Engineering Commons^™

The Dynamics Of Bicycling : An Analytical And Experimental Investigation To Determine The Principles Of Design, Sylvester Yen

Theses

Bicycles have existed in working order for a century. They are mechanical products whose dynamic characteristics are highly nonlinear. This has to some extent prevented detailed analysis and for the most part design has been made from practical experience. The advent of computers has markedly changed the techniques and procedures used to calculate the performance of a bicycle. Bicycling began long ago, and since the first bicycle was demonstrated, bicyclists, scientists and engineers have designed thousands of different bicycles considering safety, comfort to ride and ease of control. Nonetheless, nobody claims to fully understand bicycling. If the fundamental principles exist, …

Photo-Induced Electrochemical Etching Of Inp Semiconductor In A Thin Film Cell, Bungsu Iskandar

Theses

The Photo-Induced Electrochemical Etching of n-InP wafer in aqueous solution is investigated for both reservoir and capillary systems. A sinusoidal spatial variation of light intensity pattern is directly illuminated and promoting etching on an InP semiconductor wafer. The etching process is time-efficient, and produces highly isotropical and a promising high resolution pattern. It gives a good reproducibility and has less contaminating features. Its features may be explained by a non-linear relationship between the electrolyte concentration and the photo-generated holes density at the interaction surface. An optimal reaction rate is determined by the ratio of the reactivity to ionic diffusion, either …

Rotary Micromotor Design With Ic-Compatible Processing, Hong Yu

Theses

Several microelectromechanical rotary motors have been designed and simulated with varying rotor and stator configurations. All of these micromotors operate with an electrostatic power source and have rotor diameters varying from 0.2 to 0.4 mm. These micromotors develop torques in the range 8 to 50 picoNewtons with rotors of polysilicon with 2 micron film thickness based on the detailed simulations of this thesis using a 3-phase voltage power source. The geometries modelled in this work are side-drive and vertical-drive configurations. These micromotors obtain drive torque from the fringe-field differential at the periphery of the rotor poles.

Unlevitated micromotors (with bearings) …

Modeling A Fuel Rich Premixed Laminar Methane Flame Oh, Ch, Nh, Cn Profiles, Including Prompt No, Md. Hasan Ul Karim

Theses

A detailed reaction mechanism based upon fundamental thermochemical kinetic principles has been developed to describe the concentration profiles of OH, CH, NH, CN, and NO including prompt NO radicals in laminar flow, fuel rich methane flames as well as flames doped with 700 ppm ammonia. A one dimensional laminar flat flame code which incorporated diffusion, and the detailed reaction mechanism was used to predict the radical concentration profiles from the model. These calculated values are compared to experimental data of Dean (1984).

The model consist of two reaction subsets, hydrocarbon oxidation set and an ammonia oxidation set. The reactions most …

Design For Manufacturing Of Mechanical Power Transmission Shafts, Tamer Mohamed Wasfy

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Modeling Of The Interactions Of Pellets With Magnetic Fusion Plasmas For Alpha Particle Diagnostics, Abdel-Ghafar Mahmood El-Cashlan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A model for the interactions of hydrogen and carbon pellets with thermonuclear fusion plasmas has been developed and solved to determine the charge-state spatial distributions in the ablation cloud surrounding the pellet. The ionization is treated in a self-consistent manner in the energy balance and the collisional radiative (CR) model is used to calculate the ionization levels. External plasma electron effects on ionization are included. The electron heat flux is modeled as a multigroup distribution. The channelling of the flow along the field line is treated phenomenologically by restricting the cross-sectional area of the flow. The predictions of the model …

Integrated Control Of Thermally Distorted Large Space Antennas, Robert H. Tolson

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Studies on controlling the thermal distortion of large space antennae have generally investigated a single orbital position and have optimized actuator locations based on minimizing the RMS surface deviation from the original parabolic shape. One study showed the benefits of directly using far zone electric field characteristics as the performance measure; but, this approach resulted in a nonlinear programming problem. The objective of the current study is to develop an approach to designing a control system that (1) recognizes the time dependence of the distortion and (2) controls variables that are directly related to far field performance in a quadratic …

A Software Design Tool For Predictable Performance In Real-Time, Data Flow Architectures, Brij Mohan V. Mandala

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A software design tool which aids in the performance evaluation and selection of operating points for an algorithm implemented in ATAMM defined data flow architectures is presented in this thesis. ATAMM (Algorithm To Architecture Mapping Model) is a new graph theoretic model developed by researchers at Old Dominion University and the NASA-Langley Research Center. ATAMM is capable of modeling the execution of large-grained algorithms on distributed data flow architectures. A software tool is required for predicting the performance, determining the resource requirements and for selecting suitable operating points for an ATAMM based system. The ATAMM Design Tool presented in this …

Measurement Of Thermal Noise In Condenser Microphones In A Vacuum-Isolation Vessel, Kim Chi Thi Ngo

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The electrical noise generated by thermal agitation of the air molecules impinging upon the membrane of a condenser microphone and from its associated preamplifier has been studied analytically and experimentally over a wide bandwidth. These background noise levels constitute one of the most important specifications of a microphone for they determine the lowest sound pressure that can be detected. Therefore, a new method for measuring the thermal agitation noise within a bandwidth of 1-25600 Hz has been developed. The theoretical and experimental measurements of thermal agitation noise in a condenser microphone by enclosing the microphone in a vessel which is …

Optical And High Electric Field Effects In Bulk Gallium Arsenide Switches, Randy Roush

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

During the past few years, bulk, photoconductive switching has become recognized as a viable topic for future research on moderate and high power switches. The two-pulse, or BOSS, concept relies on an excitation laser pulse, and a separate de-excitation pulse in conjunction with silicon doped, copper compensated, GaAs to create a variable temporal electrical pulse width. The research contained in this document provides information concerning the feasibility of the BOSS concept, as the switch is scaled to larger sizes, and higher voltage and current. The major concern will be the high voltage and current effects. The absorption length for 1064 …

The Effectiveness Of Viscoelastic Damping Treatments On A Flexible Manipulator Subjected To Torsional Loads, Leah L. Remias

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The advent of new technology has led to an increasing number of missions in space. The space shuttle Remote Manipulator System (RMS) is a lightweight flexible manipulator currently used in NASA space missions. The future role of the RMS and similar flexible manipulators may include in-space construction and assembly tasks. Because these tasks require precise motion and short settling time of the end-point oscillations, effective vibration control schemes are being investigated.

Passive damping techniques have shown to provide a considerable amount of damping in controlling flexural vibrations. In this research passive damping via constrained viscoelastic damping treatments is explored as …

Development Of A Perturbation Generator For Vortex Stability Studies, John Edward Riester Jr.

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Theory predicts vortex instability when subjected to certain types of disturbances. It was desired to build a device which could introduce controlled velocity perturbations into a trailing line vortex in order to study the effects on stability. A perturbation generator has been designed and manufactured which can be attached to the center-body of an airfoil type vortex generator. Details of design tests and manufacturing of the perturbation generator are presented. The device produced controlled perturbations with frequencies in excess of 250 Hz. Preliminary testing and evaluation of the perturbation generator performance was conducted in a 4 inch cylindrical pipe. Observations …

Dynamics And Control Of Two Suspension Mechanisms For Ground-Based Testing Of Space Structures, Joseph E. Wilson

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Two suspension systems which effectively simulate a gravity-free environment are presented. A single degree-of-freedom suspension system utilizing a specially profiled band mechanism in conjunction with a torsional spring is presented to show its feasibility and applicability for use as a ground-based testing device for flexible space structures. The second device, a two degree-of-freedom suspension system consisting of two springs and a folding linkage is presented to show the feasibility as a testing device for suspending space structures on earth.

Problems resulting in unwanted dynamic behavior due to deviations from the design parameters for both systems are addressed. A nonlinear controller …

Deep Level Characterization Studies In Gaas, Gordhan R. Barevadia

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The goal of this research was to investigate deep levels in different types of GaAs, a material for high power optically controlled bulk semiconductor switches. For low resistivity semiconductors, such as silicon doped GaAs material (p =0.054 Ω cm), deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) was used to characterize deep levels. Three deep levels (EL6, EL3, and EL2) have been detected in this material. For high resistivity semiconductors (p > 10⁴ Ω cm), difficulty of electrical carrier injection and of making a junction does not permit the use of DLTS technique. Therefore, an experimental set-up of the photo-induced current transient spectroscopy …

Ligament Reconstruction : A Biomechanical Cadaveric Test Of Autogenous Repairs And The In Vivo Evaluation Of Synthetic Scaffold Materials, Anne Marie Daly

Theses

The knee joint is the largest and one of the most complex joints in the human body. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is one of the major intra-articular ligaments responsible for controlling and guiding the knee through most of its range of motion and its rupture alters normal joint mechanics.

One objective of this thesis was to determine if two autogenous tissue ACL reconstruction methods were biomechanically equivalent. The first method using the central one-third of the patellar tendon has been used clinically since the early 1960s. The second method utilizes portions of both the semitendinosus and the iliotibial band. …

Optimization Of Bandwidth Allocation In Atm Nets Through Simulated Annealing, Chien-Long Hou

Theses

Optimization of Bandwidth Allocation in ATM network is considered in this thesis. We address the problem of determining optimal bandwidth allocation in such BISDN's that adopt ATM as their basic switching. technique by using Simulated Annealing. Computer simulation shows that this optimal policy leads to the configuration which yields the minimum average packet delay.

An Optically Powered Cmos On-Chip Power Supply, Jaeyong Jeong

Theses

This thesis presents an optically powered CMOS on-chip power supply for CMOS IC applications. There exists a need for specialized chips that are located remotely and are powered by light supplied through fiber-optic cabling. An optically powered CMOS on-chip power supply circuit described in this thesis is composed of three subcircuits; light to voltage converter circuit, clock pulse generator circuit, and voltage multiplier circuit. Each subcircuit has been analyzed and designed, and simmulated using SPICE 2G.5/6 with 3pm CMOS SPICE parameters from the MOSIS. The circuits layout has been done using MAGIC according to the MOSIS scalable CMOS design rules. …

Design Of A Cmos Temperature Sensor With Eeprom Error Correction Scheme, Jin-Ku Kang

Theses

This thesis describes the design and operation of a CMOS temperature sensor operating at very low power with an EEPROM error correction scheme including the physical layout. This device is designed for applications requiring very low power including biomedical and optically powered device applications. The sensor output is an analog voltage. The temperature sensing cell is implemented with two BJTs having different emitter areas. An op amp dissipating about 300 micro-watts power is designed and is used to amplify the sensor output voltage with a gain of 85dB. A novel EEPROM is used to correct nonlinearity error of the temperature …

A Transputer Based Distributed Graphics Display, Ramana V. Kattula

Theses

The design of a transputer based graphics display is discussed. The problems associated with the single processor graphics systems are described. A solution based on multiple transputers is proposed. The transputer based graphics display described is a general purpose graphics system which can achieve any required compute performance and drawing performance without using special hardware. The display resolution and color depth can be enhanced as per the user requirements with little or no change in hardware.

Edge Matching Of Aerial Scenery Using Fourier Descriptors, Ananth Kittappa

Theses

In this report an integrated method of classifying aerial images as related to photo stereo grammetry is discussed. In this method, an investigation of Fourier descriptors as features for the edge matching approach is carried out. The efficient calculation of the Fourier Descriptors is made possible by applying the polygonal approximation method to the original edges. In order for the features to be invariant to rotation, scaling and starting point shift, a normalization technique is adopted. Initially the Fourier Descriptors are tested for synthesized test datasets and it was proved that the variances of the Normalized Fourier Descriptors was a …

Landmark-Based Shape Recognition By A Modified Hopfield Neural Network, Kuowei Li

Theses

In this thesis, we introduce a new thethod to achieve partial shape recognition by means of a modified Hopfield neural network. To recognize partially visible object, we represent each object by a set of "landmarks." The landmarks of an object are points of interest relative to the object that have important shape attributes. Given a scene consisting of partially occluded objects, a model object in the scene is hypothesized by matching the landmarks of the model with those in the scene. A measure of similarity between two landmarks, one from a model and the other from the scene, is needed …

Landmark-Based Partial Shape Recognition By A Two-Stage Bam Neural Network, Xianjun Liu

Theses

In this thesis, we develop a Bitfirectional Associative Memory (BAM) based neural network to achieve partial shape recognition. To recognize objects which are partially occluded, we represent each object by a set of landmarks. The landmarks of an object are points of interest relative to the object that have important shape attributes. To achieve recognition, feature values (landmark values) of each model object are trained and stored in the network. Each memory cell is trained to store landmark values of a model object for all possible positions. Given a scene which may consist of several objects, landmarks in the scene …

Decomposing Non-Product Form Queuing Lattices Through Simulated Annealing, Jr-Chin Lin

Theses

A random, heuristic search called Simulated Annealing is adapted to decompose the state transition lattice of Non-Product Form Queuing Models. Simulated Annealing Algorithm has been successfully applied to a number of optimization problem such as The Traveling Salesman Problem, Graph Partionning, Physical Computer Design, VLSI Chip Design, Image Processing,... etc. It has the advantage over other gradient descent techniques to solve the combinatorial problems. The solution can escape from local minimum by adding Boltzmann Distribution Factor to the algorithm. Most lattice of non-product form queuing models can be decomposed into Solvable Subsets through this algorithm, and solvable subset is the …

Characteristic Shape Recognition With Fuzzy Dustering, Kalpesh J. Patel

Theses

The problem of shape detection has been treated as one of clustering. A fuzzy-shell clustering(FSC) has been formulated as non linear least squares with fuzzy memberships as weights. An improved FSC algorithm has been proposed based on this formulation to partition the input feature vectors into hyper-spheres. To illustrate the usefulness of improved FSC we have provided numerous examples in 2-D space. The idea has been extended to fuzzy ellipsoidal-shell clustering (rESC). A FESC algorithm has been proposed to partition the input feature vectors into ellipsoidal patterns. To substantiate our claims regarding usefulness of this algorithm we have provided many …

Investigation Of Micromechanical Properties Of Tungsten Silicide Thin Films, Bharat Pathak

Theses

Micromechanics is a field which is maturing. Recent research interest in micromechanical structures has focussed on the fabrication of microactuators and microsensors. These microsensors and actuators can sense very small changes in the environment without disturbing the equilibrium of the environment. The refractory silicides are some of the compatible materials used to integrate the micromechanical structures and the interfacing electronic circuits on the same chip. As a result of this, the thermodynamic, electrical and mechanical properties of transition metal silicides should be given a closer look for micromechanical applications.

This thesis details the design and fabrication of tungsten silicide moveable …

Simulation And Analysis Of Priority Classes In Extended Token Based Local Area Networks, Bhavinkumar R. Pathak

Theses

Recently, Local Area Networks carrying multiple priority classes of messages have received considerable attention. The IEEE 802.5 token ring standard defines an optional priority scheme to handle different priority classes of messages. A simulation model of symmetric priority based networks, consisting of token ring networks interconnected by a bridge is considered. Messages are divided into two priority classes, namely, high priority traffic and low priority traffic. High priority traffic is guaranteed access on the channel, whereas low priority messages are served when the system determines that no high priority messages are currently waiting. The simulation results are used to evaluate …

A Self Testing Strategy For The Wafer Scale Hierarchical Memory Architecture, Maremanda V. R. Rao

Theses

Since the early 1960's, semiconductor chips have matured from single transistor devices to one million transistors per chip. The integration has been achieved by reducing transistor dimensions, and by increasing chip sizes. However, physical limits are being reached as submicrometre dimensions are approached. Fault tolerance has to be used to maintain the increase in the chip complexity. Yield improvement is only one of the many possible gains of fault tolerance. The dense integration of logic on a single chip also creates a huge test problem. in recent years a great deal of effort has gone into the development of yield …

A Novel Schottky Barrier Mosfet For Vlsi Applications, Venkata S. Simhadri

Theses

Schottky barrier MOSFETs are expected to offer certain fabrication advantages, low series resistance and the feasibility to go into sub-micron technology without having short-channel effects. A p-channel MOSFET using Schottky contacts as source and drain is reviewed theoritically. The limitations of the device arising from the oxide offset between source/channel is studied with the help of one dimensional simulation SEDAN. The process sequence leads to an offset between source and channel. The performance of the SBMOSFETs with and without offset is estimated using two dimensional device simulation program PISCES-II for PtSi and IrSi as source and drain material. A novel …

Microengineered Thermal Conductivity Vacuum Pressure Sensor, Sanjay Talreja

Theses

This thesis details the first designs for microengineered vacuum pressure gauges based on silicon microelectronic technology. A monolithic polysilicon air-bridge structure (supported at both ends), within a Wheatstone bridge circuit, is used as a pressure sensor. The device utilizes the change of the thermal conductivity of a gas with ambient gas pressure. The doubly supported beam functions as a temperature sensitive resistor with a negative temperature coefficient of resistivity. Thermal change of resistance monitored as a measure of ambient pressure constitutes the basis of operation for this sensor. The sensor operates over the pressure ranging from 1 Torr to 10 …

Simulation And Analysis Of Integrated Lans For Hospital Environment, Naveen K. Verma

Theses

Hospitals generate a large number of data sets of different types and formats and it is required to integrate these data sets for their rapid and simultaneous communication in order for a better treatment of patients and to cut the escalating costs. A better approach to meet this requirement is to have a distributed system linked all together with a high capacity LAN using an efficient integration method.

This thesis begins by studying the characteristic feature and suitability of Queued Packet & Synchronous Exchange (QPSX) network architecture. The network models are simulated for QPSX, Ethernet and Token Bus networks for …