Engineering Commons^™

A Sustainability-Based Project Selection Algorithm: Socio-Technical-Economic Project Selection (Steps) Algorithm, Bharathi Bhattu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Multi-dimensional aspects play a vital role in the task of project-decision making. Environmental effects are to be considered in addition to other technical and non-technical aspects in order to avoid undue environmental damage. This current work introduces a new decision-making algorithm (Socio-Technical-Economic Project Selection or STEPS) that is demonstrated with the use of RCA (recycled concrete aggregate) as riprap for slope stabilization and erosion control which leaches chemical arsenic when in contact with water. Arsenic has long been recognized for its lethal properties. The main intention of introducing this new algorithm is to use sustainability concepts of social, technical, and …

An Experimental Investigation Of The Effect Of Temperature And Space Velocity On The Performance Of A Cu-Zeolite Flow-Through Scr And A Scr Catalyst On A Dpf With And Without Pm Loading, Vaibhav Kadam

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Abstract The heavy-duty diesel (HDD) engines use the diesel oxidation catalyst (DOC), catalyzed particulate filter (CPF) and urea injection based selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems in sequential combination, to meet the US EPA 2010 PM and NOₓ emission standards. The SCR along with a NH₃ slip control catalyst (AMOX) offer NOₓ reduction >90 % with NH₃ slipHowever, there is a strong desire to further improve the NOₓ reduction performance of such systems, to meet the California Optional Low NOₓ Standard implemented since 2015. Integrating SCR functionality into a diesel particulate filter (DPF), by coating the SCR catalyst on the DPF, …

Methodology For Analyzing Epoxy-Cnt Phononic Crystals For Wave Attenuation And Guiding, Madhu Kolati

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Phononic crystals (PhnCs) control, direct and manipulate sound waves to achieve wave guiding and attenuation. This dissertation presents methodology for analyzing nanotube materials based phononic crystals to achieve control over sound, vibration and stress mitigation. Much of the analytical work presented is in identifying frequency band gaps in which sound or vibration cannot propagate through these PhnCs. Wave attenuation and mitigation analysis is demonstrated using finite element simulation. Engineering principles from current research areas of solid mechanics, solid-state physics, elasto-dynamics, mechanical vibrations and acoustics are employed for the methodology. A considerable effort is put to show that these PhnCs can …

Modeling Impacts Of Combined Sewer Overflows In Swmm In Cleveland, Ohio, Zoe A. Miller

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Despite its legacy of pollution, the City of Cleveland, Ohio, has historically been at the forefront of water quality management. Today, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD), which serves the Greater Cleveland area, is following a consent decree with the State of Ohio to minimize combined sewer overflows (CSOs), along with implementing an integrated Clean Water Act planning study to prioritize infrastructure improvements with a broader view of water quality objectives. This report summarizes an urban watershed modeling effort to support the integrated planning (IP) process. Specifically, the development, calibration, and validation of the EPA Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) …

Representation And Analysis Of Multi-Modal, Nonuniform Time Series Data: An Application To Survival Prognosis Of Oncology Patients In An Outpatient Setting, Jennifer Winikus

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The representation of nonuniform, multi-modal, time-limited time series data is complex and explored through the use of discrete representation, dimensionality reduction with segmentation based techniques, and with behavioral representation approaches. These explorations are done with a focus on an outpatient oncology setting with the classification and regression analysis being used for length of survival prognosis. Each decision of representation and analysis is not independent, with implications of each decision in method for how the data is represented and then which analysis technique is used. One unique aspect of the work is the use of outpatient clinical data for patients, which …

Purification And Recovery Of Infectious Virus Particles Using Osmolyte Flocculation, Ashish Saksule

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Viral infectious diseases cause millions of deaths and severe illness all around the world affecting public health and economics. Viral vaccines are helping to fight against viral diseases, but current vaccines are expensive and unavailable, especially in poor and developing countries. When measuring the entire manufacturing processing, the downstream processing of vaccines is the major cost of production. Our goal for this research is to develop a low-cost alternative downstream processing platform for new vaccine manufacturing infrastructures. We have developed a novel osmolyte flocculation method for viral particles. To create a platform purification for several types of viral particles, we …

Small Size Coupling Feed And Inductive Shorting Antenna For Wide Bandwidth, Increased Gain And Efficiency With Low Specific Absorption Rate (Sar) Operation, Md Mahfuzur Rahman

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Day by day technology is changing our lives rapidly. With these radical changes, demands in communication industry are also increasing drastically. To cope up with these demands, 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE (Long Term Evolution) communication systems have been introduced. Modern cellular phone should be capable to operate in wide range of frequency spectrum for their global access to provide end user customers these communication services. Hence mobile antennas should be designed in such a way that they should generate wideband operation. But commercially available standalone mobile antennas aren’t capable to operate in all those communication systems, several antennas are used …

Design Of A Mobile Underwater Charging System, Brian R. Page

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are extremely capable vehicles for numerous ocean related missions. AUVs are energy limited, resulting in short mission endurance on the scale of hours to days. Underwater Gliders (UGs) are able to operate on the order of months to years by using nontraditional propulsion methods. UGs, however, are unable to perform missions requiring high speed or direct forward motion due to the nature of their buoyancy driven motion. This work reviews the current state of the art in recharging AUVs and offers an underwater recharging network concept at a significantly reduced cost to traditional methods. The solution …

Competition Vehicle Based Intake Manifold Design, Joshua N. Matiash

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A competitive vehicle in Formula SAE needs to be easy for unskilled drivers to extract the maximum performance from. This requires a predictable and manageable torque curve. This report details the development of an intake manifold for a Formula SAE car from a vehicle-based approach to produce this manageable and predictable torque. The current vehicle was instrumented and driven on a representative track to determine the usage of available torque. Based on these findings an ideal torque curve was chosen that favored increased torque at upper engine speed ranges and decreased torque at lower engine speed ranges. A 1-D engine …

Comparative Analysis Of Locally Available Materials For Treadle Pump Seals In Senegal, West Africa, Brennan Tymrak

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

For rural farmers in Senegal, West Africa, pulling water for irrigation can be a laborious but necessary task during the dry season to earn income from vegetable gardening. Traditional water pulling methods are inexpensive but require great physical effort, while modern machines decrease the labor burden but at a high financial cost. This study looked at an intermediate water pulling technology, the treadle pump, and how it could be improved to become more desirable for use in agricultural irrigation. A treadle pump was built and tested during field work in a rural Senegalese village. Observations from field testing prompted a …

Dust Susceptibility At Mine Tailings Impoundments: Thermal Remote Sensing For Dust Susceptibility Characterization And Biological Soil Crusts For Dust Susceptibility Reduction, Bonnie Zwissler

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Mining operations produce massive volumes of mine tailings, which are deposited as slurry into permanent tailings impoundments. An important and heavily regulated environmental hazard associated with mine tailings impoundments is fugitive dust emissions. Wind erosion of mine tailings impoundments and the resulting dusting events, especially those caused by cold weather dusting, remain an on-going challenge for the mining industry. The overall goal of this research was to develop and evaluate effective, economical, and sustainable solutions to two major issues facing mine tailings impoundments with regards to dusting: (1) dust monitoring/detection and (2) dust reduction/prevention. Specifically, the research studied iron mine …

Drive Signal Development For The Thermoacoustic Loudspeaker, Troy Bouman

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Carbon nanotube thermophones can create acoustic waves from 1 Hz to 100 kHz. The thermoacoustic effect that allows for this non-vibrating sound source is naturally inefficient. Prior efforts have not explored their true efficiency (i.e. the ratio of the total acoustic power to the electrical input power). All previous works have used the ratio of sound pressure to input electrical power. A method for true power efficiency measurement is shown using a fully anechoic technique. True efficiency data are presented for five different drive signal processing techniques: standard alternating current (AC), direct current added to AC (DCAC), amplitude modulation of …

Scalable Integrated Circuit Simulation Algorithms For Energy-Efficient Teraflop Heterogeneous Parallel Computing Platforms, Lengfei Han

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Integrated circuit technology has gone through several decades of aggressive scaling.It is increasingly challenging to analyze growing design complexity. Post-layout SPICE simulation can be computationally prohibitive due to the huge amount of parasitic elements, which can easily boost the computation and memory cost. As the decrease in device size, the circuits become more vulnerable to process variations. Designers need to statistically simulate the probability that a circuit does not meet the performance metric, which requires millions times of simulations to capture rare failure events.

Recent, multiprocessors with heterogeneous architecture have emerged as mainstream computing platforms. The heterogeneous computing platform can …

A Fault Tolerant, Data Fusion System For Navigation Applications To A Ducted Fan Vtol Uav, Jian Lu

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A Fault Tolerant, Data Fusion (FTDF) algorithm for a Ducted Fan Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (DFUAV) Navigation System is presented. The algorithm have two parts: Gradient Descent (GD) for the Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) and an Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) for position estimation. The GD methodology was designed to fuse the gyroscope, accelerometer, and geomagnetic sensors. The IMM algorithm is able to identify and compensate for multiple sensors data failures. There are three parts in the presentation.

Firstly, system identification and the Allan Variance method is used to build dynamic models and noise models for multiple Sensors and Actuators. …

Analysis On The Performance Limitations Of An Interferometric Geolocation Device, Michael Witt

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

GPS is a critical tool often used in terrestrial location and navigation. However, GPS relies on a system of satellites in medium earth orbit and is prone to dropouts at higher latitudes, and may be susceptible to spoofing or other attacks. Thus, it is prudent to examine possible alternatives. Recently, star tracking has been of interest in global positioning. There are many implementations of a star tracker using an imaging-based optical system to capture star locations in order to estimate position using celestial navigation techniques. These imaging systems are performance limited by blurring imposed by atmospheric turbulence, platform jitter, and …

A Characterization Of The Water Quality Conditions And Pollutant Loads In Surface Waters Near The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District’S Combined Sewer System In Cleveland, Ohio, Nathan Zgnilec

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD, Cleveland, OH) serves over one million citizens through the operation of three waste water treatment plants. NEORSD provides this service through combined and separated sewer systems, which, during rainfall events, are known to deliver large volumes of untreated wastewater containing high concentrations of Escherichia coli (E.coli), ammonia nitrogen, and phosphorus. NEORSD is currently investing $3 billion over the next 25 years to mitigate its combined sewer overflows and plans to allocate additional funds to improve remaining pollutant sources related to its system, e.g. separated sewers. A suite of PC-SWMM pollutant loading models have …

Finite Element Modeling Of Active And Passive Behavior Of The Human Tibialis Anterior: A Preliminary Approach, David Joda

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This research project serves as exploratory work in the field of computational human biomechanics. A connection between muscular force and intramuscular pressure (IMP) has been uncovered that could prove invaluable in medical diagnostics as a method to circumvent the use of electromyography.

Preliminary finite element simulations were conducted to model the human tibialis anterior muscle in passive lengthening and active contraction. These simulations, totaling over 50 unique runs, utilized a novel constitutive model developed within the IMP research group. Volumetric strain, reaction forces, and pressure gradients were compared to data acquired from ongoing in vivo human experiments. A mechanism for …

On The Aerodynamic Properties Of Slotted-Flap Flow-Control Devices For Wind Turbine Applications, Muraleekrishnan Menon Menon Muraleedharan Nair

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wind energy is growing at a fast pace and utility-scale wind turbines growing in size with increasing rotor diameters. To sustain development of up-scaled wind turbines of tomorrow there is a need for innovation in load control methodologies. This thesis research targets an assessment of the aerodynamic properties of airfoil sections specifically intended for wind turbine applications, featuring them with flow-control devices. The use of fractional chord trailing-edge flaps as slotted-flap devices on aerodynamically active parts of a turbine blade were studied. As modular devices attached externally on existing blade designs, they comfortably form a cost-effective means for active load …

Assessing The Impacts Of Climate Change On The Surface Temperature Of Inland Lakes In Michigan, Kaitlin Reinl

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The aim of this study was to validate and apply a lake model for predicting the susceptibility of small inland lakes in Michigan to changes in thermal regime and increased cyanobacteria growth as a result of future climate conditions. The Freshwater Lake Model was selected, tested for sensitivity to various inputs, and validated through comparison to observed conditions. The sensitivity analysis showed that the lake model was most sensitive to solar radiation, air temperature, and air humidity. Comparison of predicted climate data with observed conditions revealed highly variable climate model error. The lake model validation was conducted using 10 lakes …

Channel Modeling For Fifth Generation Cellular Networks And Wireless Sensor Networks, Amir Torabi

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In view of exponential growth in data traffic demand, the wireless communications industry has aimed to increase the capacity of existing networks by 1000 times over the next 20 years. A combination of extreme cell densification, more bandwidth, and higher spectral efficiency is needed to support the data traffic requirements for fifth generation (5G) cellular communications. In this research, the potential improvements achieved by using three major 5G enabling technologies (i.e., small cells, millimeter-wave spectrum, and massive MIMO) in rural and urban environments are investigated. This work develops SPM and KA-based ray models to investigate the impact of geometrical parameters …

Comparison Of Ignition Delays And Liquid Penetrations Of Jp-8, Synthetic Jp-8, And A Jp-8 Surrogate Under Diesel Engine Conditions, Kyle Yeakle

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The U.S. Army and many NATO affiliates have adopted a ‘one fuel forward fuel policy’ (OFF). The goal of the OFF policy is reducing the logistics and cost involved with providing fuel for military vehicles. With this policy, the logical choice fuel is military grade jet petroleum, JP-8, because of the fuel constraints of turbo-jet engines. This requirement has made it necessary to run military compression ignited engines on JP-8. To reduce the Army’s reliance on petroleum based fuels an alternative fuel, synthetic JP-8, derived from coal and made in the Fischer-Tropsch production method is allowed to be blended up …

Polychlorinated Biphenyl Compound And Metal Contamination And Remediation In Torch Lake, Houghton County, Mi, Ankita Mandelia

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Torch Lake was subject to approximately 100 years of industrial pollution due to the dumping of waste associated with copper mining in the Keweenaw Peninsula, which lasted from approximately the 1860s through the 1960s. It is well-known that this waste included copper-containing mine tailings. What was less understood are the impacts of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals besides copper on the lake system.

The objectives of this thesis are to summarize the status of contamination and remediation activities in Torch Lake and to estimate the magnitude of potential sources of PCBs to Torch Lake. First, a brief overview of …

A Petrophysical Evaluation For Permeability Of A Gas Reservoir In The Taranaki Basin, New Zealand, Musa Cetin

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The goal of this study was to evaluate permeability and study the controls on permeability in a gas saturated formation. Conventional well logs, mineral identification crossplots and empirical models were applied to analyze different lithologic and diagenetic features and to examine the effect that these features may have on the reservoir. An unusual feature was observed, and required detailed examination: there existed (in two wells) five zones of lower resistivity (higher water saturation) above the gas-water contact. This is unexpected, as above that contact, the water is usually at irreducible water saturation. I conclude that the lower resistivity (the higher …

A Novel Low Latency, High Resolution And Low Cost Time Synchronization, Ali Aghdaei

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This report presents a new low latency, high resolution and low cost timing synchro- nization technique for digital receivers. Traditional timing synchronization employs Matched filter to perform cross-correlation operation and estimate Time-of-Arrival (TOA) of the signal. Decreasing the latency of the traditional method through over- sampling leads to a higher complexity and it is not viable. Furthermore, to obtain a high-resolution TOA, an extensive bandwidth is required, which results in high system complexity. The proposed method uses single bit quantization to employ XNOR blocks instead of multiplier and accumulator (MAC) blocks in the traditional method. This substantially decreases complexity incorporating …

An Experimental Investigation Into The Effect Of Particulate Matter On Nox Reduction In A Scr Catalyst On A Dpf, Saksham Gupta

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The study of NO_x reduction across the SCRF^® is presented in this report to understand the inlet and outlet NO, NO₂, NH₃ species from the SCRF^®. The SCRF^® is a prototype SCR catalyst on a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) that reduces NOx and PM at the downstream location. The SCRF^® reduces the packaging volume of the aftertreatment components in order to reduce the cost, volume and weight of the aftertreatment system. A total of 12 experiments were performed on a Cummins ISB 2013 280 hp engine and the aftertreatment system. The …

Increasing Solar Energy Conversion Efficiency In Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaic Devices With Plasmonic Perfect Meta – Absorbers, Jephias Gwamuri

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Solar photovoltaic (PV) devices are an established, technically-viable and sustainable solution to society’s energy needs, however, in order to reach mass deployment at the terawatt scale, further decreases in the levelized cost of electricity from solar are needed. This can be accomplished with thin-film PV technologies by increasing the conversion efficiency using sophisticated light management methods. This ensures absorption of the entire solar spectrum, while reducing semiconductor absorber layer thicknesses, which reduces deposition time, material use, embodied energy and greenhouse gas emissions, and economic costs. Recent advances in optics, particularly in plasmonics and nanophotonics provide new theoretical methods to improve …

Design, Fabrication And Analysis Of An Auxiliary Power Unit On A Heavy-Duty Truck To Power The Hvac Systems Of The Truck During Driver Off-Duty Conditions, Rohan Milind Kalurkar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Currently, one of the biggest challenges the world is facing is energy insufficiency. One of the contributors to energy consumption in United States are the idling semi-trailer trucks. In May 2001, President Bush issued The National Energy Policy in which he directed The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Transportation (DOT) to reduce the idling of trucks. This was done in order to reduce energy consumption by lowering fuel consumption and emissions coming out of semi-trailer trucks in the United States of America.

This project deals with the efforts of installing an Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) as a device …

Towards A Generic Ontology For Solar Irradiance Forecasting, Abhilash Kantamneni

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The growth of solar energy resources in recent years has led to increased calls for accurate forecasts of solar irradiance for the reliable and sustainable integration of solar into the national grid. A growing body of academic research has developed models for forecasting solar irradiance, identified metrics for comparing solar forecasts, and described applications and end users of solar forecasts.

In recent years, many disciplines are developing ontologies to facilitate better communication, improve inter-operabiity and refine knowledge reuse by experts and users of the domain. Ontologies are explicit and formal vocabulary of terms and their relationships. This report describes a …

Effects Of Scattering And Absorption On Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging, Kosar Khaksari

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI) is a real-time, non-invasive method in used to investigate blood flow and perfusion in biological tissues with high temporal and spatial resolution. A reduction in speckle contrast due to particle motion is the primary contrast mechanism in LSCI. Motion results in speckle fluctuations in time and reduces the contrast over a given camera integration period. There are a variety of parameters that effect contrast besides motion. The optical properties of the scattering medium are one of the parameters effecting LSCI values. Changes in blood hematocrit levels manifest as changes in optical properties. In this work, …

Experimental Study, Modelling And Controller Design For An Rcci Engine, Naga Nithin Teja Kondipati

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Low Temperature Combustion (LTC) has got widespread attention over the past two decades in the field of Automotive Research and Development due to it’s potential for achieving higher efficiencies with near-zero engine out NOx and soot emissions. Among all the LTC strategies Reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI) has shown the most promising results due to it’s precise control over combustion phasing and heat release rate. However, RCCI being a dual-fuel stratified combustion, precise control over the injection timing of direct injected fuel and in-cylinder fuel reactivity of the mixture needs to be controlled effectively in order to achieve gross indicated …