Engineering Commons^™

The Development And Fabrication Of A Modular Vertical Reciprocating Conveyor System For The Transportation Of Materials To And From A Mezzanine., Matthew Paul Crum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this developmental project was to design and fabricate a vertical reciprocating conveyor in order to eliminate the process of manually carrying 27 pound containers of plastic resin up and down a flight of offset space saver stairs. This project took place and was built for Phoenix Closures Incorporated. The conveyor was designed and built in house because there are no commercially available vertical reciprocating conveyors available that meet the necessary requirements.

The capabilities of the proposed vertical reciprocating conveyor are not limited to the carrying of the containers but designed to carry vacuum cleaners, tool boxes, and …

Innovative Design: Design Of A Press System And Molds To Produce A Skateboard Deck., George William Linke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Skateboarding is a passion for many people. Homemade skateboard machinery has been fabricated throughout the country. While the demand for skateboards is steady; there is a steady growth in the homemade skateboard deck market. The desire to create a one of a kind deck that expresses a person's individualism is growing. This applied research and development effort - designing and fabricating a fluid powered press system and 2-part mold assembly for forming glue up laminations for skateboard decks - is an attempt to gain understanding of the different phases of the product design process.

Adsorption And Diffusion Of Light Hydrocarbons In Ddr Zeolite, Adam Vidoni

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reports the results of an experimental study aimed at characterizing the transport properties of DDR crystals (a pure silica zeolite analog) by the “zero length column” technique. This material is potentially useful as a size selective molecular sieve adsorbent for separation of CH₄ – CO₂ in the upgrading of low grade natural gas (or biogas) as well as for the separation of C₃H₆ - C₃H₈ for production of polypropylene. In both these applications pure silica zeolites (such as DDR) have important practical advantages over the traditional cationic zeolites since they …

New Test Set For Video Quality Benchmarking, Joaquin Raventos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A new test set design and benchmarking approach (US Patent pending) allows a "standard observer" to assess the end-to-end image quality characteristics of video imaging systems operating in day time or low-light conditions.

It uses randomized targets based on extensive application of Photometry, Geometrical Optics, and Digital Media.

The benchmarking takes into account the target’s contrast sensitivity, its color characteristics, and several aspects of human vision such as visual acuity and dynamic response. The standard observer is part of the "extended video imaging system" (EVIS).

The new test set allows image quality benchmarking by a panel of standard observers at …

Optimal Charging Scheduling For Battery Electric Vehicles Under Smart Grid., Nur Dayana Abd Rahman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A projected high penetration of battery electric vehicles (BEV s) in the market will introduce an additional load in the electricity grid. Furthermore, uncontrolled BEV charging from residential users will exacerbate the existing peak load during evening hours. In this thesis, we propose two optimization models to alleviate the impact of extra demand from electric vehicles on the power grid. The first is a centralized charging scheduling model that coordinates the charging among BEV users under the goal of minimizing the total electricity cost for all users. The second model uses a decentralized agent-based approach to scheduling the BEV charging. …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Catalysts For The Selective Transformation Of Biomass-Derived Materials, Isaac Tyrone Ghampson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The experimental work in this thesis focuses on generating catalysts for two intermediate processes related to the thermal conversion of lignocellulosic biomass: the synthesis and characterization of mesoporous silica supported cobalt catalysts for the Fischer-Tropsch reaction, and an exploration of the reactivity of bulk and supported molybdenum-based nitride catalysts for the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of guaiacol, a lignin model compound. The first section of the work details the synthesis of a series of silicasupported cobalt Fischer-Tropsch catalysts with pore diameters ranging from 2-23 nm. Detailed X-ray diffraction measurements were used to determine the composition and particle diameters of the metal fraction, …

Comparative Evaluation Of Conventional Soldier Pile/Lagging Retention Systems Versus Soil Nailing Retention Systems., Abdul Amir Al-Helu 1966-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An investigation was made into the relative costs of excavation retention by two systems: conventional soldier pile-wale-tieback support, and support by soil nailing. The investigation included design of excavation supports by the two aforementioned systems for fifteen actual excavations, the majority of which were accomplished in the Louisville, Kentucky area. The design was optimized to arrive at minimum cost solutions. In all cases, the soil nailing system was much less costly than the conventional system. Several factors appeared to make soil nailing more economical than conventional retention systems, if deformations and settlement of soil nailing systems can be tolerated: lower …

Characterization Of Mesoporous Materials Via Fluorescent Spectroscopic Methods, Raymond Russell Kennard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are three components that need to be understood to create new porous membranes for industrial applications. 1.) To understand appropriate synthesis conditions to create a successful membrane system. 2.) To understand how the microstructures generated in synthesis affect the transport properties of that system. 3) To be able to characterize the heterogeneity of the fabricated membrane’s transport and physical structure.

Presented within this manuscript are new characterization methods to increase the understanding in membrane technology. It will be demonstrated that the novel application of standard fluorescent methods and the development of new fluorescent methods techniques allows for the measurement …

Development Of A Scale Model Wind Turbine For Testing Of Offshore Floating Wind Turbine Systems, Heather Rae Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the development of a 1/50th scale 5 MW wind turbine intended for wind and wave basin model testing of commercially viable floating wind turbine structures. The design is based on a popular 5 MW wind turbine designed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) commonly utilized in numerical modeling efforts. The model wind turbine is to accompany generic floating model platforms for basin model testing. The ultimate goal of the model development testing program is to collect data for validating various floating wind turbine simulation codes such as those developed by NREL. This thesis will present an …

Stereoscopic Vision In Vehicle Navigation., Behnoush Abdollahi 1986-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traffic sign (TS) detection and tracking is one of the main tasks of an autonomous vehicle which is addressed in the field of computer vision. An autonomous vehicle must have vision based recognition of the road to follow the rules like every other vehicle on the road. Besides, TS detection and tracking can be used to give feedbacks to the driver. This can significantly increase safety in making driving decisions. For a successful TS detection and tracking changes in weather and lighting conditions should be considered. Also, the camera is in motion, which results in image distortion and motion blur. …

A Water Distribution And Treatment Simulation For Testing Cyber Security Enhancements For Water Sector Scada Systems., Justin Robert Adams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems are used by many critical infrastructures including electric power production and distribution, water and waste water treatment, rail transportation, and gas and oil distribution. Originally isolated proprietary systems, SCADA systems are increasingly connected to enterprise networks and the Internet and today use commercial hardware and software. As a result SCADA systems now face serious cyber-security threats. The need for testing and evaluation of developed cyber-security solutions presents a challenge since evaluation on actual systems is usually not possible and building complete physical testbeds is costly. This thesis presents the design and development of …

Development Of Wearable Sensors For Body Joint Angle Measurement, Saba Bakhshi Khayani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the development of three different methods for body joint angle measurement using wearable sensors. Continuous monitoring of patients' movements and activities has recently become one of the active research areas in the field of body sensor network and telehealth monitoring. For many medical and rehabilitation applications, a continuous monitor of the patients' daily activities at home without visiting the hospital is desirable. This type of monitoring is beneficial for the therapists and physicians as it does not require patients' physical presence. Traditionally, measuring the range of motion (ROM) is performed in hospitals by utilizing standard tools such …

Wired For Business: The Roebling Story., Kelley Marie Hatch-Draper

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

John Augustus Roebling, a classically educated civil engineer and young Hegelian, immigrated to America in 1831 in search of freedom from a repressive political system that afforded him no opportunity for advancement. Arriving in the midst of the American market revolution, his dream of establishing an agrarian farming colony changed in response to societal transformations resulting from mechanization and the rise of industry. Within forty years, Roebling achieved fame as a canal engineer and bridge designer while establishing the American wire rope industry. Without Roebling's innovation in wire-rope, modern suspension bridges, high-rise elevators, construction cranes, and cable cars would not …

The Millimeter Legal Coordinated Cadastre, Carlton A. Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Land ownership is an important part of a nation’s wealth. Land value is determined by information about the land and about property rights that exist over the land. The Cadastre is the primary means of providing information about property rights, providing the private and public sector with: information identifying those people who have interests in parcels of land; information about those interests; and information about the parcels. The definitive cadastre would require anyone looking for information about a parcel of land to only go to the cadastre to find everything there is to know about the land such as: • …

Exfoliated Graphite Nanoplatelet-Filled Impact Modified Polypropylene Nanocomposites, Alex Duguay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets (xGnP)-filled polymer composites have demonstrated superior electrical, mechanical, physical and thermal properties and are becoming a major focus for both academic and industrial research and development (R&D) activities. The main objective of this study was to characterize the influence of xGnP particle diameter, filler loading and the addition of coupling agents on the mechanical, rheological and thermal properties of xGnP-filled impact modified polypropylene (IMPP) composites. IMPP is currently being used at the AEWC Advanced Structures and Composites Center in polymer impregnated (pre-preg) fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) tapes consisting of an IMPP matrix polymer and E-glass continuous fibers. …

Cfd Modeling Of Entrance And Exit Geometries Of A Wind Speed Accelerator., David Russ

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current wind power technology is not economically feasible throughout most of the United States due to low average wind speeds. A design for a small-scale wind concentrator device suitable for use in areas of low wind velocity was tested using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Using a novel approach, the device seeks to accelerate incoming air above minimum velocities required for economical power generation. The novel approach employs a funnel shaped inlet with relief vents along the circumference, so as to alleviate backpressure. Both inlet and outlet sections utilize funnel shapes with both parabolic and hyperbolic regions. All geometry and mesh …

Heat Transfer And Friction Augmentation In A Narrow Rectangular Duct With Symmetrical And Non-Symmetrical Wedge-Shaped Turbulators, Michelle Valentino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The need for cleaner and more fuel efficient means to produce electricity is growing steadily. Advancements in cooling technologies contribute to the improvements in turbine efficiency and are used for gas turbines and for power generation in automotive, aviation, as well as in naval applications, and many more. Studies introducing turbulators on walls of internal cooling channels, which can be applied to hot gas components and in recuperative heat exchangers, have been reviewed for their ability to promote heat transfer in the channel while observing pressure loss caused by adding the features. Several types of turbulators have been studied; ribs, …

Integration Of High-Q Filters With Highly Efficient Antennas, Yazid Yusuf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The integration of high-quality (Q)-factor 3-D filters with highly efficient antennas is addressed in this dissertation. Integration of filters and antennas into inseparable units eliminates the transitions between the otherwise separate structures resulting in more compact and efficient systems. The compact, highly efficient integrated 3-D filter/antenna systems, enabled by the techniques developed herein, allow for the realization of integrated RF front ends with significantly- reduced form factors. Integration of cavity filters with slot antennas in a single planar substrate is first demonstrated. Due to the high Q factor of cavity resonators, the efficiency of the integrated filter/antenna system is found …

Techniques For Boosting The Performance In Content-Based Image Retrieval Systems, Ning Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Content-Based Image Retrieval has been an active research area for decades. In a CBIR system, one or more images are used as query to search for similar images. The similarity is measured on the low level features, such as color, shape, edge, texture. First, each image is processed and visual features are extract. Therefore each image becomes a point in the feature space. Then, if two images are close to each other in the feature space, they are considered similar. That is, the k nearest neighbors are considered the most similar images to the query image. In this K-Nearest Neighbor …

Design Of The Layout Of A Manufacturing Facility With A Closed Loop Conveyor With Shortcuts Using Queueing Theory And Genetic Algorithms, Vernet Michael Lasrado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the ongoing technology battles and price wars in today's competitive economy, every company is looking for an advantage over its peers. A particular choice of facility layout can have a significant impact on the ability of a company to maintain lower operational expenses under uncertain economic conditions. It is known that systems with less congestion have lower operational costs. Traditionally, manufacturing facility layout problem methods aim at minimizing the total distance traveled, the material handling cost, or the time in the system (based on distance traveled at a specific speed). The proposed methodology solves the looped layout design problem …

Imaging Long-Range Orientational Order In Monolayers Of Amphiphilic Molecules With Scanning Probe Force Microscope And Liquid Crystal Optical Amplification, Wenlang Liang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monolayers of amphiphilic molecules at interface provide a unique system for understanding the thermodynamic and rheological properties of quasi two-dimensional systems. They are also an excellent model accessible for studying cell membranes. The feature of longrange organization of molecular tilt azimuth in monolayers at the air/water interface is one of the most interesting findings over the past two decades, which leads to the formation rich and defined textures. By observing the changes in these textures, the transitions between tilted monolayer phases can be detected. We study the boojum and stripe textures formed in the liquid-condensed phase of pentadecanoic acid (PDA) …

Environmental Study Of Solid Waste Collection, Mousa Awad Maimoun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The growing municipal solid waste generation rates have necessitated more efficient, optimized waste collection facilities. The majority of the US collection fleet is composed of diesel-fueled vehicles which contribute significant atmospheric emissions including greenhouse gases. In order to reduce emissions to the atmosphere, more collection agencies are investigating alternative fuel technologies such as natural gas, biofuels (bio-gas and bio-diesel), and hybrid electric technology. This research is an in-depth environmental analysis of potential alternative fuel technologies for waste collection vehicles. This study will evaluate the use of alternative fuels by waste collection vehicles. Lifecycle emissions, cost, fuel and energy consumption were …

Analysis Of Behaviors In Crowd Videos, Ramin Mehran

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we address the problem of discovery and representation of group activity of humans and objects in a variety of scenarios, commonly encountered in vision applications. The overarching goal is to devise a discriminative representation of human motion in social settings, which captures a wide variety of human activities observable in video sequences. Such motion emerges from the collective behavior of individuals and their interactions and is a significant source of information typically employed for applications such as event detection, behavior recognition, and activity recognition. We present new representations of human group motion for static cameras, and propose …

Fatigue Lifetime Approximation Based On Quantitative Microstructural Analysis For Air Plasma Sprayed Thermal Barrier Coatings, Carmen Bargraser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The durability of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) affects the life of the hot section engine components on which they are applied. Fatigue is the general failure mechanism for such components and is responsible for most unexpected failures; therefore it is desirable to develop lifetime approximation models to ensure reliability and durability. In this study, we first examined the microstructural degradation of air plasma sprayed ZrO2-8wt.%Y2O3 TBCs with a low-pressure plasma sprayed CoNiCrAlY bond coat on an IN 738LC superalloy substrate. The durability of TBCs were assessed through furnace thermal cyclic tests carried out in air at 1100°C with a 1-, …

Ultra High Density Spectral Beam Combining By Thermal Tuning Of Volume Bragg Gratings In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass, Derrek Drachenberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High power lasers with diffraction limited beam quality are desired for many applications in defense and manufacturing. A lot of applications require laser beams at the 100 kW power level along with divergence close to the diffraction limit. The figure of merit for a beam used in such applications should be radiance which determines the laser power delivered to a remote target. One of the primary limiting factors is thermal distortion of a laser beam caused by excessive heat generated in the laser media. Combination of multiple laser beams is usually considered as a method to mitigate these limitations. Spectral …

Enhancing Cnt-Composites With Raman Spectroscopy, Gregory J. Freihofer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) have been the subject of intense research for their potential to improve a variety of material properties when developed as nano-composites. This research aims to address the challenges that limit the ability to transfer the outstanding nano-scale properties of CNTs to bulk nano-composites through Raman characterization. These studies relate the vibrational modes to microstructural characterization of CNT composites including stress, interface behavior, and defects. The formulation of a new fitting procedure using the pseudo-Voigt function is presented and shown to minimize the uncertainty of characteristics within the Raman G and D doublet. Methods for optimization of manufacturing …

Theoretical Study Of Beam Transformations By Volume Diffraction, Sergiy V. Mokhov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Laser beams can be manipulated by volume diffractive elements in addition to conventional optical elements like mirrors, lenses, and beam splitters. Conventional optical elements can be described by applying the basic laws of reflection and refraction at the surfaces of the elements. Even diffraction by surface gratings utilizes relatively simple mathematics. This is to be contrasted with the volume diffraction, which requires coupled wave theory in the slowly varying envelope approximation (SVEA) to obtain accurate results. Efficient spatially distributed diffraction of laser beams is possible due to the high coherence of laser light, and it occurs at specific resonant Bragg …

Improving Throughput And Predictability Of High-Volume Business Processes Through Embedded Modeling, Joseph S. Dekeyrel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Being faster is good. Being predictable is better. A faithful model of a system, loaded to reflect the system's current state, can then be used to look into the future and predict performance. Building faithful models of processes with high degrees of uncertainty can be very challenging, especially where this uncertainty exists in terms of processing times, queuing behavior and re-work rates. Within the context of an electronic, multi-tiered workflow management system (WFMS) the author builds such a model to endogenously quote due dates. A WFMS that manages business objects can be recast as a flexible flow shop in which …

Effects Of Thermo-Mechanical Loading From In-Situ Studies Of Eb-Pvd Thermal Barrier Coatings, Melan N. Jansz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thermo-mechanical effects on the strain evolution within an EB-PVD thermal barrier coating (TBC) is presented in this work using in-situ characterization. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction at sector 1-ID at the Argonne National Laboratory provided both qualitative and quantitative in-situ data on the strain evolution under a thermal cycle with mechanical loading. The results show that at a critical combination of temperature and load, the stress in the thermally grown oxide (TGO) layer in the TBC reaches a tensile region. These significant findings enhance existing literature showing purely compressive strains within the TGO where mechanical loads have been neglected. The results …

Measurements In Air-Water Bubbly Flow Through A Vertical Narrow High-Aspect Ratio Channel, Benjamin R. Patrick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two-Phase bubbly flows are encountered in a wide range of industrial applications, particularly where phase changes occur as seen in high performance heat exchangers and boiling reactors for power generation. These flows have been extensively studied in channels with circular geometries using air-water flows, though little data exists for flows through narrow rectangular channels. Measurements in thin geometries are particularly challenging since large bubbles bridge the gap, and it is difficult to compare point measurements with photographic techniques. The objective of this study is to explore the abilities of hot-film anemometry and high speed photography for taking measurements in a …