Engineering Commons^™

Evaluation Of Turbidity Reduction Using Polyacrylamide With Linear Sediment Control Best Management Practices, Jacob O. Burkey

All Theses

Accelerated erosion and highly turbid stormwater runoff from construction sites are known to cause a variety of environmental and economic problems. To reduce turbidity and keep eroded sediment on site, this research was conducted to evaluate the potential for turbidity reduction using polyacrylamide (PAM) flocculants with sediment control best management practices (BMPs).

Previous research has shown significant turbidity reduction when applying granular PAM to linear sediment control BMPs. Numerous studies indicate that PAM loses efficacy if it becomes wet and then dries. This makes PAM reapplication a necessary part of maintaining sediment control BMPs using PAM and suggests that further …

Improved Mixed-Integer Models Of A Two-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem, William Lassiter

All Theses

This paper is concerned with a family of two-dimensional cutting stock problems that seeks to cut rectangular regions from a finite collection of sheets in such a manner that the minimum number of sheets is used. A fixed number of rectangles are to be cut, with each rectangle having a known length and width. All sheets are rectangular, and have the same dimension. We review two known mixed-integer mathematical formulations, and then provide new representations that both economize on the number of discrete variables and tighten the continuous relaxations. A key consideration that arises repeatedly in all models is the …

Gis-Based Suitability Modeling And Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis For Utility Scale Solar Plants In Four States In The Southeast Us, Kata Tisza

All Theses

Photovoltaic (PV) development shows significantly smaller growth in the Southeast U.S., than in the Southwest; which is mainly due to the low cost of fossil-fuel based energy production in the region and the lack of solar incentives. However, the Southeast has appropriate insolation conditions (4.0-6.0 KWh/m2/day) for photovoltaic deployment and in the past decade the region has experienced the highest population growth for the entire country. These factors, combined with new renewable energy portfolio policies, could create an opportunity for PV to provide some of the energy that will be required to sustain this growth. The goal of the study …

Developing A South Carolina Traffic Incident Management Plan Along The I-26 Corridor Between Columbia And Charleston, Laura Rowe

All Theses

Traffic Incident Management (TIM) programs are used in many states across the nation to efficiently clear interstate incidents and alleviate congestion in response to incidents. The overarching goal of this research is to maintain safety of the motoring public and incident responders while reducing congestion, secondary collisions, and traffic delays from incidents that occur on South Carolina highways. To reduce incident clearance times along the I-26 corridor between Columbia and Charleston through the implementation of a Traffic Incident Management (TIM) Program, several objectives for this thesis were established to move toward the goal, including; defining gaps between national TIM best-practices …

Density Functional Theory Study Of The Thermodynamics Of Catalytic Remediation Of Nitrate In Water, Lizzie Bollmann

All Theses

Over 1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water and 5,000 people die each day due to drinking contaminated water. With the development of new industries, new substances and chemicals are entering the waters every day, and the current water treatment processes are unable to remove them entirely. For example, agriculture is the world's heaviest consumer of water, and nitrates and nitrites from fertilizers are washed away with the water to rivers and streams. These chemicals can cause problems to humans and to the environment. To humans, they can cause methemoglobinemia, also known as 'blue baby syndrome'. To …

Clemson University Science Master's Program In Sustainable And Resilient Infrastructure: A Program Evaluation, Elizabeth O'Sell

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The Clemson University Science Master's Program (SMP) in Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure is a program which aims to link engineering, materials, construction, environment, architecture, business, and public policy to produce graduates with unique holistic perspective and expertise to immediately contribute to the workforce in the area of sustainable and resilient infrastructure. A program evaluation of the SMP has been performed to study the effectiveness of the SMP and identify areas where the goals and vision of the SMP are achieved and areas where improvements can be made. This was completed by analysis of trends within survey responses, review of Master's …

A Study Of Time-Based Features And Regularity Of Manipulation To Improve The Detection Of Eating Activity Periods During Free Living, Jose Reyes

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This thesis considers the problem of detecting when people eat by tracking their wrist motion. The goal of this work is to automatically detect the start and stop times of these eating activities. It builds upon previous work done by our research group, which developed an algorithm for automatically detecting peaks in activities associated with food preparation and clean-up. This peak detector is then used for segmenting data. These segments are then classified as eating or non-eating activities using a naive Bayes classifier based on probabilities obtained from computing different features in each segment. The original work introduced 4 features, …

Post-Tensioning To Prevent End-Region Cracks In Pretensioned Concrete Girders, Michael Willis

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Web-splitting cracking during and immediately after prestress transfer is a common problem in pretensioned concrete beams, often with lasting effects on the durability and performance. By providing an entry point for chlorides and other corrosives, end-region cracks enable degradation of reinforcing steel and further cracking. Current practices offer a variety of methods for controlling end-region cracking. However, methods for preventing--not just controlling or repairing--end-region cracks are necessary to improve prestressed concrete construction. Vertical end-region post-tensioning is a developing method for preventing web-splitting cracks. The purpose of this document is to explore implementation methods of post-tensioning using the turn-of-the nut procedure, …

Analysis And Mitigation Of Impacts Of Plug-In Electric Vehicles On Distribution System During Faults, Himanshu Bihani

All Theses

With rising concerns for environment, energy security and gasoline prices, penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) is bound to increase in the distribution system. The load characteristics of the distribution system with PEVs will be considerably different and hence its effects on the system needs to evaluated. Determination of the characteristics of the impacts will help utilities to prepare methodologies in advance to accommodate this new kind of load. Batteries of most of these vehicles will be charged using a single phase power electronic chargers. To study impact of these chargers on distribution system during fault and fault recovery is …

Electrokinetic Particle Manipulations In Spiral Microchannels, John Dubose

All Theses

Recent developments in the field of microfluidics have created a multitude of new useful techniques for practical particle and cellular assays. Among them is the use of dielectrophoretic forces in 'lab-on-a-chip' devices. This sub-domain of electrokinetic flow is particularly popular due to its advantages in simplicity and versatility. This thesis makes use of dielectrophoretic particle manipulations in three distinct spiral microchannels. In the first of these experiments, we demonstrate the utility of a novel single-spiral curved microchannel with a single inlet reservoir and a single outlet reservoir for the continuous focusing and filtration of particles. The insulator-based negative-dielectrophoretic (repulsive) force …

Adsorption Of Synthetic Organic Chemicals: A Comparison Of Superfine Powdered Activated Carbon With Powdered Activated Carbon, Semra Bakkaloglu

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In literature, manufacturer-supplied powdered activated carbon has been ground to produce submicron particles with mean diameter lower than 1µm for use as an adsorbent during water treatment. Superfine powdered activated carbon (SPAC) can be used for removal of natural organic matter as well as synthetic organic chemicals (SOCs) from water. It has been suggested that SPAC has higher adsorption capacity than powdered activated carbon (PAC) due to larger external surface area and mesopore volume. Another advantage of SPAC over PAC is the faster uptake rate for both NOM and SOC during adsorption owing to small particle size. Therefore, understanding SPAC …

Privacy Preserving Statistics, Oluwakemi Hambolu

All Theses

Over the past few years, there have been an increase in the development and improvement of circumvention tools like Tor and Psiphon. These tools provide an environment for citizens of oppressive regimes to access websites freely without fear of identification, these tools aid democracy activists and journalists in West Africa in using the Internet securely. A similar circumvention tool was developed by us. This tool circumvents DNS and IP address blocking/filtering, by leveraging technologies developed by criminal botnet enterprises. To improve and maintain the circumvention tool we developed, it is important to quantify the number and country of origin of …

Preliminary Evaluation Of Kenaf As A Structural Material, Andrew Sheldon

All Theses

Kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus L.) is an annual fiber plant that is kin to cotton and okra and native to east-central Africa, though it is currently grown in numerous locations around the globe. The plant's apparent high strength and light weight along with its environmental and sustainability advantages makes it a good candidate for use in structural materials. The goal of this study was to design a kenaf product that resembled parallel strand lumber and required minimal processing of the kenaf. The mechanical properties of the two main components of kenaf, the bast fibers and the core, were evaluated using experimental …

Design Of A High Temperature Subsurface Thermal Energy Storage System, Qi Zheng

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Solar thermal energy is taking up increasing proportions of future power generation worldwide. Thermal energy storage technology is a key method for compensating for the inherent intermittency of solar resources and solving the time mismatch between solar energy supply and electricity demand. However, there is currently no cost-effective high-capacity compact storage technology available (Bakker et al., 2008). The goal of this work is to propose a high temperature subsurface thermal energy storage (HSTES) technology and demonstrate its potential energy storage capability by developing a solar-HSTES-electricity generation system. In this work, main elements of the proposed system and their related state-of-art …

A Comparative Study: Structural Complexity Metrics Applied Against Function And Assembly Product Graphs In Predicting Market Price And Assembly Time, Sri Ram Mohinder Cherkadu Vasala

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The overarching objective of this research is to investigate the measurement and use of complexity in the prediction of product performance metrics (assembly time and market cost) for two model graph types (assembly models and function structures). This research focusses on analyzing how accurate the prediction of performance metrics are based on these graph types. This research focuses on developing four prediction models: Function Structures to predict Market Price (FS-MP), Assembly Models to predict Assembly Time (AM-AT), Function Structures to predict Assembly Time (FS-AT), and Assembly Models to predict Market Price (AM-MP). These assembly models and function structures are analyzed …

Mechanistic Characterization Of Rubberized Asphalt Mixture And Design Using Full Scale Tire-Pavement Finite Element Modeling, Sajib Saha

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Rubberized half-warm mix asphalt (HWMA) is being considered as one of the promising and sustainable solutions to the current environmental and economic crisis of asphalt industry. A fully mechanistic characterization and performance analysis of this mixture subjected to realistic loading and temperature conditions is necessary before its application in a practical pavement structure. The objective of this research is to characterize the viscoelastic properties of rubberized HWMA at different temperatures and to develop and validate a finite element model of a tire-pavement structure. In this research, a generalized Maxwell model is chosen to represent the time dependent stress-strain behavior of …

Phonon Transport Analysis Of Semiconductor Nanocomposites Using Monte Carlo Simulations, Mayank Malladi

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Nanocomposites are composite materials which incorporate nanosized particles, platelets or fibers. The addition of nanosized phases into the bulk matrix can lead to significantly different material properties compared to their macrocomposite counterparts. For nanocomposites, thermal conductivity is one of the most important physical properties. Manipulation and control of thermal conductivity in nanocomposites have impacted a variety of applications. In particular, it has been shown that the phonon thermal conductivity can be reduced significantly in nanocomposites due to the increase in phonon interface scattering while the electrical conductivity can be maintained. This extraordinary property of nanocomposites has been used to enhance …

Sociallink: A Social Network Based Trust System For P2p File Sharing Systems, Fang Qi

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In peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems, many autonomous peers without preexisting trust relationships share files with each other. Due to their open environment and distributed structure, these systems are vulnerable to the significant impact from selfish and misbehaving nodes. Free-riding, whitewash, collusion and Sybil attacks are common and serious threats, which severely harm non-malicious users and degrade the system performance. Many trust systems were proposed for P2P file sharing systems to encourage cooperative behaviors and punish non-cooperative behaviors. However, querying reputation values usually generates latency and overhead for every user. To address this problem, a social network based trust system …

Development And Verification Of A Test System To Quantify Strain Of An Optical Displacement Indicator And The Design Of A Strain Indicating Prototype, Josh Lake

All Theses

The organic-rich Middle Devonian Marcellus Shale of the Appalachian basin is a rapidly developing natural gas play. Stratigraphic boundaries of the Marcellus Shale in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania were identified using geophysical logs from 10 vertical gas-producing wells in a 23 sq. km area. Gamma-ray, bulk density, and resistivity well logs were examined to assess hydrocarbon potential. Values of porosity, total organic carbon (TOC), and water saturation (SW) were derived and mapped by incorporating well-log data into Marcellus-specific formulas. Gamma-ray, penetration (minutes per foot drilled), and mud-logging gas (total gas) from 12 horizontal wells from within the study area were also …

A Probabilistic Analysis Of Islanding Effects In A Modeled Distribution System With Renewable Resources, Paul Gooding

All Theses

For this research, an investigation was undertaken regarding the inclusion of renewable resources into the distribution system. This incorporated the increasing prevalence of solar and wind resources, as well as the development of islanding capabilities within distribution systems.

Cost And Embodied Energy Optimization Of Rectangular Reinforced Concrete Beams, Alexander Kosloski

All Theses

Concrete has a large environmental footprint so it is desirable to find ways to efficiently design structural members. Engineers can exercise their abilities early on in the design phase of construction projects to reduce the environmental footprint by minimizing the amount of materials required. One way to achieve these results is to optimize the design of structural concrete. In this study, simple-span rectangular reinforced concrete (RC) beams with a range of different bending moments were analyzed. The primary goal was to combine life cycle analysis (LCA), numerical optimization, and reinforced concrete mechanics to create a framework for designing efficient RC …

Design Of An Optical Position Sensor For Microfiber Actuators, Luxi Cheng

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This thesis introduces a new type of sensor that detects the position information of a paramagnetic microfiber and transforms it to computational electrical signal. The original purpose of the sensor is to solve the problem of feedback signal detection of the microfiber control system, which is the problem of detecting the position information for the microfiber. The microfiber will be presented as the experimental object of this sensor to test its capability. A novel optical based approach is used to transfer the position signal to a computer scrutable signal for further analysis.

The purpose of the sensor design comes from …

Speech Enhancement By Exploiting The Baseband Phase Structure Of Voiced Speech For Effective Non-Stationary Noise Estimation, Sanjay Patil

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Speech enhancement is one of the most important and challenging issues in the speech communication and signal processing field. It aims to minimize the effect of additive noise on the quality and intelligibility of the speech signal. Speech quality is the measure of noise remaining after the processing on the speech signal and of how pleasant the resulting speech sounds, while intelligibility refers to the accuracy of understanding speech. Speech enhancement algorithms are designed to remove the additive noise with minimum speech distortion.The task of speech enhancement is challenging due to lack of knowledge about the corrupting noise. Hence, the …

Interstitial Cell Seeding And Dynamic Conditioning Of Aortic Heart Valve Scaffolds, Allison Kennamer

All Theses

In 2011, U.S. Markets for Heart Valve Repair and Replacement Products estimated that roughly four million people in the United States are diagnosed with a heart valve disorder annually. And in the following year, the American Heart Association reported that approximately 35,000 deaths in the US were either directly or indirectly attributed to heart valve disease. Diseases of the heart valve are degenerative in nature and therefore progressively worsen unbeknownst to the patient until symptoms become clinically relevant. By this time, the valve is in such poor condition that complete replacement is often the only effective treatment. Current solutions are …

Development And Testing Of An Impact Plate Yield Monitor For Peanuts, Jacob Fravel

All Theses

Advancements in precision agriculture technologies such as yield monitors have allowed for improved management capabilities and reduced input costs for a number of crops. Most commercialized developments in yield monitoring systems and technologies to date have been directed for use with the major grain crops such as corn, soybeans and cereal grains. This research focuses on development and testing of an impact plate yield monitor system for the peanut harvest. Using a four row peanut combine in virginia type peanuts, 4.8 ha (12 ac) of simultaneous yield data were recorded from an Ag Leader® grain (impact plate) yield monitor and …

Chemical, Physical, And Moisture Release Characteristics Of Compost Based Potting Media, Tianzhen Wang

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A commercially available composted cow manure was used as a potting media amendment. A common base mix for woody ornamentals of 8 parts pine bark and 1 part sand was compared with 3 other mixes that contained 20%, 30%, and 40% compost (v/v). The remaining fraction of these three mixes was the base mix (bark and sand). Samples of the pine bark and compost were analyzed to determine the following plant nutrients and mineral concentrations: nitrogen (organic and soluble), carbon, P2O5, K2O, Ca, S, Mg, Mn, Cu, Zn, Na, Fe, and Al.

Knowledge Extraction From Work Instructions Through Text Processing And Analysis, Abhiram Koneru

All Theses

The objective of this thesis is to design, develop and implement an automated approach to support processing of historical assembly data to extract useful knowledge about assembly instructions and time studies to facilitate the development of decision support systems, for a large automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM). At a conceptual level, this research establishes a framework for sustainable and scalable approach to extract knowledge from big data using techniques from Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML). Process sheets are text documents that contain detailed instructions to assemble a portion of the vehicle, specification of parts and tools to …

Optimal Retrofit Strategy Design For Highway Bridges Under Seismic Hazards: A Case Study Of Charleston, Sc, Shawn Parmelee

All Theses

A significant number of US highway bridges are inadequate for seismic loads and could be seriously damaged or collapse during a relatively small earthquake. On the most recent infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), one-third of the bridges in the United States are deemed to be structurally deficient. To improve this situation, at-risk bridges must be identified, evaluated, and effective retrofitting programs implemented to reduce their seismic vulnerabilities. In practice, the Federal Highway Administration uses the expected damage method and indices method to assess the condition of bridges. These methods compare the severity of expected …

Effects Of Iteration On Concept Development, Shivraj Ranganathan

All Theses

Iteration in the conceptual design stage is defined as repetition of design tasks to incorporate new information. A more concise definition of iteration relevant to this research would be the progression of design through different abstraction levels or design stages, defining and refining design solutions while progressing from initial concepts to a more detailed design. Although it is believed that iteration has a positive effect on the quality of ideas in the design process, this experimental study presents an opportunity to determine the effects of iteration on quality of concepts and the factors that lead to increased quality of concepts. …

Knowledge Base Representation With Axiomatic Design Rules For Concept Level Up Implement In Ontological Framework, Zhuochen Shi

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Axiomatic Design has been applied and developed as a tool, offering a scientific basis for design and improving design activities. Axiomatic Design has been used in various fields such as software system design, structure design, and product design. However, several challenges and limitations exist in Axiomatic Design including: the inconsistency in identifying design parameters, existence of coupled design, and multiple groups of functional requirements and design parameters. Aimed at using Axiomatic Design to generate conceptual solutions in engineering design while overcoming its limitations, a formal ontology is developed. The ontology defines functional requirements, design parameters, concepts, components and variables and …