Engineering Commons^™

Evaluating The Electrical Response Of Polyaniline To Mechanical Strain, Matthew L. Goebel

Master's Theses

This thesis focuses on the electrical output of polyaniline films subjected to uniaxial strain in hydrochloric acid solutions. Polyaniline belongs to novel class of materials known as conducting polymers. Alternating single and double bonds in the backbone of conducting polymers allow them to transmit electric charge when they are doped with negatively charged ions. Modifying the degree of doping and other electrical/chemical treatments allow conducting polymers to exhibit conducting, semi-conducting, or insulating electrical properties. Resilient mechanical properties, good processability, and low cost make conducting polymers good candidates for applications traditionally held by metals and semi-conductors.

When tensile strain is applied …

A Study Of Dempster-Shafer's Theory Of Evidence In Comparison To Classical Probability Combination, Scott J. Seims

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

A Study of Dempster-Shafer’s Theory of Evidence in Comparison to Classical Probability Combination

Scott J. Seims

This thesis is an assessment on the effectiveness of Dempster-Shafer’s Theory of Evidence in comparison to Classical Probabilistic Combination as it applies to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Automatic Target Recognition (ATR). A three feature based classifier (peaks, corners and edges) ATR system is presented. These classifiers are assumed to be independent. The results of both the weight-based Maximum Likelihood and Dempster-Shafer’s Theory of Evidence data fusion techniques are presented.

Using Dempster-Shafer an accuracy of 77.50 percent is obtained, which is less than the …

General Direction Routing Protocol, Sean Michael Lydon

Master's Theses

The General Direction Routing Protocol (GDRP) is a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)

multi-path routing protocol which abstracts localization information (commonly GPS

coordinates) into relative direction information in order to perform routing decisions. By

generating relative direction information GDRP is able to operate with fewer precision

requirements than other protocols. This abstraction also allows the integration of other emerging

hardware-based localization techniques, for example, Beamforming Sensor Arrays.

GDRP does not specifically address the next hop a packet should take, but instead specifies a

direction it should travel. This direction abstraction allows for multiple paths to be taken through

the network thus …

Affine Region Tracking And Augmentation Using Mser And Adaptive Sift Model Generation, Matthew James Marano

Master's Theses

Relatively complex Augmented Reality (AR) algorithms are becoming widely available due to advancements in affordable mobile computer hardware. To take advantage of this a new method is developed for tracking 2D regions without a prior knowledge of an environment and without developing a computationally expensive world model. In the method of this paper, affinely invariant planar regions in a scene are found using the Maximally Stable Extremal Region (MSER) detector. A region is selected by the user to define a search space, and then the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to detect affine invariant keypoints in the region. …

An Approach Based On Wavelet Decomposition And Neural Network For Ecg Noise Reduction, Suranai Poungponsri

Master's Theses

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal processing has been the subject of intense research in the past years, due to its strategic place in the detection of several cardiac pathologies. However, ECG signal is frequently corrupted with different types of noises such as 60Hz power line interference, baseline drift, electrode movement and motion artifact, etc. In this thesis, a hybrid two-stage model based on the combination of wavelet decomposition and artificial neural network is proposed for ECG noise reduction based on excellent localization features: wavelet transform and the adaptive learning ability of neural network. Results from the simulations validate the effectiveness of this …

Jdiet: Footprint Reduction For Memory-Constrained Systems, Michael John Huffman

Master's Theses

Main memory remains a scarce computing resource. Even though main memory is becoming more abundant, software applications are inexorably engineered to consume as much memory as is available. For example, expert systems, scientific computing, data mining, and embedded systems commonly suffer from the lack of main memory availability.

This thesis introduces JDiet, an innovative memory management system for Java applications. The goal of JDiet is to provide the developer with a highly configurable framework to reduce the memory footprint of a memory-constrained system, enabling it to operate on much larger working sets. Inspired by buffer management techniques common in modern …

Novel Current-Fed Boundary-Mode Parallel-Resonant Push-Pull Converter, Jonathan David Paolucci

Master's Theses

The inherent difficulty in designing high voltage power supplies is often compounded by demands of high reliability, high performance, and safe functionality. A proposed high step-up ratio DC-DC converter meets the exacting requirements of applications such as uninterruptible power systems, radar, and pulsed power systems. The proposed DC-DC converter topology combines a multi-phase buck input stage with a novel self-tracking zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) resonant output stage. Traditionally, the inclusion of multiple power processing stages within a power supply topology severely degrades the overall converter efficiency. Due to the inherent high efficiency per stage, however, this effect is minimized. The self-tracking switching …

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Of An Extreme Aspect Ratio Hale Uav, Bryan J. Morrisey

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of an Extreme Aspect Ratio HALE UAV

Bryan J. Morrisey

Development of High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft systems is part of a vision for a low cost communications/surveillance capability. Applications of a multi payload aircraft operating for extended periods at stratospheric altitudes span military and civil genres and support battlefield operations, communications, atmospheric or agricultural monitoring, surveillance, and other disciplines that may currently require satellite-based infrastructure. Presently, several development efforts are underway in this field, including a project sponsored by DARPA that aims at producing an aircraft that can sustain flight for multiple years and …

A Graphical Approach To Testing Real-Time Embedded Devices, Steven M. Day

Master's Theses

Software Testing is both a vital and expensive part of the software development lifecycle. Improving the testing process has the potential for large returns. Current testing methodologies used to test real-time embedded devices are examined and the weaknesses in them are exposed. This leads to the introduction of a new graphical testing methodology based on flowcharts. The new approach is both a visual test creation program and an automated execution engine that together frame a new way of testing. The new methodology incorporates flow-based diagrams, visual layouts, and simple execution rules to improve upon traditional testing approaches. The new methodology …

An Investigation Of E-Glass Structure With Different Filler Material Under Vibration And Bending Loading, John R. Parra

Master's Theses

Although fiberglass reinforced polyester manholes and wetwalls have been proven by the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) and are currently being used in some parts of the world, there still exists a lack of investigation for testing manhole covers made with different inorganic fillers under static and dynamic behavior. The filler would not only improve the mechanical properties of fiber-reinforced polymer matrix composite not otherwise achieved by the resin ingredients alone but also lower the overall manufacturing costs by decreasing the amount of fiber content without adversely affecting the composite’s mechanical properties. The main objective involved the development of …

Development Of An Integrated Gaussian Process Metamodeling Application For Engineering Design, Collin R. Baukol

Master's Theses

As engineering technologies continue to grow and improve, the complexities in the engineering models which utilize these technologies also increase. This seemingly endless cycle of increased computational power and demand has sparked the need to create representative models, or metamodels, which accurately reflect these complex design spaces in a computationally efficient manner. As research into metamodeling and using advanced metamodeling techniques continues, it is important to remember design engineers who need to use these advancements. Even experienced engineers may not be well versed in the material and mathematical background that is currently required to generate and fully comprehend advanced complex …

Prestressing Concrete With Shape Memory Alloy Fibers, Skye M. Orvis

Master's Theses

Concrete is considerably stronger in compression than it is in tension. When cracks form in concrete members, the flexural stiffness of the member decreases and the deflection increases which increases the overall size of the member. Prestressing concrete remedies this problem by inducing a compressive stress in the concrete thereby reducing the net tension in the member and increasing the load required to crack the member. Traditional prestressing is generally limited to large, straight members. During the last decade, shape memory alloys (SMA) have become more prevalent in engineering and civil engineering applications. The shape memory effect refers to the …

Extraction Of Causal-Association Networks From Unstructured Text Data, Brett N. Bojduj

Master's Theses

Causality is an expression of the interactions between variables in a system. Humans often explicitly express causal relations through natural language, so extracting these relations can provide insight into how a system functions. This thesis presents a system that uses a grammar parser to extract causes and effects from unstructured text through a simple, pre-defined grammar pattern. By filtering out non-causal sentences before the extraction process begins, the presented methodology is able to achieve a precision of 85.91% and a recall of 73.99%. The polarity of the extracted relations is then classified using a Fisher classifier. The result is a …

Advanced Thermosonic Wire Bonding Using High Frequency Ultrasonic Power: Optimization, Bondability, And Reliability, Minh-Nhat Ba Le

Master's Theses

Gold wire bonding typically uses 60 KHz ultrasonic frequency. Studies have been reported that increasing ultrasonic frequency from 60KHz to 120KHz can decrease bonding time, lower bonding temperature, and/or improve the bondability of Au metalized organic substrates. This thesis presents a systematic study of the effects of 120 KHz ultrasonic frequency on the reliability of fine pitch gold wire bonding. Two wire sizes, 25.4 and 17.8 μm in diameter (1.0 and 0.7 mil, respectively) were used. The gold wires were bonded to metalized pads over organic substrates with five different metallization. The studies were carried out using a thermosonic ball …

Design, Fabrication, And Implementation Of A Single-Cell Capture Chamber For A Microfluidic Impedance Sensor, Joshua-Jed Doria Fadriquela

Master's Theses

A microfluidic device was created for single-cell capture and analysis using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channels and a glass substrate to develop a microfluidic single-cell impedance sensor for cell diagnostics. The device was fabricated using photolithography to create a master mold which in turn will use soft lithography to create the PDMS components for constant device production. The commercial software, COMSOLTM Multiphysics, was used to quantify the fluid dynamics in shallow micro-channels.

The device will be able to capture a cell and sequester it long enough to enable measurement of the impedance spectra that can characterize cell. The proposed device will be …

Time-Frequency Analysis Of Intracardiac Electrogram, Erik Brockman

Master's Theses

The Cardiac Rhythm Management Division of St. Jude Medical specializes in the development of implantable cardioverter defibrillators that improve the quality of life for patients diagnosed with a variety of cardiac arrhythmias, especially for patients prone to sudden cardiac death. With the goal to improve detection of cardiac arrhythmias, this study explored the value in time-frequency analysis of intracardiac electrogram in four steps. The first two steps characterized, in the frequency domain, the waveforms that construct the cardiac cycle. The third step developed a new algorithm that putatively provides the least computationally expensive way to identifying cardiac waveforms in the …

Analysis & Design Of Improved Multiphase Interleaving Dc-Dc Converter With Input-Output Bypass Capacitor, Rudi Rudianto

Master's Theses

As the transistor count per chip in computer microprocessors surpasses one billion, the semiconductor industry has become more and more concerned with meeting processor’s power requirements. This poses a design challenge for the power supply module, especially when the processor operates at low voltage range. For example, the electrical requirement for the newest Intel microprocessors has exceeded 100A with an input voltage of approximately 1V. To overcome this problem, multiphase DC-to-DC converters encased in a voltage regulator module (VRM) have become the standard means of supplying power to computer microprocessor.

This study proposes a new topology for the multiphase DC-to-DC …

Assessing Near-Field Outdoor Concentration Variability From Residential Wood Smoke Combustion Sources, Courtney E. Ward

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT Assessing Near-Field Outdoor Concentration Variability from Residential Wood Smoke Combustion Sources Courtney Ward The primary goal of this research was to determine whether near field effects from residential wood smoke emissions have a significant impact on acute and/or average PM2.5 concentrations, and therefore health risks. To this end, three primary research objectives were addressed: (1) measurement of the variability of wood smoke concentrations within a residential neighborhood with wood smoke sources, (2) establishment of whether the magnitude of near-source contributions to exposures can be estimated using typically available data, and (3) prediction of wood smoke concentrations using linear regression …

The Impact Of Lipid Percentage On Fibrous Cap Stability In Atherosclerotic Lesions, Anita Lorraine Crompton

Master's Theses

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a common cause of sudden cardiac death. Much of the disease is not completely understood, which makes treatment and prevention difficult. Many researchers are using technology, such as advanced imaging techniques and finite element analysis, to better understand the disease. While there is much progress being made to look at the analysis of actual excised diseased arteries, there is still not a standardized model to predict the future of any one lesion. The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of creating a standardized model to predict the mechanical stability of the fibrous …

Application Of Pv Panels In Large Multi-Story Buildings, Sara Kayal

Master's Theses

Application of PV Panels in Large Multi-Story Buildings Feasibility Study Sara Kayal

The awareness of global warming along with an ever increasing demand for a new source of energy has brought a strong interest in harnessing natural resources such as solar energy. This thesis evaluates the viability of applying photovoltaic (PV) panels in high-rise commercial buildings of around 20 stories. Specifically, the thesis is intended to provide a pre-planning tool during the early design stage for architects and designers who are considering the deployment of PV panels in new multi-story construction.

The first three chapters cover a comprehensive literature review …

A Highly Abstracted Method Of Fpga-Based Development For Secondary Surveillance Radar Transpond Detection, James Penn Watt

Master's Theses

Traditional FPGA-based digital design is based on writing hardware definition language (HDL) code from scratch. Time to market, cost of development, and the level of training required for designers all can be reduced with a simplified and abstracted design strategy. This project intends to demonstrate a graphical user interface (GUI) layer of abstraction on top of existing commercially produced design aids including MATLAB, Simulink, and Xilinx System Generator. This project performs and demonstrates a specific implementation example of a Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) message decoder as proof-of-concept for the abstracted design method. The abstracted digital design methods shown in this …

Preparation And Characterization Of Electrospun Poly(D, L-Lactide-Co-Glycolide) Scaffolds For Vascular Tissue Engineering And The Advancement Of An In Vitro Blood Vessel Mimic, Tiffany Richelle Pena

Master's Theses

PREPARATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ELECTROSPUN POLY(D,L-LACTIDE-CO-GLYCOLIDE) SCAFFFOLDS FOR VASCULAR TISSUE ENGINEERING AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF AN IN VITRO BLOOD VESSEL MIMIC

Tiffany Richelle Peña

Currently, an estimated 1 in every 3 adult Americans are affected by one or more cardiovascular complications. The most common complication is coronary artery disease, specifically atherosclerosis. Outcomes of balloon angioplasty treatments have been significantly improved with the addition of drug eluting stents to the process. Although both bare metal and drug eluting stents have greatly increased the effectiveness of angioplasty and decreased the occurrence of restenosis, several complications still exist. For this reason, the stent …

Simulation Of An Oxidizer-Cooled Hybrid Rocket Throat: Methodology Validation For Design Of A Cooled Aerospike Nozzle, Peter Alexander Brennen

Master's Theses

A study was undertaken to create a finite element model of a cooled throat converging/diverging rocket nozzle to be used as a tool in designing a cooled aerospike nozzle. Using ABAQUS, a simplified 2D axisymmetric model was created featuring only the copper throat and stainless steel support ring, which were brazed together for the experimental test firings. This analysis was a sequentially coupled thermal/mechanical model. The steady state thermal data matched closely to experimental data. The subsequent mechanical model predicted a life of over 300 cycles using the Manson-Halford fatigue life criteria. A mesh convergence study was performed to establish …

Non-Linear Contact Analysis Of Meshing Gears, Chun Hung Lee

Master's Theses

Gear transmission systems are considered one of the critical aspects of vibration analysis, and it contains various potential faults such as misalignment, cracks, and noise. Therefore, it requires vibration monitoring to ensure the system is operating properly. Case mounted accelerometers are frequently used to monitor frequencies in a system. However, it is not a simple task to identify and interpret the acceleration data since there are many gear mesh frequencies present. One of the approaches utilized by researchers to perform gear diagnostic is Finite Element Modeling. This study focuses on stiffness cycle and meshing stiffness of non-linear quasi-static finite element …

Mechanical Simulation Of Articular Cartilage Based On Experimental Results, Kevin Matthew Stewart

Master's Theses

Recently, a constituent based cartilage growth finite element model (CGFEM) was developed in order to predict articular cartilage (AC) biomechanical properties before and after growth. Previous research has noted limitations in the CGFEM such as model convergence with growth periods greater than 12 days. The main aims of this work were to address these limitations through (1) implementation of an exact material Jacobian matrix definition using the Jaumann-Kirchhoff (J-K) method and (2) quantification of elastic material parameters based upon research findings of the Cal Poly Cartilage Biomechanics Group (CPGBG). The J-K method was successfully implemented into the CGFEM and exceeded …

Carbon Fiber Leaf Springs For Adaptive Cross Country Skiing, William Drew Atkinson

Master's Theses

This work describes the development of a custom sit ski for US Ski Team paralympian Greg Mallory from concept through prototype fabrication. The ski consists of a custom seat molded specifically for the athlete, carbon fiber leaf springs, and a custom binding attachment system compatible with NNN style cross country bindings. The sit ski is designed to maximize poling power through the use of an upright rather than reclined seating position, allowing for increased utilization of core muscle strength. The springs were designed based on information gathered by a custom National Instruments data acquisition system, and stiffness analysis was conducted …

Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging Simulated In Matlab, Matthew Schlutz

Master's Theses

This thesis further develops a method from ongoing thesis projects with the goal of generating images using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) simulations coded in MATLAB. The project is supervised by Dr. John Saghri and sponsored by Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. SAR is a type of imaging radar in which the relative movement of the antenna with respect to the target is utilized. Through the simultaneous processing of the radar reflections over the movement of the antenna via the range Doppler algorithm (RDA), the superior resolution of a theoretical wider antenna, termed synthetic aperture, is obtained. The long term goal …

Internet-Scale Reactive Routing And Mobility, Daniel B. Nelson

Master's Theses

Since its commercialization, the Internet has grown exponentially. A large variety of devices can communicate creating advanced services for a diverse ecosystem of applications. However, as the number of Internet hosts has grown, the size of routing tables required to correctly route data between them has also increased exponentially. This growth rate necessitates increasingly frequent upgrades to routing device hardware, providing them with additional memory for fast-access storage of route information. These upgrades are both physically and fiscally untenable, and a new Internet routing solution is necessary for future growth.

This research focuses around an incrementally deployable, reactive routing system …

Store And Forward Routing For Sparse Pico-Satellite Sensor Networks With Data-Mules, Trevor Joseph Koritza

Master's Theses

Satellites are playing an increasingly important role in collecting scientific information, providing communication services, and revolutionizing navigation. Until recently satellites were large and very expensive, creating a high barrier to entry that only large corporations and government agencies could overcome. In the past few years the CubeSat project at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) has worked to refine the design and launching of small, lightweight, and less expensive satellites called pico-satellites, opening space up to a wider audience. Now that Cal Poly has the launch logistics and hardware under control, a new problem has arisen. These …

Attitude Determination Of A Student Satellite Using On-Orbit Magnetometer And Temperature Data, Jacob Daniel Dimiceli

Master's Theses

An extended Kalman filter is modified to support only magnetometer data as a measurement for spacecraft attitude information. Actual on-orbit data from a student satellite is used in the filter from three different time periods and varying data frequencies. The extended Kalman filter has a thermal model that utilizes external temperature data as a verification tool for filter convergence and for parameter tuning. It can capture the frequency of temperature changes and the correct side panel being lit by the sun as long as the filter converges properly, but not the magnitude of the temperature at a specific time. A …