Engineering Commons^™

Biodegradability And Toxicity Of Hydrocarbon Leachate From Land Treatment Units, Sandy L. Scott, Yarrow M. Nelson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The biodegradability of leachate from the land treatment of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil was investigated in the laboratory using respirometry and toxicity testing in combination with total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) measurements. Soil in land treatment units (LTU) had been contaminated with a diesel-like hydrocarbon mixture formerly used as a diluent for crude oil at an oil field in California. Leachate was collected from two different LTUs for treatability testing in a respirometer under aerobic conditions. Only about 12% reduction in TPH concentration was observed after aeration for 161 days, indicating limited biodegradability of the hydrocarbon constituents in the leachate. Similarly, Microtox® toxicity …

High Resolution Turbulence Treatment Of F/A-18 Tail Buffet, Scott A. Morton, Russell M. Cummings, Denis B. Kholodar

Aerospace Engineering

Unsteady tail loads of the F/A-18 are computed using various turbulence models at an angle of attack consistent with buffet induced by leading-edge extension vortex breakdown. Comparison of these industry standard turbulence models with the Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) hybrid RANS-LES approach reveals the inadequacies of RANS methods and the ability of DES to reproduce the observed unsteadiness at these conditions. Computed vortex breakdown position and frequencies of the DES method are shown to be accurate by comparison to flight test and experimental results. Finally, comparison of the DES unsteady tail pressures with flight-test tail pressures reveal the ability of …

Cm Facilities Update, Construction Management Department

Construction Management

No abstract provided.

Teaching Corporate Culture: An Engineer's Survival Guide, Richard N. Savage

Materials Engineering

The transition from new engineering graduate to successful member of corporate America is a difficult journey. Often the skills required are not part of a student’s traditional undergraduate education. At Cal Poly, we have integrated a new course into our existing Senior Project curriculum which enables students to develop the professional skills necessary to become an effective member of any corporation. Key skills such as communication, problem solving and project management are practiced through active learning techniques. These as well as other topics studied are required for ABET certification. The new course investigates the mission and values that are at …

Laser Ignition Of Pulverized Coals, John C. Chen, Masayuki Taniguchi, Kiyoshi Narato, Kazuyuki Ito

Mechanical Engineering

We present a novel experiment to study the ignition of pulverized coal. A dilute stream of particles is dropped into a laminar, upward-flow wind tunnel with a quartz test section. The gas stream is not preheated. A single pulse from a Nd:YAG laser is focused through the tunnel and ignites the fuel. The transparent test section and cool walls allow for optical detection of the ignition process. In this article we describe the experiment and demonstrate its capabilities by observing the ignition behavior of spherical, amorphous-carbon particles and two coals: an anthracite are a high-volatile bituminous coal. The ignition behaviors …

Critical Variables Of Solder Paste Stencil Printing For Micro-Bga And Fine-Pitch Qfp, Jianbiao Pan, Gregory L. Tonkay, Robert H. Storer, Ronald M. Sallade, David J. Leandri

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Stencil printing continues to be the dominant method of solder deposition in high-volume surface-mount assembly. Control of the amount of solder paste deposited is critical in the case of fine-pitch and ultrafine-pitch surface-mount assembly. The process is still not well understood as indicated by the fact that industry reports 52-71% surface-mount technology (SMT) defects are related to the solder paste stencil printing process. The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical variables that influence the volume, area, and height of solder paste deposited. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of relevant process parameters on the amount …

Structural Health Monitoring And Damage Detection Using An Intelligent Parameter Varying (Ipv) Technique, Soheil Saadat, Mohammad N. Noori, Gregory D. Buckner, Tadatoshi Furukawa, Yoshiyuki Suzuki

Office of the Dean (CENG) Scholarship

Most structural health monitoring and damage detection strategies utilize dynamic response information to identify the existence, location, and magnitude of damage. Traditional model-based techniques seek to identify parametric changes in a linear dynamic model, while non-model-based techniques focus on changes in the temporal and frequency characteristics of the system response. Because restoring forces in base-excited structures can exhibit highly non-linear characteristics, non-linear model-based approaches may be better suited for reliable health monitoring and damage detection. This paper presents the application of a novel intelligent parameter varying (IPV) modeling and system identification technique, developed by the authors, to detect damage in …

Irrigation District Observations On Large Diameter, Low Pressure Pipeline Materials, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

There are approximately 1,400 miles of low pressure non-reinforced cast-in-place ("monolithic" or "CIP") concrete pipe in California irrigation districts. Cast-in-place pipe was irrigation districts’ material of choice for large diameter pipelines from 1930 to at least 1980. Many of these pipelines were installed in the early 1900’s. They are predominately found on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, from Manteca in the north to Visalia in the south. Most of these pipes are deteriorating and will need to be replaced within the next 10-20 years.

Irrigation districts have attempted to find new ways to repair these pipes. However, …

Ultrasonic Testing For Geomembranes, Nazli Yesiller

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Report On The 22 December 2003, M 6.5 San Simeon, California Earthquake, Jeanne L. Hardebeck, John Boatwright, Douglas Dreger, Rakesh K. Goel, Vladimir Graizer, Kenneth Hudnut, Chen Ji, Lucile Jones, John Langbein, Jian Lin, Evelyn Roeloffs, Robert Simpson, Keith Stark, Ross Stein, John C. Tinsley

Civil and Environmental Engineering

The M_w 6.5 San Simeon earthquake struck the central California coast on 22 December 2003 at 19:15:56 UTC (11:15:56 am local time.) The epicenter was located 11 km northeast of the town of San Simeon, and 39 km west-northwest of Paso Robles (Figure 1), as reported by the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN, the California region of the Advanced National Seismic System [ANSS]). The mainshock nucleated at 35.702°N, 121.108°W and a depth of 7.1 km, and the rupture propagated unilaterally to the southeast. The strong directivity of the rupture resulted in a concentration of damage and aftershock...

Evaluation Of Modal And Fema Pushover Analyses: Sac Buildings, Rakesh K. Goel, Anil K. Chopra

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This paper comprehensively evaluates the Modal Pushover Analysis (MPA) procedure against the ‘‘exact’’ nonlinear response history analysis (RHA) and investigates the accuracy of seismic demands determined by pushover analysis using FEMA-356 force distributions; the MPA procedure in this paper contains several improvements over the original version presented in Chopra and Goel (2002). Seismic demands are computed for six buildings, each analyzed for 20 ground motions. It is demonstrated that with increasing number of ‘‘modes’’ included, the height-wise distribution of story drifts and plastic rotations estimated by MPA becomes generally similar to trends noted from nonlinear RHA. The additional bias and …

A "Divide And Conquer" Technique For Implementing Wide Dynamic Range Continuous-Time Filters, Yorgos Palaskas, Yannis Tsividis, Vladimir I. Prodanov, Vito Boccuzzi

Electrical Engineering

This paper presents a technique for implementing analog filters with wide dynamic range and low power dissipation and chip area. The desired dynamic range of the filter is divided into subranges, each covered by a different filtering path optimized specifically for this subrange. This results in small admittance levels for the individual filtering paths and correspondingly small power dissipation and chip area. The system provides undisturbed output during range switching, contrary to conventional automatic gain control (AGC)/filter arrangements that generate disturbances every time the gain of the AGC changes. We also report on a low-noise highly linear CMOS transconductor useful …

A Virtual Reality Environment For Multi-Sensor Data Integration, Scott Papson, Joseph Oagaro, Robi Polikar, John Chen, John L. Schmalzel, Shreekanth Mandayam

Mechanical Engineering

Virtual reality (VR) has typically found applications in industrial design, rapid prototyping and advanced scientific visualization. In this paper, we investigate the use of VR for multi-sensor data integration. We attempt to demonstrate that multiple data types-graphical, functional and measurement can be effectively combined inside of a VR environment. This platform allows the user to rapidly sift through large and complex data sets and isolate features of interest. Furthermore, VR environments can be made to evolve based on system data and user input-this provides the ability to develop scenarios that can be used to make informed decisions. Results demonstrating the …

Optically Coupled Etalons And Methods Of Making And Using Same, Michael A. Scobey, Lucien P. Ghislain, Dennis Derickson, Loren F. Stokes

Electrical Engineering

Optical elements comprise stacked, optically matched and optically coupled etalons, at least one of the optically coupled etalons comprising first and second selectively transparent thin film mirror coatings on opposite surfaces of a bulk optic. The bulk optic defines the cavity spacing of the etalon and may, for example be formed of a monolithic body of silica or other optically transparent glass diced from a glass wafer. The bulk optic may further comprise a wedge coating of progressively increasing thickness overlying the monolithic glass body and compensating for, or offsetting non-parallelism of the bulk optic. The bulk optic may further …

Global Shear Wave Velocity Database For Probabilistic Assessment Of The Initiation Of Seismic-Soil Liquefaction, Robert Kayen, Raymond B. Seed, Robb E.S. Moss, Onder K. Cetin, Y. Tanaka, Kohji Tokimatsu

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Engineering practitioners commonly use penetration-based methods (SPT & CPT) for assessment of seismic liquefaction triggering hazard. On the horizon, shear wave velocity (V_s) may offer engineers a third tool that is lower cost and provides more physically meaningful measurements. Development of the shear wave velocity liquefaction method has been hampered by a paucity of published velocity profiles; particularly in deeper soil deposits (>10m) and deposits subjected to high cyclic stress ratios (CSR > 0.3). A review of the literature reveals that most historic liquefaction sites fitting this depth and CSR criteria are located in Asia, though most of …

Experimental Investigation Of Statistical Moments Of Travel Time In Grid-Generated Turbulence, Tatiana A. Andreeva, S. B. Meleshi, William W. Durgin

Office of the Provost Scholarship

An experimental technique for investigation of the behavior of acoustic wave propagation through a turbulent medium is discussed. The present study utilizes the ultrasonic travel-time technique to diagnose a grid-generated turbulence. The statistics of the travel-time variations of ultrasonic wave propagation along a path are used to determine some metrics of the turbulence. Experimental data obtained using ultrasonic technique confirms numerical and theoretical predictions of nonlinear increase of the first-order travel time variance with propagation distance.

Some Systemic Issues In The Development Of The Aerospace Industry Technical Workforce Of The Future, John H. Mcmasters, Russell M. Cummings

Aerospace Engineering

This paper is a continuation of the authors’ previous examinations of a suite of issues surrounding the putative decline in aeronautics in this country. The purpose of this paper is to discuss three specific issues believed to be of particular importance to the future of our industry. The first is the question of how many engineers we may need in our future as we confront the problem of an aging workforce and the globalization of our industry. The second is the question of what skills and abilities these engineers will need to possess as the overall industry continues to evolve. …

Detached-Eddy Simulation Of Slat And Flap Aerodynamics For A High-Lift Wing, Russell M. Cummings, Scott A. Morton, James R. Forsythe

Aerospace Engineering

Three-dimensional multi-element wings are simulated to investigate slat and flap aerodynamics using Detached-Eddy Simulation. The computations are performed by solving the Navier-Stokes equations on unstructured grids. All of the computed cases include the main wing with a half-span flap deflected to 39 degrees and a three-quarter-span slat deflected to 6 degrees. Computations of the model, which simulates a landing configuration at 10 degrees angle of attack and a chord-based Reynolds number of 3.7 million, are validated with surface pressure measurements acquired at the NASA Ames 7- by 10-Foot Wind Tunnel. The results increase the computational knowledge of how to accurately …

Airplane Design And The Biomechanics Of Flight – A More Completely Multi- Disciplinary Perspective, John H. Mcmasters, Russell M. Cummings

Aerospace Engineering

Aeronautics is usually presumed to have started as a formal engineering discipline somewhere in historical time between the mythological experiments of Daedalus and his ill-fated son, Icarus; and the dreams and schemes of Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. As reviewed in this paper, “aeronautics” has a far longer history, extending over a period of about 300 million years beginning with the evolution of the ability of insects to fly. With the advent of the success of the Wright brothers, technologists quickly turned their attention from the inspirations and lessons provided by natural models of flying machines to …

An Embedded Boundary Cartesian Grid Scheme For Viscous Flows Using A New Viscous Wall Boundary Condition Treatment, David D. Marshall, Stephen M. Ruffin

Aerospace Engineering

This work presents a new viscous wall boundary condition technique for embedded Cartesian grid schemes in order to model laminar viscous flows. The development of viscous effects modeling using pure Cartesian grids with cut cells at the surface has been hampered by the widely varying control volume sizes associated with the mesh refinement and the cut cells associated with the solid surface. This scheme removes the cells adjacent to the surface from the control volume formulation. These cells are instead solved via an interpolation technique which utilizes the wall boundary conditions to build the interpolating functions. Two different interpolation techniques …

A New Inviscid Wall Boundary Condition Treatment For Embedded Boundary Cartesian Grid Schemes, David D. Marshall, Stephen M. Ruffin

Aerospace Engineering

This work presents a new inviscid wall boundary condition technique for embedded Cartesian grid schemes. This scheme eliminates the time step restrictions associated with the arbitrarily small control volumes that can result when the surface cuts the Cartesian control volumes. The cells adjacent to the surface are removed from the control volume formulation and are instead solved via an interpolation technique which utilizes the wall boundary conditions to build the interpolating functions. Two different interpolation techniques are presented, one without considering wall curvature and one considering wall curvature. Results are compared to a two-dimensional airfoil case and a three-dimensional wing …

Benchmarking Of Flexibility And Needs - 2004, Charles Burt, Dan Howes, Franklin Gaudi, Monica Holman

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

ITRC interviewed irrigation district personnel from 25 agricultural districts in eastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana.

Data were analyzed to determine the degree of water delivery flexibility provided to farmers and the extent of existing and planned district modernization. This is the fourth such report the Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) has published for irrigation districts in the western US. The first two evaluations were conducted on behalf of the Mid-Pacific Region of the US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and included California irrigation districts that had long-term federal contracts. The third report was prepared on behalf of the …

Retesting Of Liquefaction And Non-Liquefaction Case Histories In The Imperial Valley Using Cpt, Robb E.S. Moss, Brian D. Collins, Daniel H. Whang, Jonathan P. Stewart

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This report documents the retesting of liquefaction and non-liquefaction field case histories in the Imperial Valley with the cone penetration test (CPT). The River Park and Heber Road sites were originally tested using a mechanical cone following the 1979 Imperial Valley Earthquake (Bennett et al., 1981; Youd & Bennett, 1983). These two sites are rich in information because they have experienced several earthquakes in recent history, have been subjected to moderate levels of strong ground shaking, the liquefiable soils have appreciable fines content, and the sites contain a number of non-liquefied data points.

Recent liquefaction case histories databases (Moss et …

A Supply Chain Management Tool For Linking Courses In Manufacturing Engineering , Daniel Waldorf, Sema E. Alptekin

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

A Recent Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) grant received by Manufacturing Engineering Program at Cal Poly has provided funds to strengthen its curricular focus on supply chain management, flexibility, business skills, quality, and process controls. New courses and laboratories are developed in electronics manufacturing, information technology, and supply chain management. A functioning supply chain environment has been developed to provide vertical integration among several courses. A software tool being developed in-house integrates the activities of the students who play the roles of customers and suppliers. Details of the various components of this comprehensive project are presented in this paper.

Predicting Freeway Crashes From Loop Detector Data By Matched Case-Control Logistic Regression, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Nizam Uddin, Anurag Pande, Fathy M. Abdalla, Liang Hsia

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Growing concern over traffic safety has led to research into prediction of freeway crashes in an advanced traffic management and information systems environment. A crash likelihood prediction model was developed by using real-time traffic flow variables (measured through a series of underground sensors) potentially associated with crash occurrence. The issues related to real-time application, including range of stations and time slice duration to be examined, were also addressed. The methodology used, matched case-control logistic regression, was adopted from epidemiological studies in which every crash is a case and corresponding noncrashes act as controls. The 5-min average occupancy observed at the …

Water Level Sensor Testing Summary, Stuart Styles, Sarah Herman, Marcus Yasutake, Chuck Keezer

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The findings presented here are the continuation of a series of studies begun in 1998 by the Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), San Luis Obispo, California, on behalf of the Mid-Pacific Region of the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) to test water level sensors under a variety of hydraulic conditions.

The goals for the original project were to determine the best way to monitor water level, and to develop a fast method for appraising sensors considered for irrigation district applications. This research addresses the need for water level sensors that are …

Long Stemmed Total Knee Arthroplasty With Interlocking Screws: A Computational Bone Adaptation Study, Jeffry S. Nyman, Scott J. Hazelwood, Juan J. Rodrigo, R. Bruce Martin, Oscar C. Yeh

Biomedical Engineering

The ability of an interlocking screw fixation technique to minimize bone loss related to stress shielding in the tibia was investigated and compared to the abilities of cement and press-fit fixation. Full bony ingrowth has been associated with greater stress shielding than partial ingrowth; therefore, the effect of intimate bonding of the stem to bone on subsequent bone loss was also studied. A damage-and disuse-based remodeling theory was coupled with a two-dimensional finite element model of the tibia to predict changes in bone remodeling following long stemmed total knee arthroplasty (TKA) for four different fixation techniques (cement, press-fit, interlock with …

Joint Application Of Artificial Neural Networks And Evolutionary Algorithms To Watershed Management, Misgana K. Muleta, John W. Nicklow

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have become common data driven tools for modeling complex, nonlinear problems in science and engineering. Many previous applications have relied on gradient-based search techniques, such as the back propagation (BP) algorithm, for ANN training. Such techniques, however, are highly susceptible to premature convergence to local optima and require a trial-and-error process for effective design of ANN architecture and connection weights. This paper investigates the use of evolutionary programming (EP), a robust search technique, and a hybrid EP–BP training algorithm for improved ANN design. Application results indicate that the EP–BP algorithm may limit the drawbacks of using …

Digital Imaging Experiences For Undergraduate Engineering Students, Kauser Jahan, John Chen, Shreekanth Mandayam, Robert Krchnavek, Beena Sukumaran, Yusuf Mehta, Jennifer Kadlowec, Paris Von Lockette, Robi Polikar

Mechanical Engineering

Our project is an effort by a multidisciplinary team of engineering faculty members at Rowan University to integrate digital imaging technology (DIT) into the undergraduate engineering curriculum. It builds upon the experience and interest of faculty to promote new topics and innovative methods of teaching. The work is an effort to provide students with the skills directly relevant to the evolving needs of the industry and the marketplace. Projects involve the development of digital imaging curriculum and focus on the creation of a leading edge digital imaging laboratory/studio to facilitate the use of nontraditional learning approaches that encourage interactive learning, …

Preliminary Report On December 22, 2003 San Simeon Earthquake, Rakesh K. Goel

Civil and Environmental Engineering

A strong earthquake of magnitude 6.5 ( M_w) struck the Central Coast of California at 11:15:56 AM PST (19:15:56 UTC) on Monday, December 22, 2003. The epicenter (Figure 1) was 11 km (7 mile) NE of San Simeon, at a depth of about 8 km (5 mile). Two people were killed and about 40 buildings collapsed or severely damaged at Paso Robles which is located about 39 km (24 mile) from the epicenter. At least 40 people were reported to be injured in the Paso Robles-Templeton area. This preliminary report presents basic information on the epicenter location, intensity …