Engineering Commons^™

Department Of Biological Systems Engineering Newsletter, Volume 4, Number 1, August 2008

BSE Department Magazine

Contents:
New Biomedical Lab Makes Debut
From the Department Head
The Dean's List
Meet the Faculty
Alumni News
Student News
UCARE
Graduates
John Miller: A Success Story
Discover Your Career: Mechanized Systems Management
Alumnus Profile
Faculty and Staff News
Comings and Goings
Spreading the word about No-till

Flying Dme Arcs, Nihad E. Daidzic

Aviation Department Publications

No abstract provided.

A Nonlinear Finite Element Model Of Cartilage Growth, Andrew Davol, Michael S. Bingham, Robert L. Sah, Stephen M. Klisch

Mechanical Engineering

The long range objective of this work is to develop a cartilage growth finite element model (CGFEM), based on the theories of growing mixtures that has the capability to depict the evolution of the anisotropic and inhomogeneous mechanical properties, residual stresses, and nonhomogeneities that are attained by native adult cartilage. The CGFEM developed here simulates isotropic in vitro growth of cartilage with and without mechanical stimulation. To accomplish this analysis a commercial finite element code (ABAQUS) is combined with an external program (MATLAB) to solve an incremental equilibrium boundary value problem representing one increment of growth. This procedure is repeated …

Microwave Dielectroscopy Of Breast Tissue Phantoms In The 5.8-40 Ghz Range, Binh Tran

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Based on the high contrast in dielectric properties between the low-water-contain sample and the high-water-content one, we can determine whether the tissue sample is cancerous or normal. In order to make the measurement repeatable and convenient, some phantom materials, which have the same dielectric properties of human tissues, have been prepared. These phantom tissues are made from gelatin, water with honey syrup and Sodium Chloride (NaCl). In this project, we are going to measure and compare the dielectric properties of different types of phantom tissues by using focused beam antennas. The purpose of this project is to perform a systematic …

E-Transcript Web Services System Supporting Dynamic Conversion Between Xml And Edi, Myungjae Kwak '11, Woohyun Kang '14, Gondy Leroy, Samir Chatterjee

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

As XML becomes a standard for communications between distributed heterogeneous machines, many schools plan to implement Web Services systems using the XML e-transcript (electronic transcript) standard. We propose a framework that supports both XML e-transcript Web Services and existing EDI e-transcript systems. The framework uses the workflow engine to exploit the benefits of workflow management mechanisms. The workflow engine manages the e-transcript business process by enacting and completing the tasks and sub-processes within the main business process. We implemented the proposed framework by using various open source projects including Java, Eclipse, and Apache Software Foundation’s Web Services projects. Compared with …

Performance And Analysis Of Transfer Control Protocol Over Voice Over Wireless Local Area Network, Rajendra Patil

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science and Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Science by Rajendra Patil in August of 2008.

Service Oriented Transitive Closure Solution, Jonathan Baran

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The goal of this project is a service based solution that utilizes parallel and distributed processing algorithms to solve the transitive closure problem for a large dataset. A dataset may be view conceptually as a table in a database, with a physical structure representing a file containing a sequence of records and fields. Two records are said to be transitively related if and only if they are directly related due to sharing of one or more specific fields, or a sequence may be made from one record to the other under the condition that all intermediate entries are related the …

Hypothesis Testing With Interval Data: Case Of Regulatory Constraints, Sa-Aat Niwitpong, Hung T. Nguyen, Ingo Neumann, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, there exist regulatory thresholds: e.g., a concentration of certain chemicals in the car exhaust cannot exceed a certain level, etc. If we know the exact value of the corresponding quantity, then we can immediately tell whether, e.g., a car design resulting in this value is acceptable (below the threshold) or not acceptable (above the threshold). In practice, however, the value of the desired quantity comes from measurements or from expert estimates; in both cases, the resulting estimates are not 100% accurate. It is therefore necessary to make an accept/reject decision based on this estimate, i.e., based …

Development Of The Soil Moisture Index To Quantify Agricultural Drought And Its “User Friendliness” In Severity-Area-Duration Assessment, Venkataramana Sridhar, Kenneth G. Hubbard, Jinsheng You, Eric D. Hunt

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines the role of soil moisture in quantifying drought through the development of a drought index using observed and modeled soil moisture. In Nebraska, rainfall is received primarily during the crop-growing season and the supply of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico determines if the impending crop year is either normal or anomalous and any deficit of rain leads to a lack of soil moisture storage. Using observed soil moisture from the Automated Weather Data Network (AWDN), the actual available water content for plants is calculated as the difference between observed or modeled soil moisture and wilting point, …

Raising The Dead, Nihad E. Daidzic

Aviation Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Exploring Potential U.S. Switchgrass Production For Lignocellulosic Ethanol, Ethan B. Davis, Henriette I. Jager, Tristram O. West, Robert D. Perlack, Craig C. Brandt, Stan D. Wullschleger, Latha M. Baskaran, Erin G. Wilkerson, Mark E. Downing, Carla A. Gunderson

United States Department of Energy: Publications

In response to concerns about oil dependency and the contributions of fossil fuel use to climatic change, the U.S. Department of Energy has begun a research initiative to make 20% of motor fuels biofuel based in 10 years, and make 30% of fuels bio-based by 2030. Fundamental to this objective is developing an understanding of feedstock dynamics of crops suitable for cellulosic ethanol production. This report focuses on switchgrass, reviewing the existing literature from field trials across the United States, and compiling it for the first time into a single database. Data available from the literature included cultivar and crop …

Computing Degrees Of Subsethood And Similarity For Interval-Valued Fuzzy Sets: Fast Algorithms, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

We propose fast algorithms for computing degrees of subsethood and similarity for interval-valued fuzzy sets.

Choquet Integrals And Owa Criteria As A Natural (And Optimal) Next Step After Linear Aggregation: A New General Justification, Francois Modave, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In multi-criteria decision making, it is necessary to aggregate (combine) utility values corresponding to several criteria (parameters). The simplest way to combine these values is to use linear aggregation. In many practical situations, however, linear aggregation does not fully adequately describe the actual decision making process, so non-linear aggregation is needed.

From the purely mathematical viewpoint, the next natural step after linear functions is the use of quadratic functions. However, in decision making, a different type of non-linearities are usually more adequate than quadratic ones: non-linearities like OWA or Choquet integral that use min and max in addition to linear …

Extracting Trust Network Information From Scientific Web Portals, Alejandro Castaneda, Paulo Pinheiro Da Silva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

An increased exchange of (scientific) information across organizations and disciplines is one of the long-term goals of the semantic web. In any such exchange of information, it is not difficult to identify one or more (scientific) communities responsible for the measurement, gathering and processing of scientific information. More challenging, however, is to understand the trust relations between members of these communities, whether the members are organizations or people. With a better understanding of trust relations, one may be able to compute trust recommendations for scientific information exchange, increasing in this way the acceptance of information by scientists. In this paper, …

Intermediate Degrees Are Needed For The World To Be Cognizable: Towards A New Justification For Fuzzy Logic Ideas, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich, J. Esteban Gamez, Francois Modave, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Most traditional examples of fuzziness come from the analysis of commonsense reasoning. When we reason, we use words from natural language like "young", "well". In many practical situations, these words do not have a precise true-or-false meaning, they are fuzzy. One may therefore be left with an impression that fuzziness is a subjective characteristic, it is caused by the specific way our brains work.

However, the fact that that we are the result of billions of years of successful adjusting-to-the-environment evolution makes us conclude that everything about us humans is not accidental. In particular, the way we reason is not …

A Mathematical Model Development And Sensitivity Analysis Of Two Photon Polymerization For 3d Micro/Nano Fabrication, Nitin Uppal

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Two photon polymerization (2PP) is an effective technique for the fabrication of complex polymeric 3-D micro/nano features using ultrashort pulses from a NIR laser source. The photosensitive material absorbs two photons and initiates the chain polymerization reaction. The interaction of laser pulses with photo responsive resin creates a voxel (volumetric pixel) which defines the resolution of 2PP process. In this work, a mathematical model of the polymerization process that considers the effects of molecular diffusion and polymerization kinetics on the formation of voxel. The increase in temperature upon polymerization and their effect on the polymerization kinetics and molecular diffusion is …

A Least-Squares/Galerkin Split Finite Element Method For Incompressible And Compressible Navier-Stokes Equations, Rajeev Kumar

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Over the years Galerkin finite element method along with its variants has been used to solve incompressible and compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The Galerkin method which is more suited for self-adjoint type system of equations like in solid mechanics and heat conduction struggles when applied to non self-adjoint type systems like one encountered in fluid dynamics. Velocity and pressure variables have to be approximated using functions which belong to different spaces and must satisfy the tough LBB condition. The least-squares finite element method (LSFEM), which is based on minimizing the l2-norm of the residual, has many attractive advantages over Galerkin finite …

The Development And Testing Of Pulsed Detonation Engine Ground Demonstrators, Philip Koshy Panicker

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The successful implementation of a PDE running on fuel and air mixtures will require fast-acting fuel-air injection and mixing techniques, detonation initiation techniques such as DDT enhancing devices or a pre-detonator, an effective ignition system that can sustain repeated firing at high rates and a fast and capable, closed-loop control system. The control system requires high-speed transducers for real-time monitoring of the PDE and the detection of the detonation wave speed. It is widely accepted that the detonation properties predicted by C-J detonation relations are fairly accurate in comparison to experimental values. The post-detonation flow properties can also be expressed …

Design And Fabrication Of Piezoelectric Micro Generator Using Laser Micromachining And Mems Technique, Hyunuk Kim

Material Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

An energy harvesting device based on PbPb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3-Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3 ceramics was fabricated by using laser micromachining technique. It was found that the laser machining process did not have a significant effect on electrical properties of piezoelectric material. The device was found to generate continuous power of 1.13 μW at. 870Hz across a 288.5 kΩ load with power density of 301.3 μW/cm3. The characterization was conducted in low frequency regime of 50-1000Hz at the constant force of 8g(where g=9.8m/s2) In order to fabricate a lead free MEMS device, BaTiO3 was selected as the piezoelectric material. BaTiO3 gel was synthesized by aqueous process using …

Analytical Thermal Model Of A Generic Multi-Layer Spacerless 3d Package, Erantha Nuwan Rodrigo

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Analytical Thermal Model of a Generic Multi-Layer Spacerless 3D Package Abstract The need for more functions in a single device has lead to die stacking architecture. Although the number of functional die increases further to accommodate package functionality, the overall package dimensions have not increased, they have stayed the same or decreased. Recently, Samsung announce a 16 die stacked device. In order to keep the same package height, alternate stacking structures need to be investigated. One suck opportunity is spacerless die stacking architecture. Using dummy silicon spacers add cost to a package and do not increase the memory of functionality. …

The Lattice Boltzmann Method For Computational Fluid Dynamics Applications, Chinmay Adhvaryu

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

An analysis of lattice Boltzmann method is presented in this thesis. This analysis contrast with the traditional lattice Boltzmann work, where complex fluids are considered with extended properties. Focus of the current thesis is on the validation and use of lattice Boltzmann method for traditional fluid dynamics. In first part of the document a historical and theoretical background of lattice Boltzmann method is presented. In this part some conclusions are drawn about the stability and other physical characteristics of the lattice Boltzmann method. Second part deals with the computer implementation of the LBM. It also discusses some aspect about practical …

The Development Of A Finite Element Tool For The Calculation Of Beam Cross Section Properties, Bryan Dale Mixon

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Cross section properties are crucial in the analysis and design of beams as they play a key role in the determination of the stress state encountered. The development of an FEM tool in MATLAB for the calculation of beam cross section properties will be discussed. Properties of interest include general cross section properties as well as the non-trivial warping-dependent properties for both the unrestrained and restrained cross section conditions for solid and hollow, open and closed sections.

Flip Chip Back End Design Parameters To Reduce Bump Electromigration, Vishal Nagaraj

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

The advancement in flip chip technology has enabled us to meet the requirement of smaller die size along with the increased functionality. Due to this development in flip chip packaging technology along with higher current carrying requirement of solder bumps, electromigration has now become a reliability concern. In this research, a commercially available finite element tool is adopted in order to study the distribution of current density in eutectic solder bump for variety of back end design parameters. Geometries needed were generated by using Pro/Engineer® Wildfire 3.0 as a Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) tool and were transferred to ANSYS® 10.0, where meshed …

Development Of A Freeway Incident Rating System, Jose Javier Lopez

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

A freeway incident rating system is proposed to classify incidents in terms of their disruptive potential to cause delays, fuel wastage, secondary accidents, and other adverse operational impacts. A two-dimensional rating scale is used which classifies incidents in terms of their severity and the number of agencies required to respond and clear incidents. Variables used in characterizing the severity include number of vehicles involved, number of lanes and shoulders blocked, time of incident occurrence, duration of incident until full clearance, and weather conditions at the time of the incident. The objective behind the development of such a rating system is …

Targeted Drug Delivery To Human Aortic Smooth Muscle Cells Using Biodegradable Nanoparticles, Danyel Specht

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

Restenosis is a common problem that can occur in angioplasty patients. In order to reduce the restentosis rate, various treatments such as glucocorticoids and drug eluting stents have been used for angioplasty patients. However, their limitations include the inefficient delivery of drugs to inhibit smooth muscle cell proliferation, a major cause of restenosis. Therefore, we propose the use of biodegradable nanoparticles as a drug delivery system for transporting a therapeutic agent to human aortic smooth muscle cells (HASMC) to prevent their proliferation. In this study the glucocorticoid dexamethasone (DEX) was chosen as the therapeutic agent. A biodegradable polymer, poly (D,Llactide-co-glycolide) …

Subcellular Light Activation, Control And Manipulation Using A Dynamically Reconfigurable Nanopatterning System, Amruta Rajiv Joshi

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

Cellular communication is the basis of all cellular activities and functions. Cell signaling is crucial in the processes of tissue maintenance, tissue development and homeostasis. Errors in transmission or interpretation of these signals can result in the onset of diseases like cancer. Efforts have been made to probe into the communication between cells, and the extracellular signals that cells transmit to each other. There is however, a necessity to understand cell communication within the cellular components themselves and to be able to perform a nanoscale analysis of the cell organelle behavior. Many cellular mechanisms involve processes at the subcellular level, …

Microfluidic Flow Cytometer For High Throughput Label Free Cell Analysis, Sajal Chirvi

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

Microfluidic flow cytometer for high throughput label free cell analysis is proposed. Detection of cell morphology plays an important role in determination of state of health and diagnosis of many diseases such as sickle cell anemia, cancer, urine analysis, blood analysis etc. The platform proposed integrates label free cell analysis, microfluidic platform and high throughput imaging. Label free analysis helps in analyzing cells without altering cell/protein of interest and also allows biophysical characterization of living cells. Microfluidic platform used is fabricated from soft lithography. It mimics biological environment due to its channel confinement and is biocompatible. Being optically clear (PDMS), …

Cytotoxicity Evaluation Of Temperature Sensitive Poly(N-Isopropylacrylamide) Nanoparticles For Drug Delivery, Aniket Sharadrao Wadajkar

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

The objective of this research project was to develop temperature sensitive poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPA) nanoparticles for drug delivery applications. These nanoparticles were formulated by a radical polymerization method, and their toxicity was studied in vitro using MTS assays and various cell types such as fibroblasts, smooth muscle cells, and endothelial cells. Cytotoxicity results did not show a significant difference in cell survival when cells were exposed to different particle sizes (100, 300, and 500 nm). In addition, dose studies of 100 nm nanoparticles showed that the cells exposed to PNIPA nanoparticles at concentrations less than or equal to 5 mg/ml were …

Studies On Volume Change Movements In High Pi Clays For Better Design Of Low Volume Pavements, Thammanoon Manosuthikij

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Numerous low- to medium-volume roads such as Farm Market (FM) roads constructed on expansive clay subgrades, especially in the eastern and central Texas, encounter severe pavement cracking and premature loss of serviceability. The maintenance costs, in some cases, are greater than the initial construction costs. The roads built on problematic expansive soils often become distressed due to volume changes associated with seasonal moisture content fluctuations. This dissertation research was attempted to evaluate models that predict volume changes movements of the expansive or highly plastic soils and also develop new models that could provide better prediction of volume change movements in …

Building Pressure Tests Of Fiber-Reinforced Foam-Based Lightweight Concrete Precast Wall Panels, Francheska Enid Seijo

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Instrumentation and procedures for building pressure tests were designed as a means of providing new wind pressure test methods for full-scale building models. Fiber-reinforced foam-based lightweight concrete precast wall panels were studied in this investigation. Three (3) full-scale prototype buildings were tested for this purpose. To determine the material properties and design parameters for this targeted 90 pcf (1,446 kg/m3) cellular lightweight concrete and to gain overall knowledge of its behavior, some tests such as compressive strength test, pull-out strength test, and flexural strength test were performed. The wind pressure tests performed provided results for strength, maximum wind pressure the …