Engineering Commons^™

A Comparative Study Of Various Loss Functions In The Economic Tolerance Design, Jehnan Pan, Jianbiao Pan

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Engineering tolerance design plays an important role in modern manufacturing. In this paper, the Kapur's model was modified so that the economic specification limits for both symmetric and asymmetric losses can be established. Three different loss functions: (1) Taguchi's quadratic loss function; (2) Inverted Normal Loss Function; (3) Revised Inverted Normal Loss Function are compared in the economic tolerance design. The relationships between the three loss functions and process capability indices for symmetric tolerance are established. The results suggest that the revised inverted normal loss function be used in determination of economic specification limits.

Curricula To Educate The 2020 Mse Engineering Professional: Simple But Powerful Changes In The Way That Mse Is Taught, Linda Vanasupa, Blair London, Katherine C. Chen, Richard Savage

Materials Engineering

National leaders in science and technology sectors speak in unison as they call for engineers who are not only technically competent in their fields, but who possess the abilities to communicate well, to work on teams, to apply systems thinking, to operate in the global business environment, to design within a greater set of constraints (environmental, health and safety, sustainability, economic, societal, political, manufacturability, and ethical). In short, our challenge is to educate an engineering professional who is far more sophisticated than the engineer of the 20^th century. Additionally, challenges brought on by the overuse of natural resources put …

Laying The Foundation For Nanoscience And Nanotechnology With An Introductory Module For High School Students, Maynard Valerie, Hsu Mathew, Katherine C. Chen, R. H. Chang

Materials Engineering

In response to the need to create a skilled workforce in nanotechnology and to excite young students with the wonders and potentials of science, the National Center for Learning and Teaching in Nanoscale Science and Engineering, is developing educational materials for grades 7 – 16. Learning theory and cutting-edge research are used in the development of modules on nanoscience and nanotechnology. This paper describes the rationale for such materials and describes an introductory module in which students are lead through a series of inquiry-based and hands-on activities, which lead to a design project. Its goal is to teach an underlying …

The Role Of Industry In Supporting Education In Environmentally Responsible Engineering, Andrew Borchers, David Rinard, Trevor S. Harding, Terri Lynch-Caris

Materials Engineering

Achievement of a sustainable future implies a collaborative effort between a variety of stakeholders including industry, government, and academia. We are traveling in unfamiliar waters where the course is not always clear and the goals are sometimes daunting. To develop the environmental wisdom we need to help us know the “right answers,” we must bring together the knowledge we get from our academic pursuits with the experience we obtain through trial and error. Bringing together the academic world and the business world not only helps us solve the immediate engineering need, it more importantly builds a partnership that will produce …

Student Competitions - The Benefits And Challenges, Peter Schuster, Andrew Davol, Joseph Mello

Mechanical Engineering

Intercollegiate design competitions are a popular means to engage students in design activities that extend beyond the curriculum. When students gather around a project in their spare time and use their classroom skills to design, build, and test a product for an intercollegiate competition, something amazing happens: They develop a passion for engineering. This paper discusses the key benefits to engineering undergraduate students that flow from involvement in a team design competition. Advisor involvement plays a key role in both project success and student learning throughout the process. Different approaches to advising student competition teams are compared. Specific examples are …

Cosmm: An Undergraduate Laboratory For Engineering And Manufacturing Complex, Organic Shapes Using Nature As A Template, Daniel Walsh, Lanny Griffin, Robert Crockett

Biomedical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Research In The Undergraduate Environment, Charles Birdsong, Peter Schuster

Mechanical Engineering

The benefits of research experiences for undergraduates are significant. For many faculty, these were the experiences that convinced us to pursue further education and a career in academia. However, performing research at an undergraduate institution carries with it certain challenges. In traditional research institutions, doctoral students perform most of the research activities, led by the faculty. These students have completed at least their undergraduate courses and can be expected to remain on the research team for four to six years. In contrast, at an undergraduate institution students may start in the group with only one or two engineering courses completed, …

Bandwidth Enhancement Of Fabry-Perot Quantum-Well Lasers By Injection-Locking, Xiaomin Jin, Shun-Lien Chuang

Electrical Engineering

Theory and experiment for dc and small-signal electrical modulation of an injection-locked quantum-well (QW) Fabry-Perot laser are presented. Our experiment is realized by performing side-mode injection locking of a multiple-quantum-well (MQW) InGaAsP Fabry-Perot (FP) laser, which has the advantage of optical wavelength conversion. We first measure the dc characteristics and optical spectra of an injection-locked laser to define its locking range and linewidth enhancement factor. We then show experimentally that the bandwidth of an injection-locked semiconductor laser is 10.5 GHz, which is around twice the free-running electrical modulation bandwidth (5.3 GHz). The relaxation frequency of the injection-locked laser can be …

Investigation Of Particle-In-Cell Acceleration Techniques For Plasma Simulations, David D. Marshall, Douglas B. Vangilder

Aerospace Engineering

COLISEUM is an application framework that integrates plasma propagation schemes and arbitrary 3D surface geometries. Using Particle-in-Cell (PIC) schemes to model the plasma propagation high fidelity modeling of the plasma and its interactions with the surfaces is possible. In order to improve the computational performance of the Particle-in-Cell scheme with Direct Simulation Monte Carlo collision modeling (PIC-DSMC) within COLISEUM, AQUILA, acceleration techniques have been developed that significantly decrease the amount of CPU time needed to obtain a steady-state solution. These techniques have been demonstrated to decrease the CPU time from 3 to 24 times with little appreciable differences in the …

Recyclability Index For Automobiles, Alexander Tsuji, Yarrow Nelson, Andrew Kean, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

A rating system was developed to quantify the environmental impacts of light-duty motor vehicles at the end of their life-cycle based on recyclability, toxic material content and ultimate disposal. Each year, 10-11 million vehicles are retired from service in the United States. The vehicle material not recycled is called automotive shredder residue (ASR). About 4.5 to 5 million tons of ASR are disposed in U.S. solid waste landfills annually. The volume of this residue is likely to increase as vehicle manufacturers continue to use more plastics and composites in their designs to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency. The rating …

Plotting A Bright Future For Manufacturing Education: Results Of A Brainstorming Session, Daniel Waldorf, Sema E. Alptekin, Robert Bjurman

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Manufacturing industries worldwide have undergone dramatic changes in recent years and now demand more from graduating manufacturing engineers. The effects of globalization have forever changed the parameters for success in manufacturing. Our educational institutions must respond to these changes with innovation. That agenda formed the basis for a special SME/CIRP international conference on manufacturing engineering education called “Looking Forward: Innovations in Manufacturing Engineering Education,” held in San Luis Obispo, California, June 22-25, 2005. At the meeting, manufacturing education professionals from around the world came together to share their own innovative ideas and to brainstorm ways to shape the future of …

Infusing The Materials Engineering Curriculum With Sustainability Principles, Katherine C. Chen, Linda Vanasupa, Blair London, Richard N. Savage

Materials Engineering

In order to better prepare our students for the complex, global world outside the confines of the university, we have been making concerted efforts to incorporate sustainability principles (i.e., balance of economics, society, and environment) within the materials engineering curriculum at California Polytechnic (Cal Poly) State University. Many future engineering tasks will require the understanding of complicated interplays of technology with the environment and society. In addition, energy demands and dwindling natural resources have emerged as significant challenges for scientists and engineers. The materials engineer has great opportunity to help devise sustainable solutions through appropriate materials selection and processing, and …

Cheating In College And Its Influence On Ethical Behavior In Professional Engineering Practice, Trevor S. Harding, Cynthia J. Finelli, Donald D. Carpenter

Materials Engineering

Research has demonstrated that engineering undergraduates report rates of cheating higher than those in most other disciplines and that students who cheat in college are more likely to make unethical decisions as professionals. To explore the relationship between academic and professional ethical behavior, the authors launched the Work Experience Study (WES) that examines students' decision-making processes in situations where they are tempted to engage in unethical behavior in academic and professional settings. The population sampled for WES includes engineering undergraduates with substantial work experience in engineering. Such a sampling strategy enables us to make comparisons between academic and work-place scenarios …

Examining The Underlying Motivations Of Engineering Undergraduates To Behave Unethically, Trevor S. Harding, Cynthia J. Finelli, Donald D. Carpenter, Matthew Mayhew

Materials Engineering

The need for ethical behavior in engineering professional practice has been demonstrated repeatedly over the years, and most, if not all, academic institutions provide opportunities for engineering students to learn about ethics and professional responsibility. While there has been some investigation of the effectiveness of these academic efforts on student learning of ethics, little attention has been paid to students’ ethical decision-making and behavior. The present study seeks to verify the use of a model of ethical decision-making to predict the tendency of engineering and humanities students to engage in cheating, an unethical behavior with which nearly all undergraduates are …

A Bimodular Theory For Finite Deformations: Comparison Of Orthotropic Second-Order And Exponential Stress Constitutive Equations For Articular Cartilage, Stephen M. Klisch

Mechanical Engineering

Cartilaginous tissues, such as articular cartilage and the annulus fibrosus, exhibit orthotropic behavior with highly asymmetric tensile–compressive responses. Due to this complex behavior, it is difficult to develop accurate stress constitutive equations that are valid for finite deformations. Therefore, we have developed a bimodular theory for finite deformations of elastic materials that allows the mechanical properties of the tissue to differ in tension and compression. In this paper, we derive an orthotropic stress constitutive equation that is second-order in terms of the Biot strain tensor as an alternative to traditional exponential type equations. Several reduced forms of the bimodular second-order …

An Innovative Geocentric Decision Support Solution To Comprehensive Planning, Design, Operation, And Management Of Urban Drainage Systems, Paul F. Boulos, Misgana K. Muleta, Chun-Hou Orr, Jun Je Ro

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Geographic Information System (GIS) is quickly becoming a critical component to develop and sustain asset management for today’s wastewater utilities as most of their data is geographically referenced. This technology offers sophisticated data management and spatial analysis capabilities that can greatly improve and facilitate urban drainage infrastructure modeling and analysis applications. This paper presents a comprehensive GIS-based decision support system that integrates several technologies for use in the effective management of urban stormwater collection systems. It explicitly integrates ESRI ArcGIS geospatial model with advanced hydrologic, hydraulic, and water quality simulation algorithms, nature-based global optimization techniques including genetic algorithms for design …

Using Genetic Algorithms And Particle Swarm Optimization For Optimal Design And Calibration Of Large And Complex Urban Stormwater Management Models, Misgana K. Muleta, Paul F. Boulos, Chun-Hou Orr, Jun Je Ro

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Computer models are vital for the evaluation and management of urban drainage systems. Usefulness of these models, however, depends on how well they are calibrated. Properly calibrated models can be used to conceive, evaluate and compare various design improvement alternatives. Unfortunately, calibration and design of urban stormwater models, especially with the commonly used trial-and-error approach, are an expensive, time-consuming process and normally represent the most painful step of a modeling exercise. Their success depends mainly on the engineering expertise of the modeler and budget availability. The effort is complicated by the fact that these models normally necessitate the evaluation of …

Effects Of Hydrogen On The Phases And Transition Temperatures Of Niti, Amanda Runciman, Katherine C. Chen, Alan R. Pelton, Christine Trepanier

Materials Engineering

Austenitic (B2) NiTi samples were cathodically charged with various amounts of hydrogen. Trends are tracked based on temperature, time and voltage throughout the process to establish consistent and predictive hydrogen charging procedures. The effect of hydrogen on the austenitic structure and the formation of hydrides are studied with x-ray diffraction (XRD). An increase in the austenite lattice parameter with increased hydrogen content is observed up to a hydrogen solubility limit of approximately 85 wppm. At greater hydrogen concentrations, additional XRD peaks appear, suggesting possible hydride formation. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) results show a decrease in both the austenitic and martensitic …

Tile Size Selection For Low-Power Tile-Based Architectures, John Y. Oliver, Ravishankar Rao, Michael Brown, Jennifer Mankin, Diana Franklin, Frederic T. Chong, Venkatesh Akella

Electrical Engineering

In this paper, we investigate the power implications of tile size selection for tile-based processors. We refer to this investigation as a tile granularity study. This is accomplished by distilling the architectural cost of tiles with different computational widths into a system metric we call the Granularity Indicator (GI). The GI is then compared against the communications exposed when algorithms are partitioned across multiple tiles. Through this comparison, the tile granularity that best fits a given set of algorithms can be determined, reducing the system power for that set of algorithms. When the GI analysis is applied to the Synchroscalar …

Biotreatment Of Synthetic Drill-Cutting Waste In Soil, Laleh Rastegarzadeh, Yarrow Nelson, Todd G. Ririe

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Oil and gas drilling operations create drill cutting wastes around the world. Drill cutting waste includes synthetic drilling fluids typically consisting of petroleum-based compounds mixed with clay-type materials and water. Biological treatment is an effective means of disposing of drill cutting wastes, but proper biodegradation conditions are critical. In this study biological treatment of drill cutting wastes containing Saraline® (synthetic paraffin mineral oil) was examined using a variety of amendments to study the effect of different conditions on the biodegradability of synthetic drill cutting wastes. Soil was collected from a drilling site in Southeast Asia and soil microcosms were incubated …

Biodegradation Of Hydrocarbons Assisted By Arroyo Willows In Controlled Mesocosms Conducted At The Former Guadalupe Oil Field, Kevin Crossley, Yarrow M. Nelson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Abstract of paper presented at conference.

Biodegradation And Toxicity Of Hydrocarbons Along Vertical Transects In A Groundwater Plume, Yarrow M. Nelson, Andrew Lassen, Christopher L. Kitts, Paul Lundegrad, Gonzalo Garcia

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Abstract of paper presented at conference.

The Implications Of Academic Dishonesty In Undergraduate Engineering On Professional Ethical Behavior, Donald D. Carpenter, Trevor S. Harding, Cynthia J. Finelli

Materials Engineering

Student academic dishonesty, commonly referred to as cheating, has become a serious problem at institutions of higher education. This is particularly true of engineering students who, according to previous research, are among the most likely to cheat in college. In addition, research on college students in all fields has indicated that such behavior is more common among students who participate in academic dishonesty at the high school level and that it is correlated with other deviant or unethical behaviors, such as petty theft and lying. If, in fact, such correlations do exist, one might hypothesize that there is also a …

Experiences In Accurately Predicting Time-Dependent Flows, Russell M. Cummings, Scott A. Morton, David R. Mcdaniel

Aerospace Engineering

As computational fluid dynamics matures, researchers attempt to perform numerical simulations on increasingly complex aerodynamic flows. One type of flow that has become feasible to simulate is massively separated flow fields, which exhibit high levels of flow unsteadiness. While traditional computational fluid dynamic approaches may be able to simulate these flows, it is not obvious what restrictions should be followed in order to insure that the numerical simulations are accurate and trustworthy. Our research group has considerable experience in computing massively separated flow fields about various aircraft configurations, which has led us to examine the factors necessary for making high-quality …

Study Of Optical-Feedback Using An Integrated Laser-Modulator/Amplifier Device, Xiaomin Jin, A. Hsu, Shun Lien Chuang

Electrical Engineering

We study optical-feedback effects using an integrated laser-modulator/amplifier. Our experiment and theory are agree well and provide interesting results of feedback effects on optical spectrum, spatial-hole burning, the photon density profile, and the microwave modulation.

Tsunamigenic Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazard Analysis For Subduction Zones, Robb E.S. Moss, Thaleia Travasarou

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The recent Sumatra earthquake and subsequent tsunami has provoked greater awareness of the hazard posed by coseismic fault displacement associated with sea-floor subduction zones. This catastrophic event has focused renewed efforts on tsunami forecasting, modeling, and detection. Yet the mechanism that causes this type of tsunami, coseismic fault displacement of a sea-floor subduction zone, is still treated deterministically. This paper describes a methodology for probabilistic fault displacement hazard analysis (PFDHA) for a sea-floor subduction zone, and presents example displacement hazard curves for the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The goal of this probabilistic methodology is to quantify the uncertainty and associated hazard …

Incorporating Parameter Uncertainty Into Attenuation Relationships, Robb E.S. Moss, Armen Der Kiureghian

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Strong ground motion attenuation relationships estimate the mean and variance of ground shaking as it decreases with distance from an earthquake source. Current relationships use “classical” regression techniques that treat the input variables or parameters as exact, neglecting the uncertainties associated with the measurement of ground acceleration, moment magnitude, site-to-source distance, shear wave velocity, etc. This leads to a poorly constrained estimate of the uncertainty of strong ground motions. This paper discusses the work in progress on; a) estimating the statistics of parameter uncertainty, and b) incorporating the parameter uncertainty into the regression of strong motion attenuation data using a …

Current Trends In Bumper Design For Pedestrian Impact, Peter J. Schuster

Mechanical Engineering

Worldwide, the pace of development in pedestrian countermeasures is increasing rapidly. To better understand the state of the art in bumper design for pedestrian impact, a survey of literature and patents has been performed. Two general approaches to reducing the severity of pedestrian lower limb impacts were identified: (a) Provide cushioning and support of the lower limb with a bumper and a new lower stiffener, or (b) Use the bumper as a platform for impact sensors and exterior airbags. This study focused on the first approach. Excluding bumper sensors, airbags, and non-design-related articles, a total of 130 relevant technical articles …

An Investigation On The Importance Of Material Anisotropy In Finite-Element Modeling Of The Human Femur, Ryan Krone, Peter Schuster

Mechanical Engineering

Detailed finite element modeling of the human body offers a potential major enhancement to the prediction of injury risk during vehicle impacts. Currently, vehicle crash safety countermeasure development is based on a combination of testing with established anthropomorphic test devices (i.e., ATD or dummy) and a mixture of multi-body (dummy) and finite element (vehicle) modeling. If a relatively simple finite element model can be developed to capture additional information beyond the capabilities of the multi-body systems, it would allow improved countermeasure development through more detailed prediction of performance.

A simpler finite element model of human bones could be developed if …

Cpt-Based Probabilistic Assessment Of Seismic Soil Liquefaction Initiation, Robb E.S. Moss, R. B. Seed, R. E. Kayen, J. P. Stewart, Armen Der Kiureghian

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The correlation of seismic field performance with in situ index test results has been proven to be a reliable method for defining the threshold between liquefaction and non-liquefaction. The objective of this research was to define, in the most accurate and unbiased manner possible, the initiation of seismic soil liquefaction using the cone penetration test (CPT). Contained in this report are the results of this research.

Case histories of occurrence and non-occurrence of soil liquefaction were collected from seismic events that occurred over the past three decades. These were carefully processed to develop improved CPT-based correlations for prediction of the …