Engineering Commons^™

Spillway Debris Physical Model Study Morning Glory Spillway, Melissa Shinbein

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

In this 1:18 Froude scale physical hydraulic model study, woody debris was introduced into a reservoir upstream of a morning-glory spillway at different flow rates causing jams. The purpose of this study is to ascertain the frequency of woody debris clogs in the crest, mouth, transition, or a combination of the three in the morning-glory spillway over varying flow rates. Because of the random nature of debris loading into reservoirs (flux, density, species, length, diameter, branch complexity, etc.), a variety of woody species were used to represent prototype lengths of 10 feet to 35 feet and diameters of 0.5 feet …

Streamflow Regime Change In The Delaware River Basin, Travis Shoemaker, Madhav Bista, David Brandes

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

The combined impacts of hydroclimatic change and land development are widely expected to increase the frequency and magnitude of flooding in the northeast United States, with potential implications to floodplain infrastructure and mapping, hydraulic structures, land management, and flood losses. Additionally, shifting flow regimes pose a challenge for engineers and regulators of stormwater management, dams, and levees because design storms are commonly based on historical data, with the stationarity assumption that the future flow regime will mimic the past. Here, we examine selected long-term (40 to 114 years of data) streamflow records from watersheds of varying size in the upper …

Composite Experimental And Numerical Modeling Of Arced Labyrinth Weirs, Seth Thompson, Blake Tullis

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

Arced labyrinth weirs are a viable option for existing spillway retrofit due to their increased flow capacity. This study supplies additional arced labyrinth weir hydraulic design empirical data and uses this data to validate a numerical model (utilized Flow-3D) of the same experimental setup. The dimensionless discharge coefficient relationship is presented for the physical model, potential errors due to physical model crest referencing are discussed, and the relative and absolute errors along with a grid convergence study are given for the numerical model.

Comparison Of Modelling Approaches For Development Of Discharge Rating Curves For Spillway/Bridge Combinations, Nathan Young

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

When estimating spillway discharge rating curves, engineers can use a variety of methods such as empirical equations, one- (1D) or two-dimensional (2D) hydraulic computer models, or a combination thereof; however, conservative assumptions are often applied to such methods. The use of three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models is an alternative modelling approach that can often better estimate spillway discharge rating curves, especially for complex flow situations. In this study, the results of 3D CFD models are compared to estimates of spillway discharge rating curves developed with a combination of empirical equations and other hydraulic computer models for spillway/bridge combinations. …

Physical Model Testing Of Supercritical Flow Diversion For Combined Sewer Overflow Control, Tony Loeser

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

In this study, a 1:8 scale physical hydraulic model was used to demonstrate that a novel widening ramp concept was applicable for diverting supercritical inflows for a proposed regulator chamber and also to establish design dimensions for the proposed structure to meet project goals. The following conclusions were determined from the testing. The widening ramp concept proposed for this project was able to adequately pass the full range of design inflows of 0-425 MGD without experiencing undesirable flow conditions that would produce excessive water depths while meeting the diversion goals of the project. The proposed diversion conduit could adequately pass …

Numerical Study Of Froude Number And Submergence Ratio And Their Affect On Hydraulic Jump Flow Patterns For A Backward Facing Step, Kurt Smithgall

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

The surface recirculation region (SRR), or roller of a conventional hydraulic jump, can pose a safety hazard to recreational river users. In contrast, for an undular hydraulic jump (UHJ), the recirculation region lies submerged on the channel bed and does not pose the same risk. For a river engineer designing whitewater parks, it is crucial to know the conditions of undular hydraulic jump formation at instream structures; it can mean the difference between life and death for recreational river users. However, most existing literature has established conditions of UHJ formation only for the case of a plain bed rectangular channel, …

Beyond Floodplain Analysis: A Modeler’S Experience Using Hec-Ras 2d For Spillway Assessments And Designs, Yan Wang, Amanda Hess, Gregory Richards

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

HEC-RAS 5.0 (2D) has been increasingly used by the dam safety community for performing dam breach and other hydraulic analyses since its debut in 2015. While this two-dimensional hydraulic modeling software has wide applications in dam breach analysis and urban flood simulation, its ability to analyze complex multidirectional flow problems can also be used as a design tool for spillways, overtopping protection, and other hydraulic structures. In this manuscript, the authors discussed their experience using HEC-RAS and other two-dimensional hydraulic models to design and assess various hydraulic structures. This includes: 1) sizing spillway outlet channels and assessing the hydraulic adequacy …

Full Proceedings: Ijrewhs 2019, International Association For Hydro-Environmental Engineering And Research

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

Full proceedings for the 7th International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures.

Modeling Of A Novel Submerged Oscillating Water Column (Sowc) Energy Harvester, Mohammadamin Torabi, Bruce Savage

International Junior Researcher and Engineer Workshop on Hydraulic Structures

Wave energy converters (WEC) are hydraulic structures that are used to harvest energy from oceans. This research explores a new concept of a WEC termed a Submerged Oscillating Water Column (SOWC). Numerical simulations using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code Flow-3D and physical model tests were carried out at Idaho State University to assess the validity and efficiency of the proposed device. The SOWC device consists of two submerged chambers that are connected to allow airflow between the two as waves pass; ideally spaced at half a wavelength. The results of the CFD modeling for seventeen different geometries with linear …

A Race Re-Imaged, Intersectional Approach To Academic Mentoring: Exploring The Perspectives And Responses Of Womxn In Science And Engineering Research, Idalis Villanueva, Marialuisa Di Stefano, Laura Gelles, Paul Vicioso Osoria, Sheree Benson

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

In academic mentoring research, there is a need to include empirical designs that consider more sociocultural perspectives. The purpose of this exploratory study was to race re-image academic mentoring by considering its sociocultural perspectives (i.e., intersectionality, tokenism, and awareness).

For this, a qualitative-dominant, convergent mixed-methods approach was used to explore the perspectives and responses of twelve womxn graduate students and faculty involved in science and engineering research. Using multi-modal approaches that included two structured interviews and electrodermal activity (EDA) sensors, participants were asked to respond to case studies of achievement-, race-, and gender-equity through an academic mentoring lens.

Our qualitative …

Minimizing Induced Drag With Weight Distribution, Lift Distribution, Wingspan, And Wing-Structure Weight, Warren F. Phillips, Douglas F. Hunsaker, Jeffrey D. Taylor

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Student Publications and Presentations

Because the wing-structure weight required to support the critical wing section bending moments is a function of wingspan, net weight, weight distribution, and lift distribution, there exists an optimum wingspan and wing-structure weight are presented for rectangular wings with four different sets of design constraints. These design constraints are fixed lift distribution and net weight combined with 1) fixed maximum stress and wing loading, 2) fixed maximum deflection and wing loading, 3) fixed maximum stress and stall speed and 4) fixed maximum deflection and stall speed. For each of these analytic solutions, the optimum wing-structure weight is found to depend …

Unravel The Cellular Biophysical Dynamics Of Spatial Constraint-Induced Membrane Blebbing And 3d Migration Using A Microfluidic Platform And Data-Driven Mathematical Modeling, Yu Huang

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

A Multi-Fidelity Prediction Of Aerodynamic And Sonic Boom Characteristics Of The Jaxa Wing Body, Forrest L. Carpenter, Paul G. A. Cizmas, Christian R. Bolander, Ted N. Giblette, Doug F. Hunsaker

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Student Publications and Presentations

This paper presents a detailed comparison between the linear panel solver PANAIR A502 and the in-house Navier–Stokes solver UNS3D for a supersonic low-boom geometry. The high-fidelity flow solver was used to predict both the inviscid and laminar flow about the aircraft geometry. The JAXA wing body was selected as the supersonic low-boom geometry for this study. A comparison of the undertrack near-field pressure signatures showed good agreement between the three levels of model fidelity along the first 0.8L of the signature. Large oscillations in the PANAIR results were observed. The PANAIR discrepancies were traced back to violations of the …

Engineering State Turns 30 | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Utah's longest-running engineering summer camp concluded its 30th year last week.

Approximation Techniques For Stochastic Analysis Of Biological Systems, Thakur Neupane, Zhen Zhang, Curtis Madsen, Hao Zheng, Chris J. Myers

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

There has been an increasing demand for formal methods in the design process of safety-critical synthetic genetic circuits. Probabilistic model checking techniques have demonstrated significant potential in analyzing the intrinsic probabilistic behaviors of complex genetic circuit designs. However, its inability to scale limits its applicability in practice. This chapter addresses the scalability problem by presenting a state-space approximation method to remove unlikely states resulting in a reduced, finite state representation of the infinite-state continuous-time Markov chain that is amenable to probabilistic model checking. The proposed method is evaluated on a design of a genetic toggle switch. Comparisons with another state-of-the-art …

Exploration Vs. Data Refinement Via Multiple Mobile Sensors, Mohammad Shekaramiz, Todd K. Moon, Jacob H. Gunther

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We examine the deployment of multiple mobile sensors to explore an unknown region to map regions containing concentration of a physical quantity such as heat, electron density, and so on. The exploration trades off between two desiderata: to continue taking data in a region known to contain the quantity of interest with the intent of refining the measurements vs. taking data in unobserved areas to attempt to discover new regions where the quantity may exist. Making reasonable and practical decisions to simultaneously fulfill both goals of exploration and data refinement seem to be hard and contradictory. For this purpose, we …

Utah State Steel Bridge Team Takes 15th At Nationals | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

The Utah State University Steel Bridge team placed 15th at the National Steel Bridge Competition that took place in Carbondale, Illinois on May 31.

Energy Efficient Network-On-Chip Architectures For Many-Core Near-Threshold Computing System, Chidhambaranathan Rajamanikkam, Jayashankara S. Rajesh, Koushik Chakraborty, Meher Samineni

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Near threshold computing has unraveled a promising design space for energy efficient computing. However, it is still plagued by sub-optimal system performance. Application characteristics and hardware non-idealities of conventional architectures (those optimized for nominal voltage) prevent us from fully leveraging the potential of NTC systems. Increasing the computational core count still forms the bedrock of a multitude of contemporary works that address the problem of performance degradation in NTC systems. However, these works do not categorically address the shortcomings of the conventional on-chip interconnect fabric in a many core environment. In this work, we quantitatively demonstrate the performance bottleneck created …

David G. Tarboton Named Utah Water Research Lab Director | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

One of the state’s largest research laboratories is getting a new director. David Tarboton, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Utah State University, will lead the Utah Water Research Laboratory beginning July 1.

Utah State Steel Bridge Team Qualifies For Nationals | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

The Utah State University Steel Bridge Team took 2nd place at the Regional Steel Bridge Competition held in font-weight-bold, Colorado on April 6.

Estimation Of Soil Moisture At Different Soil Levels Using Machine Learning Techniques And Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav) Multispectral Imagery, Mahyar Aboutalebi, L. Niel Allen, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Mac Mckee, Calvin Coopmans

AggieAir Publications

Soil moisture is a key component of water balance models. Physically, it is a nonlinear function of parameters that are not easily measured spatially, such as soil texture and soil type. Thus, several studies have been conducted on the estimation of soil moisture using remotely sensed data and data mining techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANNs) and support vector machines (SVMs). However, all models developed based on these techniques are limited to site-specific applications where they are trained and their parameters are tuned. Moreover, since the system of non-linear equations produced by and conducted in the machine learning process …

Estimation Of Surface Thermal Emissivity In A Vineyard For Uav Microbolometer Thermal Cameras Using Nasa Hytes Hyperspectral Thermal, And Landsat And Aggieair Optical Data, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Mahyar Aboutalebi, Timothy Wright, Ayman Nassar, Pierre Guillevic, Lawrence Hipps, Feng Gao, Kevin Jim, Maria Mar Alsina, Calvin Coopmans, Mac Mckee, William Kustas

AggieAir Publications

Microbolometer thermal cameras in UAVs and manned aircraft allow for the acquisition of highresolution temperature data, which, along with optical reflectance, contributes to monitoring and modeling of agricultural and natural environments. Furthermore, these temperature measurements have facilitated the development of advanced models of crop water stress and evapotranspiration in precision agriculture and heat fluxes exchanges in small river streams and corridors. Microbolometer cameras capture thermal information at blackbody or radiometric settings (narrowband emissivity equates to unity). While it is customary that the modeler uses assumed emissivity values (e.g. 0.99– 0.96 for agricultural and environmental settings); some applications (e.g. Vegetation Health …

Validation Of Digital Surface Models (Dsms) Retrieved From Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav) Point Clouds Using Geometrical Information From Shadows, Mahyar Aboutalebi, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Mac Mckee, William Kustas, Héctor Nieto, Calvin Coopmans

AggieAir Publications

Theoretically, the appearance of shadows in aerial imagery is not desirable for researchers because it leads to errors in object classification and bias in the calculation of indices. In contrast, shadows contain useful geometrical information about the objects blocking the light. Several studies have focused on estimation of building heights in urban areas using the length of shadows. This type of information can be used to predict the population of a region, water demand, etc., in urban areas. With the emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the availability of high- to super-high-resolution imagery, the important questions relating to shadows …

The Impact Of Shadows On Partitioning Of Radiometric Temperature To Canopy And Soil Temperature Based On The Contextual Two-Source Energy Balance Model (Tseb-2t), Mahyar Aboutalebi, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Mac Mckee, Hector Nieto, William Kustas, Calvin Coopmans

AggieAir Publications

Tests of the most recent version of the two-source energy balance model have demonstrated that canopy and soil temperatures can be retrieved from high-resolution thermal imagery captured by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This work has assumed a linear relationship between vegetation indices (VIs) and radiometric temperature in a square grid (i.e., 3.6 m x 3.6 m) that is coarser than the resolution of the imagery acquired by the UAV. In this method, with visible, near infrared (VNIR), and thermal bands available at the same high-resolution, a linear fit can be obtained over the pixels located in a grid, where …

Transportation Engineering Student Takes Two Major Awards | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Utah State University PhD student of transportation engineering Yi He won the 2019 Utah Institute of Transportation Engineers student paper competition and was awarded a $1,000 scholarship from the Northern Utah Women's Transportation Seminar.

Congratulations 2019 Graduates | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

The College of Engineering at Utah State Univerisity congratulates all students who graduated May 2.

Comparison Of Induced And Parasitic Drag On Wings With Minimum Induced Drag, Sarah A. Abdel-Motaleb

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Minimizing the induced drag for steady level flight is a variational problem that requires solving for the optimum lift distribution given a set of design constraints. From lifting-line theory, minimizing the induced drag is, in part, achieved by varying the Fourier coefficients used to describe the section lift. The elliptic lift distribution minimizes the induced drag for a wing with fixed weight and wingspan by setting all but the first coefficient to zero. If wingspan is allowed to vary, a negative third Fourier coefficient is utilized to reach an optimum lift distribution that further reduces the induced drag for stress-limited …

Micromechanics-Enriched Finite Element Modeling Of Composites With Manufacturing Or Service-Induced Defects, Alden S. Hyde

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Composite materials are increasingly used in many industries due to the high strength and low weight properties that they exhibit. Since composites are becoming more popular, they are being used in applications such as aircraft, boats, wind turbine blades, and even sports equipment. Composite behavior is complicated since they are made up of two completely different materials such as strong thin fibers and a relatively weaker resin material that hold the fibers together. It is becoming more important to understand how composites behave in different situations so that equipment designers have reliable material information in order to design safe products …

Error-Floors Of The 802.3an Ldpc Code For Noise Assisted Decoding, Tasnuva Tarannum Tithi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In digital communication, information is sent as bits, which is corrupted by the noise present in wired/wireless medium known as the channel. The Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes are a family of error correction codes used in communication systems to detect and correct erroneous data at the receiver. Data is encoded with error correction coding at the transmitter and decoded at the receiver. The Noisy Gradient Descent BitFlip (NGDBF) decoding algorithm is a new algorithm with excellent decoding performance with relatively low implementation requirements. This dissertation aims to characterize the performance of the NGDBF algorithm. A simple improvement over …

Cell Imaging And Data Analysis For Biomaterial-Mammalian Co-Cultures, Jefferson Pontsler

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Microscopic bioimaging is a useful approach to study cell-biomaterial interactions which are vital to the biomedical application of biomaterials. Through microscopic imaging, numerous cellular responses, such as proliferation, uptake, and death, can be recorded, characterized and analyzed.

In this thesis, I first provided basic introductions to the imaging techniques and analysis tools, especially those that are highly relevant to the studies of biomaterials and cell interactions. I also detailed the adaptation of these techniques and tools in the application of two specific research projects in biomaterials, with special focuses on the imaging and analysis.

The first project assessed the subtle …