Engineering Commons^™

Standardizing The Collection And Measurement Of Glucose In Exhaled Breath And Its Relationship To Blood Glucose Concentrations, Mark Hamilton

Open Access Theses

Blood glucose level control (glycemic control) is crucial in diabetes. Limitations in current commercially available monitoring devices include causing patient pain leading to poor blood glucose level management. The development of a non-invasive measurement system may lead to improved patient glycemic control, reducing unwanted side-effects and complications of poor blood glucose level maintenance.

This work explores the use of glucose within exhaled breath in attempt to establish an indirect method of blood glucose level measurement. Specifically, exhaled breath condensate (EBC) is examined. A breath condensing unit was designed to measure the temperature of the system, flow rate, volume of expired …

Improved Random Demodulator For Compressed Sensing Applications, Sathya Narayanan Hariharan

Open Access Theses

The advances in the field of signal processing have led to the continuous increase in the bandwidth of signals. Sampling these signals becomes harder and harder due to the increased bandwidth. This brings in need for a complex high rate ADCs to meet the Nyquist rate which is the minimum rate to avoid aliasing. For a given increase in bandwidth, there has to be a corresponding increase in the sampling rate of ADC. This might not be possible in the near future at the current rate of increase in bandwidth. Hence, there is a need to replace the current Nyquist …

Design Of Optical Access For The Application Of Laser Doppler Velocimetry In A Low Specific Speed Centrifugal Compressor, Bryce Ashton Heckaman

Open Access Theses

The objective of this research has been to design optical access for the application of laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) in a low specific speed centrifugal compressor. The ability to acquire non-intrusive flow measurements will provide valuable insight into tip leakage flow, secondary flow, and impeller/diffuser interactions within the centrifugal compressor. The current research facility houses a new low specific speed centrifugal compressor which design is based off a compressor that would be installed as the last stage of a high-pressure compressor.

The LDV optical access has been designed and includes two fused silica windows that are housed in stainless steel …

Numerical Simulation Of Hydrogen Plasma In Mpcvd Reactor, Di Huang

Open Access Theses

A numerical study was conducted to build a model able to estimate the plasma properties under different working conditions for pure hydrogen plasma in a MPCVD reactor. A plasma model based on standing wave assumption and a linear estimation of ne and coupled the EM simulation, heat transfer simulation and UDF calculations of plasma properties was built in COMSOL Muitiphysics and tested with six different working conditions. The reliability of COMSOL EM solver was tested through comparing the simulation results with a benchmark EM solver, ANSYS HFSS. The validities of two assumptions made about the electrical field, standing wave assumption …

Optimal Control Of Unknown Nonlinear System From Inputoutput Data, Xin Jin

Open Access Theses

Optimal control designers usually require a plant model to design a controller. The problem is the controller's performance heavily depends on the accuracy of the plant model. However, in many situations, it is very time-consuming to implement the system identification procedure and an accurate structure of a plant model is very difficult to obtain. On the other hand, neuro-fuzzy models with product inference engine, singleton fuzzifier, center average defuzzifier, and Gaussian membership functions can be easily trained by many well-established learning algorithms based on given input-output data pairs. Therefore, this kind of model is used in the current optimal controller …

High Temperature Flooded Expansion For Solar Thermal Power Generation, Nelson Alexander James

Open Access Theses

Even though solar power usage has seen rapid growth over the past decade, fossil fuel generation sources are still generally a less expensive means of producing power. The Liquid-Flooded Ericsson Cycle (LFEC) was investigated as a high efficiency power cycle for reducing the cost of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants and helping to address this cost disparity. High temperature flooded expansion was identified as one of the main challenges in regards to utilizing the LFEC as a power cycle. Thermodynamic models were developed to help assess the performance of the LFEC and a load stand was constructed to test a …

Evaluation Of Asphalt Pavement Interface, Hyung Jun Ahn

Open Access Theses

This paper presents the development process of modified pull-off test for measurement of in-situ pavement interface bonding strength. The modified test method was validated using two case studies (i.e., delaminated vs. non-delaminated pavements on I-65 and intelligent compacted vs. non-intelligent compacted pavements on US-52) and used for developing a correlation model for estimating a probability of delamination failure at a given pull-off bonding strength. In addition, methodologies for probabilistic interpretations with pull-off test results were explored.

The results demonstrated that the modified pull-off test showed its applicability in measurement of interface bonding condition with both weak and strong conditions. Additionally, …

Integration And Implementation Of High-Voltage Energy Storage Sub-System For A Parallel-Through-The-Road Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle, Bilwa A. Jadhav

Open Access Theses

With research showing an alarming rate of increase in global warming and thus causing dangerous instabilities in the weather, a strong push has been initiated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation being one of the top offenders in greenhouse gas emissions, has led the drive for improving the efficiency of the modern automobile. One of the current strategies for reducing the emissions produced by the transportation sector is hybrid vehicles powered from both a fuel such as gasoline, diesel, or hydrogen; and electricity. This merger has proven to be effective at decreasing harmful emissions including, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) …

Design Of Robust Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic Random Access Memories For Ultralow Power High Performance On-Chip Cache Applications, Xuanyao Fong

Open Access Dissertations

Spin-transfer torque magnetic random access memories (STT-MRAMs) based on magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) has become the leading candidate for future universal memory technology due to its potential for low power, non-volatile, high speed and extremely good endurance. However, conflicting read and write requirements exist in STT-MRAM technology because the current path during read and write operations are the same. Read and write failures of STT-MRAMs are degraded further under process variations. The focus of this dissertation is to optimize the yield of STT- MRAMs under process variations by employing device-circuit-architecture co-design techniques. A devices-to-systems simulation framework was developed to evaluate …

On Variability And Reliability Of Poly-Si Thin-Film Transistors, Chih-Hsiang Ho

Open Access Dissertations

In contrast to conventional bulk-silicon technology, polysilicon (poly-Si) thin-film transistors (TFTs) can be implanted in flexible substrate and can have low process temperature. These attributes make poly-Si TFT technology more attractive for new applications, such as flexible displays, biosensors, and smart clothing. However, due to the random nature of grain boundaries (GBs) in poly-Si film and self-heating enhanced negative bias temperature instability (NBTI), the variability and reliability of poly-Si TFTs are the main obstacles that impede the application of poly-Si TFTs in high-performance circuits. The primary focus of this dissertation is to develop new design methodologies and modeling techniques for …

Fundamental Design Principles Of Novel Mems Based "Landau" Switches, Sensors, And Actuators : Role Of Electrode Geometry And Operation Regime, Ankit Jain

Open Access Dissertations

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are considered as potential candidates for "More-Moore" and "More-than-Moore" applications due to their versatile use as sensors, switches, and actuators. Examples include accelerometers for sensing, RF-MEMS capacitive switches in communication, suspended-gate (SG) FETs in computation, and deformable mirrors in optics. In spite of the wide range of applications of MEMS in diverse fields, one of the major challenges for MEMS is their instability. Instability divides the operation into stable and unstable regimes and poses fundamental challenges for several applications. For example: Tuning range of deformable mirrors is fundamentally limited by pull-in instability, RF-MEMS capacitive switches suffer from …

Technology, Science, And Environtmental Impact Of A Novel Cu-Ag Core-Shell Solderless Interconnect System, Milea Joy Kammer

Open Access Dissertations

Tin-based solder is ubiquitous in microelectronics manufacturing and plays a critical role in electronic packaging and attachment. While manufacturers of consumer electronics have made the transition to the use of lead-free solder, there are still a variety of reliability issues associated with these lead-free alternatives, particularly for high performance, high reliability applications. Because of these performance short-comings, researchers are still searching for a material, an alloy, or a unique alternative that can meet the thermal, mechanical, and electrical requirements for conventional reflow solder applications. In an effort to produce a more reliable alternative, Kim et al. proposed the low-temperature (200°C) …

High Fidelity Simulations Of Electrokinetic Phenomena In Microfluidic Devices, Qian Li

Open Access Dissertations

Electroosmotic flow with electrokinetic effects is the primary method of fluid handling in micro-total analysis systems. Under external applied electric fields, electrokinetic micro-devices allow for innovative functionality in a wide range of microfluidic applications including sample injection, separation, rapid micromixing, and miniaturized chemical and biochemical analysis and detection. This dissertation focuses on simulations of two electrokinetic phenomena, isotachophoresis (ITP) and electrokinetic instability (EKI). A set of coupled governing equations including the incompressible Naiver-Stokes equations, Nernst-Planck transport equations and a charge conservation equation are solved in the simulation. A multiblock in-house solver based on high-order finite difference schemes is developed to …

Scour In Regions Of Flow Separation With Free-Surface Effects, John Frederick Newton

Open Access Dissertations

Downstream of essentially all overflow and drop structures two distinct flow regimes are possible, one associated with a plunging flow, the other dominated by a flow that rides along the surface. Predicting the flow regime is important because diving-jet scouring rates are substantially faster than surface flow scouring rates, and diving-jet scour holes form nearer to the structure. A bi-stable region exists in which either flow is possible with the same upstream and downstream flow conditions. Bi-stable regime boundaries were delineated for a wide variety of fixed bed structures, based on both new experiments and reanalysis of others' experiments with …

Energy Efficient Hybrid Computing Systems Using Spin Devices, Mrigank Sharad

Open Access Dissertations

Emerging spin-devices like magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ's), spin-valves and domain wall magnets (DWM) have opened new avenues for spin-based logic design. This work explored potential computing applications which can exploit such devices for higher energy-efficiency and performance. The proposed applications involve hybrid design schemes, where charge-based devices supplement the spin-devices, to gain large benefits at the system level. As an example, lateral spin valves (LSV) involve switching of nanomagnets using spin-polarized current injection through a metallic channel such as Cu. Such spin-torque based devices possess several interesting properties that can be exploited for ultra-low power computation. Analog characteristic of spin …

Multi-Objective Optimization And Meta-Modeling Of Tape-Wound Transformers, Ahmed Taher

Open Access Dissertations

In the research presented herein, design models of tape-wound transformers to support component and system-level optimization are considered. As a basis for component optimization, a magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) model is derived. The key components of the MEC model are the leakage permeances, which have been established using analytical techniques and validated using both 2D and 3D finite element analysis. To enable high frequency design, expressions that predict the winding AC resistance and the proximity effect loss are derived. In addition, a thermal equivalent circuit (TEC) model is established to predict the temperature throughout the transformer and to account for …

Novel Energy Efficient Electrohydraulic Steer-By-Wire Technology, Naseem Daher

Open Access Dissertations

Improving energy efficiency, productivity, safety, and comfort of mobile machines is of utmost priority to original equipment manufacturers, suppliers, and consumers given the escalating fuel prices and increased awareness to the environment and workplace hazards. A major breakthrough in the realm of high power motion control is pump displacement controlled (DC) actuation, which does away with hydraulic valves for motion control and uses a variable displacement pump as both a flow source and final control element, thus eliminating throttling losses associated with hydraulic control valves. This work deals with researching and implementing DC technology for realizing the steering function of …

A Novel Microgrid Demand-Side Management System For Manufacturing Facilities, Terance Jerome Harper

Open Access Theses

Thirty-one percent of annual energy consumption in the United States occurs within the industrial sector, where manufacturing processes account for the largest amount of energy consumption and carbon emissions. For this reason, energy efficiency in manufacturing facilities is increasingly important for reducing operating costs and improving profits. Using microgrids to generate local sustainable power should reduce energy consumption from the main utility grid along with energy costs and carbon emissions. Also, microgrids have the potential to serve as reliable energy generators in international locations where the utility grid is often unstable.

For this research, a manufacturing process that had approximately …

2013 Summary Of Highway Revenues, Distributions & Expenses, Indiana Ltap

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Publications

This report provides information on revenues, distributions, and expenses of state and local governments for highway, road, and street work. Since the Motor Vehicle Highway (MVH) and Local Road and Street (LRS) Accounts are the principal source of funds for local road or street construction and maintenance operations, this summary may be used to see the trends in income sources and in the expenses charged to the funds prior to their being distributed to the highway, road, and street agencies.

Quantifying The Local Density Of Optical States Of Nanorods By Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging, Jingjing Liu, Xunpeng Jiang, Satoshi Ishii, V. M. Shalaev, Joseph Irudayaraj

Birck and NCN Publications

In this paper, we demonstrate a facile far-field approach to quantify the near-field local density of optical states (LDOS) of a nanorod using CdTe quantum dot (QD) emitters tethered to the surface of the nanorods as beacons for optical readouts. The radiative decay rate was extracted to quantify the LDOS; our analysis indicates that the LDOS of the nanorod enhances both the radiative and nonradiative decay of QDs, particularly the radiative decay of QDs at the end of a nanorod is enhanced by 1.17 times greater than that at the waist, while the nonradiative decay was enhanced uniformly over the …

Role Of Strain On Electronic And Mechanical Response Of Semiconducting Transition-Metal Dichalcogenide Monolayers: An Ab-Initio Study, David M. Guzman, Alejandro Strachan

Birck and NCN Publications

We characterize the electronic structure and elasticity of monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides MX2 (M = Mo, W, Sn, Hf and X = S, Se, Te) based on 2H and 1T structures using fully relativistic first principles calculations based on density functional theory. We focus on the role of strain on the band structure and band alignment across the series of materials. We find that strain has a significant effect on the band gap; a biaxial strain of 1% decreases the band gap in the 2H structures, by as a much as 0.2 eV in MoS2 and WS2, while increasing it for …

Characterizing The Pore Structure Of Carbonated Natural Wollastonite, Chiara Villani, Robert Spragg, Raikhan Tokpatayeva, Jan Olek, W. Jason Weiss

International Conference on Durability of Concrete Structures

This paper focuses on examining the pore structure of a cementitious paste made with a calcium silicate (wollastonite) that reacts with carbon dioxide and water to form a hardened solid. The pore structure of the hardened solid has been characterized using vapor sorption and desorption, low-temperature differential scanning calorimetry (LT-DSC), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The total porosity was also measured using mass measurement in oven-dry and vacuum-saturated conditions. Evidence exists that support the hypothesis that the solid has two main pore sizes: large macropores (>10 nm) appear to form between the initial calcium silicate particles and small micropores …

Computational Study Of Heterojunction Graphene Nanoribbon Tunneling Transistors With P-D Orbital Tight-Binding Method, Sung Geun Kim, Mathieu Luisier, Timothy B. Boykin, Gerhard Klimeck

Birck and NCN Publications

The graphene nanoribbon (GNR) tunneling field effect transistor (TFET) has been a promising candidate for a future low power logic device due to its sub-60 mV/dec subthreshold characteristic and its superior gate control on the channel electrons due to its one-dimensional nature. Even though many theoretical studies have been carried out, it is not clear that GNR TFETs would outperform conventional silicon metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs). With rigorous atomistic simulations using the p/d orbital tight-binding model, this study focuses on the optimization of GNR TFETs by tuning the doping density and the size of GNRs. It is …

Adventures In Paragraph Writing: The Development And Refinement Of Scalable And Effective Writing Exercises For Large-Enrollment Engineering Courses, Rebecca R. Essig, Cary David Troy, Brent K. Jesiek, Josh Boyd, Natascha Michele Trellinger

IMPACT Publications

Adventures in paragraph writing: the development and refinement of scalable and effective writing exercises for large enrollment engineering courses. The ability to communicate effectively is a highly desirable attribute for today’s graduating engineers. Additionally, the inclusion of communication components in technical courses has been shown to enhance learning of technical content and can be leveraged to satisfy non-technical learning outcomes. However, the incorporation of such components in undergraduate engineering curricula remains challenging due to resource limitations, credit hour crunches, and other issues. This paper presents the design considerations and preliminary results from our ongoing work to create an effective, transferrable, …

"Cap" Cornish, Indiana Pilot: Navigating The Century Of Flight, Ruth Ann Ingraham

Purdue University Press Books

Clarence "Cap" Cornish was an Indiana pilot whose life spanned all but five years of the Century of Flight. Born in Canada in 1898, Cornish grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He began flying at the age of nineteen, piloting a "Jenny" aircraft during World War I, and continued to fly for the next seventy-eight years. In 1995, at the age of ninety-seven, he was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest actively flying pilot. The mid-1920s to the mid-1950s were Cornish's most active years in aviation. During that period, sod runways gave way to asphalt and concrete; …

Factors Of Group Design Decision Making, Andrew Jackson, Nathan Mentzer, Angelika N. Zissimopoulos

IMPACT Publications

Design is a decision-making process. Designers make decisions between alternative solutions,decisions about feasibility of individual solutions, decisions about narrowing or broadening the problem scope. They also make logistical decision about when teams will meet, how decisions will be made. Recent analysis of high school student design activities revealed that groups and individuals are not spending much time on decision processes and it can be assumed that the faculties of beginning college students are in a similar vein. In the past year changes were made to a freshman level design thinking course to improve student approaches to decision making.Accompanying these changes, …

Draft Genome Sequence Of Acetobacter Aceti Strain 1023, A Vinegar Factory Isolate, John Hung, Christopher Mill, Sandra Clifton, Vincent Magrini, Ketaki Bhide, Julie Francois, Aaron Ransome, Lucinda Fulton, Jyothi Thimmapuram, Richard Wilson, T. Joseph Kappock

Cyber Center Publications

The genome sequence of Acetobacter aceti 1023, an acetic acid bacterium adapted to traditional vinegar fermentation, comprises 3.0 Mb (chromosome plus plasmids). A. aceti 1023 is closely related to the cocoa fermenter Acetobacter pasteurianus 386B but possesses many additional insertion sequence elements.

Ultraviolet Laser Crystallized Zno:Al Films On Sapphire With High Hall Mobility For Simultaneous Enhancement Of Conductivity And Transparency, Qiong Nian, Martin Y. Zhang, Bradley D. Schwartz, Gary J. Cheng

Birck and NCN Publications

One of the most challenging issues in transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) is to improve their conductivity without compromising transparency. High conductivity in TCO films often comes from a high carrier concentration, which is detrimental to transparency due to free carrier absorption. Here we show that UV laser crystallization (UVLC) of aluminum-doped ZnO (AZO) films prepared by pulsed laser deposition on sapphire results in much higher Hall mobility, allowing relaxation of the constraints of the conductivity/transparency trade-off. X-ray diffraction patterns and morphological characterizations show grain growth and crystallinity enhancement during UVLC, resulting in less film internal imperfections. Optoelectronic measurements show that …

Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory Of Coupled Electronic Lattice Motion In Quasi-Two-Dimensional Crystals, Vladimir U. Nazarov, Fhhad Alharbi, Timothy Fisher, Sabre Kais

Birck and NCN Publications

Electron-holes, phonons, and plasmons come in close proximity to each other in the low-energy range of the excitation spectrum of two-dimensional (2D) crystals, breaking the validity of the weakly interacting-quasiparticles picture. By including the lattice oscillations into the scheme of time-dependent density-functional theory, we open a pathway to the ab initio treatment of the coupled low-energy excitations in 2D crystals. With the use of graphene as an important test system, we find the strong coupling of the elementary excitations, giving rise to new hybrid collective modes. The total (including both the electronic and ionic response) dielectric function epsilon(tot)(omega) is constructed …

Leveraging High Resolution Signalized Intersection Data To Characterize Discharge Headway Distributions And Saturation Flow Rate Reliability, Stephen M. Remias, Alexander M. Hainen, Gannon Grimmer, Alexander D. Davis, Christopher M. Day, Thomas M. Brennan Jr, James R. Sturdevant, Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Other Publications and Reports

As highway systems become more congested, it becomes increasingly important to understand the reliability with which we can estimate important performance measures such as volume to capacity ratios, particularly as we move toward leveraging field infrastructure to obtain real-time performance measures. In 1947, Greenshields wrote a paper that characterized “green time consumed” by “car-in-line-number” that ultimately was called headway. Average headway is one of principles used by the highway capacity manual to estimate saturation flow rate at signalized intersections. However, the current analytical techniques calculate a deterministic value for saturation flow rate that does not consider the stochastic variation of …