Engineering Commons^™

Assessing The Engineering Performance Of Affordable Net-Zero Energy Housing, Jordan P. Wallpe

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

The purpose of this research was to evaluate affordable technologies that are capable of providing attractive, cost-effective energy savings to the housing industry. The research did so by investigating the 2011 Solar Decathlon competition, with additional insight from the Purdue INhome. Insight from the Purdue INhome verified the importance of using a three step design process to design a net-zero energy building. In addition, energy consumption values of the INhome were used to compare and contrast different systems used in other houses.

Evaluation of unbiased competition contests gave a better understanding of how a house can realistically reach net-zero. Upon …

Improving Manufacturing Processes Through Energy Monitoring, Andrew Grzelak

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Energy efficiency and sustainability are very popular topics in the current field of manufacturing. With the increase in use of automation technology as well as the recent growth in the area of energy management, there is much focus on the overall improvement of manufacturing processes. For this research a project was completed to create a system that could improve both process efficiency as well as decrease energy consumption. By taking a look at the machine level energy consumption of an automated piece of manufacturing equipment, by eliminating waste in process, both energy efficiency and operational efficiency can be improved.

Using …

Lithium-Based Battery System Management And Balancing, William Joel Schmidt Iii

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

This thesis builds upon previous work completed for the design and evaluation of active lithium battery system management. Simulations were performed to provide a comparison for the hardware that was designed, built, and tested. An analysis of the simulation and hardware results was completed to support or disprove the initial hypothesis. A DC-DC converter was used as the source for the balancing current. Lithium polymer batteries with a 5Ah capacity were used for testing the designed hardware. The findings showed that there is a reduction in the system voltage swing during balancing as well as less time taken to decrease …

Miniature Mass Spectrometry: Rf Amplitude Control System Design, Matthew Allen Kirleis

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

This thesis covers the methods used to construct and characterize a custom digital RF amplitude control system. Many types of mass spectrometers exist, but few have been miniaturized as much as the Mini instruments developed at Purdue University. The goal of this research was to improve upon an earlier amplitude control system consisting of analog circuits first implemented in the Mini 11.5 mass spectrometer developed at Purdue University.

A custom set of control and data acquisition electronics were developed for testing the digital and analog control systems in a Mini 11.5 mass spectrometer chassis. A MATLAB Simulink simulation was done …

Characterization Of Parallel Application Runtime Sensitivity On Multi-Core High Performance Computing Systems, Padma Priya Veeraraghavan

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

A commonly seen behavior of parallel applications is that their runtime is influenced by network communication load. The way a parallel application is run in a network and the presence of other applications and processes in the network can contribute to a wide range of variations in the runtime. Therefore, in order to achieve consistent and optimal runtimes, it is important to understand and characterize the runtime sensitivity of parallel applications with respect to execution under the presence of network communication load.

In this research, runtime sensitivities for various parallel applications were studied by applying additional network communication load. In …

Using Smartphones For Indoor Navigation, Benjamin Thomas Loulier

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

This directed projet is about the use of smartphones for indoor navigation.

Nowadays, indoor navigation is a real challenge, we are all familiar with the multiple applications of GPS based navigation but all these applications cannot be transfered in an indoor environment as we cannot receive a GPS signal inside.

The document is composed of three different parts related to indoor navigation using smartphones. The first part presents an inertial positioning system for pedestrians walking in an indoor environment, this system is implemented on an iPhone 4. In the second part we introduce a positioning system using RFID tags scattered …

Electric Field Analysis Of Human Breast Tumors For Treatment By Electroporation, Poornima Agoramurthy

Purdue Polytechnic Masters Theses

Breast cancer is a frequently diagnosed disease in women, second only to cancers of the skin. According to the American Cancer Society there were approximately 210,000 new cases of breast cancer estimated in 2010 in the US, 20 % of which resulted in death. With such a high rate of incidence, there is clearly a need for alternate treatments, especially for in-operable tumors and chemo- and radio-resistive patients. Electrochemotherapy, a method by which high intensity, short duration electrical pulses are used to temporarily open pores of cells to enhance uptake of drugs, is gaining popularity in drug delivery for cancer …