Engineering Commons^™

Performance Of A New Cfd Flow Solver Using A Hybrid Programming Paradigm, M. J. Berger, M. J. Aftosmis, D. D. Mashall, S. M. Murman

Aerospace Engineering

This paper presents several algorithmic innovations and a hybrid programming style that lead to highly scalable performance using shared memory for a new computational fluid dynamics flow solver. This hybrid model is then converted to a strict message-passing implementation, and performance results for the two are compared. Results show that using this hybrid approach our OpenMP implementation is actually marginally faster than the MPI version, with parallel speedups of up to 599 out of 640 using OpenMP and 486 with MPI.

A Freeway Safety Strategy For Advanced Proactive Traffic Management, Anurag Pande, Mohamed Abdel-Aty

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Reactive traffic management strategies such as incident detection are becoming less relevant with the advancement of mobile phone usage. Freeway management in the 21st century needs to shift focus toward proactive strategies that include anticipating incidents such as crashes. A simple approach to identify freeway locations with high probability of crashes through real-time traffic surveillance data is presented here. The crash and loop detector data for the study was collected from 36-mile corridor of Interstate-4 in Orlando, Florida. The analysis is based on simple (one covariate) logistic regression models developed under a matched study design. Individual traffic parameters obtained one …

Identifying Crash Propensity Using Specific Traffic Speed Conditions, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Anurag Pande

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Introduction: In spite of recent advances in traffic surveillance technology and ever-growing concern over traffic safety, there have been very few research efforts establishing links between real-time traffic flow parameters and crash occurrence. This study aims at identifying patterns in the freeway loop detector data that potentially precede traffic crashes.

Method: The proposed solution essentially involves classification of traffic speed patterns emerging from the loop detector data. Historical crash and loop detector data from the Interstate-4 corridor in the Orlando metropolitan area were used for this study. Traffic speed data from sensors embedded in the pavement (i.e., loop …

Characterization Of Surface Topography Of Sand, Nazli Yesiller, James L. Hanson, Donald K. Cohen

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This study was conducted to investigate surface characteristics of sand particles. Surface topography of sand particles was determined in 3-D using a commercially available optical profiler. Measurements were made on areas that had side dimensions on the order of 0.1 mm at a lateral resolution of 0.3 μm and height resolution of less than 6 nm. The 3-D representation of a surface obtained using the measurement system is analyzed to determine 3-D as well as 2-D surface texture parameters. The parameters included amplitude, spacing, hybrid (amplitude and spacing), and functional (performance related) parameters. Tests were conducted on two silica sands: …

Synchroscalar: Initial Lessons In Power-Aware Design Of A Tile-Based Embedded Architecture, John Y. Oliver, Ravishankar Rao, Paul Sultana, Jedidiah Crandall, Erik Czernikowski, Leslie W. Jones, Iv, Dean Copsey, Diana Keen, Venkatesh Akella, Frederic T. Chong

Electrical Engineering

Embedded devices have hard performance targets and severe power and area constraints that depart significantly from our design intuitions derived from general-purpose microprocessor design. This paper describes our initial experiences in designing Synchroscalar, a tile-based embedded architecture targeted for multi-rate signal processing applications. We present a preliminary design of the Synchroscalar architecture and some design space exploration in the context of important signal processing kernels. In particular, we find that synchronous design and substantial global interconnect are desirable in the low-frequency, low-power domain. This global interconnect enables parallelization and reduces processor idle time, which are critical to energy efficient implementations …

Canal Flow Rate Measurement Guidelines – Itrc 2005: Hydroacoustic Meters, Charles M. Burt, Stuart Styles

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

A Hydroacoustic flow meter provides remote velocity sampling and integrated flow measurement based on the physical principle called the Doppler shift. The sensors can either project a continuous or pulsed beam of acoustic signals at angles above the horizontal position of the sensor. Flow velocity is calculated by averaging the measured variations in sound frequency reflected back from particles in the water. Depth is measured with a ceramic-based pressure transducer integrally mounted in a surface mount velocity sensor and the device calculates the flow rate.

California Energy Commission Agricultural Peak Load Reduction Program Case Study: North Kern Wsd, Charles M. Burt, Daniel J. Howes

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The North Kern Water Storage District (NKWSD) is located just north of Bakersfield in Kern County and encompasses nearly 60,000 acres. The district receives water from the Kern River as well as groundwater pumping to supply its users.

California Energy Commission Agricultural Peak Load Reduction Program Case Study: Orange Cove Id, Charles M. Burt, Daniel J. Howes

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The Orange Cove Irrigation District is located in Fresno and Tulare Counties, approximately 30 miles southeast of Fresno and 20 miles north of the City of Visalia. The Friant-Kern Canal is the district’s main source of water to supply 28,000 acres of farmland.

Core Thickness And Asperity Height Of Textured Geomembranes: A Critical Review, Nazli Yesiller

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Decision Support For Watershed Management Using Evolutionary Algorithms, Misgana K. Muleta, John W. Nicklow

Civil and Environmental Engineering

An integrative computational methodology is developed for the management of nonpoint source pollution from watersheds. The associated decision support system is based on an interface between evolutionary algorithms (EAs) and a comprehensive watershed simulation model, and is capable of identifying optimal or near-optimal land use patterns to satisfy objectives. Specifically, a genetic algorithm (GA) is linked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) for single objective evaluations, and a Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm has been integrated with SWAT for multiobjective optimization. The model can be operated at a small spatial scale, such as a farm …

Concepts Learning Using Technology For Rapid Feedback And Student Engagement, John Chen, Jennifer A. Kadlowec, Dexter C. Whittinghill

Mechanical Engineering

In this project our goal is to improve student learning in the foundation mechanics course Statics. In this case improved learning is defined as knowledge retention (durability) and knowledge application in a different environment (transferability). We aim to do this by providing rapid feedback to students of their understanding of key concepts and skills being presented. The feedback system acts as the focal point and catalyst to encourage students to assist each other in correcting misconceptions or deepening each other’s understanding of the topic or skill at hand. Furthermore, the system allows the professor to assess the students’ level of …

Using Technology For Concepts Learning And Rapid Feedback In Statics, John Chen, Jennifer A. Kadlowec, Dexter C. Whittinghill

Mechanical Engineering

In this project our goal is to improve student learning in the foundation mechanics course Statics as well as improve knowledge retention (durability) and knowledge application in a different environment (transferability). We aim to do this by providing rapid feedback to students of their understanding of key concepts and skills being presented. The feedback system acts as the focal point and catalyst to encourage students to assist each other in correcting misconceptions or deepening each other’s understanding of the topic or skill at hand. Furthermore, the system allows the professor to assess the students’ level of comprehension (or misconception) in …

Emerging From Engineering Education – Building A Remotely Operated Submarine, Hong Zhang, Bernard Pietrucha, John Chen

Mechanical Engineering

In spring 2004, the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Rowan University offered a new course called “Emerging Topic – Designing and Building a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV)”. It is a project-based course where students are required to design, build and operate a submersible with provided materials. This course integrated many engineering aspects into one project and also exposed mechanical engineering students to Mechatronics. The course was welcomed by students and the response from them was quite positive.

Development Of A Flying Eye: A Project-Based Learning Experience, Sema E. Alptekin, Dianne Deturris, Daniel J. Macy, Jon E. Ervin

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The paper describes the design for manufacturability of a prototype product as part of a manufacturing engineering capstone course. The product chosen was a vertically launched unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)—the “Flying Eye.” The Flying Eye is an autonomous parafoil surveillance platform quipped with sensors, controllers, mechanical components, and software. Once the autonomous UAV is deployed, it is designed to follow a predetermined flight path down to the ground. The design effort of the prototype device took place over a three-year period as a collaborative effort between the Aerospace Engineering and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering departments at California Polytechnic State University. …

Standard Penetration Test-Based Probabilistic And Deterministic Assessment Of Seismic Soil Liquefaction Potential, K. Onder Cetin, Raymond B. Seed, Armen Der Kiureghian, Kohji Tokimatsu, Leslie F. Harder, Jr., Robert E. Kayen, Robb E. S. Moss

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This paper presents new correlations for assessment of the likelihood of initiation (or “triggering”) of soil liquefaction. These new correlations eliminate several sources of bias intrinsic to previous, similar correlations, and provide greatly reduced overall uncertainty and variance. Key elements in the development of these new correlations are (1) accumulation of a significantly expanded database of field performance case histories; (2) use of improved knowledge and understanding of factors affecting interpretation of standard penetration test data; (3) incorporation of improved understanding of factors affecting site-specific earthquake ground motions (including directivity effects, site-specific response, etc.); (4) use of improved methods for …

Lead-Free Solder Joint Reliability – State Of The Art And Perspectives, Jianbiao Pan, Jyhwen Wang, David M. Shaddock

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

There is an increasing demand in replacing tin-lead (Sn/Pb) solders with lead-free solders in the electronics industry due to health and environmental concern. The European Union recently passed a law to ban the use of lead in electronic products. The ban will go into effect in July of 2006. The Japanese electronics industry has worked to eliminate lead from consumer electronic products for several years. Although currently there are no specific regulations banning lead in electronics devices in the United States, many companies and consortiums are working on lead-free solder initiatives including Intel, Motorola, Agilent Technologies, General Electric, Boeing, NEMI …

Improvement Of Parameter Estimation For Non-Linear Hysteretic Systems With Slip By A Fast Bayesian Bootstrap Filter, S. J. Li, Yoshiyuki Suzuki, Mohammad N. Noori

Office of the Dean (CENG) Scholarship

Modeling and identification of non-linear hysteretic systems are widely encountered in the structural dynamics field, especially for the hysteresis with slip. A model, called SL model, which can describe the pinching of most practical hysteresis loops perfectly was proposed by Baber and Noori (J. Eng. Mech. 111 (1985) 1010). A method of estimating the parameters of SL model on the basis of input–output data based on bootstrap filter was proposed by the writers. Bootstrap filter is a filtering method based on Bayesian state estimation and Monte Carlo method, which has the great advantage of being able to handle any functional …

Rapid Field Evaluation Of Drip And Microspray Distribution Uniformity, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The Cal Poly ITRC irrigation evaluation programs have been widely used to assess the global distribution uniformity (DU) of drip and microsprayer irrigation systems. The field procedures and formulas used in the program are presented in this paper. The system DU is estimated by mathematically combining the component DU values. DU components include pressure differences, "other causes" (such as manufacturing variation, plugging, and wear), unequal drainage, and unequal application rates. Results are presented from evaluations by several entities, including Cal Poly ITRC. Cal Poly evaluations of 329 fields provided an average DU_lq of 0.85 for drip and 0.80 for …

The Role Of Moral Philosophy In Promoting Academic Integrity Among Engineering Students, Brian K. Etter, Trevor S. Harding, Cynthia J. Finelli, Donald D. Carpenter

Materials Engineering

Academic dishonesty is nothing new, yet it is particularly disturbing to find among engineering students, whose professional lives need to be guided by the highest ethical standards. Moral philosophy may illuminate some of the conditions for recovering a sense of the ethical for engineering students. Classical moral philosophers held that people belong to communities in ways that inform their sense of obligation. Recognition of these communities would make concrete the engineer's responsibility for the health, safety and welfare of the public. A further difficulty is that the primary community that students know is simply that of their peers in school …

Work In Progress – Classical Ballet Structure And Practice Applied To Engineering Class Sessions, Blair London, Lisa Deyo

Materials Engineering

Classical ballet classes have a universal structure that fosters active in-class learning. This structure creates a safe environment for students to try, fail, be corrected, and succeed. Engineering classes lack a common structure; most learning in engineering occurs outside of class. Engineering classes could move toward adopting a similar structure to ballet to improve in-class learning and mirror engineering culture and practice. The paper describes aspects of ballet class structure and practices that work and how these can apply to engineering classes. A new engineering class session structure is presented following the ballet model where engineering students are motivated to …

Work In Progress: Combining Concept Inventories With Rapid Feedback To Enhance Learning, John Chen, Jennifer Kadlowec, Dexter Whittinghill

Mechanical Engineering

In this project our goal is to adapt the Concept Inventory for frequent classroom use, and to implement it in a system to provide rapid feedback to students of their understanding of key concepts being presented. The feedback system acts as the focal point and catalyst to encourage students, working in pairs, to assist each other in correcting misconceptions or deepening each other’s understanding of the topic at hand. Furthermore, the system allows the professor to assess the students’ level of comprehension (or misconception) in a just-in-time fashion, and thus guides his or her pacing and coverage of the material. …

A Laboratory Course On Antenna Measurement, Samuel Parker, Dean Y. Arakaki

Electrical Engineering

This paper presents background information and experiment procedures for an antenna measurement laboratory course to be held in a new anechoic chamber at California Polytechnic State University. The lab consists of five experiments and one design project intended to give students practical experience with antenna measurement techniques and to creatively apply analytical skills to design, construct, and test antennas that meet given specifications. The experiments reinforce antenna principles including E-field polarization, antenna gain, radiation patterns, image theory, and frequency response.

In addition to the experiment procedures, this paper presents the design and characterization of Helical Beam (RHCP and LHCP) and …

Absorber Foam Characterization For Predicting Overall Anechoic Chamber Performance, Christopher R. Brito, Aloysius Aragon Lubiano, Newlyn Hui, Dean Y. Arakaki

Electrical Engineering

A new rectangular anechoic chamber (20’L x 10’W x 9’7”H) has been established at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) through donations and financial support from industry and Cal Poly departments and programs. The chamber was designed and constructed by three graduate students as part of their thesis studies to explore and further their understanding of chamber design and antenna measurements. The chamber project has included RF absorber characterization, overall chamber performance assessment, and software development for the coordination of a positioner with a vector network analyzer.

This paper presents absorber characterization as a function of incidence angle and orientation …

Reflectivity Characterization And Identification Of Primary Reflection Path In Anechoic Chamber Analysis, Aloysius Aragon Lubiano, Christopher R. Brito, Newlyn Hui, Dean Y. Arakaki

Electrical Engineering

This paper presents an analysis of the reflectivity performance of the anechoic chamber. Measurements indicating the performance of the chamber-installed foam absorbers (described in a companion paper) are used to complete this analysis. This is followed by a comparison of the analysis results to chamber measurements taken in accordance with the free-space VSWR procedure [1]. Agreement between the analysis results and worst-case VSWR test measurements is within 1dB for a majority of reflection angles. In addition to chamber performance predictions, this paper describes a method of identifying primary reflection paths through interferometer calculations that compare all single bounce reflection path …

Inspection And Deterioration Of Bridge Decks Constructed Using Stay-In-Place Metal Forms And Epoxy-Coated Reinforcement, Nabil Grace, James L. Hanson, Hany I. Abdelmessih

Civil and Environmental Engineering

A comprehensive research investigation was conducted to evaluate the use of Stay-in-Place Metal Forms (SIPMFs) in construction of concrete bridge decks. The objectives of this research project were to establish the state-of-the-practice for use and performance of SIPMFs for bridge decks, to evaluate the field performance of bridge decks with and without SIPMFs, and to investigate the behavior of environmentally conditioned large-scale laboratory bridge deck specimens with and without SIPMFs. A survey was developed and administered to all DOTs to examine the state-of-the-practice of using SIPMFs for concrete bridge deck construction. Additionally, a field investigation was conducted to evaluate the …

Work Flow Policy And Within-Worker And Between-Workers Variability In Performance, Kenneth Howard Doerr, Tali Freed, Terence R. Mitchell, Chester A. Schriesheim, Xiaohua Zhou

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Work flow policies are shown to induce a change in average between-workers variability (worker heterogeneity) and within-worker variability in performance times. In a laboratory experiment, the authors measured the levels of worker heterogeneity and within-worker variability under an individual performance condition, a work sharing condition, and a fixed assignment condition. The work sharing policy increased the levels of worker heterogeneity and worker variability, whereas the fixed assignment policy decreased them. These effects, along with work flow policy main effects on mean performance times and variability are examined. This article represents an initial step in understanding effects that may be important …

Investigation Of Hydrocarbon Phytoremediation Potential Of Lupinus Chamissonis In Laboratory Microcosms, Wendy Martin, Yarrow M. Nelson, Kenneth Hoffman

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Controlled laboratory microcosms were used to research the phytoremediation potential of lupines (Lupinus chamissonis) for hydrocarbon-contaminated groundwater at a former oil field near Guadalupe, California. During oil production in the Guadalupe Oil Field, a kerosene-like hydrocarbon mixture was used as a diluent to improve the flow of the heavy crude oil. Leaking tanks and pipes resulted in diluent contamination in the soil and groundwater. Native plant species were planted at a pilot-scale field site to investigate the feasibility of using phytoremediation to remediate the groundwater contamination. In the field, biological and hydrological factors make it difficult to determine the specific …

Optical Filter Elements And Methods Of Making And Using Same, Michael A. Scobey, Lucien P. Ghislain, Dennis J. Derickson, Loren F. Stokes

Electrical Engineering

Optical filter elements and optical systems comprise optically mismatched etalons and optically mismatched stacked, optically coupled etalons that are directly optically coupled, at least one of the etalons or stacked, optically coupled etalons comprising first and second selectively transparent thin film mirror coatings on opposite surfaces of a bulk optic. The optically mismatched etalons can be configured to selectively pass single passbands. The disclosed optical systems optionally comprise other devices optically coupled to the optically mismatched etalons and optionally mismatched stacked, optically coupled etalons.

Preliminary Report On September 28, 2004 Parkfield Earthquake, Rakesh K. Goel, Charles Chadwell

Civil and Environmental Engineering

A strong earthquake of magnitude 6.0 (M_w) struck the Central Coast of California at 10:15:24 AM PST (17:15:24 UTC) on Tuesday, September 28, 2004. The epicenter (Figure 1) was 11 km (7 mile) SSE of Parkfield, at a depth of approximately 8 km (5 mile). The main shock was followed by a strong aftershock of magnitude 5.0 roughly four minutes later. As expected, numerous smaller aftershocks continue to strike to epicentral region. At the time of this report, no injuries have been reported and the damage is light, mostly limited to nonstructural damage. This preliminary report presents …

Do Microcracks Decrease Or Increase Fatigue Resistance In Cortical Bone?, O. S. Sobelman, J. C. Gibeling, S. M. Stover, S. J. Hazelwood, O. C. Yeh, D. R. Shelton, R. B. Martin

Biomedical Engineering

Fatigue of cortical bone produces microcracks; it has been hypothesized that these cracks are analogous to those occurring in engineered composite materials and constitute a similar mechanism for fatigue resistance. However, the numbers of these linear microcracks increase substantially with age, suggesting that they contribute to increased fracture incidence among the elderly. To test these opposing hypotheses, we fatigued 20 beams of femoral cortical bone from elderly men and women in load-controlled four point bending having initial strain ranges of 3000 or 5000 microstrain. Loading was stopped at fracture or 106 cycles, whichever occurred first, and microcrack density and length …