Engineering Commons^™

An Integrated Database Management System And Building Information Modeling For Sustainable Design, Sultan Althobaiti

Masters Theses

The use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) with sustainable design is getting widespread since it helped architects, engineers, and contractors in achieving the sustainability goal. The present work is using green and certified products and materials to be integrated with Building Information Model (BIM) to simulate and generate a conceptual design for green and sustainable design. The use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) would help achieving sustainability, which would be predictable and possible. Revit Architecture is a tool of BIM technology that can be used for building designing and modeling.

The research represents a database system for green building products …

Identification And Quantification Of Cotton Yield Monitor Errors, Jason Clay Head

Masters Theses

Cotton yield monitors are an important part of a precision agriculture program and are becoming widely used by cotton producers for making management decisions. Members of the cotton industry have shown interest in using cotton yield monitors for collecting data from production scale variety yield trials (experiments that test yield performance for numerous varieties). Weighing boll buggies are the current industry standard for measuring yield in variety trials. This process is time consuming and requires extra equipment and labor. The ability to use a yield monitor for measuring yield would streamline variety trial harvesting. Recommendations for the Ag Leader cotton …

Accelerating The Stochastic Simulation Algorithm Using Emerging Architectures, David Dewayne Jenkins

Masters Theses

In order for scientists to learn more about molecular biology, it is imperative that they have the ability to construct and evaluate models. Model statistics consistent with the chemical master equation can be obtained using Gillespie's stochastic simulation algorithm (SSA). Due to the stochastic nature of the Monte Carlo simulations, large numbers of simulations must be run in order to get accurate statistics for the species populations and reactions. However, the algorithm tends to be computationally heavy and leads to long simulation runtimes for large systems. In this research, the performance of Gillespie's stochastic simulation algorithm is analyzed and optimized …

Design And Implementation Of A High Temperature Fully-Integrated Bcd-On-Soi Under Voltage Lock Out Circuit, Nora Dianne Bull

Masters Theses

As concern about the environment has grown in recent years, alternatives in the automotive industry have become an important topic for researchers. One alternative being considered is electric vehicles, which utilize electric motors. DC/AC inverters and DC/DC power converters control these electric motors. A logic circuit is needed to power these converters; however, the logic generators inherently operate at a voltage too low to power the motors. A device known as the gate driver is the interface between the logic generators (or microcontroller) and the power devices (power converter). The gate driver provides the power needed to drive the power …

Structural Behavior Of A Pile Framed Tie Back Retaining Wall, Mieah Dee Turner

Masters Theses

The objective of this research study is to analyze the preliminary structural behavior of a pile framed tie back retaining wall concept created by the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT). Instrumentation is used to measure the forces and moments on the steel piles, loads on the anchors, and the pressure and displacement of the retained soil over time. Data collection for steel pile analysis consisted of the comparison of strain gage readings. Stress values were calculated from the readings and reduced down to an axial and bending force along the pile. Soil pressures that built up behind the wall were …

A Condition Assessment Process For Aerospace Ground Test Systems, Larry Michael Davis

Masters Theses

This research developed a process to identify condition deficiencies and sustainment requirements to assist in the development of strategic management plans for aerospace ground test systems that may be unique in design, operation, and/or maintenance.

Subject matter experts can use the process to evaluate the condition of a test asset by inputting data into the developed software system. The process was designed around the concept of evaluating the condition of a system against ten parameters that encompass all of the aspects of a system that would be considered in determining its overall condition. A scale of zero (failed) to ten …

Stream Channel Stability And Channel Evolution In A Rapidly Urbanizing, Ridge-And-Valley Watershed, Beaver Creek, Knox County, Tennessee, Francis Bartholomew Keaney

Masters Theses

In Tennessee, sedimentation is among the leading causes of stream impairment. Excessive loads of alluvium are detrimental to the ecological health and human use of these resources. Sediments in streams have many sources, but there is evidence that stream bank erosion is a major contributing factor. Development and urbanization in a stream’s watershed will have impacts on the concentration of stream sediment because the increase in the area covered by impervious surfaces, which reduces initial abstraction and retention times. This, in turn will increase the peak storm water discharge and sediment carrying capacity. If the stream channel cannot accommodate these …

Development And Testing Of A Self-Contained, Portable Instrumentation System For A Fighter Pilot Helmet, Michael Anthony Kamp

Masters Theses

A self-contained, portable, inertial and positional measurement system was developed and tested for an HGU-55 model fighter pilot helmet. The system, designated the Portable Helmet Instrumentation System (PHIS), demonstrated the recording of accelerations and rotational rates experienced by the human head in a flight environment. A compact, self-contained, “knee-board” sized computer recorded these accelerations and rotational rates during flight. The present research presents the results of a limited evaluation of this helmet-mounted instrumentation system flown in an Extra 300 fully aerobatic aircraft. The accuracy of the helmet-mounted, inertial head tracker system was compared to the aircraft-mounted referenced system. The ability …

Vision-Based Reinforcement Learning Using A Consolidated Actor-Critic Model, Christopher Allen Niedzwiedz

Masters Theses

Vision-based machine learning agents are tasked with making decisions based on high-dimensional, noisy input, placing a heavy load on available resources. Moreover, observations typically provide only partial information with respect to the environment state, necessitating robust state inference by the agent. Reinforcement learning provides a framework for decision making with the goal of maximizing long-term reward. This thesis introduces a novel approach to vision-based reinforce- ment learning through the use of a consolidated actor-critic model (CACM). The approach takes advantage of artificial neural networks as non-linear function approximators and the reduced com- putational requirements of the CACM scheme to yield …

Design Of A Highly Constrained Test System For A 12-Bit, 16-Channel Wilkinson Adc, Zachary William Pannell

Masters Theses

Outer space is a very harsh environment that can cause electronics to not operate as they were originally intended. Aside from the extreme amount of radiation found in space, temperatures can also change very dramatically in a relatively small time frame. In order to test electronics that will be used in this environment, they first need to be tested on Earth under replicated conditions. Vanderbilt University designed a dewar that allows devices to be tested at these extreme temperatures while being radiated. For this thesis, a test setup that met all of the dewar's constraints was designed that would allow …

Automated System To Debug Under-Performing Network Flows In Wide Area Networks, Harika Tandra

Masters Theses

Locating the cause of performance losses in large high performance Wide Area Networks (WAN) is an extremely challenging problem. This is because WANs comprise several distributed sub-networks (Autonomous Networks), with their own independent network monitoring systems. Each individual monitoring system has limited or no access to network devices outside its own network. Moreover, conventional network monitoring systems are designed only to provide information about the health of individual network devices, and do not provide sufficient information to monitor endto- end performance – thus, adding severe overhead on debugging end-toend performance issues.

In this thesis, an automated tool is designed that …

Novel Design Of A Portosystemic Shunt Occluder, Tommy Lee Washington

Masters Theses

In some breeds of dog, specifically the Yorkshire Terrier, a genetic defect exists that causes a hepatic portosystemic shunt to form. A hepatic portosystemic shunt is a vessel that when present cause blood to bypass the liver, which is responsible for filtering waste from the digestive system and moving it out of the body. An implantable polymeric device was constructed that would slowly occlude the hepatic portosystemic shunt and force the blood to stop flowing through the bypassing vessel and flow through the vessel to the liver over 3-4 months time.

The portosystemic shunt occluder device consist of three polyoxymethylene …

A Business Process Modeling Approach For Evaluating A Government Contract Closeout Process, Clayton Jerrett Capizzi

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the practice of Business Process Modeling (BPM) in the field of contracts management. Government defense contractors are heavily burdened by contracts which have ended, but have not been finalized and closed. In order to keep good relations with organizations regulating government contracts, contractors have been forced to devise a strategy to address contract closeouts. Through utilization of BPM practices, an organization is able to not only model the flow of their contract closeout process, but simulate the performance of their process under varying conditions so that goals and deadlines may be met. Data was collected about a …

A Study To Evaluate The Suitability Of A Centrifuge As A Dynamic Flight Simulator For F/A-18 Strike Fighter Mission Training, Richard Michael Masica

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the suitability of using an existing 25-ft radius centrifuge as a dynamic flight simulator for “full mission” F/A-18 strike fighter mission training with respect to the representativeness of pilot-perceived motion and acceleration cues.

The methodology employed in this study consisted of analyzing F/A-18 mission tasks, collecting pilot opinion surveys of important sensory cues needed in simulator training, and conducting an analysis of human pilot perceptual problems caused by centrifuge motion constraints.

This study identified a number of issues indicating that a centrifuge-based flight simulator shows limited potential for use in “full mission” …

Wetting Behavior Of Polymer Melts With Refractory Coatings At High Temperature, Robin Woracek

Masters Theses

Within the scope of this thesis, an experimental system has been designed, developed and manufactured for the determination of the wetting behavior of liquids and polymer melts with solid surfaces (coated and uncoated) at high temperatures (> 200 ºC). The measurement system incorporates a modified Wilhelmy plate technique, using a precision weighing module, a vertical linear stage, custom developed application software using LabView with suitable hardware and a high temperature furnace with thermocouple feedback control. Experiments have been performed and are reported to evaluate the performance of the testing system, using liquids of known wetting properties. A suitable testing procedure …

Integral Formulation Of The Compressible Flowfield In Solid Rocket Motors, Michel Henry Akiki

Masters Theses

In this thesis, a semi-analytical formulation is provided for the rotational, steady, inviscid, compressible motion in a solid rocket motor that is modeled as a slender porous chamber. The analysis overcomes some of the deficiencies encountered in previous work on the subject. The method that we employ consists of reducing the problem’s mass, momentum, energy, ideal gas, and isentropic relations into a single integral equation that can be solved numerically. Furthermore, Saint-Robert’s power law is used to link the pressure to the sidewall mass injection rate. At the outset, results are presented for the axisymmetric and planar porous chambers and …

Vibration Analysis Of Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicles, Christopher Jack Campbell

Masters Theses

Truck drivers are more susceptible than other workers to lower back pain and spinal disorders caused by whole body vibrations, which are among the most common long term health effects for drivers. The dynamic behavior of trucks can be modeled and simulated to improve the design of the trucks, which can reduce the exposure of drivers to whole body vibrations.

The main purposes of this study are to analyze vibrations for different manufacturers and road types, and to create a computer-based model using Adams to predict vibration anywhere on the model using acceleration data collected previously from on-road tests of …

Export Of Carbon, Nutrients And Microbiological Indicators In Beaver Creek Watershed, Tennessee, Si Chen

Masters Theses

Storms are the most important events impacting stream water quality at the watershed-scale. With the goal to develop effective water resource management strategies for the impaired Beaver Creek Watershed in East Tennessee, the impacts of storm events on water quality were assessed by monitoring the intra-storm dynamics of the export of carbon, nutrients, and microbiological indicators (E. coli), which are parameters critical to water quality and ecological functions of the target watershed. The dynamics of carbon export from the Beaver Creek Watershed as represented by dissolved organic carbon revealed distinct carbon transport mechanisms as a function of storm …

Characterizing Episodic Stream Acidification Using A Concentration-Duration-Frequency Methodology In Watersheds Of The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, John Leland Mauney Iii

Masters Theses

Episodic stream acidification occurs as storm events temporarily reduce acid neutralizing capacity and pH. Stream acidification is suspected to have damaging effects on the health of aquatic ecosystems and biota and is dependent on various watershed characteristics such as drainage area, elevation, slope, and surficial geology. Here, a stochastic modeling approach is applied to continuous pH data for multiple stream monitoring sites within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in order to characterize episodic acidification responses during stormflows for different streams. The approach summarizes voluminous pH data recorded by water quality sondes at 15-minute intervals into concentration-duration-frequency relationships. Unique to …

A Gpu-Based Implementation For Improved Online Rebinning Performance In Clinical 3-D Pet, Dilip Reddy Patlolla

Masters Theses

Online rebinning is an important and well-established technique for reducing the time required to process Positron Emission Tomography data. However, the need for efficient data processing in a clinical setting is growing rapidly and is beginning to exceed the capability of traditional online processing methods. High-count rate applications such as Rubidium 3-D PET studies can easily saturate current online rebinning technology. Realtime processing at these high-count rates is essential to avoid significant data loss. In addition, the emergence of time-of-flight (TOF) scanners is producing very large data sets for processing. TOF applications require efficient online Rebinning methods so as to …

An Experimental Analysis Of The Laminar Separation Bubble At Low Reynolds Numbers, Karla Marie Swift

Masters Theses

This paper is an investigation into the laminar separation bubble that frequently plagues airborne vehicles operating in the low Reynolds number regime – experimentally found to be typically present in flows with Reynolds numbers below 10⁶ (Lissaman 1983). The specific application driving the present investigation is the fixed wing performance of unmanned micro air vehicles (MAVs), defined by their maximum chord length of 6 inches and current cruising speeds of 10-20 meters per second (Mueller 2001). A basic generic model was chosen for this investigation: a circular arc (section of 16 inch diameter PVC pipe) with sharp leading and …

Computational Investigations Of Characteristic Performance Improvements For Subkilogram Laser Micropropulsion, Richard Joel Thompson

Masters Theses

Experimental investigations have evaluated the feasibility of using laser-driven plasma microthrusters for small-thrust, high-specific-impulse space maneuvers, particularly for micro- and nanosatellite missions. Recent work made use of the Mach2 hydromagnetics code for the construction of an adequate computational model of the micro-thruster opera- tion. This thesis expounds on this previous work by extending the computational modeling capabilities, allowing for the determination of plasma plume properties and characteristic performance assessment of the microthruster; this allows for further computational investi- gation of the performance improvements achieved by new design considerations. Two par- ticular design changes are implemented and measured: (i) the simulation …

Impact Of Larger Diameter Strands On Aashto/Pci Bulb-Tees, Jayaprakash Vadivelu

Masters Theses

This thesis consists of the analytical study and the experimental investigation of larger diameter strands in AASHTO Type I girders. The main purpose of this study was to verify that the 2 inch minimum spacing recommended by ACI 318-08 and AASHTO (2008) can be used for 0.7 inch diameter strands by comparing various effects in girders using 0.7 and 0.6 inch diameter strands. Based on the parametric analysis it was concluded that by using 0.7 inch strands there was a considerable saving in the material. For example, an AASHTO BT-72 with 0.6 inch strand could be replaced with AASHTO BT-54 …

Geotechnical Site Characterization Using Multi-Channel Analysis Of Rayleigh And Love Waves, James David Lane, Jr.

Masters Theses

The Multi-Channel Analysis of Surface Waves (MASW) is a technique in which surface waves can be analyzed to determine soil shear wave velocity profiles with depth. The shear wave velocity of soil can be used to calculate the shear modulus, which is an important geotechnical engineering parameter. Site surveys were conducted and analyzed located at a location on the flood plain of the Tennessee River. The flood plain consists of a thin layer of soil above rigid (Knox Dolomite) bedrock and exhibited strong stratification. Three different aspects of MASW data acquisition and analysis are presented in the study. The first …

Multiple Axisymmetric Solutions For Axially Traveling Waves In Solid Rocket Motors, Nadim Yaacoub Zgheib

Masters Theses

In this article, we consider the vorticoacoustic flowfield arising in a rightcylindrical porous chamber with uniform sidewall injection. Such configuration is often used to simulate the internal gaseous environment of a solid rocket motor (SRM). Assuming closed-closed acoustic conditions at both fore and aft ends of the domain, the introduction of small disturbances in the mean flow give rise to an axially traveling vortico-acoustically dominated wave structure that our study attempts to elucidate. Although this problem has been formulated before, it is reconsidered here in the context of WKB perturbation expansions in the reciprocal of the crossflow Reynolds number. This …

Effects On Digital Image Quality When Photographing Through A Transparent Material Used To Hold Or Flatten An Original Object, Paul E. Howell

Masters Theses

An increasing number of libraries and archives are initiating projects where new and updated technologies make it practical to digitize materials containing color and fine detail. Many of the imaging systems and methods used for this process require that some type of glass or plastic be placed over the original to hold it flat and in the correct position during image capture. The physical properties of a material placed between an original object and the capture system or camera, during digitization, could possibly affect the accuracy of image color and quality being reproduced by the system. This investigation provides an …

Parallel Processing Architecture For Solving Large Scale Linear Systems, Arun Nagari

Masters Theses

Solving linear systems with multiple variables is at the core of many scienti…c problems. Parallel processing techniques for solving such system problems has have received much attention in recent years. A key theme in the literature pertains to the application of Lower triangular matrix and Upper triangular matrix(LU) decomposing, which factorizes an N N square matrix into two triangular matrices. The resulting linear system can be more easily solved in O(N²) work. Inher- ently, the computational complexity of LU decomposition is O(N³). Moreover, it is a challenging process to parallelize. A highly-parallel …

Method Of Evaluation For Stream Bed Shear Stress And Sediment Transport Capacity In Urbanizing Watershed: Implications For Stream Restoration, William Cantrell

Masters Theses

In the field of stream restoration, use of a one-dimensional flow model with typical Manning’s n values for an open channel greatly over-predicts bed shear values. This, in turn, incorrectly predicts the size of the mobile fraction on the bed and if used in a bedload transport function over-predicts mass movement of the bed material. This study identified 12 sites for which watershed and reach characteristics were compiled, and bedload sampling was performed. This information was used to produce an empirical relationship between reach pebble count data and an effective Manning’s n value that can be used to produce accurate …

Development And Flight Test Of A Real-Time Energy Management Display, Isaac Atuahene

Masters Theses

A real-time energy management display is developed and evaluated, and the feasibility and utility of the display in providing real-time guidance and information on the aircraft’s energy state was investigated. Flight simulations were conducted with the UTSI Aviation Systems research flight simulator to validate the display and evaluate its utility for flying along constant specific excess power contours, and directly obtaining specific excess power contours from level acceleration flight test. The display was evaluated for flying optimal paths. This study considered the energy state of the aircraft from the point of view of the relation that exists between specific excess …

An Analysis Of Anaerobic Dual-Anode Chambered Microbial Fuel Cell (Mfc) Performance, Min Hea Kim

Masters Theses

Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology utilizes bacterial growth in carbon-containing solutions to generate electricity or hydrogen. For the direct production of electricity, an MFC operates aerobically at the cathode and anaerobically at the anodes. The same basic design can be used with minor changes to produce hydrogen at the cathode by applying an additional overpotential and omitting oxygen from the cathode. In this configuration, the device is called an MEC (Microbial Electrolysis Cell). However, the term “MFC” is frequently used to describe both devices. The primary objectives of this study were to determine optimal operating conditions and to minimize the …