Engineering Commons^™

Capacity Fade Analysis And Model Based Optimization Of Lithium-Ion Batteries, Venkatasailanathan Ramadesigan

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Electrochemical power sources have had significant improvements in design, economy, and operating range and are expected to play a vital role in the future in a wide range of applications. The lithium-ion battery is an ideal candidate for a wide variety of applications due to its high energy/power density and operating voltage. Some limitations of existing lithium-ion battery technology include underutilization, stress-induced material damage, capacity fade, and the potential for thermal runaway. This dissertation contributes to the efforts in the modeling, simulation and optimization of lithium-ion batteries and their use in the design of better batteries for the future. While …

Development Of Optimization Models For The Set Behavior And Compressive Strength Of Sodium Activated Geopolymer Pastes, Brian Albert Fillenwarth

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

As large countries such as China begin to industrialize and concerns about global warming continue to grow, there is an increasing need for more environmentally friendly building materials. One promising material known as a geopolymer can be used as a portland cement replacement and in this capacity emits around 67% less carbon dioxide. In addition to potentially reducing carbon emissions, geopolymers can be synthesized with many industrial waste products such as fly ash.

Although the benefits of geopolymers are substantial, there are a few difficulties with designing geopolymer mixes which have hindered widespread commercialization of the material. One such difficulty …

Optimization Of Induced-Power From Dynamic Inflow Theory With Realistic Constraints, Chad File

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Finite-state induced-inflow theory is used to develop an analytic formulation for general performance of the lifting rotor with arbitrary loading. The theory incorporates conventional blade-element theory for blade lift and provides the integrated loads and the induced-power of the rotor in terms of an arbitrary number of rotor controls such as conventional collective and cyclic pitch as well as higher harmonic radial and azimuthal pitch. The theory provides the basis for a classical quadratic optimization with realistic constraints that is applied to determine minimum induced-power for a variety of available control combinations, rotor trim constraints, and operating conditions. The findings …

A Rigorous Solution For Finite-State Inflow Throughout The Flowfield, Zhongyang Fei

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In this research, the Hseih/Duffy model is extended to all three velocity components of inflow across the rotor disk in a mathematically rigorous way so that it can be used to calculate the inflow below the rotor disk plane. This establishes a complete dynamic inflow model for the entire flow field with finite state method. The derivation is for the case of general skewed angle. The cost of the new method is that one needs to compute the co-states of the inflow equations in the upper hemisphere along with the normal states. Numerical comparisons with exact solutions for the z-component …

Chemoprevention Of Lung Carcinogenesis: Aerosol Administration And Deposition In The Mouse Lung, Jingjie Zhang

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

INTRODUCTION Chemoprevention is the use of natural or synthetic agents to inhibit either the initial development or the further progression of early lesions. Chemoprevention of lung cancer aims to decrease lung cancer morbidity and mortality, especially for former smokers. Many synthetic and natural compounds have been investigated for their potential chemopreventive efficacy. Conventional administration of these compounds: especially oral administration) is convenient, but may potentially result in adverse side effects. Aerosol delivery, on the other hand, offers many advantages over conventional routes of administration for diseases of the respiratory tract and the lungs. These advantages include the extensive pulmonary surface …

Optimal Control Of Weakly Forced Nonlinear Oscillators, Isuru Sammana Dasanayake

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Optimal control of nonlinear oscillatory systems poses numerous theoretical and computational challenges. Motivated by applications in neuroscience, we develop tools and methods to synthesize optimal controls for nonlinear oscillators described by reduced order dynamical systems. Control of neural oscillations by external stimuli has a broad range of applications, ranging from oscillatory neurocomputers to deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease. In this dissertation, we investigate fundamental limits on how neuron spiking behavior can be altered by the use of an external stimulus: control). Pontryagin's maximum principle is employed to derive optimal controls that lead to desired spiking times of a neuron …

Kernel Density Metric Learning, Yujie He, Wenlin Chen, Yixin Chen

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper introduces a supervised metric learning algorithm, called kernel density metric learning (KDML), which is easy to use and provides nonlinear, probability-based distance measures. KDML constructs a direct nonlinear mapping from the original input space into a feature space based on kernel density estimation. The nonlinear mapping in KDML embodies established distance measures between probability density functions, and leads to correct classification on datasets for which linear metric learning methods would fail. Existing metric learning algorithms, such as large margin nearest neighbors (LMNN), can then be applied to the KDML features to learn a Mahalanobis distance. We also propose …

Parallel Real-Time Scheduling Of Dags, Abusayeed Saifullah, David Ferry, Jing Li, Kunal Agrawal, Chenyang Lu, Christopher Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Recently, multi-core processors have become mainstream in processor design. To take full advantage of multi-core processing, computation-intensive real-time systems must exploit intra-task parallelism. In this paper, we address the open problem of real-time scheduling for a general model of deterministic parallel tasks, where each task is represented as a directed acyclic graph (DAG) with nodes having arbitrary execution requirements. We prove processor-speed augmentation bounds for both preemptive and non-preemptive real-time scheduling for general DAG tasks on multi-core processors. We first decompose each DAG into sequential tasks with their own release times and deadlines. Then we prove that these decomposed tasks …

Scanner: An Efficient And Accurate Trimming Tool For Illumina Next Generation Sequencing Reads, Xiang Zhou

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Recent advances in High-Throughput Sequencing (HTS) technology have greatly facilitated the researches in bioinformatics field. With the ultra-high sequencing speed and improved base-calling accuracy, Illumina Genome Analyzer is currently the most widely used platform in the field. To use the raw reads generated from the sequencing machine, the 3’ adapter sequence attached to the real read in the process of ligation needs to be correctly trimmed. This is often done by some inhouse scripts or different packages with various parameters. They either use the Smith-Waterman algorithm or search for an exact match of the 3’ adapter sequence. In this report, …

Simple Analytic Performance Models For Streaming Data Applications Deployed On Diverse Architectures, Jonathan C. Beard, Roger D. Chamberlain, Mark A. Franklin

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Modern hardware is inherently heterogeneous. With heterogeneity comes multiple abstraction layers that hide underlying complex systems. While hidden, this complexity makes quantitative performance modeling a difficult task. Designers of high-performance streaming applications for heterogeneous systems must contend with unpredictable and often non-generalizable models to predict performance of a particular application and hardware mapping. This paper outlines a computationally simple approach that can be used to model the overall throughput and buffering needs of a streaming application on heterogeneous hardware. The model presented is based upon a hybrid maximum flow and decomposed discrete queueing model. The utility of the model is …

Ewa Model With Recency Effect And Limited Memory, Hang Xie

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Game theory is an important field in economics; it studies how people make decisions amid conflict and cooperation. Various experiments have been carried to study the way people play those games, and economists study those data for various purposes. There has been a rise of need for using artificial agents to simulate the game, since we could save the cost of hiring human subjects for the experiments, and we could gain more control over the experiment settings.

Self-Adapting Mac Layer For Wireless Sensor Networks, Mo Sha, Meng Xu, Chenyang Lu, Linh T.X. Phan, Tae-Suk Kim, Taerim Park

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The integration of wireless sensors with mobile phones is gaining momentum as an enabling platform for numerous emerging applications. These mobile systems face dynamic environments where both application requirements and ambient wireless conditions change frequently. Despite the existence of many MAC protocols however, none can provide optimal performance along multiple dimensions, in particular when the conditions are frequently changing. Instead of pursuing a one-MAC-fit all approach we present a Self-Adapting MAC Layer (SAML) comprising (1) a Reconfigurable MAC Architecture (RMA) that can switch to different MAC protocols at run time and (2) a learning-based MAC Selection Engine that selects the …

Real-Time Multi-Core Virtual Machine Scheduling In Xen, Sisu Xi, Meng Xu, Chenyang Lu, Linh T.X. Phan, Christopher Gill, Olga Sokolsky, Insup Lee

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Recent years have witnessed two major trends in the development of complex real-time systems. First, to reduce cost and enhance flexibility, multiple systems are sharing common computing platforms via virtualization technology, instead of being deployed separately on physically isolated hosts. Second, multicore processors are increasingly being used in real-time systems. The integration of real-time systems as virtual machines (VMs) atop common multicore platforms raises significant new research challenges in meeting the real-time performance requirements of multiple systems.

Automated Color Calibration Of Display Devices, Andrew Shulman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

If you compare two identical images on two different monitors, they will likely appear different. Every display device is supposed to adhere to a particular set of standards regulating the color and intensity of the image it outputs. However, in practice, very few do. Color calibration is the practice of modifying the signal path such that the colors produced more closely match reference standards. This is essential for graphics professionals who are mastering original content. They must ensure that the source material appears correct when viewed on a reference monitor. When viewed on a consumer panel, however, some error will …

Efficient Parallel Real-Time Upsampling Of Ultrasound Vectors, William D. Richard Ph.D.

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Upsampling is required prior to the summation step in most receive digital beamforming implementations to produce an accurate summed RF line or vector. This is true in both annular and linear array systems where receive echos are digitized first and then time delayed in the digital domain to achieve proper signal alignment. The efficient, parallel, real-time upsampling circuit presented here produces M upsampled values per ADC clock, where M is the desired upsampling factor. A circuit implementation that upsamples by a factor of M=4 is presented as an example of the more general technique.

Adding Data Parallelism To Streaming Pipelines For Throughput Optimization, Peng Li, Kunal Agrawal, Jeremy Buhler, Roger D. Chamberlain

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The streaming model is a popular model for writing high-throughput parallel applications. A streaming application is represented by a graph of computation stages that communicate with each other via FIFO channels. In this report, we consider the problem of mapping streaming pipelines — streaming applications where the graph is a linear chain — in order to maximize throughput. In a parallel setting, subsets of stages, called components can be mapped onto different computing resources. The through-put of an application is determined by the throughput of the slowest component. Therefore, if some stage is much slower than others, then it may …

Development & Testing Of Novel Atmospheric Chemistry Technologies, Peter Johnson Mellott

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Atmospheric aerosols play an important role in global atmospheric chemistry and climate and have a detrimental impact on human health. Advancements in measurement technologies allow for better monitoring of atmospheric composition and dynamics, creating better predictive models and understanding of atmospheric chemistry and physics. Gas and particle atmospheric oxidation is poorly understood. In order to create a better understanding of atmospheric oxidation, the following equipment was developed: 1) a Potential Aerosol Mass: PAM) flow reaction chamber was developed to create reproducible steady-state oxidation of organic species in a controlled laboratory setting, 2) a custom combustion chamber for introduction of realistic …

Labview Based Whispering Gallery Mode Microtoroid Coupling Pid Controller, Peiyao Li

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The aim of this thesis is to test the implementation of PID control algorithm for stabilization of coupling. Efficient and robust coupling is prerequisite in microcavity related applications. But surrounding environments, like temperature and airflow, could easily influence coupling condition. PID algorithm has been used for stabilization and control in industry for several decades. For this reason, the author decided to test further application, with the goal of proving the suitability for Whispering Gallery Mode coupling. The thesis first discusses the Whispering Gallery Mode microtoroid, especially its relative coupling regime. In a second stage, the LabVIEW and Arduino based real …

Calcium Cycling Disturbances And Arrhythmogenesis, Namit Gaur

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In this work, a detailed multiscale computational model of Ca cycling and action potential in a ventricular myocyte is developed and used to study mechanisms of arrhythmias associated with mutations in the ryanodine receptor (RyR). The multiscale ventricular myocyte model reproduces experimentally observed Ca dynamics both at the local dyadic scale and at the global whole-cell scale, while also simulating the action potential (AP) shaped by membrane ionic currents. The model represents stochastic activation of L-type Ca channels (LCCs) and RyRs in the dyads and simulates random generation of Ca sparks both during excitation-contraction coupling (ECC) and during diastole. The …

Economic Prospects For Advanced Combustion Technologies Suited For Climate Change Mitigation, Craig Bryan Jacobson

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Coal is projected to remain a significant portion of the global energy portfolio in the coming century. Concerns over accelerating climate change have spurred development of technologies aimed at reducing CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants through carbon capture and sequestration: CCS). Utilities considering expansion of baseload generation capacity face a myriad of uncertainties regarding the timing and scale of future carbon legislation. This study reports on an economic evaluation of various technologies for carbon capture, sequestration, and utilization.

Correction Of An Augmentation Bound Analysis For Parallel Real-Time Tasks, Abusayeed Saifullah, Kunal Agrawal, Chenyang Lu, Christopher Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This paper proposes some significant corrections in a recent work of Lakshmanan et al on parallel task scheduling. Lakshmanan et al have proposed a transformation of parallel tasks into sequential tasks, and have claimed a resource augmentation bound of 3:42 for partitioned deadline monotonic (DM) scheduling of the transformed tasks. We demonstrate that their analysis for resource augmentation bound is incorrect. We propose a different technique for task transformation that requires a resource augmentation bound of 5 for partitioned DM scheduling.

Real-Time Scheduling Of Parallel Tasks Under A General Dag Model, Abusayeed Saifullah, David Ferry, Chenyang Lu, Christopher Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Due to their potential to deliver increased performance over single-core processors, multi-core processors have become mainstream in processor design. Computation-intensive real-time systems must exploit intra-task parallelism to take full advantage of multi-core processing. However, existing results in real-time scheduling of parallel tasks focus on restrictive task models such as the synchronous model where a task is a sequence of alternating parallel and sequential segments, and parallel segments have threads of execution that are of equal length. In this paper, we address a general model for deterministic parallel tasks, where a task is represented as a DAG with different nodes having …

Delaunay-Restricted Optimal Triangulation Of 3d Polygons, Ming Zou, Tao Ju, Nathan Carr

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Triangulation of 3D polygons is a well studied topic of research. Existing methods for finding triangulations that minimize given metrics (e.g., sum of triangle areas or dihedral angles) run in a costly O(n4) time [BS95,BDE96], while the triangulations are not guaranteed to be free of intersections. To address these limitations, we restrict our search to the space of triangles in the Delaunay tetrahedralization of the polygon. The restriction allows us to reduce the running time down to O(n2) in practice (O(n3) worst case) while guaranteeing that the solutions are intersection free. We demonstrate experimentally that the reduced search space is …

Building A Skeleton Of A Human Hand Using Microsoft Kinect, Jed Jackoway

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The goal of the project was to reconstruct the skeleton of a Microsoft Kinect user’s hand. Out of the box, Kinect reconstruct the skeleton of users’ bodies, but it only does large joints, such that the hand is given a location on the general skeleton, but the specifics of the fingers and fist are not actually calculated.

Foveon F13 Camera, David Shelley

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Most high-fidelity digital cameras currently available obtain their images using technology where individual pixels can only acquire a single color. Since the acquisition of multiple colors is necessary to capture a full colored image, picture resolution is lost due to difficulties in interpolation between non-adjacent, same color pixels. The resulting unsharp images create the need to find a new way to obtain these images without requiring interpolation between adjacent pixels. An innovative method to capture images with individual pixel cells consisting of three layers of photodetectors stacked vertically upon one another has been created to rectify this problem, but no …

The Clear Channel Prior, Devorah Langsam

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Capturing imagery from outdoor cameras provides a large amount of information about a scene. The true surface appearances of elements in a scene, however, are often incorrectly represented in images. To get a better representation of the scene it is necessary to separate the effects of the underlying reflectance, illumination, and fog in the image. The goal of the dark channel prior is to eliminate the effects of haze in outdoor images and recover the true surface reflectance image for the scene.

Youpon, Garrison Prinslow

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This project was motivated by two related ideas: what can be learned about the unique issues involved with developing cloud-based mobile applications; and, what application could be developed to evaluate these characteristics that would also be innovative and provide value to users. After vetting ideas for the latter objective, it was clear that a new digital coupon system could offer value and apply interesting technologies to computer science problems, such as shortest path calculation, position-aware authentication, game theory, and statistical reasoning. A brief summary of the motivation for developing the new digital coupon system follows.

Accounting For Failures In Delay Analysis For Wirelesshart Networks , Abusayeed Saifullah, Paras Babu Tiwari, Bo Li, Chenyang Lu [email protected]

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

WirelessHART networks are gaining ground as a real-time communication infrastructure in industrial wireless control systems. Because wireless communication is often susceptible to transmission failures in industrial environments, it is essential to account for failures in the delay analysis for realtime flows between sensors and actuators in process control. WirelessHART networks handle transmission failures through retransmissions using dedicated and shared time slots through different paths in the routing graphs. While these mechanisms for handling transmission failures are critical for process control requiring reliable communication, they introduce substantial challenges to worst-case end-to-end delay analysis for real-time flows. This paper presents the first …

Just Draw It! A 3d Sketching System, Cindy Grimm, Pushkar Joshi

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We present a system for sketching in 2D to create 3D curves. The interface is light-weight, pen-based, and based on observations of how artists sketch on paper.

An Integrated Data Mining Approach To Real-Time Clinical Monitoring And Deterioration Warning, Yi Mao, Wenlin Chen, Yixin Chen, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Clinical study found that early detection and intervention are essential for preventing clinical deterioration in patients, for patients both in intensive care units (ICU) as well as in general wards but under real-time data sensing (RDS). In this paper, we develop an integrated data mining approach to give early deterioration warnings for patients under real-time monitoring in ICU and RDS. Existing work on mining real-time clinical data often focus on certain single vital sign and specific disease. In this paper, we consider an integrated data mining approach for general sudden deterioration warning. We synthesize a large feature set that includes …