Engineering Commons^™

Effect Of Coating Viscoelasticity On Quality Factor And Limit Of Detection Of Microcantilever Chemical Sensors, Isabelle Dufour, Frederic Lochon, Stephen M. Heinrich, Fabien Josse, Dominique Rebiere

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Microcantilevers with polymer coatings hold great promise as resonant chemical sensors. It is known that the sensitivity of the coated cantilever increases with coating thickness; however, increasing this thickness also results in an increase of the frequency noise due to a decrease of the quality factor. By taking into account only the losses associated with the silicon beam and the surrounding medium, the decrease of the quality factor cannot be explained. In this paper, an analytical expression is obtained for the quality factor, which accounts for viscoelastic losses in the coating. This expression explains the observed decrease of the quality …

The International Fuel Tax Agreement (Ifta) And International Registration Plan (Irp): Allocating Commercial Fuel Tax And Registration Fee Payments Across Multiple Jurisdictions, Lenahan O'Connell, Juita-Elena Wie Yusuf, Merl Hackbart

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This report provides: (1) an overview of the IFTA and IRP processes for allocating fuel tax revenues across jurisdictions; and (2) an assessment of these systems in regard to their effectiveness at allocating the tax and fee burden among commercial carriers in an efficient and accurate manner. Three aspects of the system were assessed by answering the following questions: (1) Is the system effectively fostering cooperation among the 58 jurisdictions governed by the IFTA and IRP agreements? (2) Is it effectively promoting the allocation of tax burdens and payments among the jurisdictions? and (3) Is it effectively collecting tax payments …

Effect Of Different Additives On Properties Of Virgin Pp/Recycled Pp To Substitute Pc, Myriam Nabil Raouf Demian

Archived Theses and Dissertations

The use of polymers in many products have increased tremendously in the past few years leading to an increase in the amount of plastic waste generated, which in return became a huge problem. There are several ways to handle these wastes including; landfilling, chemical recycling, mechanical recycling and incineration. In Egypt mechanical recycling takes place in order to re-use these polymers in new products. The concern of this thesis is to try to find solution for some of the unused wastes by mechanically recycling them. The research aims to modify the properties of one of the most available polymers which …

A Finite Element Material Model Applied To A1-Alloy Consolidates Processed Via Equal Channel Angular Extrusion, Khalil Ibrahim El Khodary

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Using Neural Networks For The Diagnosis And Repair Of Corroded Steel In Reinforced Concrete Structures, Youssef Ibrahim Fayez

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Effective Recharge From Stream Beds In Arid Basins, Sherif Kamal Fouad Kamel

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Arid regions are characterized by scarce rainfall with long dry periods in-between the storms. These regions of the world are under severe and increasing pressure because the water shortage is almost the main obstacle facing their development plans. Assessment of the natural renewable water resources is urgently needed these days. This study appraises the effective groundwater recharge from ephemeral streams in arid regions. The assessment of the effective recharge is through the development of a numerical model coupling the surface model (SWMM) and the subsurface model (HYDRUS-ID).

Business Process Normalization Using Model Transformation, Mohamed Abdel-Razik Mansour

Archived Theses and Dissertations

Business Process Management is growing in popularity. While there is a need to change Business Process Models to evolve with different business needs, making these changes is usual a complicated and time consuming task. One of the reasons behind such complexity is the richness of some of the modeling languages used. UML Activity Diagrams are used as a language tool to model Business Processes. These Activity Diagrams allow for control and data flow to be represented in more than one expressive way. Although this expressiveness gives more flexibility to users, it comes at the price of making changes in process …

A Computer-Aided-Learning Tool For Teaching Construction Engineering Decision Making: An Excavation Stage Educational Game, Hosnachah Ahmed Refaat Mekkawi

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

A Framework For Requirements Engineering Support For Service Providers, Yohana Saad Soliman Nassim

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Minimum Number Of Points For Assessment Of Geometric Deviations, Ola Hamada Rashwan

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Heat Treatment On Microstructure, Hardness & Superelasticity Of Severely Deformed Niti, Omar Bahy El-Din Mortagy

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Fractionation Of Natural Organic Matter In Nile Water To Reduce Disinfection By-Products Formation, Ahmed Abdul Aziz Al Qabany

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

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Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Theoretical Analysis Of Strong-Axis Bending Mode Vibrations For Resonant Microcantilever (Bio)Chemical Sensors In Gas Or Liquid Phase, Isabelle Dufour, Stephen M. Heinrich, Fabien Josse

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

The frequency stability, sensitivity, and limit of detection of a coated-cantilever chemical sensor operating in a dynamic mode are mainly determined by its mechanical quality factor. While a coated-cantilever operating in the gas phase exhibits a large reduction in quality factor, immersion in liquids results in an even greater reduction in the Q-factor due to displaced fluid mass and losses in the surrounding liquid. In this paper, two different bending vibration modes are studied in order to minimize both the losses induced by the surrounding medium and the displaced fluid mass, thus increasing the quality factor and sensitivity and improving …

Mining Generalized Associations Of Semantic Relations From Textual Web Content, Tao Jiang, Ah-Hwee Tan, We Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traditional text mining techniques transform free text into flat bags of words representation, which does not preserve sufficient semantics for the purpose of knowledge discovery. In this paper, we present a two-step procedure to mine generalized associations of semantic relations conveyed by the textual content of Web documents. First, RDF (resource description framework) metadata representing semantic relations are extracted from raw text using a myriad of natural language processing techniques. The relation extraction process also creates a term taxonomy in the form of a sense hierarchy inferred from WordNet. Then, a novel generalized association pattern mining algorithm (GP-Close) is applied …

Granular Layers On Vibrating Plates: Effective Bending Stiffness And Particle-Size Effects, Wonmo Kang, Joseph A. Turner, Florin Bobaru, Liyong Yang, Kitti Rattanidit

Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience: Faculty Publications

Acoustic methods of land mine detection rely on the vibrations of the top plate of the mine in response to sound. For granular soil (e.g., sand), the particle size is expected to influence the mine response. This hypothesis is studied experimentally using a plate loaded with dry sand of various sizes from hundreds of microns to a few millimeters. For low values of sand mass, the plate resonance decreases with added mass and eventually reaches a minimum without particle size dependence. After the minimum, a frequency increase is observed with additional mass that includes a particle-size effect. Analytical nondissipative continuum …

Lake Whatcom Model Calibration With Variable Stoichiometry In Sediments - Revised, Chris Berger, Scott A. Wells

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This memorandum discusses model calibration and enhancements made to the Lake Whatcom water quality model. Model development and initial calibration were documented in the report “Lake Whatcom Water Quality Model” (Berger and Wells, 2005). The Lake Whatcom water quality model has been converted from CE-QUAL-W2 version 3.2 to version 3.5 (Cole and Wells, 2006).

Towards Efficient Planning For Real World Partially Observable Domains, Pradeep R. Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

My research goal is to build large-scale intelligent systems (both single- and multi-agent) that reason with uncertainty in complex, real-world environments. I foresee an integration of such systems in many critical facets of human life ranging from intelligent assistants in hospitals to offices, from rescue agents in large scale disaster response to sensor agents tracking weather phenomena in earth observing sensor webs, and others. In my thesis, I have taken steps towards achieving this goal in the context of systems that operate in partially observable domains that also have transitional (non-deterministic outcomes to actions) uncertainty. Given this uncertainty, Partially Observable …

Segmentation Of Overlapping Particles In Automatic Size Analysis Using Multi-Flash Imaging, Tze K Koh, Nicholas Miles, Steve Morgan, Barrie Hayes-Gill

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

In this paper, we propose a novel hardware approach to image segmentation, specifically in the case of overlapping particles. Our research is based on multi-flash imaging (MFI), originally developed to detect depth discontinuities. Multiple images captured with different illumination conditions provide additional information about a scene compared to conventional segmentation techniques. Shadows are used to identify true object edges and underlying particles. We applied the new approach in automated particle size analysis and evaluated it against the watershed and canny edge detection techniques. Evaluation results confirm that MFI can be applied in image segmentation and reveals the superiority of the …

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

Application Of Advanced Computational Modelling In The Comparison Of Stent Induced Coronary Flow Disturbances, Jonathan Murphy, Fergal Boyle

Conference Papers

Coronary stent implantation can improve blood flow in an artery narrowed by the build up of arterial plaque. However, the haemodynamic effect of stent placement is unclear and may influence arterial restenosis (re-blockage). In this investigation computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to predict the non-Newtonian three-dimensional flow field in a coronary artery following implantation of two different stents. A graphical illustration of the stented areas affected to various degrees of wall shear stress (WSS) is presented for both the Palmaz-Schatz (PS) and the Gianturco-Roubin-II (GR-II) coronary stents. The axial WSS and wall shear stress gradient (WSSG) is also presented …

Quality Of Service Routing Strategy Using Supervised Genetic Algorithm, Zhaoxia Wang, Yugeng Sun, Zhiyong Wang, Huayu Shen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A supervised genetic algorithm (SGA) is proposed to solve the quality of service (QoS) routing problems in computer networks. The supervised rules of intelligent concept are introduced into genetic algorithms (GAs) to solve the constraint optimization problem. One of the main characteristics of SGA is its searching space can be limited in feasible regions rather than infeasible regions. The superiority of SGA to other GAs lies in that some supervised search rules in which the information comes from the problems are incorporated into SGA. The simulation results show that SGA improves the ability of searching an optimum solution and accelerates …

Modeling And Sensitivity Analysis Of Acoustic Release Of Doxorubicin From Unstabilized Pluronic P105 Using An Artificial Neural Network Model, Ghaleb A. Husseini, Nabil M. Abdel-Jabbar, Farouq S. Mjalli, William G. Pitt

Faculty Publications

This paper models steady state acoustic release of Doxorubicin (Dox) from Pluronic P105micelles using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Previously collected release data werecompiled and used to train, validate, and test an ANN model. Sensitivity analysis was thenperformed on the following operating conditions: ultrasonic frequency, power density, Plu-ronic P105 concentration, and temperature. The model showed that drug release was mostefficient at lower frequencies. The analysis also demonstrated that release increases as thepower density increases. Sensitivity plots of ultrasound intensity revealed a drug releasethreshold of 0.015 W/cm2 and 0.38 W/cm2 at 20 and 70 kHz, respectively. The presence ofa power density threshold …

Neural And Electromyographic Correlates Of Wrist Posture Control, Aaron J. Suminski, Stephen M. Rao, Kristine M. Mosier, Robert A. Scheidt

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

In identical experiments in and out of a MR scanner, we recorded functional magnetic resonance imaging and electromyographic correlates of wrist stabilization against constant and time-varying mechanical perturbations. Positioning errors were greatest while stabilizing random torques. Wrist muscle activity lagged changes in joint angular velocity at latencies suggesting trans-cortical reflex action. Drift in stabilized hand positions gave rise to frequent, accurately directed, corrective movements, suggesting that the brain maintains separate representations of desired wrist angle for feedback control of posture and the generation of discrete corrections. Two patterns of neural activity were evident in the blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) time series …

Speech Signal Enhancement Through Adaptive Wavelet Thresholding, Michael T. Johnson, Xiaolong Yuan, Yao Ren

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

This paper demonstrates the application of the Bionic Wavelet Transform (BWT), an adaptive wavelet transform derived from a non-linear auditory model of the cochlea, to the task of speech signal enhancement. Results, measured objectively by Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) and Segmental SNR (SSNR) and subjectively by Mean Opinion Score (MOS), are given for additive white Gaussian noise as well as four different types of realistic noise environments. Enhancement is accomplished through the use of thresholding on the adapted BWT coefficients, and the results are compared to a variety of speech enhancement techniques, including Ephraim Malah filtering, iterative Wiener filtering, and spectral …

Hydrodynamics Investigation Of In-Vitro Dissolution Testing, Ge Bai

Dissertations

Dissolution testing is routinely carried out in the pharmaceutical industry to determine dissolution rate of solid dosage forms. The United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) Dissolution Apparatus II is the device most commonly used for this purpose. Despite its widespread use, dissolution testing remains susceptible to significant error and test failures. Limited information is available on the hydrodynamics of this apparatus, although hydrodynamic effects can play a major role on test performance.

Laser-Doppler Velocimetry (LDV) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) were used here to experimentally map and computationally predict the velocity distribution inside a standard USP Apparatus II under the typical operating …

Some Contributions On Mimo Radar, Nikolaus Lehmann

Dissertations

Motivated by recent advances in Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) wireless communications, this dissertation aims at exploring the potential of MIMO approaches in the radar context. In communications, MIMO systems combat the fading effects of the multi-path channel with spatial diversity. Further, the scattering environment can be used by such systems to achieve spatial multiplexing. In radar, a complex target consisting of several scatterers takes the place of the multi-path channel of the communication problem. A target's radar cross section (RCS), which determines the amount of returned power, greatly varies with the considered aspect. Those variations significantly impair the detection …

Nanoparticle Formation And Coating Using Supercritical Fluids, Abhijit Aniruddha Gokhale

Dissertations

Jet breakup phenomenon and nanoparticle formation

The focus of this dissertation is to study the SAS process to manufacture nanoparticles with minimum agglomeration, controlled size and size distribution. Solution jet breakup and solvent evaporation into supercritical fluid (SC CO₂) is studied using high speed charged coupled device (CCD) camera facilitated with double shot particle image veloimetry (PIV) laser and a high pressure view cell. Particles formation using SAS is studied. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) particles are formed using micron size capillary nozzles and combination of thermodynamically good and poor solvents in order to achieve nano-sized particles with reduced agglomeration and …

Solvent Resistant Microporous/Nanoporous Polymeric Hollow Fiber And Flat Film Membranes And Their Applications, Praveen B. Kosaraju

Dissertations

The separation and purification of organic-solvent-based process streams may be carried out by membrane processes such as nanofiltration/ultrafiltration/microfiltration and membrane solvent extraction. Lack of solvent stability and chemical stability of most commercially available membranes is limiting the utilization of the above mentioned membrane technologies. This dissertation was primarily focused on developing solvent resistant hollow fiber and flat film membranes for separation and purification of organic-solvent-based process streams.

Available porous polymeric supports (Polypropylene (PP), Polyethersulfone (PES) and Nylon) suitable for the required solvent-stable applications were chosen first and then the supports were modified to satisfy the requirements for the applications. Membrane …

Enhancement Of Fluidization And Filtration Using Nanoparticle Agglomerates And Aerogels, Jose A. Quevedo

Dissertations

Previous works have classified the fluidization behavior of nanoparticles as Agglomerate Particulate Fluidization (APF) and Agglomerate Bubbling Fluidization (ABE). These fluidization behaviors are quite different in regard to the fluidized bed expansion, the presence of bubbles and the smoothness of the bed surface, with APF nanopowders showing a much more homogeneous fluidization and a much better dispersion than ABE nanopowders which are generally very difficult to fluidize and show vigorous bubbling. In the present work, the fluidization of APF as well as ABF nanopowders is studied in depth, both conventionally, and in the presence of extemal assistance; several related topics …