Digital Commons Network^™

Moments Of Connection, Kimberly Knaust

Theses

Moments of Connection explores author Kimberly Knaust's relationship with literature, her sense of the world 's beauty and strangeness, and her certainty that identity is an ever changing thing, never stagnant or limited but something which sheds the unnecessary and blossoms with every moment of choice.

Anti-Nostalgic is a novella in which the amnesiac protagonist Ariel struggles against both her own martial impulses and the ruined world in which she awakens. In a dystopian future, one in which the environment has collapsed and there is a shortage of potable water, Ariel chooses sides in the battle for control of the …

The I Of The Beholder, Grady B. Manus

Theses

The essay that follows is an overview of some of the writers and schools of poetics that have influenced my poetry and writing process. A writer's voice echoes their philosophy about the art and the voices of those whose work they most appreciate. I have tried to credit those influences and describe, in brief, my approach to poetry.

My belief is that all art should be exercises in experimentation. Stretching strengthens a poet's work and the art. Poetry is a living thing and it must move and breathe and grow or it will simply cease to be a viable force. …

The Impact Of A Wave Farm On Large Scale Sediment Transport, R Gonzalez Santamaria, Qp Zou, S Pan

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

This study investigates the interactions of waves and tides at a wave farm in the southwest of England, in particular their effects on radiation stress, bottom stress, and consequently on the sediment transport and the coast adjacent to the wave-farm (the Wave Hub). In this study, an integrated complex numerical modelling system is setup at the Wave Hub site and is used to compute the wave and current fields by taking into account the wave-current interaction, as well as the sediment transport. Results show that tidal elevation and tidal currents have a significant effect on the wave height and direction …

Solutions And Open Challenges For The Symbol Grounding Problem, A Cangelosi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

This article discusses the current progress and solutions to the symbol grounding problem and specifically identifies which aspects of the problem have been addressed and issues and scientific challenges that still require investigation. In particular, the paper suggests that of the various aspects of the symbol grounding problem, the transition from indexical representations to symbol-symbol relationships requires the most research. This analysis initiated a debate and solicited commentaries from experts in the field to gather consensus on progress and achievements and identify the challenges still open in the symbol grounding problem.

Neurorehabilitation Of The Hand Using The Cybergrasp[Tm] And Mirror Image, Amy Frances Boos

Theses

In recent years, researchers have explored the use of a mirror image as a means of rehabilitation for individuals suffering from hemiparesis. Through neuroimaging and functional testing, neurological improvement has been demonstrated in those that engage in mirror therapy. Bilateral training, or simultaneous movement of both sides of the body, has also been studied as a treatment method to improve function after cerebral vascular accident. The development of robotic systems to assist movement of the human body has played a major role in the fabrication of bilateral training devices.

In this experiment, the CyberGrasp™ robotic exoskeleton was used to assist …

A Method For Calibration Of Speed-Flow Curves In Hcm 2010 And Determination Of Highway Capacity, Seyed Hadii Khazraee Khoshroozi

Masters Theses

"This study proposes a method for calibration of speed-flow curves in a format suggested by the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) 2010 and applies it to two sites in Missouri: a work zone on I-44 around Pacific, and a basic freeway segment on I-270 in St. Louis. The three-regime model proposed is based on the two-regime (free-flow and transition) uncongested relationship suggested by the HCM 2010, complemented with a third regime representing congested conditions. Further, this study proposes a systematic approach based on regression analysis to determine capacity i.e., the break-point (intersection) between the transition and congested regimes. The proposed method …

A Detailed Petrographic Analysis Of The Mt. Sheridan Roosevelt Gabbro And Associated Rock Types, Daniel Russell Lasco

Masters Theses

"The Mt. Sheridan Roosevelt Gabbro of the Wichita Mountains igneous province in Southwestern Oklahoma underwent dynamic crystallization, resulting in three distinct gabbro zones with a range of pegmatite morphologies spread throughout. The three zones are informally named the lower, central, and upper zones. The lower zone consists of a quartz and alkali feldspar poor, plagioclase and pyroxene rich, poorly altered, gabbro cumulate. The central zone is comprised of a heavily altered quartz and alkali feldspar rich gabbro with few cumulate textures. The upper zone is mineralogically and texturally identical to the lower zone, distinguished only by its higher elevation. The …

Evaluation Of Skin-Core Adhesion Bond And Low-Velocity Impact Behavior Of Honeycomb Sandwich Structures, Ramanjaneya R. Butukuri

Masters Theses

"Composite sandwich structures offer several advantages over conventional structural materials such as lightweight, high bending and torsional stiffness, superior thermal insulation and excellent acoustic damping. Some of the failure mechanisms in a composite sandwich structure are de-bonding of the composite facesheets from the core structure and damage due to low-velocity impact. In the first part of this work, adhesive fillet formation and adhesive mechanical strength are evaluated as a function of several different sandwich construction design variables. The effect of film adhesive thickness is studied. A process for reticulation of the adhesive is applied and studied. Optimized combinations of core …

Development Of Lower Cost Imaging Systems For Laser Metal Deposition Process, Shyam Barua

Masters Theses

"Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) has been used as an additive manufacturing process in industries such as aerospace and die castings. LMD is especially useful in repair applications involving die repair. However, it is still not used widely in industry due to variations in the quality of parts. There are multiple interactions between various factors which influence the quality of deposit.

There exists a need for defect detection systems to detect any changes in the deposition quality during deposition. On demand detection enables adjustment in process parameters and minimization of rework cost.

Vision systems have been used extensively in the industry …

"Long" Carbon Fiber Reinforced Concrete For Impact And Blast Resistance, Benjamin Paul Gliha

Masters Theses

"One of the most commonly used materials for protective structures and construction is traditional reinforced concrete. However, in a blast, conventional reinforced concrete (RC) is susceptible to significant spalling (small to medium size chunks of concrete detaching from the original member). The force of the blast turns spalled concrete into projectiles, resulting in secondary fragmentation and the majority of loss of life. Furthermore, the concrete debris makes for difficult and uncertain footing. Both phenomena endanger personnel and complicate post-blast recovery efforts. A very promising but barely explored change to conventional RC construction is the addition of "long" carbon fibers (fibers …

A Neural Network Based Approach For Path Planning On Costmap, Songjie Chen

Masters Theses

"In this thesis, a path planning method using a three-level hierarchical system model is proposed. In the top level of the hierarchy, the given location points to visit are taken as waypoints. The waypoint navigation process is formulated as a traveling salesman problem (TSP). The Lin-Kernighan algorithm is used to solve the TSP and transfer the solution to the lower level of the hierarchy. In the middle level, the path is represented by a grid-based costmap. A novel modified Grossberg neural network is designed to solve the point-to-point path planning. The bottom level of the hierarchy smoothens the path with …

Intelligent Control Of Smartparks And Wind Farms In Smart Grids, Priyam Chakravarty

Masters Theses

"With development in wind turbine technology, wind energy has become an important contestant in the utility market. However, wind energy has the intrinsic property of variations which causes fluctuations in the power grid.

Plug-in electric vehicles are drawing the attention of researchers and the electric power industry because of its need for charging from the grid and its ability to store energy. With increase in the numbers of plug-in electric vehicles, there will be significant penetration of distributed energy resources and hence plug-in electric vehicles connected to the grid in parking lots (SmartParks) can be used as energy storage sink …

Life Expectancy Evaluation And Replacement Schedule Development For Led Traffic Indicators, Casey Robert Noll

Masters Theses

"LED (light-emitting diode) technology is being widely adopted for use in sustainable traffic signal management. However, the useful life and luminosity characteristics have not been sufficiently studied in the field to provide departments of transportation with cost-effective replacement strategies based on the realities for LED indicators. LED indicators fail when their luminous intensity (LI) falls below a pre-specified threshold, posing a danger to traffic. This research details a field study of LED indicators in Missouri and develops a replacement schedule based on key findings. Rates of degradation and subsequently the useful life of each type of LED indicator were calculated …

Pressed Powdered Titanium And Aluminum Conical Shaped Charge Penetration Of Geological Targets, Dominique John Nolan

Masters Theses

"Conical Shaped Charge penetration into rock is dependent on the physical characteristics of the rock itself and the design and composition of the shaped charge conducting the work. This study looks at the effects of a non-typical conical shaped charge and its penetration into four different rock targets. The shaped charge is made of a liner, which is not a typical solid but instead is a pressed powdered metallic compound of Titanium (Ti) and Aluminum (AI).

The study presents the raw data from testing against rock targets that range in density, uniaxial compressive strength (UCS), tensile strength, hardness scales, and …

Quantitative Oxygen Imaging With A Display Screen And A Color Camera, Sanghan Park

Masters Theses

"Optical oxygen sensing uses luminophores such as metal complex dyes that respond to oxygen when illuminated by their specific excitation wavelengths. Traditional optical instruments are mostly spectrometric instruments based on the measurements of emission, absorption or reflection. There is, however, a great need to develop simple, economical, photometric detection components toward quantitative and two-dimensional imaging instruments.

In this work, familiar optoelectronic devices were utilized to demonstrate a simple determination method of gaseous oxygen both quantitatively and qualitatively. A liquid crystal display (LCD) screen and a color charge-coupled device (CCD) camera were employed as a light source for fluorescence excitation and …

Innovative Air Breathing Design And Output Control For Portable Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell, Amar Bala Sridhar

Masters Theses

"Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) Fuel Cell Technology is an energy source that can provide several times more energy per unit volume than current lithium ion batteries that are available in the market today. The barriers that exist that prevent the fuel cell from entering the world of portable applications are mainly system architecture integration. The idea is to have a fully functioning fuel cell with optimum power output using an innovative chimney design. Tests were conducted to quantify the advantage of using a chimney with the fuel cell. Further research was done to shed light on how different chimney designs …

A Statewide Analysis Of Highway Safety In Arkansas, Uday R. R. Manepalli

Masters Theses

"This research concentrated on two major aspects of highway safety analysis, hotspot identification and identification of crash contributing factors on highways. The objective of the first part of this thesis is to evaluate two crash frequency, three crash severity and two composite hotspot ranking methods. Based on the limitations of the existing hotspot identification methods (HSID), crash factor method (CFM), a crash severity based HSID method is proposed. A composite rank method (F 1) based on principal component analysis is also proposed. These methods are evaluated using three tests, the site consistency test, the method consistency test, and the total …

Simulink As A Tool For Modelling Communication Systems, Chaitri Avinash Aroskar

Masters Theses

"Simulink is a graphical tool provided by MathWorks to enable model-based design and simulation. This thesis consists of two papers which take advantage of Simulink features in order to model communication systems.

The first paper employs Simulink to create projects to supplement a purely lecture oriented course: Communication Systems I. The projects cover Linear systems, Analog modulation and Digital modulation concepts in a set of six projects. These projects have been designed based on Gagne's nine events of instruction to enhance their impact on students' learning process. The paper also outlines the advantages of this approach over the conventional programming …

Effect Of Nickel On Castability Of Chromium Molybdenum Steel & The Dynamic Fracture Toughness Of Hy-130, Abhilash Dash

Masters Theses

"The fill lengths of Ni alloyed Cr-Mo steels obtained from fluidity studies (Paper 1) varied linearly with superheat. A 5% Ni steel showed a maximum fill length compared to other steels tested. Ni decreased the liquidus, solidus, and dendritic coherency temperature, but it did not have any significant effect on volume fraction (0.27-0.31) of the solid phase at the dendrite coherency point. The filling time obtained experimentally at 150 C⁰ superheat for 5% Ni steel (HY 130) was close to 1.4 s. For similar conditions, the predicted fill time using a Magmasoft model was close to 1.9 s. Modeling results …

Creating A Sustainable Transportation Workforce: Identifying Skills, Abilities And Knowledge For Future Transportation Workforce, Sandhya Gopalakrishnan

Masters Theses

"The recruitment and retention of a transportation workforce capable of adapting to the requirements of emerging sustainable technologies is an important concern for engineering managers in transportation. Although there is an increasing demand for transportation professionals to fill positions stemming from retirement or created by innovations in sustainable transportation systems, the supply is decreasing. The objective of this research was to fill the gap between the supply and demand of skilled workforce by presenting a life-cycle framework for recruiting and retaining the transportation workforce as part of succession planning efforts funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Transportation Education Development …

Comparison Of Matrix Pencil And Prony Analysis For Estimating Electromechanical Modes In Noisy Signals For Power System Applications, Lisa L. Grant

Masters Theses

"As modern power systems continue to grow and evolve, accurate system stability analysis and oscillation control become increasingly important to guarantee system security. Network instability due to power system oscillations caused by the natural modes of the system is becoming a common occurrence. Modal analysis techniques can estimate the eigenvalues of large nonlinear systems from their dynamics responses. The extracted modal information can be applied to detect low frequency oscillations and assess stability margins for power system monitoring and preventive control. Modal information is also useful for low-frequency oscillation damping controller design. This thesis examines two techniques for modal identification …

Femtosecond And Nanosecond Laser Fabricated Substrate For Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering, Adam Hamdorf

Masters Theses

"Surface-enhanced Raman scattering has many applications to chemical science, and shows great promise in the medical field because of its ability to provide "molecular fingerprinting" of probe molecules, whereby a material can be identified and potentially quantified. This is done by enhancing the normally weak Raman spectrum by many orders of magnitude with the use of fabricated substrates. It is therefore desirable to produce repeatable substrates with high enhancement factors for identification and quantification of samples. This thesis introduces a new method for generating such a substrate. By using femtosecond laser machining, gold sputtering, and nanosecond laser annealing, gold nanoparticles …

Assess Commercialization Feasibility Of Algae-Based Bio-Fuel With Dashboard And Scorecard Technologies, Madhur Chopra

Masters Theses

"The growing energy depleting energy supplies and increasing environmental pollution has motivated researchers across the globe to look for alternative energy sources. Various energy sources have been identified but none of them have the capability of realistically replacing the fossil fuels and meeting the current demand. Algae based bio-fuels give some hope but producing them at large scale is a challenge which needs to be overcome.

The underlying objective of this research project is two folds. Firstly, the project aims to assist with the commercialization of algae based bio-fuels by developing Dashboard based and Balanced Scorecard based monitoring prototypes. The …

Selective Laser Sintering Of 13-93 Bioactive Glass, Krishna C. R. Kolan

Masters Theses

"Bioactive glasses are promising materials for bone scaffolds due to their ability to assist in tissue regeneration. When implanted in vivo, bioactive glasses can convert to hydroxyapatite, the main mineral constituent of human bone and form a strong bond with the surrounding tissues, thus providing an advantage over polymer scaffold materials. Bone scaffold fabrication using additive manufacturing techniques like selective laser sintering (SLS) provide control over pore interconnectivity during the fabrication of scaffold, which helps in mimicking human trabecular bone. 13-93 glass, a third-generation bioactive material designed to accelerate the body's natural ability to heal itself, was used in …

Experimental Investigation Of Cutting Forces, Temperature And Surface Roughness In End-Milling Of Hastelloy C-2000, Ryan Matthews

Masters Theses

"This thesis presents the results of experimental investigation of the effects of cutting parameters (spindle speed, feed per tooth, axial depth of cut and radial depth of cut) on the three components of cutting forces (F_x, F_y, F_z), workpiece temperature and surface roughness in end-milling of Hastelloy C-2000 alloy using design of experiments (DOE) and response surface methodology (RSM). End-milling experiments were conducted using 0.5 inch diameter end-mill on Cincinnati Milacron Sabre 750 vertical machining center using water based flood coolant. An inscribed central composite design of experiment was used to study the four …

Development Of A Graphical User Interface For The Study Of Parallel-Connected Solar Arrays, Nisha Nagarajan

Masters Theses

"For any solar array it is necessary to be able to harness the maximum possible power from it. A new technology is proposed to improve the efficiency of solar arrays and harness maximum potential power as well by connecting the solar panels in parallel. This thesis describes the development of a graphical user interface for the evaluation of this parallel-connected solar array technology and to compare different scenarios for solar arrays to predict the potential power output to decide the best configuration for an application. This is done via several computations and analysis of field data. The first paper describes …

Geological And Geomorphological Evolution Of The Egyptian Nile Between Aswan And Kom Ombo: A Remote Sensing And Field Study Approach, Leslie Lansbery

Masters Theses

"This work uses field and remote sensing studies to examine structural controls of the Egyptian Nile between Aswan and Kom Ombo (referred here to as AKN). This segment of the Egyptian Nile incises through Cretaceous Nubian sandstone and Precambrian crystalline rocks separated by a shallowly-dipping to theN unconformity. It was only 0.8 Ma that the Egyptian Nile connected to the rest of the sub-Sahara Africa drainage system. Prior to this time, the Egyptian Nile evolved independently through 8 phases: Pre-Eonile (Ma), Eonile (6.0-5. 4 Ma), Gulf Phase (5.4-3.3 Ma), Paleonile Phase (3.3-1.8 Ma), Desert Phase (1.8-0.8 Ma), Prenile Phase (0.8-0.4 …

Economic Evaluation Of Sustainable Strategies For The Transportation Sector, Yaqin Lin

Masters Theses

"Sustainable strategies are drawing growing attention as global environmental challenges increase concerns over energy consumption. As one of the most intensive consumers of energy, the transportation sector has a particular need to go green. Implementing alternative energy sources and applying advanced energy efficient technologies are two major approaches to achieve sustainability. Much work thus far used cost-effectiveness as an important criterion for assessing the practicability of sustainable strategies. However, few studies have evaluated such strategies systematically. This thesis has developed a framework of cost-effectiveness analysis to assess sustainability strategies. The framework summarizes the various effects of five representative alternative energy …

Fabrication Of Sers Active Nanostructures By Femtosecond Laser Micromachining, Matthew Aaron Olson

Masters Theses

"This work investigated the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) enhancement of gold nanoparticles on femtosecond laser created nanostructures on a silicon wafer. The goal was to use the nanostructures to assemble the nanoparticles into three-dimensional aggregates and compare these enhancements to those of two dimensional aggregates. The SERS enhancement generated by the three-dimensional structures was on average 5 x 10⁴ with a high enhancement of 1.2 x 10⁵. The magnitude of this enhancement was on par with previous experiments that tested SERS enhancements on gold nanoparticles, but it did not show any significant enhancement caused by the three-dimensional nature of the …

Exploring Join Caching In Programming Codes To Reduce Runtime Execution, Swetha Surapaneni

Masters Theses

"This thesis describes an approach to reduce the runtime of a large program by exploring object querying and query caching in programming codes. Some object-oriented languages allow the programmers to express queries explicitly in the code, which are optimized using the query optimization techniques from the database domain. In this regard, Java Query Language (JQL) has been developed that allows object querying and performs the query optimization and query caching at runtime. The problem that has been addressed in this thesis is how to reduce the runtime of a large program during the single execution by employing an efficient cache …