Engineering Commons^™

Climate Change Adaptation Chapter: Marshfield, Massachusetts, Joshua H. Chase, Jonathan G. Cooper, Rory Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Filipe Antunes Lima, Sally R. Miller, Toni Marie Pignatelli

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Climate change, understood as a statistically significant variation in the mean state of the climate or its variability, is the greatest environmental challenge of this generation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Marshfield is already being affected by changes in the climate that will have a profound effect on the town’s economy, public health, coastal resources, natural features, water systems, and public and private infrastructure. Adaptation strategies have been widely recognized as playing an important role in improving a community’s ability to respond to climate stressors by resisting damage and recovering quickly.

Based on review of climate projections for the …

Prelude To A Master Plan: Ware, Massachusetts, Belen Alfaro, Bruno Carneiro, Margaret Engesser, Kathryn E. Fox, Evadne R. Friedman, Timothy Inacio, Anita Lockesmith, Christina Mills, Stephanie Molden, Meagen Mulherin, Russell Pandres, Vinicius Pereira, Brian Reid, Pedro Soto, Jennifer Stromsten

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Prelude to a Master Plan offers ideas, recommendations, and a toolkit to help the town chart its own path towards that future. While the teams and individual students worked to ‘drill down’ into specific topic areas, the Studio defined three basic areas in order to think about how the various assets, challenges and ideas undermine or reinforce one another. The report is loosely organized in those terms: addressing the outlying rural areas and issues specific to these places, considering one of the key growth areas that has extended from town and the conflicts that arise from the many uses occurring …

Large Excitonic Effects In Monolayers Of Molybdenum And Tungsten Dichalcogenides, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Quasiparticle band structures and optical properties of MoS2, MoSe2, MoTe2, WS2, and WSe2 monolayers are studied using the GW approximation in conjunction with the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE). The inclusion of two-particle excitations in the BSE approach reveals the presence of two strongly bound excitons (A and B) below the quasiparticle absorption onset arising from vertical transitions between a spin-orbit-split valence band and the conduction band at the K point of the Brillouin zone. The transition energies for monolayer MoS2, in particular, are shown to be in excellent agreement with available absorption and photoluminescence measurements. Excitation energies for the remaining monolayers …

Investigating Pilot Scale Performance Of An Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment System With A High Rate Anaerobic Side Stream Reactor, Aaron Brennan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The anaerobic side stream reactor (ASSR) process was continuously operated and tested as a pilot scale system, treating 500 gallons of raw wastewater per day. Addition of an ASSR to a conventional activated sludge (CAS) system has been shown to reduce overall waste sludge generation in previous bench scale experiments. This study aimed to specifically test the feasibility of the ASSR process at the pilot scale while comparing it to a full scale CAS plant. The ASSR process differs from the similar Cannibal® process in that it utilizes an SRT in the side stream reactor of only 2 days rather …

Evaluation Of Second-Stage Contactor Media For Manganese Removal, Jonathan Chihoski

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The focus of this research was to determine the performance of different types of media for a post-filter second-stage contactor for the removal of manganese from a drinking water source. The Aquarion Water Company’s Lantern Hill (LH) water treatment facility in Stonington, CT served as the motivation for this study. The groundwater at this site contains significant concentrations of manganese, averaging 0.2 mg/L, as well as iron, 2.3 mg/L, and total organic carbon (TOC), 3.5 mg/L. Currently, the Lantern Hill facility is using a combination of pH adjustment, potassium permanganate, chlorine, and cationic polymer addition prior to down flow through …

Hydrologic Forecasts And Adaptation To Climate Change In The Northeast Water Sector, Sarah Whateley

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Innovative approaches are needed for improving water resources management and decisionmaking under hydroclimatic uncertainty. Presently, water resource management and infrastructure design relies on an assumption of stationarity, the notion that ‘natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability’ (Milly et al., 2008). However, the need to reexamine this paradigm has proliferated in recent literature due to alterations in the hydrologic landscape (Pahl-Wostl, 2007; Peel and Bloschl, 2011). Sustainable management of water resource systems is becoming increasingly difficult as a result of intensification of anthropogenic disturbances, channel modifications, land-cover changes, and future uncertainty in climate change and variability. As we …

Developing A Watershed-Level Protocol For Choosing Indicator Compounds For Edcs/Ppcps Using Analytical Methods And Chemometrics, Varun N. Srinivasan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Numerous studies have reported the presence of several endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC) and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP) in wastewater effluents and consequently in natural water sources which serve as source water for drinking water utilities. However it is still unclear as to which of these compounds are important and need to be monitored. This paper proposes a new approach to identify indicators or surrogates to monitor these compounds in a watershed based on intensive sampling, analytical methods and statistical analysis. The watershed-level protocol involves identifying common patterns of occurrence in these trace chemicals and proposes indicators based on …

Assessment Of Iron And Manganese Sequestration, Danielle Volpe

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

For drinking water with low to moderate levels of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) (at or somewhat above the SMCL), sequestration is a less expensive treatment alternative compared to metal oxidation and removal. Sequestration complexes Fe and Mn to prevent precipitation and subsequent water quality problems (turbidity, color, staining, etc.). Despite the widespread use of sequestering agents, research has not resulted in a successful method to directly assess the complexation of Mn and Fe. This study was conducted to develop a method for assessing sequestering agent effectiveness and to assess the effectiveness of several phosphate based sequestering agents for several …

Assessment Of Iron And Manganese Sequestration, Danielle Volpe

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

For drinking water with low to moderate levels of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) (at or somewhat above the SMCL), sequestration is a less expensive treatment alternative compared to metal oxidation and removal. Sequestration complexes Fe and Mn to prevent precipitation and subsequent water quality problems (turbidity, color, staining, etc.). Despite the widespread use of sequestering agents, research has not resulted in a successful method to directly assess the complexation of Mn and Fe. This study was conducted to develop a method for assessing sequestering agent effectiveness and to assess the effectiveness of several phosphate based sequestering agents for several …

Engineering Nonlinearity Into Memristors For Passive Crossbar Applications, Jianhua Yang, M Zhang, Matthew Pickett, Stanley Williams

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Although TaOx memristors have demonstrated encouraging write/erase endurance and nanosecond switching speeds, the linear current-voltage (I-V) characteristic in the low resistance state limits their applications in large passive crossbar arrays. We demonstrate here that a TiO2-x/TaOx oxide heterostructure incorporated into a 50 nm× 50 nm memristor displays a very large nonlinearity such that I(V/2) ≈ I(V)/100 for V ≈ 1 volt, which is caused by current-controlled negative differential resistance in the device.

Evaluation Of Effluent Organic Nitrogen And Its Impacts On Receiving Water Bodies, Dongke Yu

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

This research characterizes different wastewater treatment plant effluent nitrogen species in order to further understand the organic fraction of effluent nitrogen. Four effluents from biological nutrient removal (BNR) treatment and conventional activated sludge (CAS) treatment processes were investigated. Proteomic tools were applied in characterizing effluent protein. The protein profiles show the presence of active enzymes in all effluents and the organic nitrogen in the BNR effluent is more diverse than that in the CAS effluent, especially in the size range of 50-75 kDa. Size fractionation of the effluents suggests that over 70% of the effluent protein is soluble and most …

Remote Sensing Models Of Algal Blooms And Cyanobacteria In Lake Champlain, Adam Trescott

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

We developed empirical remote sensing models to estimate chlorophyll a concentrations and cyanobacteria synoptically, over a large inland lake using available Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data. In contrast to previous studies which rely on the spectral characteristics of the cyanobacterial specific pigment, phycocyanin, we developed remote sensing models capable of directly detecting cyanobacterial biovolume. This distinction is important because Landsat ETM+ data lacks the spectral band information required for optimal phycocyanin detection. Each model was calibrated and cross-validated with existing in situ measurements from Lake Champlain’s Long-Term Water Quality and Biological Monitoring Program (LTMP). Lake station measurements taken …

A Mathematical Programming Computational Model For Disproportionate Collapse Analysis Of Steel Building Frames, Simos Gerasimidis, A. Ampatzis, C. Bisbos

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Disproportionate collapse analysis aims to assure that frames, a commonstructural system of buildings, can survive unforeseen local events and a central modelingtool of such abnormal deterioration is the concept of column loss. This paperformulates an appropriate computational model on the basis of mathematical optimization,using the collapse load analysis problem of steel frames with pre-existingdamage. A respective collapse load robustness measure is proposed. The model hasthe ability to consider both full and partial column/node removals. It renders to be alinear programming model, if the US steel design regulations are used. A practicalexample is presented and several aspects are discussed.

Umass Amherst Cmp Transportation And Parking Appendix A, Joseph Wanat, Dennis Swinford, Niels La Cour

Campus Planning Master Plans

The University of Massachusetts Transportation Study is a key component of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Campus Master Plan 2012. Produced by Vanesse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB), this study focuses on the transportation component of the Master Plan. The purpose of the Transportation Study is to describe existing conditions, project future conditions with development proposed in the Master Plan, identify existing and future transportation deficiencies, and recommend enhancements and improvements to improve safety and system operations. The Transportation Study includes traffic operations (traffic counts, turning movements, intersection performance, etc.), pedestrian and bicycle accommodations and transit services. The study is …

Load Reduction Of Floating Wind Turbines Using Tuned Mass Dampers, Gordon M. Stewart

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Offshore wind turbines have the potential to be an important part of the United States' energy production profile in the coming years. In order to accomplish this wind integration, offshore wind turbines need to be made more reliable and cost efficient to be competitive with other sources of energy. To capitalize on high speed and high quality winds over deep water, floating platforms for offshore wind turbines have been developed, but they suffer from greatly increased loading. One method to reduce loads in offshore wind turbines is the application of structural control techniques usually used in skyscrapers and bridges. Tuned …

Techniques For Industrial Implementation Of Emerging Semantic Technologies, Jay T. Breindel

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Techniques for the industrial implementation of emerging semantic technologies are presented in this research. Every new design, project, and procedure within a company generates a considerable amount of new information and important knowledge. Furthermore, a tremendous amount of legacy knowledge already exists within companies in electronic and non-electronic formats. All of this generated knowledge results in the need for tools and techniques to represent, structure, and reuse this knowledge. Researchers have spent considerable time and effort developing semantic knowledge management systems, with anticipation that these tools will address these knowledge management needs. However, little has been done to implement these …

The Economic Impacts Of Technical Change In Carbon Capture, Peter G. Rasmussen

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

There is a general consensus in the literature that carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that controls CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel power plants, figures to be a critical technology to reduce CO₂ emissions to CO₂ concentration stabilization levels prescribed in the literature. We completed three projects that advance the understanding of how technical change in carbon capture affects both near-future costs of CCS and the economy in the long term. First, we conducted a literature review of near-future capture cost estimates in order to get an idea of how expensive carbon capture will be in …

N3asics: Designing Nanofabrics With Fine-Grained Cmos Integration, Pavan Panchapakeshan

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Nanoscale-computing fabrics based on novel materials such as semiconductor nanowires, carbon nanotubes, graphene, etc. have been proposed in recent years. These fabrics employ unconventional manufacturing techniques like Nano-imprint lithography or Super-lattice Nanowire Pattern Transfer to produce ultra-dense nano-structures. However, one key challenge that has received limited attention is the interfacing of unconventional/self-assembly based approaches with conventional CMOS manufacturing to build integrated systems.

We propose a novel nanofabric approach that mixes unconventional nanomanufacturing with CMOS manufacturing flow and design rules to build a reliable nanowire-CMOS 3-D integrated fabric called N³ASICs with no new manufacturing constraints. In N³ASICs …

Impact Of Manufacturing Flow On Yield Losses In Nanoscale Fabrics, Priyamvada Vijayakumar

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Reliable and scalable manufacturing of nanofabrics entails significant challenges. Scalable nano-manufacturing approaches that employ the use of lithographic masks in conjunction with nanofabrication based on self-assembly have been proposed. A bottom-up fabrication of nanoelectronic circuits is expected to be subject to various defects and identifying the types of defects that may occur during each step of a manufacturing pathway is essential in any attempt to achieve reliable manufacturing. This thesis aims at analyzing the sources of defects in a nano-manufacturing flow and estimating the resulting yield loss. It integrates physical fabric considerations, manufacturing sequences and the resulting defect scenarios. This …

Secure And Energy Efficient Physical Unclonable Functions, Sudheendra Srivathsa

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Physical Unclonable Functions are a unique class of circuits that leverage the inherentvariations in manufacturing process to create unique,unclonableIDs and secret keys.The distinguishing feature of PUFs is that even an untrusted foundry cannot create a copy of the circuit as it is impossible to control the manufacturing process variations.PUFs can operate reliably in presence of voltage and temperature variations. In thisthesis, weexplorethe security offered by PUFs and tradeoffs between different metrics such as uniqueness, reliability and energy consumption.Benefits of sub-threshold PUF operation and the use of delay based Arbiter PUFs and ring oscillator PUFs in low power applications is evaluated. …

Simulations Of Non-Contact Creep In Regimes Of Mixed Dominance, Maija Benitz

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Improvement of high temperature applications relies on the further development of ultra-high temperature materials (UHTMs). Higher performance and efficiency is driving the need for improvements in energy conversion and propulsion systems. Rocket nozzles, gas turbine engines and hypersonic aircraft depend on a better understanding of a material's performance at high temperatures. More specifically, the characterization of creep properties of high temperature materials is required. Conventional creep testing methods are limited to about 1700 degrees Celsius. Non-contact methods have been developed, which rotate spherical samples up to 33,000 rotations per second. A load is supplied by centripetal acceleration causing deformation of …

On-Chip True Random Number Generation In Nanometer Cmos, Vikram Belur Suresh

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

On-chip True Random Number Generator (TRNG) forms an integral part of a number of cryptographic systems in multi-core processors, communication networks and RFID. TRNG provides random keys, device id and seed for Pseudo Random Number Generators (PRNG). These circuits, harnessing physical random variations like thermal noise or stray electromagnetic waves are ideally expected to generate random bits with very high entropy and zero correlation. But, progression to advance semiconductor manufacturing processes has brought about various challenges in the design of TRNG. Increasing variations in the fabrication process and the sensitivity of transistors to operating conditions like temperature and supply voltage …

A Quantitative Analysis Of The Impacts From Selected Climate Variables Upon Traffic Safety In Massachusetts, Katrina M. Hecimovic

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Current literature predicts that climate change may increase both the occurrence and severity of heavy rainfall events and winter precipitation in the Northeast United States. A potential increase in intense precipitation events related to climate change would theoretically also cause an increase in weather-related delays, increase in overall traffic disruptions, a substantive shift in travel behavior, and presumably a negative effect on safety and maintenance operations of highways. This current research study examines the existing impacts from both an operational and behavioral perspective of how weather events currently impact overall safety along routes in Massachusetts. A secondary objective of the …

Implementation Of Dual-Polarization On An Airborne Scatterometer And Preliminary Data Quality, Jason Dvorsky

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The Imaging Wind and RAin Profiler (IWRAP) is an airborne scatterometer system built and operated by University of Massachusetts Amherst's Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (MIRSL). The radar is seasonally deployed aboard one of the two National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) WP-3D Orion ``Hurricane Hunter'' aircraft based out of MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida. IWRAP is a dual-frequency, Ku- and C-band, scatterometer that uses two conically scanning antennas to estimate the ocean surface wind vectors as well as intervening rain profiles. Data that is gathered with IWRAP is used to improve current Geophysical Model Functions (GMF) or to help derive …

Viscoelastic Flow Through Contraction Geometries, Ashwin Karthik Sankaran

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Contraction flow of viscoelastic fluids has been a benchmark problem in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics because it mimics flows occurring in a number of industrial applications. It is also of considerable interest to academia to gain fundamental understanding of factors that affect the evolution of vortices and a complete understanding of the dynamics for a simple polymeric fluid has not been achieved. In this two part study we investigate the effect of pre deformation of a Boger fluid in a contraction geometry and the flow of surfactants in a parallel contraction geometry.

Entry flow of a polymeric fluid results in the …

Vehicle Miles Traveled (Vmt) Fee Financing Alternatives: Lessons Learned And Future Opportunities, Ashley L. Costa

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) today are seeking financing alternatives so that transportation infrastructure investments can become less dependent on the amount of fuel U.S. drivers consume. Because the fuel tax is no longer viewed as a sustainable and stable option, other financing alternatives are being considered. One such alternative includes the vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fee. Examples of such VMT fee alternatives include: 1) collection using an onboard diagnostic system (OBD), 2) collection at the fuel pump using an OBD in conjunction with GPS technology, and 3) collection at a vehicle inspection station using the OBD.

This proposed research …

Interfacial Strength Between Prestressed Hollow Core Slabs And Cast-In-Place Concrete Toppings, Ryan M. Mones

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The horizontal shear strength of the interface between prestressed concrete hollow core slabs and cast-in-place concrete topping slabs was evaluated through a set of 24 push-off experiments. The push-off test specimens featured segments of dry-mix and wet-mix hollow core slabs with a variety of surface treatments including machine finished, sandblasted, broom roughened, rake roughened and grouted. A cast-in-place slab was poured on top of the hollow core specimens to form a 15 inch by 15 inch interface between the two materials. Results indicate the average horizontal shear strength of the push-off specimens was 227 psi. Higher shear strength and slip …

Development Of A Cost Minimizing Strategy To Mitigate Bird Mortalities In A Wind Farm, Karamvir Singh

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Wind is the second largest renewable energy source after solar. It is one of the fastest growing sources of electricity in the world and currently of wind energy is installed in the United States and an additional is under construction (Office of Energy and Environment Affairs, 2011). For the growth of wind electricity, one of the most prominent environmental concerns relates to the death of birds, bats and other avian species resulting from collision with turbine blades.

This thesis develops a model that provides the optimal strategy of turning the turbines off in a wind farm for certain periods to …

Driver Dynamics And The Longitudinal Control Model, Gabriel G. Leiner

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Driver psychology is one of the most difficult phenomena to model in the realm of traffic flow theory because mathematics often cannot capture the human factors involved with driving a car. Over the past several decades, many models have attempted to model driver aggressiveness with varied results. The recently proposed Longitudinal Control Model (LCM) makes such an attempt, and this paper offers evidence of the LCM's usefulness in modeling road dynamics by analyzing deceleration rates that are commonly associated with various levels of aggression displayed by drivers. The paper is roughly divided into three sections, one outlining the LCM's ability …

Semi-Active Damping For An Intelligent Adaptive Ankle Prosthesis, Andrew K. Lapre

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Modern lower limb prostheses are devices that replace missing limbs, making it possible for lower limb amputees to walk again. Most commercially available prosthetic limbs lack intelligence and passive adaptive capabilities, and none available can adapt on a step by step basis. Often, amputees experience a loss of terrain adaptability as well as stability, leaving the amputee with a severely altered gait. This work is focused on the development of a semi-active damping system for use in intelligent terrain adaptive ankle prostheses. The system designed consists of an optimized hydraulic cylinder with an electronic servo valve which throttles the hydraulic …