Engineering Commons^™

Control And Design Of A Passive Solar Lumber Drying Kiln, Peter Chardavoyne

Honors Scholar Theses

The passive solar lumber drying kiln design, developed by EE Senior Design Team 2317 is presented, tested, and discussed. The design incorporates solar power and a custom control system to dry 12’ lumber boards inside a shipping container much faster than air-drying methods, which can take up to a year for thorough drying, though this can be extended due to the unpredictability of weather events and conditions. This work presents the design as in the final report provided by the team, but provides a more detailed explanation and analysis of the microcontroller system, testing methods and outcomes, alternate solutions and …

A Comparison Of Medical Article Transport Approaches, Andrew White

Honors Scholar Theses

Our senior design project is to develop a product named the Smartbox - a container capable of safely carrying and monitoring medical articles and accommodate a UAV drone carrying the container. These medical articles include sensitive medicines and human organs for transplantation. Speed, safety, and reliability are a must in this field, as the stakes if a payload is lost or improperly maintained can be life threatening. This project aims to improve on the existing medical transport logistics chains in use today. Time is the most important factor in transportation: many organs simply cannot survive outside of the human body …

Path Planning With Deep Neural Networks, Paul Simmerling, Brendan Sayers, Paulo Alcantara Silva

Honors Scholar Theses

This report will cover the work and plans of the ECE 2107 Senior design team. The goal of the project is to design and build a fully autonomous self-driving car. This car will have a complete sensor suite including LIDAR, an IMU, a camera, and encoders. It will be based on a multi-level system where the highest level uses a neural network for advanced signal processing and analysis. The current state of the project is discussed as well as the final results. Project management and other constraints will be briefly investigated. This team is building a self driving car testbed …

Evaluating Driving Performance Of A Novel Behavior Planning Model On Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Keyur Shah

Honors Scholar Theses

Many current algorithms and approaches in autonomous driving attempt to solve the "trajectory generation" or "trajectory following” problems: given a target behavior (e.g. stay in the current lane at the speed limit or change lane), what trajectory should the vehicle follow, and what inputs should the driving agent apply to the throttle and brake to achieve this trajectory? In this work, we instead focus on the “behavior planning” problem—specifically, should an autonomous vehicle change lane or keep lane given the current state of the system?

In addition, current theory mainly focuses on single-vehicle systems, where vehicles do not communicate with …

Design Of Versatile Feedback Control System Components For Selective Laser Sintering, Thomas Chessman

University Scholar Projects

Selective laser sintering (SLS) is an additive manufacturing technique that involves using a laser to fuse powdered material together, layer by layer, in order to create a 3-D product. Despite its numerous benefits over traditional methods of manufacturing, including higher efficiency, versatility, and the ability to process many materials, selective laser sintering suffers from its propensity to generate structural errors during operation.

Feedback control has been shown to improve fabrication quality in other laser-based additive manufacturing techniques when implemented properly. Widespread exploration of applying feedback control in SLS might lead to significant performance improvements in this form of manufacturing.

This …

Development Of A Sonically Powered Biodegradable Nanogenerator For Bone Regeneration, Avi S. Patel

University Scholar Projects

Background: Reconstruction of bone fractures and defects remains a big challenge in orthopedic surgery. While regenerative engineering has advanced the field greatly using a combination of biomaterial scaffolds and stem cells, one matter of difficulty is inducing osteogenesis in these cells. Recent works have shown electricity’s ability to promote osteogenesis in stem cell lines when seeded in bone scaffolds; however, typical electrical stimulators are either (a) externally housed and require overcomplex percutaneous wires be connected to the implanted scaffold or (b) implanted non-degradable devices which contain toxic batteries and require invasive removal surgeries.

Objective: Here, we establish a biodegradable, piezoelectric …

Development Of A Sonically Powered Biodegradable Nanogenerator For Bone Regeneration, Avi Patel

Honors Scholar Theses

Background: Reconstruction of bone fractures and defects remains a big challenge in orthopedic surgery. While regenerative engineering has advanced the field greatly using a combination of biomaterial scaffolds and stem cells, one matter of difficulty is inducing osteogenesis in these cells. Recent works have shown electricity’s ability to promote osteogenesis in stem cell lines when seeded in bone scaffolds; however, typical electrical stimulators are either (a) externally housed and require overcomplex percutaneous wires be connected to the implanted scaffold or (b) implanted non-degradable devices which contain toxic batteries and require invasive removal surgeries.

Objective: Here, we establish a biodegradable, piezoelectric …

Security Analysis Of The Uconn Husky One Card, Trevor Phillips

Honors Scholar Theses

The “Husky One Card” is the name given to student IDs at the University of Connecticut. It can identify students, faculty, and staff in a variety of situations. The One Card is used for meal plans, Husky Bucks (an equivalent of money, but valid only in the Storrs area), residence hall/ university facility access, and student health services. The current Husky One Card consists of a picture identification on the front and a standard 1-dimensional barcode and 3-track magnetic strip on the back.

The goal of this thesis is to investigate the feasibility of cloning Husky One Cards, the ease …

Assisted Switched Reluctance Machines, Amy Robinson

Honors Scholar Theses

Switched reluctance machine (SRM) modifications in both control schemes and physical design have been steadily increasing in academia to improve machine performance. Assisted switched reluctance machines (ASRMs) are a type of design modification for SRMs. Permanent magnets (PMs) and electromagnetic DC coils (DCC) are being added to the SRM to improve its torque output and overall efficiency. The choice for the design modification has been evolving throughout the decades. The focus has shifted from adding DCC to ASRM to adding PMs to ASRMs. This paper reviews the research trends of ASRMs and includes an analysis of the modified stator yoke …

Development Of The Codebase For Ece Design: Smartwatch Device And App For Continuous Glucose Monitoring, Keelin J. Becker-Wheeler

Honors Scholar Theses

This honors thesis describes the development of the codebase for the 2018 University of Connecticut ECE Senior Design project titled "Smartwatch Device and App for Continuous Glucose Monitoring''. The goal for the senior design project is to remove the dependencies imposed by a previously-designed prototype of a glucose-monitoring smartwatch, by creating a new custom device without those dependencies. Development of the new codebase involves splitting the tasks of an Arduino codebase into a number of logical components that are then implemented in C. This new codebase makes substantial improvements to the overall program structure and organization, as well as numerous …

A Novel Time-Domain Method Of Fault Diagnosis In Induction Motors, Bryan J. Davis

Honors Scholar Theses

This paper introduces a novel time-domain method for detecting the four major types of induction motor faults without requiring complex signal processing or additional sensors other than those already in place for closed-loop motor control. This method artificially modulates the motor current feedback signal with a perturbed frequency that oscillates about the characteristic frequency of the fault in question. After filtering out the unwanted frequency components that result from the modulation, the selected fault-indicative component is a very slow sinusoid that is only present when the fault is present. The method looks for this fault-indicative component by monitoring the time …

Cooperative 3-D Map Generation Using Multiple Uavs, Andrew Erik Lawson

University Scholar Projects

This report aims to demonstrate the feasibility of building a global 3-D map from multiple UAV robots in a GPS-denied, indoor environment. Presented are the design of each robot and the reasoning behind choosing its hardware and software components, the process in which a single robot obtains a individual 3-D map entirely onboard, and lastly how the mapping concept is extended to multiple robotic agents to form a global 3-D map using a centralized server. In the latter section, this report focuses on two algorithms, Online Mapping and Map Fusion, developed to facilitate the cooperative approach. A limited selection …

Design And Development Of Two Component Hydrogel Ejector For Three-Dimensional Cell Growth, Thomas Dunkle, Jessica Deschamps, Connie Dam

Honors Scholar Theses

Hydrogels are useful in wound healing, drug delivery, and tissue engineering applications, but the available methods of injecting them quickly and noninvasively are limited. The medical industry does not yet have access to an all-purpose device that can quickly synthesize hydrogels of different shapes and sizes. Many synthesis procedures that have been developed result in the formation of amorphous hydrogels. While generally useful, amorphous hydrogels exhibit limited capability in tissue engineering applications, especially due to their viscous properties. This endeavor aims to modulate the appropriate gelation parameters, optimize the injection process, and create a prototype that allows for the extrusion …

Condition-Dependent Risk Assessment Of Large-Scale Grid-Tied Photovoltaic Power Systems, Sherwin Li

Master's Theses

This thesis reviews the methods for evaluating the reliability of large PV systems and techniques for quantifying the impacts of PV interconnection on distribution system reliability. In addition, a comparative study is performed to evaluate the seasonal condition-dependent risk performance of central-inverter and string-inverter grid-tied PV power systems. Major contributions include: 1) risk analysis of seasonal impacts for string and centralized PV systems. Seasonal sensitivities of PV system risks to system structures, temperature variation, solar insolation, and capacitor equivalent series resistance are analyzed; and 2) the incorporation of the effect of operational conditions and the aging failure model into the …

Development And Implementation Of A Calibration Procedure For Complex Impedance Spectrum Measurements With Applications To Embedded Battery Health Monitoring And Management Systems, William H. Morrison

Master's Theses

Energy storage devices such as rechargeable Lithium ion batteries are assuming an increasingly prominent role in society, covering applications from electric / hybrid electric vehicles to personal portable electronics. In response to this increasing demand, technologies that monitor battery health and remaining useful life have developed. One such system is the Smart Battery Status Monitor (SBSM), developed by the Idaho National Laboratory, Montana Tech and Qualtech Systems, Inc. The SBSM utilizes impedance spectrum measurements using a subsystem called the Impedance Measurement Box (IMB). The impedance measurements are complex quantities (having both a resistive and a reactive component) and are made …

Active Storage And Ssd Caching In An Object Storage Environment, Michael T. Runde

Master's Theses

The advancing performance and lowering costs required to implement additional processing power on system peripherals such as disk drives are increasingly allowing additional computing ability to be located directly on individual drives. Active Storage attempts to take advantage of this excess by moving some computationally intensive applications directly to the disk drives. This can remove the bottlenecks seen through interconnects between the drives and the CPU of an initiating system as well as remove the need for systems to handle these applications.

The contributions of this thesis are in two areas. The first is the development of a framework designed …

Adaptive Energy Management Scheme In Real-Time Energy Harvesting Embedded Systems, Shruti Khare

Master's Theses

The main purpose of this thesis was to develop an online adaptive energy management scheme for energy harvesting embedded systems. Two energy prediction schemes were used, namely Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) and Adaptive Forward Prediction (AFP), to schedule all the tasks with least deadline miss rate. The AFP scheme has a mean relative error of 6-10% which is much lower than exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) algorithm with an error of 30%. The large difference in the error percentage between the two prediction algorithms is due to the adaptive nature of AFP as it tracks small changes in input …

Dynamic Test Scheduling In Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation Of Commercial Vehicles, Tenil Cletus

Master's Theses

Modern day commercial vehicles are controlled by various Electronic Control Units (ECU). They are not only tested as single units, but also by networking them in Controlled Area Network bus (CAN) to form a complete electrical control system. This is achieved using Hardware In the Loop (HIL) Integration Lab. In HIL, the electrical system is connected to a real time mathematical model of the vehicle plus it’s environment so as to form a loop.

Testing functionality of the electrical system begins by defining functional tests. An example would be testing cruise control activation. Executing each test is made possible by …

Computational Modeling For Transportation Network Security, Sherif A. Tolba

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Cathode Materials For Low Temperature (500-700c) Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Alexander M. Lassman

Master's Theses

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) have gained a great deal of interest, due to their potential for high efficiency power generation and ability to utilize hydrogen fuel, as well as various hydrocarbon-based fuels. A recent trend in SOFC development has been towards lower operating temperatures (500-700°C), which can substantially reduce the cost and complexity of the system. This thesis presents an investigation into state of the art Ba- and La- based cathode materials for use in low temperature (500-700°C) solid oxide fuel cells.

Synthesis of A-site deficient [A=0.97] Ba_0.5Sr_0.5Co_0.8Fe_0.2O₃ (BSCF) was …

Experimental And Numerical Investigations Of Tubular-Shaped Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (Dmfcs), Travis R. Ward

Master's Theses

This study focuses on both the numerical and experimental investigations of the novel, passively operated, tubular-shaped, Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) as an alternative geometry to the traditional planar-shaped fuel cell. The benefit of the tubular geometry compared to the planar geometry is the higher instantaneous volumetric power density provided by the larger active area, which could be beneficial in applications that require a high instantaneous power while occupying a small volume. First, a two-dimensional, two-phase, non-isothermal model was developed to investigate the steady-state performance and design characteristics of a tubular-shaped, passive DMFC. It was found that a higher ambient …

Reconfigurable Sampling For Enhanced Energy Efficiency In Power-Constrained Wireless Systems, Timothy Kurp

Master's Theses

Advancement in microelectronics and wireless communications has nurtured the development of low power and low cost wireless systems such as sensor networks. Each node is typically driven by a battery, which has a limited energy capacity that directly constrains node, and network lifetime. This presents a bottleneck for the widespread exploitation of wireless sensing technology. Therefore, improving the energy efficiency of wireless sensing devices is of critical importance and has attracted the attention of the research community.

In this work, a data-driven method has been proposed and systematically investigated. Specifically, this technique reconfigures, in real time, the rate of data …

Underwater Localization And Tracking Of Physical Systems, Patrick E. Carroll

Master's Theses

In this paper, we investigate the problem of localizing an underwater sensor node basedon message broadcasting from multiple surface nodes. With the time-of-arrival measurementsfrom a DSP-based multicarrier modem, each sensor node localizes itself based on the traveltime differences among multiple senders to the receiver. Using one-way message passing, such asolution can scale to accommodate a large number of nodes in a network. We consider the issuefrom not only the physical layer, but also at the node processing layer by incorporating a trackingsolution. We present simulation results as well as preliminary testing results in a swimming poolwith both stationary and moving …

Robust Region Tracking In Multi-Agent Systems Utilizing Sliding Mode Control: Theory And Applications, Mark Bacon

Master's Theses

This thesis presents a methodology to bring controlled agents within a moving region despite agent interaction dynamics, uncertain forces and parameter variation. The logic is derived from traditional Sliding Mode Control theory with an expanded boundary layer which allows position deviation from the region center to specified bounds. As an example of the utility of this control, multiple methods of herding (controlling passive agents by appropriate positioning of controlled agents) are presented.

Game Theoretic Bidding Strategies For Auctions In Green Electricity Markets, Dipayan Ghosh

Honors Scholar Theses

Electricity markets in the United States presently employ an auction mechanism to determine the dispatch of power generation units. In this market design, generators submit bid prices to a regulation agency for review, and the regulator conducts an auction selection in such a way that satisfies electricity demand. Most regulators currently use an auction selection method that minimizes total offer costs ["bid cost minimization" (BCM)] to determine electric dispatch. However, recent literature has shown that this method may not minimize consumer payments, and it has been shown that an alternative selection method that directly minimizes total consumer payments ["payment cost …