light interferometry. Using methanol, 2-propanol, and toluene as the model chemicals, it was demonstrated that the zeolite IPFI sensor could detect dissolved organics in water with high sensitivity.

Improving Melting Efficiency Through The Application Of New Refractory Materials, Kent D. Peaslee, Semen Naumovich Lekakh, Von Richards, Todd P. Sander, Jeffrey D. Smith, Mangesh Vibhandik

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ladle design and ladle practices have a significant effect on a foundry operation and product quality. Large steel temperature losses or instabilities in the pouring temperature are frequently compensated by tapping at higher temperatures dramatically increasing furnace and ladle lining wear, oxidation of the steel, alloying element losses, and energy consumption in steel melting. Ladle lining materials need to satisfy a complex array of often conflicting requirements. For example, ceramic materials for linings must possess a high strength at liquid steel temperatures to prevent erosion and crack formation. However, linings need to also have a low thermal conductivity which typically …

Decreasing Electrical Energy Consumption Through Sic Additions, Kent D. Peaslee, Semen Naumovich Lekakh, Von Richards, John Carpenter, Chen Wang

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper summarizes results of industrial experiments investigating the introduction of supplemental chemical energy in Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF). Specifically, this research evaluates the effects of adding 0.4-0.6% of the scrap charge weight as SiC (10 lbs per scrap ton charged) in the EAF. SiC additions increase the available exothermic reactions during oxygen boiling in an attempt to reduce the electrical energy requirements. Results from 180 trial heats at two different steel foundries are highlighted and statistically evaluated. In both cases, the SiC additions had a measurable effect on decreasing the electrical energy consumption.

Earthquake Hazard Input For Loss Estimation Study: St. Louis Highway System, Ronaldo Luna, David J. Hoffman, William T. Lawrence

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The long recurrence period and high consequence earthquakes events in the New Madrid Seismic Zone have caused some federal agencies (e.g., NEHRP, FHWA) to look at the more densely populated areas where higher seismic risk is present. This paper presents the data collection, interpretation, and analysis of the geotechnical information required for an earthquake loss estimation study in St. Louis metro area. The loss estimation study was limited to the highway transportation system, where only the major highways were considered. The project information was processed using a GIS, and the subsequent loss analysis was executed using the HAZUS-MH program.

Liquefaction Effects On Lateral Pile Behavior For Bridges, Wei Zheng, Ronaldo Luna

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A coupled pile-soil-structure interaction (SPSI) analysis method is presented to study the liquefaction effects on lateral pile behavior of the highway bridges. Pile-soil interaction is simulated by the dynamic nonlinear p-y method including the effect of liquefaction. The liquefaction effects to the pile-soil interaction are taken into account by introducing a degradation multiplier to the p-y curve. The degradation multiplier is related to the excess pore water pressure buildup at the pile-soil interface. The SPSI analysis method is implemented into a Missouri highway bridge site near the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) rift complex for future earthquake scenarios of Mw …

Systems Approach For Estimating Field Moisture Content, Thomas M. Petry, Yuh-Puu Han, David Newton Richardson

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper describes a software tool developed for estimation of the field moisture content of subgrade materials. Subgrade behavior is directly related to its moisture content. Unfortunately, some approaches of estimating field moisture content are too complex to be used in routine design. In this paper, the authors attempt to provide an approach that is easy to use. The software presented here was developed using expert system approaches. It is capable of analyzing data entered by the users, and providing estimations to meet different scenarios. The information entered by the user is first examined for its reasonableness and accuracy. Then, …

Transverse-Earthquake Induced Deformations Of A Bridge Approach Embankment In The New Madrid Seismic Zone, Wanxing Liu, Richard Wesley Stephenson, Ronaldo Luna

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

It is predicted that strong earthquakes, larger than M 7.0, may occur within next 50 years in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), the location of three of the most powerful earthquakes in United States history. Large displacements may occur during strong earthquakes that can cause an embankment to fail or lose its function. The hyperbolic stress-strain model with Masing rules was modified to account for strength and stiffness reduction due to change in the effective confining pressure. The Byrne model was combined with a hyperbolic model to calculate the pore water pressure caused by seismic shaking. This modified hyperbolic …

Origin-Destination (O-D) Trip Table Estimation Using Traffic Movement Counts From Vehicle Tracking System At Intersection, S. Lee, Hojong Baik

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new video-based vehicle tracking system is proposed to provide accurate information on directional traffic counts at intersections. The extracted counts are fed to estimate an origin- destination trip table which is necessary information for traffic impact study and transportation planning. The system utilizes a fisheye lens to expand the area covered by a single camera and uses a particle filtering method to track an individual vehicle. The filter is designed to handle environmental changes and multiple motion dynamics. Experimental results show its strong ability on tracking in various conditions. The paper shows how to use the tracking outputs in …

Strength And Durability Characteristics Of A 70% Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag (Ggbfs) Concrete Mix, David Newton Richardson

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

For a bridge pier and abutment mass concrete project, three mixes were studied: an ordinary portland cement (OPC) mix (Type I PC) and two 70% by weight ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) mixes (Type II Low Heat PC). One of the slag mixes contained a high range water reducer (HRWR). Tests for compressive strength, freezethaw durability, rapid chloride permeability, and salt scaling were conducted on field samples. Results showed that the strengths of the slag mixes were lower than the OPC mix at all ages up to one year, although the use of HRWR did improve the strength somewhat. …

Unexpected Higher-Order Effects In Charged Particle Impact Ionization At High Energies, M. Foster, Jerry Peacher, Michael Schulz, Don H. Madison, Zhangjin Chen, H. R. J. Walters

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Most of the experimental and theoretical studies of electron-impact ionization of atoms, referred to as (e, 2e), have concentrated on the scattering plane. The assumption has been that all the important physical effects will be observable in the scattering plane. However, very recently it has been shown that, for C6+-helium ionization, experiment and theory are in nice agreement in the scattering plane and in very bad agreement out of the scattering plane. This lack of agreement between experiment and theory has been explained in terms of higher-order scattering effects between the projectile and target ion. We have examined electron-impact ionization …

Adaptive And Probabilistic Power Control Algorithms For Dense Rfid Reader Network, Kainan Cha, Anil Ramachandran, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In radio frequency identification (RFID) systems, the detection range and read rates may suffer from interferences between high power devices such as readers. In dense networks, this problem grows severely and degrades system performance. In this paper, we investigate feasible power control schemes to ensure overall coverage area of the system while maintaining a desired data rate. The power control should dynamically adjust the output power of a RFID reader by adapting to the noise level seen during tag reading and acceptable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We present a novel distributed adaptive power control (DAPC) and probabilistic power control (PPC) as …

Adaptive Critic Design Based Neuro-Fuzzy Controller For A Static Compensator In A Multimachine Power System, Salman Mohagheghi, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, Ronald G. Harley

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a novel nonlinear optimal controller for a static compensator (STATCOM) connected to a power system, using artificial neural networks and fuzzy logic. The action dependent heuristic dynamic programming, a member of the adaptive Critic designs family, is used for the design of the STATCOM neuro-fuzzy controller. This neuro-fuzzy controller provides optimal control based on reinforcement learning and approximate dynamic programming. Using a proportional-integrator approach the proposed controller is capable of dealing with actual rather than deviation signals. The STATCOM is connected to a multimachine power system. Two multimachine systems are considered in this study: a 10-bus system …

Advanced Detection And Coding Techniques For Nonlinear Intersymbol Interference Cancellation In 40 Gb/S Systems, B. Vasic, I. B. Djordjevic, Vittal S. Rao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of Two Optimal Control Strategies For A Grid Independent Photovoltaic System, Richard L. Welch, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents two optimal control strategies for a grid independent photovoltaic system consisting of a PV collector array, a storage battery, and loads (critical and non-critical loads). The first strategy is based on Action Dependent Heuristic Dynamic Programming (ADHDP), a model-free adaptive critic design (ACD) technique which optimizes the control performance based on a utility function. ADHDP critic network is used in a PV system simulation study to train an action neural network (optimal neurocontroller) to provide optimal control for varying PV system output energy and loadings. The second optimal control strategy is based on a fuzzy logic controller …

Toward A Genealogy Of Aryan Morality: Nietzsche And Jacolloit, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

While Nietzsche’s writings of the late 1880s reveal waxing interests in Hinduism, Sanskrit philology, Aryan culture, and the related Indo-European hypothesis, these interests have been remarkably understudied by Nietzsche scholarship, with the exception of a scant few articles that have recently appeared. The presence of the aforementioned topics was crucial for the configuration of the works written in 1887 and 1888: On the Genealogy of Morality, The Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist, as well as for some of the notions at hand in Nietzsche’s correspondence with Heinrich Köselitz, but the provenance of the ideas that …

Density Estimation Using A Generalized Neuron, R. Kiran, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, M. Palaniswami

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Neural networks have been shown to be useful tools for density estimation. However, the training of neural network structures is time consuming and requires fast processors for practical applications. A new method with a generalized neuron (GN) for density estimation is presented in this paper. The GN is trained with the particle swarm optimization algorithm which is known to have fast convergence than the standard backpropagation algorithm. Results are presented to show that the GN can estimate the density functions for distribution functions with different means and variances. This density estimation method can also be applied to the multi-sensor data …

Speeding Up Vlsi Layout Verification Using Fuzzy Attributed Graphs Approach, Nian Zhang, Donald C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Technical and economic factors have caused the field of physical design automation to receive increasing attention and commercialization. The steady down-scaling of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) device dimensions has been the main stimulus to the growth of microelectronics and computer-aided very large scale integration (VLSI) design. The more an Integrated Circuit (IC) is scaled, the higher its packing density becomes. For example, in 2006 Intel's 65-nm process technology for high performance microprocessor has a reduced gate length of 35 nanometers. In their 70-Mbit SRAM chip, there are up to 0.5 billion transistors in a 110 mm2 chip size with …

Adapting User Interface To Expedite Physician Order Entry: A Frontline To Ensure Patient Safety, Chiang S. Jao, Daniel B. Hier

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Preventable Medical Errors Are a Major Problem in Healthcare. Maintenance of Accurate Problem Lists and Drug Lists in the Electronic Medical Record is Critical to the Practice of Medicine and Patient Safety. We Built a Simulator of a Clinical Decision Support System that Automates the Process of Maintaining an Electronic Problem List by Processing Drug Order Requests from a Simulated Computerized Physician Order Entry System. Preliminary Results Revealed that the Productivity of the System Increased When the User Interface Was Improved. This Study Highlights the Importance of an Enhanced User Interface as a Frontline in Expediting Physician Data Entry, Streamlining …

Iep Meetings: What Are The Strategies That Make An Iep Meeting Successful?, Maria T. Cashman

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

All students who receive special education services have one thing in common. They each have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) designed specifically for him/her. The IEP is a valuable document that guides the special education services for a student. It is imperative that parents have a significant role in the development, implementation, and review of the IEP.

For this study, interviews were used to understand the strategies that assist parents in achieving active participation during their child's IEP conference. Six parents of sophomore, junior, and senior high students were interviewed. Three parents were identified as "involved", which means they were …

Permutation Coding Technique For Image Recognition Systems, Ernst M. Kussul, Tatiana N. Baidyk, Donald C. Wunsch, Oleksandr Makeyev, Anabel Martin

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A feature extractor and neural classifier for image recognition systems are proposed. The proposed feature extractor is based on the concept of random local descriptors (RLDs). It is followed by the encoder that is based on the permutation coding technique that allows to take into account not only detected features but also the position of each feature on the image and to make the recognition process invariant to small displacements. The combination of RLDs and permutation coding permits us to obtain a sufficiently general description of the image to be recognized. The code generated by the encoder is used as …

Real-Time Implementation Of An Optimal Transient Neurocontroller For A Gcsc, Swakshar Ray, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents the design of an optimal Auxiliary Transient Neurocontroller (ATNC) for the Gate Controlled Series Capacitor (GCSC) in a multi-machine power system. GCSC is a recent advancement in the family of series FACTS devices. While GCSC regulates power flow through a transmission line, an auxiliary control signal can provide damping to the power oscillations during disturbances. The ATNC has been designed using heuristic dynamic programming to develop an optimal neurocontroller with fixed weights. The ATNC is implemented in real-time using the TMS3206701 DSP and the Real-Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). Results are presented to show the effectiveness of the …

Robustness And Distance Discrimination Of Adaptive Near Field Beamformers, Y. Rosa Zheng, Peng Xie, Steven L. Grant

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A robust adaptive beamformer is proposed using the near field regionally constrained adaptive approach that designs a set of linear constraints by filtering on a low rank subspace of the near field signal over a spatial region and a wide frequency band. This method can accurately control the beam-former response over the designed spatial-temporal region using a small number of linear constraint vectors and improve the robustness against target location errors. Meanwhile, this method enhances the capability of the near field beamformer in distance discrimination without additional constraints so that interference impinging at the same direction as the desired signal …

Expanding Extracurricular Learning Opportunities Through International Engineering Student And Faculty Exchange, Mark Polczynski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Trait Anxiety And Cognitive Appraisals On Emotional Reactions To Psychological And Physical Stressors, Qutayba Abdullatif

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of individual differences in trait anxiety on cognitive appraisals and emotional reactions to stressful situations. Specifically, the effects of trait anxiety on the evaluation of psychological and physical threats to well-being were examined in relation to state-anxiety. To accomplish this goal, a proposed model consisting of elements from the Lazarus and Folkman Stress and Coping Model (1984) and Spielberger's State Trait distinctions is presented. To our knowledge, this is the first proposed model to attempt to combine trait anxiety, primary and secondary appraisals, and state anxiety and to utilize path analytic models in assessing empirical …

Analysis Of The Role Of Residential Segregation On Perinatal Outcomes In Florida, Georgia And Louisiana, Tabia Henry Akintobi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between residential segregation (the physical separation of Blacks and Whites in residential contexts) and adverse perinatal outcomes (low birth weight, preterm delivery and small for gestational age births) in Florida, Georgia and Louisiana. The study determined the independent effect of the level of residential segregation on the likelihood of adverse perinatal outcomes after controlling for contextual and individual factors. The study also assessed whether the relationship between residential segregation and adverse perinatal outcomes were moderated by ethnicity and median income.The studied employed an observational, cross-sectional study design that utilized secondary …

The Use Of Mini-Pile Anchors To Resist Uplift Forces In Lightweight Structures, Julio Aguilar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the state of Florida one of the primary factors which influences design of structures is the effect of hurricane force winds on structures. These forces can be greater than any other force encountered throughout the lifetime of said structure. For this reason, designing a structure to resist such forces can greatly increase the cost and time required for completing construction projects. Traditionally, large concrete footings have been utilized to resist wind-induced uplift forces. These footings do little more than act as large reaction masses to weigh down the building. An alternative and little-used method for resisting these large uplift …

Hermeneutics, Gerry White

Syllabus Repository

No abstract provided.