Engineering Commons^™

Dissolution Kinetics Of Model Api In Molten Polymer Excipients During Batch Processing, Shen Ji

Theses

In the pharmaceutical industrial application field, hot-melt extrusion (HME) has been recently introduced to develop new solid dosage forms and products. By dissolving the poorly–soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) into water-soluble polymers, the bioavailability of the Class II (with low solubility and high permeability in water) API in Biopharmaceutical Classification System (BCS) could be significantly improved in the body. For readily water-soluble API, HME provides a new approach to produce a controlled release drug system. Hence, pharmaceutical HME is a promising processing method in the pharmaceutical industry.

However, HME has not been widely applied into the pharmaceutical industry. The thermal …

Simulation Of A Low Voltage Customer Microgrid Using Petri Nets, Joshua Mark

Theses

With renewable energy coming to the forefront of how power is generated and delivered to the modern consumer, Microgrids are emerging as an optimal and efficient method for implementing renewables and changing the infrastructure of the dated transmission and distribution grid. This thesis work presents mathematical models of Petri Nets for the simulation of a low voltage customer Microgrid. Using previous work created in this specific field, a Hybrid Petri Net is modified such that it consists of multiple distributed generators, storage, and the utility which is referred to as the main distribution grid in this thesis. A Discrete Petri …

Effectiveness Of Water Quality Benefits Provided By Stormwater Management Facilities/Infiltration Basin, Vinicius Rodrigues De Mattos Barreto

Theses

Stormwater Best Management Practices (BMP) and devices are systems frequently built under assumed design performances, but rarely verified after construction. Their effectiveness in protecting the environment against pollutants carried by stormwater runoff has been extensively questioned and investigated. This research presents a case study of an infiltration basin in Medford, NJ to verify if the 80% expected Total Suspended Solids (TSS) removal as stated in the New Jersey Stormwater BMP Manual is actually achieved. A sampling pit was installed on the site and infiltrated water samples were collected during three rain events and TSS measurements were compared with the inflow. …

Koh Etching Of Silicon, Ying Wang

Theses

In this research, a series of comparative etching experiments on silicon wafers have been carried out using potassium hydroxide (KOH) for different experimental etching conditions for concentration, temperature and time on (100) orientation p-type silicon wafers. Besides the basic etching conditions, the position of the immersed wafer also has unpredictable effect on the etching process. This may be attributed to the relative contact position between the surface of the immersed wafer and the flow patterns of the stirred etching solution.

The surface morphology analysis indicates that the specific position of the wafer, with respect to the flow of the etchant, …

Development And Analysis Of Aluminum-Ptfe Reactive Composite Material, Siva Kumar Valluri

Theses

The shortcomings of micron sized aluminum due to the oxide barrier and two phase loses pose a hindrance for its efficient use as a fuel. In this study a fluoropolymer; Teflon’s inclusion in micron sized -325 mesh aluminum is suggested as a replacement to aluminum. Aluminum Teflon based energetic material see great potential for use in pyrotechnics, propellants and even explosives. A composite with composition Al-PTFE (90-10 wt. %) is prepared through Cryomilling and is shown to be a better method of preparation as compared to room temperature milling. The prepared materials are studied to identify best conditions. The analysis …

A Computational Model For Transdermal Diffusion Of Lidocaine And Tetracaine Topical Patches, Qian Dong

Theses

In recent years, transdermal drug delivery patches (TDDP) have developed rapidly. This is because the TDD system has more advantages than traditional drug delivery systems such as oral medicine and intravenous injection. In order to reach the circulatory system of the human body, drug molecules have to pass through the epidermis (outer layer) of the skin. The barrier properties of epidermis originate from low permeability of stratum corneum (SC) which is the outermost layer of the human skin. The objective of this thesis is to build a Finite Element (FE) model, utilizing commercial FE software (ANSYS), that can be implemented …

Magnetic Augmented Rotation System (Mars ) - Properties And Performance, Ruolei Liu

Theses

Magnetic Augmented Rotation System (MARS) is proposed as a system for conversion of mechanical energy into electrical energy. It works on the principle of magnetic coupling. Because it is contactless, compared with traditional gears, it increases the transfer efficiency from a driver to a rotor; reduces noise, requires no lubrication and has low maintenance cost. In order to assess the performance of MARS, a charging system based on MARS is implemented. This system includes rechargeable batteries in the range of 6 volts to 12 volts, a load in the form of a light bulb, a voltage transformer, and digital multimeter …

Scare Tactics, Tiago Martines, Gabriel Ortega, Karan Sahu, Lucas Pereira Vasconcelos, Henrique Silva Chaltein De Almeida

Theses

It is the purpose of this document to describe the design and development processes of Scare Tactics. The game will be discussed in further detail as it relates to several areas, such as market analysis, development process, game design, technical design, and each team members’ individual area of background research. The research areas include asymmetrical game design, level design, game engine architecture, real-time graphics, user interface design, networking and artificial intelligence.

As part of the team’s market analysis, other games featuring asymmetric gameplay are discussed. The games described in this section serve as inspirations for asymmetric game design. Some …

Microalgae Cell Quantification Using Electrical Parameters, Leena Osama Fahmi Saqer

Theses

Electrical properties of living cells have been proven to play a significant role in understanding and characterizing the different biological activities of the cell. The objective of this work is to develop an electrical based technique for determining and estimating the number of microalgae cells in a suspension without the need for any sample treatments or pre-processing.

The proposed technique is based on the direct use of electrical capacitive model. The basic premise behind this idea is the electrical polarization of microalgae particles that get charged due to the application of an electric field. This wouldn’t cause any distortion or …

Behavior Of Expansive Concrete-Filled Steel Tubular (Ecfst) Columns Under Axial Loadings, Abdulaziz Lazkani

Theses

Concrete-filled steel tubes (CFST) have been introduced in high-rise buildings in order to expedite construction and increase the confinement of concrete by the steel tube, and hence increase the capacity of the column cross-section. More recently, expansive additives (EAs) that counteract the shrinkage of concrete have been used in CFST to improve the bond between the concrete and steel tube. Although changing the confinement level exerted by the steel tube on concrete will have an impact on the behavior of CFSTs, little information is available regarding the influence of EAs on the mechanical characteristics of expansive concrete-filled steel tubular (ECFST) …

Recycling Ceramic Waste Powder And Its Usage As An Alternative Ingredient In Concrete, Dima Mamoun Kanaan

Theses

Green environment is a challenging concern to accomplish in today’s world. This could be accomplished through an effective and beneficial recycling system through reusing solid waste materials. The study and exploration of alternative ingredients for concrete-making industry started more than five decades ago. Concrete that contains solid waste is referred to as “Green” concrete. Ceramic tiles are widely used in most structures; its production creates waste powder. Using ceramic waste powder (CWP) as an ingredient to partially replace cement in concrete will have a positive and progressive environmental impact in addition will help reserve natural resources. In this study, CWP …

Carbon Dioxide Capture By Steel-Making Residues In A Fluidized Bed Reacto, Suhaib Mohammad Hameedi

Theses

Global warming is one of the most challenging problems facing societies these days, and it is known to be caused by the increasing emissions of Green House Gases (GHG's), mainly CO₂, from various human activities. To solve such a problem, or at least minimize its effects, several actions have been considered. One of these actions is carbon capture, which has many different options and techniques. This research focuses on the capture of CO₂ through reactions with steel-making residues, an alkaline solid by-product of the steel-making process. The aim is to sequester CO₂ and form carbonates, which …

Numerical Analysis For The Hemodynamics In Unruptured Cerebral Aneurysms, Hashem Mhd Hicham Alargha

Theses

A cerebral aneurysm is a vascular disorder characterized by abnormal focal dilation of a brain artery which is considered as a serious and potentially life-threatening condition. Cerebral aneurysms affect around 2%-5% of adults and they are fatal and can rupture with an overall mortality rate of more than 50%. Through computational fluid dynamics investigation, this study is offering a closer look into the initiation growth and rupture of cerebral aneurysms. Four focus points are studied in this thesis which are sensitivity analysis of blood viscosity in aneurysms, the effect of cerebral aneurysm size on wall stresses and strain, hazard effects …

Thermal Analysis For The Purpose Of Fault Diagnosis Of Commercial Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (Pemfc), Reem Izzeldin Elsadig Salim

Theses

The world's awareness towards the amount of destruction that our extensive and ignorant lifestyles in the past few decades have imposed on the environment is growing day after day. This resulted in an increased governmental and research interest towards the development and use of green technology. Fuel Cells are one of the green technologies that received a major share of research interest in the past decade.

However, despite their promising features, Fuel Cell systems still lack a solid fault diagnosis and predictive maintenance study. There are numerous faults that have to be detected and diagnosed on a fuel cell power …

Oil Recovery By Polymer Flooding; Sensitivity Analysis To Technical Parameters, Rana Osama Fahmi Saqer

Theses

Numerous enhanced oil recovery techniques including miscible gas injection, chemical, thermal and other methods are applied at the third phase of production after both primary and secondary recovery have been exhausted. Polymer flooding is one of the chemical methods that recover more oil by decreasing the mobility of the system; by increasing the viscosity of the injected water that results in an improvement in the volumetric sweep efficiency.

The objective of this work is to asses and select the development options using polymer process that maximize oil recovery for a synthetic reservoir model where technical parameters are optimized thoroughly.

Reservoir …

Contact Angle And Ift Measurements Of Smart Water At Elevated Temperatures And Pressures For Evaluating Wettability In A Selected Carbonate Reservoir In The Uae, Jassim Abubacker Ponnambathayil

Theses

Water flooding has been regarded as a well-known secondary oil recovery method. In the recent years, extensive research on crude oil, brine, and rock systems has acknowledged that the composition of the injected water can change wetting properties of the reservoir during a water flood in a promising way to improve oil recovery. Hence, injection of “smart water” with correct salinity and composition is considered as a tertiary recovery method. The mechanism behind wettability alteration that is promoted by smart water injection has been a topic of discussion in carbonate and sandstone formations. In this work, some key properties of …

Oil Recovery By Flooding; Sensitivity Analysis To Technical Parameters, Rana Osama Fahmi Saqer

Theses

Numerous enhanced oil recovery techniques including miscible gas injection, chemical, thermal and other methods are applied at the third phase of production after both primary and secondary recovery have been exhausted. Polymer flooding is one of the chemical methods that recover more oil by decreasing the mobility of the system; by increasing the viscosity of the injected water that results in an improvement in the volumetric sweep efficiency.

The objective of this work is to asses and select the development options using polymer process that maximize oil recovery for a synthetic reservoir model where technical parameters are optimized thoroughly.

Reservoir …

An Fpga Implementation Of A Sleep Enabled Pon System, Zheyu Liu

Theses

Owing to the growing demand for bandwidth-hungry video-on-demand applications, Passive Optical Network (PON) has been widely considered as one of the most promising solutions for broadband access. Environmental concerns motivated network designers to lower energy consumption of optical access networks. A well-known approach to reduce energy consumption is to allow network elements to switch to the sleep mode.

In this framework, an improved Optical network Unit (ONU) architecture in TDM-PON is proposed to reduce the handover time of status switching. Energy-saving performances of current and improved architectures are compared in different scenarios. The simulation results show that by applying a …

Comparison Of Muscle Synergies Elicited From Transcranial Meganetic Stimulation (Tms) And Voluntary Movements, Yifei Wei

Theses

A key question in motor control is the redundancy of musculoskeletal elements involved. This problem refers to as the degree of freedom problem. The Muscle Synergy Hypothesis is one of the hypotheses that aim to resolve the problem which defines that a muscle synergy is a combination of a small set of muscles activated at different levels, serving as a building block that constructs motor behaviors. A recent study (Overduin et al. 2012) demonstrated that muscle synergies decomposed by Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) from EMG patterns evoked by intra-cortical microsimulation (ICMS) in the monkey remarkably matched ones observed in naturalistic …

Computational And Experimental Determination Of The Hydrodynamics In A Stirred Unbaffled Vessel Provided With Angle-Mounted Axial Impellers, Ji Ma

Theses

In most industrial applications, stirred tanks and reactors are typically provided with baffles to improve their mixing characteristics. However, in a number of pharmaceutical production facilities unbaffled vessels are commonly used. The absence of baffles is preferred in such cases because it reduces the potential for contamination and makes cleaning the vessel between batches easier. However, the lack of baffles also has a negative impact on the system’s hydrodynamics since it often results in poor mixing of the batch, especially if the impeller is centrally placed, since the liquid in such a system is subject to a strong tangential flow, …

Thermoelectric Properties Of Silicon-Germanium Alloys, Aniket Annasaheb Maske

Theses

Direct energy conversion from thermal to electrical energy, based on thermoelectric effects, is attractive for potential applications in waste heat recovery and environmentally friendly refrigeration. The energy conversion efficiency of thermoelectric devices is related to the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT, which is proportional to the electrical conductivity, the square of the Seebeck coefficient, and the inverse of the thermal conductivity. Currently, the low ZT values of available materials restrict the large scale applications of this technology. Recently, however, significant enhancements in ZT have been reported in nanostructured materials such as super-lattices mainly due to their low thermal conductivities. According …

Investigating Neural Mechanisms Of Hand Movements In Virtual Reality, Chuang Mu

Theses

Mirror visual feedback (MVF), a technique by which movement of one limb is perceived as movement of the contralateral limb, has the capacity to relieve phantom limb pain or promote motor recovery of the upper limbs after stroke (Ramachandran et al., 1995). Functional MRI studies have demonstrated activation of the motor areas in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the moving hand in response to MVF. However, the neural mechanisms of MVF are still unclear. This Electroencephalography (EEG) study was designed to investigate the timing of neural responses to MVF presented in virtual reality. 16 right-handed, neurologically healthy subjects participated in a …

A Preliminary Investigation Of The Sterile-Filterability Of Bcs Class Ii Drug Nanosuspensions Prepared Via Wet Stirred Media Milling, Parul Ohri

Theses

Drug nanoparticles can achieve targeting capabilities, enhanced dissolution rates and improved bioavailability when injected intravenously. Sterile filtration of drug nanoparticle suspensions (nanosuspensions) is critically needed for administration by intravenous delivery route. Avoiding gamma irradiation and high temperatures, sterile filtration could be an effective process to sterilize drug nanosuspensions. On the other hand, two major challenges must be tackled: drug particles must at least be smaller than the filter pore size and minimum amount of non-toxic stabilizers must be used to prevent side effects like pain on the injection site. The aim of this study is to prepare naproxen (NPX) nanosuspensions …

A Study Of Kinematics And Kinetics In Time-Constrained Arm Movements, Oyindamola Owoeye

Theses

Several studies such as the equilibrium point hypothesis (EPH) purport that the motor signals that descend from the brain instead of encoding muscle torques, influence an existing relationship between muscle torque and body configuration.

In the present study, the possibility of torque depending explicitly on position was tested using a task in which subjects (N=5) moved a simulated weightless frictionless mass through a small (<8 degree) elbow extension in order to move a cursor on a screen to a target location. Each subject completed 720 trials. On ~10% of trials the simulated mass was increased unknown to the subject. The relationship between the cursor’s position and the torque applied to the system was held constant even when the simulated mass was increased. Thus, any change in torque produced was neither due the subjects’ perception of the mass nor due to their perception of the cursor. The time at which the subjects torque changed direction was seen to be significantly different (p<0.005) during trials which the mass changed. This change in torque is concluded to be position-dependent. However the possibility of this being a merely mechanical effect could not be ruled out by due to poor EMG collection.

A post-hoc analysis of different position-dependent motor control models, was done. Particularly, an exponential spring model, a linear spring model, and a linear spring with relative damping model were each tested to see how well …

Shock Wave Interaction With A Fluid Filled Cylinder Experimental Methods, Praveen Kumar Baba Siddabattuni

Theses

In the recent wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, many soldiers sustained bTBI (blast-induced traumatic brain injury). The blasts are created by extensive use of improvised explosive devices (IED’s). Whether pure blast-shock waves cause TBI or what is the mechanism of injury are not fully known. Research efforts are underway to find answers to these questions.

The primary objective of this project is to understand how the shockwave interacts with a fluid-filled cylinder of different thicknesses. Here, the cylinder is idealized as head and the fluid filled inside it as the brain material. The primary interest here is, how the pure …

Realization Of Dynamixel Servo Plant Parameters To Improve Admittance Control For A Compliant Human-Robot Interaction, Ahmad Zahid Rao

Theses

In theory, admittance control offers a very effective method of implementing smooth human-robot interaction. It allows the user’s applied force to control the movement of a powerful robot as if the robot were a small, passive mass. However, the real-world application of admittance control faces limitation posed by the dynamics of servo motors, the accuracy of the force sensors, and the computation speed of processors.

This research investigates the limitations on achieving compliant passive behavior when using state-of-the-art actuators, sensors and processors. The work involves characterizing the dynamic behavior of the servo motors, development of improved differential equations representing admittance …

Rodent Testing Device Surrogate For Shockwave Blast Testing, Anthony C. Misistia

Theses

Many laboratories around the world are conduct shockwave blast injury tests on rodents to simulate blast traumatic brain injury (TBI). Each of these laboratories has different techniques for creating the shockwave blasts as well as positioning the rats. There is no device to determine whether or not the rodent animal models actually experiences a true blast wave in a given set up. This device was developed as a method for verifying rodents undergoing true shockwave blasts through biometrics, instrumentation and the basic biomechanical responses a rodent experiences during such tests. Since the goal of shockwave blast testing is to replicate …

Synthesis Of A Renewable Sourced Thermotropic Polyester With 2,5-Furandicarboxylic Acid, Alicia Marie Marguerite Hurst

Theses

With the rapid depletion of non-renewable sourced materials, unpredictable fluctuations in the prices of fossil fuels, and increased environmental awareness the need to develop biobased materials grows ever more desperate. Furan derivatives sourced from hexoses provide a promising solution for replacing petrochemical based materials. One furan derivative in particular, 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), is especially promising due to its structural similarity to terephthalic acid and potential for use in the production of polyesters similar to PET, PPT, and PBT. This study investigated the synthesis, thermal and liquid crystalline properties of a totally renewable sourced thermotropic polyester based on FDCA. Fructose was …

Water Demand Forecasting In Al-Ain City, United Arab Emirates, Hebah Ibrahim Younis

Theses

Al-Ain city is the second largest city in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the third in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Currently, desalination plants are the only source of municipal water in Al-Ain city with an average daily supply of 170 MIG. The expected natural population growth, in addition to future projects, will certainly put additional stress on the water resources in the city. Therefore, Al-Ain city seems to be in an urgent need for estimations of future water demands for achieving sustainable development. The main aim of this thesis is to introduce a water demand forecasting model to …

Thermal Envelope Analysis Of Local Authority Low Rise Housing Based On Stock Aggregation Theory Using A Remote Feature Extraction Technique., James Pittam

Theses

Understanding the buildings thermal envelope is paramount to analysing existing problems which facilitate cold bridging and low surface temperatures. As no detailed housing stock database is in existence in Ireland which describes the geometrical configuration of the existing housing stock, and to create one would be a major challenge, this research set out to develop a high speed remote cataloguing and geometrical data extraction methodology to build such a database. Replacing traditional measurement methods with a remote method allows for the rapid extraction of fagade information. A remote surveying process is proposed named, the Virtual Survey Method, for the classification …