Engineering Commons^™

Swept Wind Turbine Blade Aeroelastic Modeling For Loads And Dynamic Behavior, Scott M. Larwood, Mike Zutek

All Faculty Presentations - School of Engineering and Computer Science

A dynamic modeling effort of a swept-blade wind turbine rotor has been conducted. The swept-blade concept was used for increased energy capture without an increase in the turbine loads. The work is part of a Department of Energy contract for increased wind energy capture at low-wind speed sites. The blade works by twisting to feather under aerodynamic loads at the outboard region. Conceptual design of the blade resulted in a 28 m blade radius for eventual testing on a normally 50 m diameter turbine. The blade was modeled with codes developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Comparisons were made …

Compliant Mechanism Suspensions, Timothy Melvin Allred

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis has explored the use of compliant mechanisms in vehicle suspension systems, specifically where a compliant mechanism acts as part of the wheel locating mechanism and as the energy storage element. A compliant mechanism has the potential of reducing part count, joints, and manufacturing and assembly costs of a suspension system. Fatigue failure has been found to be a limiting design constraint which competes with space and weight constraints. Controlling wheel motion in response to control forces has also been shown to be an important functional requirement for a compliant suspension system. Vehicle applications that are best suited for …

Effect Of Co On No And N2O Conversions In Nonthermal Argon Plasma, Gui-Bing Zhao, Morris D. Argyle, Maciej Radosz

Faculty Publications

200-600 ppm of CO inhibit NO conversion in nonthermal Ar plasma, but do not produce ⁠N₂O. However, 1.01% of CO has no effect on NO conversion, but produces ⁠N₂O. In general, N₂O conversion in Ar plasma decreases with increasing CO concentration. These experimental results cannot be explained by charge transfer reactions of Ar⁺⁠. Selectivity analysis of all excited states of Ar possibly contributing to NO_x conversion without and with CO suggests that only Ar(³P₂) contributes to NO_x conversion and CO dissociation. A kinetic model of 43 …

Direct Strength Method (Dsm) Design Guide, American Iron And Steel Institute

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

The following Design Guide has been developed under the direction of the American Iron and Steel Institute Committee on Specifications for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members. The development of the Guide was sponsored by the American Iron and Steel Institute. The AISI Committee on Specifications wishes to acknowledge and expresses gratitude to Dr. Benjamin Schafer of Johns Hopkins University who was the author of this Guide.

With anticipated improvements in understanding of the behavior of cold-formed steel and the continuing development of new technology, this material might become dated. It is possible that AISI will attempt to produce …

Climate Scenarios For California, Edwin P. Maurer, Michael Dettinger, Daniel Cayan, Mary Tyree, Katherine Hayhoe, Celine Bonfils, Philip B. Duffy, Benjamin Santer

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering

Possible future climate changes in California are investigated from a varied set of climate change model simulations. These simulations, conducted by three state-of-the-art global climate models, provide trajectories from three greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenarios. These scenarios and the resulting climate simulations are not “predictions,” but rather are a limited sample from among the many plausible pathways that may affect California’s climate. Future GHG concentrations are uncertain because they depend on future social, political, and technological pathways, and thus the IPCC has produced four “families” of emission scenarios. To explore some of these uncertainties, emissions scenarios A2 (a medium-high emissions) …

Measuring Privacy Loss In Statistical Databases, Vinod Chirayath, Luc Longpre, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Protection of privacy in databases has become of increasing importance. While a number of techniques have been proposed to query databases while preserving privacy of individual records in the database, very little is done to define a measure on how much privacy is lost after statistical releases. We suggest a definition based on information theory. Intuitively, the privacy loss is proportional to how much the descriptional complexity of a record decreases relative to the statistical release. There are some problems with this basic definition and we suggest ways to address these problems.

Competitive Metagenomic Dna Hybridization Identifies Host-Specific Microbial Genetic Markers In Cow Fecal Samples, Orin C. Shanks, Jorge W. Santo Domingo, Regina Lamendella, Catherine A. Kelty, James E. Graham

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Several PCR methods have recently been developed to identify fecal contamination in surface waters. In all cases, researchers have relied on one gene or one microorganism for selection of host-specific markers. Here we describe the application of a genome fragment enrichment (GFE) method to identify host-specific genetic markers from fecal microbial community DNA. As a proof of concept, bovine fecal DNA was challenged against a porcine fecal DNA background to select for bovine-specific DNA sequences. Bioinformatic analyses of 380 bovine enriched metagenomic sequences indicated a preponderance of Bacteroidales-like regions predicted to encode membrane-associated and secreted proteins. Oligonucleotide primers capable …

Exchange Faculty Perspectives On International Collaborations, Donal Mchale

Conference Papers

The main purpose of the paper is to document key issues in developing successful transatlantic faculty exchanges and to document perspectives and key learnings’ emanating from the development and implementation of an international exchange process.

Unimodality, Independence Lead To Np-Hardness Of Interval Probability Problems, Daniel J. Berleant, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Hung T. Nguyen

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many real-life situations, we only have partial information about probabilities. This information is usually described by bounds on moments, on probabilities of certain events, etc. -- i.e., by characteristics c(p) which are linear in terms of the unknown probabilities pj. If we know interval bounds on some such characteristics ai <= ci(p) <= Ai, and we are interested in a characteristic c(p), then we can find the bounds on c(p) by solving a linear programming problem.

In some situations, we also have additional conditions on the probability distribution -- e.g., we may know that the two variables x1 and x2 are independent, or that the distribution of x1 and x2 is unimodal. We show that adding each of these conditions makes the corresponding interval probability …

How To Measure Loss Of Privacy, Luc Longpre, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To compare different schemes for preserving privacy, it is important to be able to gauge loss of privacy. Since loss of privacy means that we gain new information about a person, it seems natural to measure the loss of privacy by the amount of information that we gained. However, this seemingly natural definition is not perfect: when we originally know that a person's salary is between $10,000 and $20,000 and later learn that the salary is between $10,000 and $15,000, we gained exactly as much information (one bit) as when we learn that the salary is an even number -- …

Statistical Data Processing Under Interval Uncertainty: Algorithms And Computational Complexity, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

No abstract provided.

Sequence Of Linear Programming For Transmission Of Fine-Scalable Coded Content In Bandwidth-Limited Environments, Xiao Su, Tao Wang

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we propose an optimal peer assignment algorithm on peer-to-peer networks. This algorithm is designed to maximize the quality of transmitting fine-scalable coded content by exploiting the embedding property of scalable coding. To be more realistic, we assume that the requesting peer has a delay constraint to display the content within a certain delay bound, and it also has limited incoming bandwidth. We first use a simple example to illustrate the peer assignment problem, and then formulate this problem as a linear programming problem, followed by a nonlinear programming problem. To efficiently solve the second nonlinear problem, we …

Recyclability Index For Automobiles, Alexander Tsuji, Yarrow Nelson, Andrew Kean, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

A rating system was developed to quantify the environmental impacts of light-duty motor vehicles at the end of their life-cycle based on recyclability, toxic material content and ultimate disposal. Each year, 10-11 million vehicles are retired from service in the United States. The vehicle material not recycled is called automotive shredder residue (ASR). About 4.5 to 5 million tons of ASR are disposed in U.S. solid waste landfills annually. The volume of this residue is likely to increase as vehicle manufacturers continue to use more plastics and composites in their designs to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency. The rating …

Plotting A Bright Future For Manufacturing Education: Results Of A Brainstorming Session, Daniel Waldorf, Sema E. Alptekin, Robert Bjurman

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Manufacturing industries worldwide have undergone dramatic changes in recent years and now demand more from graduating manufacturing engineers. The effects of globalization have forever changed the parameters for success in manufacturing. Our educational institutions must respond to these changes with innovation. That agenda formed the basis for a special SME/CIRP international conference on manufacturing engineering education called “Looking Forward: Innovations in Manufacturing Engineering Education,” held in San Luis Obispo, California, June 22-25, 2005. At the meeting, manufacturing education professionals from around the world came together to share their own innovative ideas and to brainstorm ways to shape the future of …

Infusing The Materials Engineering Curriculum With Sustainability Principles, Katherine C. Chen, Linda Vanasupa, Blair London, Richard N. Savage

Materials Engineering

In order to better prepare our students for the complex, global world outside the confines of the university, we have been making concerted efforts to incorporate sustainability principles (i.e., balance of economics, society, and environment) within the materials engineering curriculum at California Polytechnic (Cal Poly) State University. Many future engineering tasks will require the understanding of complicated interplays of technology with the environment and society. In addition, energy demands and dwindling natural resources have emerged as significant challenges for scientists and engineers. The materials engineer has great opportunity to help devise sustainable solutions through appropriate materials selection and processing, and …

Gauging Voip Call Quality From 802.11 Wlan Resource Usage, Miroslaw Narbutt, Mark Davis

Conference papers

In this paper we experimentally study the relationship between resource utilization in the wireless LAN and the quality of VoIP calls transmitted over the wireless medium. Specifically we evaluate how its overall capacity is shared between three basic MAC bandwidth components (load, access and free) as the number of VoIP calls increases and how it influences transmission impairments (delay, loss and jitter) and thus call quality. Resource utilization (under the MAC bandwidth components framework) is calculated by a WLAN probe application that passively “sniffs” packets at the L2/MAC layer of the wireless medium and analyses their headers and temporal characteristics. …

An Experimental Analysis Of The Call Capacity Of Ieee 802.11b Wireless Local Area Networks For Voip Telephony, Brian Keegan, Mark Davis

Conference papers

In this paper we present the results from an experimental study of the call capacity of an IEEE 802.11b network when using VoIP telephony. Experiments include increasing the number of VoIP users in a wireless test-bed and increasing the level of background traffic until network saturation occurs. The experiments allow us to perform an analysis of the access point (AP) buffer dynamics. Results show that the network is capable of supporting up to 16 VoIP stations (STAs). Due to the operation of the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) mechanism, the AP acts as a bottleneck for all traffic destined …

Effect Of Free Bandwidth On Voip Performance In 802.11b Wlan Networks, Miroslaw Narbutt, Mark Davis

Conference papers

In this paper we experimentally study the relationship between bandwidth utilization in the wireless LAN and the quality of VoIP calls transmitted over the wireless medium. Specifically we evaluate how the amount of free bandwidth decreases as the number of calls increases and how this influences transmission impairments (i.e. delay, loss and jitter) and thus degrades call quality. We show that the amount of free bandwidth is a good indicator for predicting VoIP call quality.

Cheating In College And Its Influence On Ethical Behavior In Professional Engineering Practice, Trevor S. Harding, Cynthia J. Finelli, Donald D. Carpenter

Materials Engineering

Research has demonstrated that engineering undergraduates report rates of cheating higher than those in most other disciplines and that students who cheat in college are more likely to make unethical decisions as professionals. To explore the relationship between academic and professional ethical behavior, the authors launched the Work Experience Study (WES) that examines students' decision-making processes in situations where they are tempted to engage in unethical behavior in academic and professional settings. The population sampled for WES includes engineering undergraduates with substantial work experience in engineering. Such a sampling strategy enables us to make comparisons between academic and work-place scenarios …

Examining The Underlying Motivations Of Engineering Undergraduates To Behave Unethically, Trevor S. Harding, Cynthia J. Finelli, Donald D. Carpenter, Matthew Mayhew

Materials Engineering

The need for ethical behavior in engineering professional practice has been demonstrated repeatedly over the years, and most, if not all, academic institutions provide opportunities for engineering students to learn about ethics and professional responsibility. While there has been some investigation of the effectiveness of these academic efforts on student learning of ethics, little attention has been paid to students’ ethical decision-making and behavior. The present study seeks to verify the use of a model of ethical decision-making to predict the tendency of engineering and humanities students to engage in cheating, an unethical behavior with which nearly all undergraduates are …

Low-Cost Wavelength Measurement Based On A Macrobending Single-Mode Fiber, Qian Wang, Gerald Farrell, Thomas Freir, Ginu Rajan, Pengfei Wang

Articles

A low-cost all-fiber wavelength measurement technique is proposed and demonstrated. A macrobending standard single-mode fiber is developed as an edge filter with an optimal design and simple surface processing. A ratiometric wavelength measurement system employing the developed macrobending fiber filter demonstrates a resolution of ∼10 pm in a wavelength range from 1500 to 1560 nm with ease of assembly and calibration.

Year Two Annual Report: Activities, Findings And Evaluators' Reports, Naida Tushnet, Jodie L.S. Hoffman, Jaclyn Ziobrowski, Khadijah Salaam, Isabel Ochoa

Reports to NSF

A major challenge in the work of the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education has been the need to strengthen the research climate across the institutional settings. A number of activities have been directed at that effort: internal funding of small student and faculty research projects; presentations by researchers at Center meetings; providing a research focus for the required core courses in cognitive science, design, problem solving, and creativity; and the evolution of the research framework for the Center. The internal research program has been successful in providing relatively non-threatening experiences with proposal preparation, review, negotiation, and the conduct …

Web Services - Based Autonomic Computing Framework (Wsac), Sherif Atef Gurguis

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Real-Time Identification Of Sliding Friction Using Labview Fpga, Laine Mears, Jeannie S. Falcon, Thomas R. Kurfess

Publications

Friction is present in all mechanical systems, and can greatly affect system stability and control in precision motion applications. In this paper, we present application of a frictional model to trajectory planning of a part centering system with real-time identification of model parameters through system force and position response. This identification is carried out using LabVIEW motion control software and digital signal processing (DSP) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) hardware. A comparison of hardware performance for force measurement is also made.

Automatic Labeling Of Back Channels, Udit Sajjanhar, Nigel Ward

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In dialog, the proper production of back-channels is an important way for listeners to cooperate with speakers. Developing quantitative models of this process is important both for improving spoken dialog systems and for teaching second language learners. An essential step for the development of such models is labeling all back-channels in corpora of human-human dialogs. Currently this is done by hand. This report describes a method for automatically identifying back-channels in conversation corpora, using only the patterns of speech and silence by the speaker and the listener in the local context. Tested on Arabic, Spanish, and English, this method identifies …

Helicopter Flight Operational Quality Assurance (Hfoqa): Development Of Hfoqa Analysis Software, Sergio Teixeira

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA), or Flight Data Monitoring (FDM), has benefited flight safety in both fixed-wing and helicopter operations. The relative youth of FOQA programs has resulted in their minimal application among the helicopter fleets of the world; thus, Helicopter FOQA (HFOQA) has merited consolidation and expansion. This mixed methods design developed HFOQA analysis software via a blend of the qualitative data from helicopter and FOQA experts with quantitative data represented by a sample of de-identified digital flight data from 1,014 helicopter flights. Development of the software emphasized three domains of interest: (a) helicopter flight phases; (b) helicopter operational …

Service Learning At Cincinnati: Researching Water Treatment For Emerging Economies, Sarah I. Pumphrey, Anna Hoessle, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Of the nearly six billion human inhabitants of planet earth, nearly two thirds lack access to sufficient quantities of potable water and access to basic sanitation. These appalling conditions result in the deaths of millions of children each year from preventable waterborne diarrheal disease. At the University of Cincinnati, two female graduate students have undertaken MS degrees with the specific objective of performing service learning where the research focus of their respective degrees is validating and deploying appropriate technology for water quality treatment in developing countries. This presentation will highlight the results of these research projects as well as the …

An Engineering Research Experience For Teachers: Implementation And Assessment, Anant R. Kukreti, Patricia Mcnerney, Suzanne Wegener Soled, Kelly Josephine Obarski, Mingming Lu, Richard Miller, Daniel B. Oerther, Heng Wei, Thaddeus W. Fowler

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Filtering Of Acoustic Emission Data Through Principal Frequency Component Extraction, Justin O. Karl

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

Rapid editing of acoustic emission (AE) data is required in order to make real-time acoustic emission flaw growth systems a viable testing method for materials and setups that contain noisy signals. It was hypothesized that extracting major frequency components from the acoustic emission signal would therefore provide a representative acoustic signature of the major waveforms occurring due to defect growth This research has verified that the aforementioned filtering technique does, in fact, extract a representative signal from the composite and metal specimens utilized herein These findings were verified both through visual analysis of the data as well as the low …

Using Phosphorus Recovery From Wastewater As A Context For Teaching Sustainable Development With Usepa P3 Support, Daniel B. Oerther, Cinnamon Carlarne, Eric Maurer, Regina Lamendella, Sarah I. Pumphrey

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Phosphorus is an essential element required for agriculture. Current practices include "one-way" use of phosphorus: that is mining; production of fertilizer; land application; and ultimately loss to aquatic sediments. Once in the aquatic environment, phosphorus stimulates eutrophication resulting in the "death" of water bodies. With financial support from a People, Prosperity, and Planet program grant of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an interdisciplinary team of faculty at the University of Cincinnati used phosphorus recovery from sewage and re-utilization as a struvite fertilizer as the context for a year-long course of study integrating graduate and undergraduate students in Environmental Engineering and …