Engineering Commons^™

The Plasma Electrolysis Phenomenon In A Two-Compartment Reactor For Chlor-Alkali Production, Nelson Saksono, Fakhrian Abqari, Setijo Bismo

Makara Journal of Technology

Chlor-alkali is one of the most important processes in the chemical industry. It produces chlorine and caustic soda, which become the main feedstock of daily products. The aim of this study is to report the phenomenon of plasma electrolysis and how it can be used in chlor-alkali production for more efficient energy consumption. When the plasma is formed, the current fluctuates and gradually declines. Plasma electrolysis begins with the process of electrolysis itself. Due to Joule heating, gas bubbles are formed and a sheath is made on both electrodes, resulting in the plasma field. Plasma electrolysis can be identified by …

Determining The Air Gap Length Of An Axial Flux Wound Rotor Synchronous Generator, Abdul Multi, Iwa Garniwa, Uno Bintang Sudibyo

Makara Journal of Technology

The air gap length of the designed axial flux wound rotor (AFWR) synchronous generator is determined properly according to the design parameters. One of the distinct advantages of an axial flux (AF) machine is its adjustable air gap. An AF generator’s performance might be controlled by adjusting its air gap. The designed generator has a smallscale capacity that has 1 kW, 380 V, and 50 Hz. The windings are laid into slots made from laminated core. The slots are carved in the face of the stator and rotors. The generator has a single-double-sided slotted wound stator sandwiched between twin rotors. …

Adaptive Co-Scheduler For Highly Dynamic Resources, Kartik Vedalaveni

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There are many kinds of scientific applications that run on high throughput computational (HTC) grids. HTC may utilize clusters opportunistically, only running on a given cluster when it is otherwise idle. These widely dispersed HTC clusters are heterogeneous in terms of capability and availability, but can provide significant computing power in aggregate. The scientific algorithms run on them also vary greatly. Some scientific algorithms might use high rates of disk I/O and some might need large amounts of RAM. Most schedulers only consider cpu availability, but unchecked demand on these associated resources that aren’t managed by resource managers may give …

Online Ecosystems In Software Development, Corey J. Jergensen

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Software projects are no longer developed as individual, monolithic projects. In- stead, they exist as part of an ecosystem where related projects are developed together using a common underlying technical infrastructure and common project cultures.

This work explores characteristics of online software communities by comparing and contrasting two software ecosystems that are both related to programming, but provide different functions. The first is Stack Overflow, a programming question and answer forum. The second is Gnome, an open-source, Linux desktop environment. Both are examples of online communities because: (1) the communities are composed of smaller projects or topics, (2) users contributions …

Characteristics Of Vacuum Freeze Drying With Utilization Of Internal Cooling And Condenser Waste Heat For Sublimation, Muhammad Idrus Alhamid, Nasruddin Yusuf, Indra Teuku Meurah Mahlia, Engkos Ahmad Kosasih, Muhamad Yulianto, Rio Ricardi

Makara Journal of Technology

Vacuum freeze drying is an excellent drying method, but it is very energy-intensive because a relatively long drying time is required. This research investigates the utilization of condenser waste heat for sublimation as a way of accelerating the drying rate. In addition, it also investigates the effect of internal cooling combined with vacuum cooling in the pressure reduction process. Jelly fish tentacles were used as the specimen, with different configurations for condenser heat waste and internal cooling valve opening. The results show that heating with condenser heat waste can accelerate the drying rate up to 0.0035 kg/m2.s. In addition, pre-freezing …

A New Experimental Approach To Evaluate Plasma-Induced Damage In Microcantilever, Yuki Nishimori, Shinji Ueki, Masakazu Sugiyama, Seiji Samukawa, Gen Hashiguchi

Makara Journal of Technology

Plasma etching, during micro-fabrication processing is indispensable for fabricating MEMS structures. During the plasma processes, two major matters, charged ions and vacuum–ultraviolet (VUV) irradiation damage, take charge of reliability degradation. The charged ions induce unwanted sidewall etching, generally called as “notching”, which causes degradation in brittle strength. Furthermore, the VUV irradiation gives rise to crystal defects on the etching surface. To overcome the problem, neutral beam etching (NBE), which use neutral particles without the VUV irradiation, has been developed. In order to evaluate the effect of the NBE quantitatively, we measured the resonance property of a micro-cantilever before and after …

Observation Of Photovoltaic Effect And Single-Photon Detection In Nanowire Silicon Pn-Junction, Arief Udhiarto, Sri Purwiyanti, Daniel Moraru, Takeshi Mizuno, Michiharu Tabe

Makara Journal of Technology

We study nanowire silicon pin and pn-junctions at room and low temperature. Photovoltaic effects are observed for both devices at room temperature. At low temperature, nanowire pn-junction devices show their ability to detect single photon. This ability was not been observed for pin devices. Phosphorus-boron dopant cluster in the depletion region is considered to have the main role for single-photon detection capability. Fundamental mechanism of dopant-based single-photon detection in nanowire pn-junction is described in details.

Improvement In Performance Of Zno Based Dsc Prepared By Spraying Method, Rangga Winantyo, Devinda Liyanage, Kenji Murakami

Makara Journal of Technology

This paper reports the effect of TiCl4 on the performance of ZnO based DSC. ZnO was used due to its stability against photo-corrosion and photochemical properties similar to TiO2. Thin films of nanocrystalline ZnO were deposited on transparent conducting oxide glass using spray method. The ZnO films were treated using TiCl4. The cell’s efficiency was found to be 2.5% with TiCl4 post-treatment and 1.9% without TiCl4 post-treatment.

Influences Of Surface Morphology Of Nanostructured Rutile Tio2 Nanorods/Nanoflowers As Photoelectrode On The Performance Of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell, Mohd Khairul Bin Ahmad, Kenji Murakami

Makara Journal of Technology

Aligned Rutile TiO2 nanorods (r-TNRs) and TiO2 nanoflowers (r-TNFs) were successfully prepared by hydrothermal method. Using hydrochloric acid (HCl) as chelating agent and titanium butoxide (TBOT) as precursor, aligned r-TNRs with r-TNFs were successfully growth onto fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) with different morphologies. The influences of surface morphologies to the rutile based Dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) efficiency are discussed. The highest lightto- electric energy conversion efficiency, 1.80% is achieved using different concentration under simulated solar light illumination of 100 mWcm-2 (1.5 AM).

Fatigue Life Prediction Of The Keel Structure Of A Tsunami Buoy Using Spectral Fatigue Analysis Method, Angga Yustiawan, Ketut Suastika, Wibowo Harso Nugroho

Makara Journal of Technology

One of the components of the Indonesia Tsunami Early Warning System (InaTEWS) is a surface buoy. The surface buoy is exposed to dynamic and random loadings while operating at sea, particularly due to waves. Because of the cyclic nature of the wave load, this may result in a fatigue damage of the keel structure, which connects the mooring line with the buoy hull. The operating location of the buoy is off the Java South Coast at the coordinate (10.3998 S, 108.3417 E). To determine the stress transfer function, model tests were performed, measuring the buoy motions and the stress at …

Production Optimization For Plan Of Gas Field Development Using Marginal Cost Analysis, Suprapto Soemardan, Widodo Wahyu Purwanto, Arsegianto Arsegianto

Makara Journal of Technology

Gas production rate is one of the most important variables affecting the feasibility plan of gas field development. It take into account reservoir characteristics, gas reserves, number of wells, production facilities, government take and market conditions. In this research, a mathematical model of gas production optimization has been developed using marginal cost analysis in determining the optimum gas production rate for economic profit, by employing the case study of Matindok Field. The results show that the optimum gas production rate is mainly affected by gas price duration and time of gas delivery. When the price of gas increases, the optimum …

Feedback Stabilization At Spear3, Daniel Kelley, Jeff Corbett

STAR Program Research Presentations

The SPEAR3 synchrotron lightsource at SLAC relies on a sophisticated radio frequency (RF) timing system to maintain current – electrons – in the storage ring. One problem SPEAR3 operators have dealt with is the thermal expansion of one of the cables supporting this RF timing system. As the cable expands and contracts with the diurnal rise and fall of the sun, the phase of the RF in the cable shifts. This shifting phase affects the timing accuracy of electron injections into the storage ring.

A common feedback control algorithm PID (Proportional Integral Derivative) has countless applications in engineering. PID feedback …

Investigation Of Negative Index In Dispersive, Chiral Materials Via Contra-Propagating Velocities Under Second-Order Dispersion (Gvd), Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Tarig A. Algadey

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Negative refractive index arises typically in metamaterials via multiple routes. One such avenue is the condition where the Poynting vector of the electromagnetic wave is in opposition to the group velocity in the material. An earlier work along this route in a chiral material led to the well-known result of requiring very large (non-realizable) chirality.

Thereafter, a combination of chirality together with first-order dispersion was examined using plane wave electromagnetic analysis. To arrive at the conclusions in that approach, the three wave velocities (energy, group and phase) were derived under first-order dispersion in permittivity, permeability and chirality. Negative index in …

Human Action Recognition Via Fused Kinematic Structure And Surface Representation, Salah R. Althloothi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Human action recognition from visual data has remained a challenging problem in the field of computer vision and pattern recognition. This dissertation introduces a new methodology for human action recognition using motion features extracted from kinematic structure, and shape features extracted from surface representation of human body. Motion features are used to provide sufficient information about human movement, whereas shape features are used to describe the structure of silhouette. These features are fused at the kernel level using Multikernel Learning (MKL) technique to enhance the overall performance of human action recognition. In fact, there are advantages in using multiple types …

Numerical Examination Of Acousto-Optic Bragg Interactions For Profiled Lightwaves Using A Transfer Function Formalism, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Fares S. Almehmadi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Classically, acousto-optic (AO) interactions comprise scattering of photons by energetic phonons into higher and lower orders. Standard weak interaction theory describes diffraction in the Bragg regime as the propagation of a uniform plane wave of light through a uniform plane wave of sound, resulting in the well-known first- and zeroth-order diffraction.

Our preliminary investigation of the nature of wave diffraction and photon scattering from a Bragg cell under intensity feedback with profiled light beams indicates that the diffracted (upshifted photon) light continues to maintain the expected (uniform plane wave) behavior versus the optical phase shift in the cell within a …

Adaptive Wiener Filter Super-Resolution Of Color Filter Array Images, Barry K. Karch, Russell C. Hardie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Digital color cameras using a single detector array with a Bayer color filter array (CFA) require interpolation or demosaicing to estimate missing color information and provide full-color images. However, demosaicing does not specifically address fundamental undersampling and aliasing inherent in typical camera designs. Fast non-uniform interpolation based super-resolution (SR) is an attractive approach to reduce or eliminate aliasing and its relatively low computational load is amenable to real-time applications. The adaptive Wiener filter (AWF) SR algorithm was initially developed for grayscale imaging and has not previously been applied to color SR demosaicing. Here, we develop a novel fast SR method …

Smarter Neat Nets, Ryan Swords Dehaven

Master's Theses

This paper discusses a modification to improve usability and functionality of a ge- netic neural net algorithm called NEAT (NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topolo- gies). The modification aims to accomplish its goal by automatically changing parameters used by the algorithm with little input from a user. The advan- tage of the modification is to reduce the guesswork needed to setup a successful experiment with NEAT that produces a usable Artificial Intelligence (AI). The modified algorithm is tested against the unmodified NEAT with several different setups and the results are discussed. The algorithm shows strengths in some areas but can increase the …

Occlusion-Aware Multi-View Reconstruction Of Articulated Objects For Manipulation, Xiaoxia Huang

All Dissertations

The goal of this research is to develop algorithms using multiple views to automatically recover complete 3D models of articulated objects in unstructured environments and thereby enable a robotic system to facilitate further manipulation of those objects. First, an algorithm called Procrustes-Lo-RANSAC (PLR) is presented. Structure-from-motion techniques are used to capture 3D point cloud models of an articulated object in two different configurations. Procrustes analysis, combined with a locally optimized RANSAC sampling strategy, facilitates a straightforward geometric approach to recovering the joint axes, as well as classifying them automatically as either revolute or prismatic. The algorithm does not require prior …

Decentralized Collision Avoidance, Jayasri K. Janardanan

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Autonomous Robots must carry out their tasks as independently as possible and each robot may be assigned different tasks at different locations. As these tasks are being performed, the robots have to navigate correctly such that the assigned tasks are completed efficiently, while also avoiding each other and other obstacles. To accomplish effective navigation, we must ensure that the robots are calibrated to avoid colliding with any kind of object on its path. Each robot has to sense the obstacles on its path and take necessary corrective measure to avoid those obstacles. In a situation with multiple robots, robots may …

Statistical Regression Methods For Gpgpu Design Space Exploration, Nimisha Raut

All Theses

General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPUs) have leveraged the performance and power efficiency of today's heterogeneous systems to usher in a new era of innovation in high-performance scientific computing. These systems can offer significantly high performance for massively parallel applications; however, their resources may be wasted due to inefficient tuning strategies. Previous application tuning studies pre-dominantly employ low-level, architecture specific tuning which can make the performance modeling task difficult and less generic. In this research, we explore the GPGPU design space featuring the memory hierarchy for application tuning using regression-based performance prediction framework and rank the design space based on …

Continuum Robotic Surface: Forward Kinematic Analysis And Implementation, Jessica Merino

All Theses

This thesis presents a new class of biologically inspired robots: continuum robotic surfaces. This work is fueled by the question: can the interaction between robot and environment be advanced with “programmable surfaces in space?” The novelty of continuum robotic surfaces lies in their ability to be actively controlled and reconfigured in what we believe is the current “missing dimension” in robot movements — two–dimensional space. We believe that such surfaces will lend themselves to more complex applications. However, to effectively deploy such surfaces for these complex applications, kinematic models will be necessary to plan and control desired configurations. The forward …

An Assessment Of The Accuracy Of An Automated Bite Counting Method In A Cafeteria Setting, Ziqing Huang

All Theses

Advances in body-worn sensors and mobile health technology have created new opportunities for empowering people to take a more active role in managing their health. Obesity has been recognized as a target of opportunity that could particularly benefit from this approach. Self-monitoring of dietary intake is critical for weight loss/management, but currently used tools such as
food diaries require users to manually estimate and record energy intake, making them subjective, prone to error, and difficult to use for long periods of time. Our group is developing a new tool called
the 'bite counter' that automates the monitoring of caloric intake. …

Cad Tool Design For Ncl And Mtncl Asynchronous Circuits, Vijay Mani Pillai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents an implementation of a method developed to readily convert Boolean designs into an ultra-low power asynchronous design methodology called MTNCL, which combines multi-threshold CMOS (MTCMOS) with NULL Convention Logic (NCL) systems. MTNCL provides the leakage power advantages of an all high-Vt implementation with a reasonable speed penalty compared to the all low-Vt implementation, and has negligible area overhead. The proposed tool utilizes industry-standard CAD tools. This research also presents an Automated Gate-Level Pipelining with Bit-Wise Completion (AGLPBW) method to maximize throughput of delay-insensitive full-word pipelined NCL circuits. These methods have been integrated into the Mentor Graphics and …

Experimental Analysis Of The Effects Of Manipulations In Weighted Voting Games, Ramoni Olaoluwa Lasisi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation investigates weighted voting games and three methods of manipulating those games, called splitting, merging, and annexation. The manipulations involve an agent or some agents misrepresenting their identities in anticipation of gaining more power over the outcomes of games. Indeed, in open anonymous environments, manipulation can be easy and cheap to achieve. We provide clear and sufficient discussion on related work and backgrounds to motivate this research topic, which certainly deserves attention. Weighted voting games are among key cooperative games, and the manipulations considered in this dissertation are natural, and have practical applications, that are likely …

Wireless Cyber-Physical Simulator And Case Studies On Structural Control, Bo Li

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

End-To-End Delay Analysis For Wireless Control Networks Under Edf Scheduling, Chengjie Wu

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

A Systematic Approach To Verify An Embedded Capacitive Touchscreen System, Jeffrey Lee Richardson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The conspicuously massive growth in the number of products utilizing capacitive touchscreen technology has raised awareness of the technology. The embedded system used to detect and report finger touches to the host is fairly complex and difficult to verify. An automated verification system is required to systematically test this type of system in a reasonable amount of time. This thesis describes the framework for an automated verification system for embedded capacitive touchscreen systems. The framework includes a Cartesian desktop robot, test instruments, communications bridge, and custom-built test management software. The criteria for selecting a Cartesian desktop robot rather than a …

Modeling, Control, And Motion Analysis Of A Class Of Extensible Continuum Manipulators, Apoorva Kapadia

All Dissertations

In this dissertation, the development of a kinematic model, a configuration-space controller, a master-slave teleoperation controller, along with the analysis of the self-motion properties for redundant, extensible, continuous backbone (continuum) ``trunk and tentacle' manipulators are detailed. Unlike conventional rigid-link robots, continuum manipulators are robots that can bend at any point along their backbone, resulting in new and unique modeling and control issues. Taken together, these chapters represent one of the first efforts towards devising model-based controllers of such robots, as well as characterizing their self-motion in its simplest form.
Chapter 2 describes the development of a convenient set of generalized, …

Hierarchical Channel-Access And Routing Protocols For Heterogeneous Multichannel Ad Hoc Networks, Crystal Jackson

All Dissertations

In this work, we consider a heterogeneous multichannel ad hoc network consisting of frequency-agile radios with the ability to change their carrier frequency and chip rate over a wide range of possibilities. The radios in this type of network are permitted to utilize multiple non-overlapping channels, and each channel differs significantly in its characteristics such as achievable data rate and communication range. A channel-access protocol regulates access to the channels available, and a routing protocol determines how a packet should be forwarded from its source to its destination through the network. The initial focus of this research is on channel-access …

Mobile Robot Navigation For Person Following In Indoor Environments, Ninad Pradhan

All Dissertations

Service robotics is a rapidly growing area of interest in robotics research. Service robots inhabit human-populated environments and carry out specific tasks. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a service robot capable of following a human leader around populated indoor environments. A classification system for person followers is proposed such that it clearly defines the expected interaction between the leader and the robotic follower. In populated environments, the robot needs to be able to detect and identify its leader and track the leader through occlusions, a common characteristic of populated spaces. An appearance-based person descriptor, which augments the …