Engineering Commons^™

Design Of A Biomass-To-Biorefinery Logistics System Through Bio-Inspired Metaheuristic Optimization Considering Multiple Types Of Feedstocks, Isidoro Trueba

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Bioenergy has become an important alternative source of energy to alleviate the reliance on petroleum energy. Bioenergy offers significant potential to mitigate climate change by reducing life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions relative to fossil fuels. The Energy Independence and Security Act mandate the use of 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels including 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels by the year 2022. It is clear that Biomass can make a substantial contribution to supplying future energy demand in a sustainable way. However, the supply of sustainable energy is one of the main challenges that mankind will face over the coming decades. …

Printable Biodegradable Hydrogel For Skin Wound Dressing Using Inkjet Printing Technology, Maria G. Yanez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Chronic wounds are becoming more frequent. Foot ulcers affect approximately 10% - 15% of patients with diabetes throughout their lifetimes, and by 2025, it is estimated the prevalence of diabetes will be 250 million people in the worldwide. There is increased potential for patients with peripheral neuropathy and peripheral vascular disease to suffer more foot injuries. These conditions reduce the normal pain sensations and healing of minor traumas, allowing the development of chronic non-healing ulcers, often preceding lower-extremity amputation. These types of wounds are very difficult to treat and sometimes take months or even years to heal because of many …

Recovering Magnesium Hydroxide And Sodium Chloride From Zero Discharge Desalination Concentrate Streams, Alemayehu Asfaw Yetayew

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

UTEP and Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies have been demonstrating and commercializing the Zero Discharge Desalination (ZDD) technology as part of a three year project sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. ZDD is able to achieve up to 98% recovery by desalinating brackish groundwater. ZDD is typically comprised of a reverse osmosis (RO) or nanofiltration (NF) system and a unique variation of electrodialysis called electrodialysis metathesis (EDM). The ZDD technology increases the yield of fresh water from water supplies that contain enough CaSO4 to cause precipitation problems when the water is treated with RO or NF alone. The EDM …

Smart Grid: A New Hope For Energetic Crisis, Humberto Camarena

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

With the world changing so rapidly, new renewable energies began to develop, but a new system that integrated these energies and the Non-renewable energies has not been developed yet. A great problem grew at the same time as the renewable energies became more popular. It consisted on searching for a way to permit the control of flow of energy and the power thru the power grid. It’s a critical problem because all the energy that is lost is during the power factor phenomenon. The main factor that produces that the power factor be low (the lowest, more energy is lost) …

The Fly Way, Daniel Moran, John Moya, Ruben Hernandez, Amaury F. Perez

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

This project is related to the way a common house fly’s eye works. Dr. Moya has received a patent that helps mimic the way the ommatidia(compound eye of the fly) processes and “pinpoints” the location of a given image / object. It is on the basis of this patent that his graduate students Ruben Hernandez and Amauri Perez have improved the programming of the algorithm that shows that an object can be effectively be detected by a camera interfaced with these programs. Potential applications include but are not limited to security (both public and private), robotic assisted surgical procedures/treatments, gaming…etc. …

Selection Of Critical Design Parameters For Mmod Protection In Interplanetary Missions, Lisa M. Haisan, Cesar Carrasco

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

This research presents a methodology for the selection of critical design-parameters for the design of Micro Meteoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) spacecraft protection based on a modified implementation of the concept of the Probability of No Impact (PNI). The PNI methodology, based on Poisson’s discrete statistics, has been widely used to determine critical particle sizes for the design of protection systems. However, it does not provide guidelines for the selection of the design impact speed, especially when the impact speed has a very wide statistical distribution like that encountered in interplanetary missions. The modifications to the PNI methodology presented here …

Poly(3,4-Ethylenedioxy-Thiophene)：Poly（Styrenesulfonate）（Pedot:Pss） As A Hole-Transporting/Electron-Blocking Interfacial Layer To Increase The Efficiency Of Polymer Bulk-Heterojunction Solar Cells, Yanyu Wu, Michael D. Irwin

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Solar energy is playing a critical role in today’s renewable energy resources. Polymer bulk-heterojunction solar cells have the possibility to be cost-effective and highly efficient. However, the technology is fairly new and has not yet been perfected. Therefore, In order to enhance the efficiency of polymer bulk-heterojunction solar cells, thin layers of Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxy-thiophene)：poly（styrenesulfonate）（PEDOT:PSS） are inserted between the active organic layer, poly(3-hexylthiophene)(P3HT)+[6,6]-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester(PCBM), and the ITO(tin-doped indium oxide) anode of bulk-heterojunction ITO/P3HT:PCBM/LiF /Al solar cells. Both the interfacial layer, which is PEDOT: PSS, and the active layer are deposited by spin-coating. So far, I have been able to …

Systems Engineering, Caitlin A. Lambing, Eric D. Smith

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Systems Engineering is a fast growing field in the engineering braches. It can be applied to anything that one can be described as a system. To show this, two different projects are being directed through the systems engineering department at UTEP. In the Student Busing Project, UTEP was granted funding from the Green Fund in order to pursuit the start of a busing system on campus. Research on other busing systems, as well as the effects and costs of adopting a busing system were researched. Surveys were completed, and additional research was done to see the environmental effects the buses …

Complex Geometries For Particle Image Velocimetry (Piv) Testing, Elaine T. Maestas, Ryan Wicker, David Espalin, Francisco R. Medina

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Clear, physical models or phantoms are needed for particle image velocimetry (PIV) to accurately record fluid velocities within complex geometries including anatomical structures. Based on Karina Arcaute’s work on “Complex Silicon Cardiovascular Models Manufactured Using a Dip-Spin Coating Technique”, a box casting technique was developed to provide the most effective phantom for testing. The phantom is required to be free of visual obstructions, thus allowing a CCD camera to capture accurate velocity readings. In this study, complex parts were made of a water-soluble material and sanded until all ridges were removed. The model was created using a fused deposition modeling …

Asphalt Testing: Enhancing The Roads, Andrea Gutierrez, Soheil Nazarian, Anjan K. Siddagangaiah

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

At the University of Texas at El Paso, the Center for Transportation Infrastructure Systems is conducting several asphalt tests to ensure the quality of the asphalt and the safety of the public. The tests determine special engineering properties of the material such as the strength and aggregate-asphalt ratio that are crucial to the life span of the asphalt on the field. The five tests that are conducted are:

• Maximum Theoretical Specific Gravity Test (GMM) – used to find the density of the material
• Bulk Specific Gravity Test (GMB) – determines the air pockets (air voids) in the material using the …

Performance Comparisons Of Personal And Professional-Grade 3d Printers, Alfonso Fernandez, Ryan Wicker, Francisco R. Medina, David Espalin

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The recent emergence of personal 3D printers (i.e., systems that cost $5,000 or less) has engaged a new class of users including hobbyists, tinkerers, entrepreneurs, and do-it-yourselfers. Over 20,000 personal 3D printers were sold in 2011, and thus there is a need for users to understand the cost and performance of personal 3D printers as compared to low-cost professional-grade machines (i.e., systems that cost between $5,000 and $20,000). The cost, process time, material usage, and dimensional accuracy was assessed for select personal 3D printers and low-cost professional-grade systems. The study showed that the laminated object manufacturing (LOM) printer generated 80% …

Solar Light Bulb, David G. Guzman, Virgilio Gonzalez

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The Solar Lighting project is a work driven towards building a low-cost and environmental-friendly solar bulb and to understanding the science behind its behavior. A solar light bulb refers to a device capable of absorbing and transferring solar energy to light up an enclosed area. By using the physical properties of fluids and light is possible to manipulate solar light waves to illuminate an enclosed structure. Moreover, this project attempts to utilize recycled materials that reduce the cost of such device, helping not only the planet but also the costumer’s pocket. The ultimate goal for this project is to scientifically …

Sic-Cnt Multifunctional Nanocomposites For High Temperature Structural, Thermoelectric And Sensing Applications, Salvador Sandoval, Luz I. Bugarin, Luz I, Arifur Chowdhury, Luisa A. Cabrera, Mujibur R. Khan

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The purpose of this project is to study the thermal-electrical and mechanical properties of the Nanojunctions between Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNT) and Silicon Carbide (SiC). The mixture was done by spreading the nanoparticles in a solution of ethanol and SiC, then sintered to a solid sample of 10 mm x 10 mm x 35 mm, which was attached with Alumel (Ni-Al) wire using silver epoxy to form a circuit for recording during fracture testing. The carbon nanotubes used were approximately 60% semiconducting and 40% metallic. The themal-electrical effect changed when SWCNTs (at 2, and 5 wt%) were infused into SiC. …

3-D Vision And Motion Tracking, Alberto G. Fajardo, Olac Fuentes

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Motion tracking in Computer Vision consists of determining the location and configuration of an object from a video sequence. The potential real world applications of motion tracking range from medical imaging and analysis to entertainment, as well as surveillance and security. Motion tracking is a difficult problem, especially if it is required to be done in real time, which is why it has been an active research area for the past couple of decades. In this project we are developing algorithms for tracking articulated objects, such as the human body, by exploiting the use of the Microsoft Kinect, an imaging …

Characterization Of Printed Skin Equivalents, Mayela R, Aldaz Cervantes, Maria Yanez, Thomas Boland

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Severe burns, ulcerations, and cuts are some of the reasons people need bioengineered skin as a treatment for full-thickness wounds. When patients run out of donor sites in their own body, using the patient’s skin as a graft is no longer an option, and tissue-engineered constructs are the only possible replacement for damaged skin. The goal of this research is to develop a hydrogel-based skin graft that will be able to function as a skin replacement in full-thickness wounds while minimizing the possibility of rejection, being cost-effective, and possessing a longer shelf-life than the grafts currently in the market. Endothelial …

Smart Home System Prototype, Comparing And Evaluating Current Technologies, Marco Antonio López, David Guzman, Virgilio Gonzalez

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Imagine a world where blackouts can be prevented, reduced, or even removed completely. This one of the many benefits a Smart Grid would bring. The integration of the Smart Grid would bring all these benefits by being able to transfer information through all stages of electricity; generation, distribution, and consumption. This research is concentrated on the Smart Home –the consumption stage of electricity. Specifically, on technologies available that can be used towards the designing of the Smart Home. Before being able to design a Smart Home, it is necessary to decide which technologies are best for the job; be it …

Nanowire-Graphene Hybrids For Li-Ion Insertion, Philip A. Morton, Mohammad Arif I. Shuvo, Yirong Lin

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Lithium ion batteries are one of the most popular energy storage devices due to its high energy density. However, their performance is hindered by the limited surface area of the anode. This research focuses on the use of graphene nanowire hybrids and their performance as anode material. These hybrid structures have a greater surface area then graphite, the most common anode material. Greater surface area will enhance lithium ion insertion, and thus improve battery performance. The graphene oxide (GO) will be synthesized using the Hummer’s plus method. The GO will be sonicated and reduced in an argon furnace to form …

Research And Development Of An Extremely Affordable Prosthetic Knee, Victor H. Duenas, Noe Vargas-Hernandez

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The objective of this research and development work is to apply the design process in a prosthetic knee mechanism. The importance of human knee is founded in the provided mobility, body positioning and support of the body weight. But for amputees, limitations for everyday tasks imply a real challenge. The project scope a cycle involving the social need, the development and the supply of the solution layout. The motivation is to improve life quality through voluntary and independent human movement by providing a low cost knee design.

The design process requires the conceptual, embodiment, detail and evaluation phases to complete …

Development Of A Vaccine Printer For Helicobacter Pylori, Gabriela Enriquez, Julio E. Rincon, Thomas Boland

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Helicobacter pylori is present in approximately half of the world’s population, of which approximately 2% develop a type of gastric cancer. This cancer is often discovered when being in an advanced stage due to its lack of symptoms. Unfortunately, a vaccine hasn’t been successfully developed against the bacterium. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop the functional prototype of a DNA vaccine printer. Its parts were designed in the program NX. 6.0 and built out of ABS plastic using printing technology at the University of Texas at El Paso. After being assembled, the printer will be programmed and …

Research And Development Of An Expert System In Idea Generation Methods To Aid In The Engineering Design Process, Rodrigo Enriquez, Noe Vargas-Hernandez

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The objective of this research is to develop an Expert System (i.e. software) to aid designers in selecting appropriate idea generation methods for their specific design situation. This expert system would help designers generate creative ideas more frequently, and hence better designs and better products for society. The first step is to understand the creative design process in detail; this involves the engineering design process, cognitive processes, and other related elements. This understanding is represented initially as a conceptual model. Following an Artificial Intelligence (AI) approach, this model is then developed into a Logical model that defines entities, attributes, and …

Power Tac 2012: Agent Technologies For The Smart Grid, Carlos E. Montijo, Daniel H. Grajeda, Christopher Kiekintveld

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Intelligent agents are a critical technology in managing the increasingly complex and decentralized energy systems that are evolving. These technologies, often called the "smart grid," have the potential to improve the efficiency and reliability of future energy markets. This project focuses on developing a trading agent to compete in the 2012 Power TAC game, a new scenario this year that is part of the annual Trading Agent Competition. Modeling a liberalized retail electrical energy market, Power TAC is a simulation in which competing trading agents or brokers offer energy services to customers via tariff contracts. The brokers must also serve …

Low Power Sigma Delta Converter, Noel P. Martinez, Praveen K. Palakurthi, Eric Macdonald

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Sub threshold technology allows for circuits to run at their best efficiency with the lowest amount of energy possible. The aim of this research was to combine this technology along with radiation hardness, or the ability for circuits to resist radiation without getting corrupted data. A chip that can convert digital data into analog data (DAC) was created and programmed using verilog, a Hardware Description Language (HDL). With verilog, we created digital data that would eventually be fed into the chip using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board. We tested our digital data using a test bench on the computer …

Seismic Tomography And Smoothing Filters, Mathew Guevara, Olac Fuentes

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Seismic Tomography and Smoothing Filters Seismic Tomography is a technique used by geologists to map the Earth's crust. Seismic Tomography is an iterative process that develops a model based on travel times of waves from explosion sites to sensors. First, travel times are gathered by using shot points and sensors. Then an optimization process begins with an initial simple model (velocity increasing monotonically with depth), is used to predict the travel times. These predictions are compared to the observed travel times, and the model is refined so that it can better match the observed data until a satisfactory solution is …

Electrophoretic Screen And Functionalized Microspheres As Antigen Assays, Alejandra Hernandez, Julio Rincon, Thomas Boland

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Immunoassays are used for medical diagnosis of infectious diseases. People in developing countries usually do not have access to this type of technologies, which makes infectious diseases the main cause of death in these countries. Immunoassay techniques assist the medical field with diagnosing, prognosis and monitoring of analytes present in the human body. This project will develop a portable antigen detection assay built using an electrophoretic screen with functionalized microspheres. A portable electrophoretic immunoassay will permit the reduction of lab materials and the independence of lab installations making it more accessible. This project involves two main steps: The screen modification …

Molecular Imprinting Of Silica Microspheres On Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, Paulina Almada, Julio E. Rincon, Thomas Boland

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The technique of molecule imprinting prepares polymers with specific binding sites for a target molecule. Monomers are polymerized with a template present, arranging into a polymer matrix that can rebind the template once removed and creates the potential use of the polymers as artificial antibodies. The same process can be used to synthesize silica microspheres .The aim of this study was to test the ability of silica microspheres to bind human chorionic gonadotropin and be used as antibodies. 26.4 ml of tetraethoxysilane, 4.7 ml of water, 6.6 ml of 0.12 M hydrochloric acid, and 11.5 ml of 70% ethanol were …

Rapid Oxidation Of Titanium And Its Alloys, Monica A. Cadena, Stephen Stafford

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

The tragedy of the Space Shuttle Columbia demonstrated the need for better understanding of materials in extreme environments. This study’s main objective was to provide more information about the behavior of materials, particularly Ti-6Al-4V, whenever conditions (such as temperature, pressure and behavior) change dramatically. The study included the microstructural analysis of Ti-6Al-4V samples that were exposed to conditions that approximate those encountered during re-entry by arc-jet experimentation. The analysis of these samples consisted of scanning electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction. The x-ray diffraction analysis showed the presence of several titanium oxides, such as Ti3-O and Ti6-O on different sections of …

Generating Minimal T-Wise Test Suites, Luis C. Gutierrez, Carlos Nieto, Francisco Zapata, Martine Ceberio

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

As the use of computing devices increases every day, users rely on the adequate functioning of software. When software is not tested properly, it can yield erroneous information or a complete failure of the system. The NIST estimates that defective software cost the United States economy close to $60 billion a year. Therefore, there is a need to develop software testing techniques that are time and cost effective. Fully testing software under all possible combinations of parameters values cannot be reduced. However, testing can focus on covering all combinations of subsets of parameters and empirical data shows that doing so …

Generating Minimal T-Wise Covering Test Suites Using Constraints, Carlos A. Nieto, Martine Ceberio

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Software testing is an essential part of software development that seeks quality assurance, reliability, and robustness. Unfortunately, exhaustive testing can be a very expensive, time consuming, and tedious process. With large sets of inputs, exhaustive testing can result in unpractical test suites, of size that grows exponentially with the number of input parameters.

As a way to address this growth, t-wise testing consists in focusing on test suites that only cover the interactions of the t-tuples of input parameters of the system at hand. Adding constraints further restricts the size of the test suite by limiting the possible values of …

Scalability Study Of Explicit Finite Element Method On Shared And Distributed Memory Architectures, Leonardo Orea-Amador, Jack F. Chessa Ph.D.

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Parallel architectures in computer systems are powerful tools for processing enormous amounts of information. The results of this research will illustrate their optimal usage by evaluating the scalability of the code Abaqus in the cases of domain decomposition and loop parallelization architectures. The scalability was analyzed using concomitant variation having the DoF (Degrees of Freedom) and CPU (Central Processing Unit) numbers as the variables. Abaqus jobs with less than 100,000 DoF showed similar scalability than that of jobs with more than 500,000. These results contradict the original hypothesis which proposed that small jobs would show poor scalability and vice versa. …

Locating Local Extrema Under Interval Uncertainty: Multi-D Case, Karen Villaverde, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we need to locate local maxima and/or local minima of a function which is only know with interval uncertainty. For example, in radioastronomy, components of a radiosource are usually identified by locations at which the observed brightness reaches a local maximum. In clustering, different clusters are usually identified with local maxima of the probability density function (describing the relative frequency of different combinations of values). In the 1-D case, a feasible (polynomial-time) algorithm is known for locating local extrema under interval (and fuzzy) uncertainty. In this paper, we extend this result to the general multi-dimensional case.