Engineering Commons^™

Risk Matrix Input Data Biases, Eric D. Smith, William T. Siefert, David Drain

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Risk matrices used in industry characterize particular risks in terms of the likelihood of occurrence, and the consequence of the actualized risk. Human cognitive bias research led by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky exposed systematic translations of objective probability and value as judged by human subjects. Applying these translations to the risk matrix allows the formation of statistical hypotheses of risk point placement biases. Industry-generated risk matrix data reveals evidence of biases in the judgment of likelihood and consequence-principally, likelihood centering, a systematic increase in consequence, and a diagonal bias. Statistical analyses are conducted with linear regression, normal distribution fitting, …

A Global Defect Chemistry Model For P-Type Mixed Ionic And Electronic Conductors, Xiao Dong Zhou, Harlan U. Anderson

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A global defect chemistry model is presented to relate the properties of a variety of p-type perovskite conductors, including chromites, manganites, and ferrites, which can be tailored as mixed ionic and electronic conductors (MIECs). It is found that oxygen nonstoichiometry in these p-type MIECs can be correlated using reaction constant for oxygen vacancy generation. the values of reaction constant for oxygen vacancy formation can be obtained by simulating the electronic conductivity as a function of oxygen activity and temperature with the existing global model that is based on the concept of localized electron holes. the global defect chemistry model allows …

Effect Of System Components On Electrical And Thermal Characteristics For Power Delivery Networks In 3d System Integration, Jianyong Xie, Daehyun Chung, Madhavan Swaminathan, Michael Mcallister, Alina Deutsch, Lijun Jiang, Barry J. Rubin

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, parameterized electrical-thermal co-analysis for power delivery networks (PDN) in 3D system integration is carried out. A 3D integrated system including glass-ceramic substrate, single and stacked dies, power delivery network, through-silicon vias (TSVs), controlled collapse chip connections (C4s), underfill material, and thermal interface material (TIM) is analyzed with several variable parameters. The analysis results show that temperature effects on DC IR drop can not be neglected. The TIM thermal conductivity, C4 density, stacking order of stacked dies, and voltage source location affect the final IR drop and hot spot temperature in the system. ©2009 IEEE.

Reflective Optics Cpv Panels Enabling Large Scale, Reliable Generation Of Solar Energy Cost Competitive With Fossil Fuels, S. Horne, M. Mcdonald, N. Hartsoch, K. Desy

Publications (E)

The objective of this 18 month subcontract was the improvement of reflective optics CPV panels to enable the large-scale, reliable production of solar electricity to meet SAI-established LCOE targets, and ultimately provide a path to solar power at parity with or better than the cost of energy generated utilizing fossil fuels. To this end, SolFocus has completed this subcontract with great success as evidenced by the end results of a CPV panel with conversion efficiencies greater than the targeted 22% and manufacturing capabilities with a run rate capacity far exceeding the milestone benchmark >3MW.

2009 Indiana County Highway Department Wage And Salary Survey, Indiana Ltap

Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) Publications

Included in this publication are wage and salary figures for the major salaried and hourly county highway positions in Indiana. In addition, the numbers of employees working under each job title are tabulated, and the ratio of total number of employees per mile of county road is displayed. The following series of tables are divided into four categories: administration, maintenance and repair, general and undistributed, and cumulative bridge. The appendix presents the recommended methods for calculating the labor burden for both salaried and hourly employees. Also included are generalized worksheets, which may be copied and used to calculate labor burden …

A Parallel Direct Solver For The Simulation Of Large-Scale Power/Ground Networks, Stephen Cauley, Venkataramanan Balakrishnan, Cheng-Kok Koh

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

We present an algorithm for the fast and accurate simulation of power/ground mesh structures. Our method is a direct (non-iterative) approach for simulation based upon a parallel matrix inversion algorithm. Through the use of additional computational resources, this distributed computing technique facilitates the simulation of large-scale power/ground networks. In addition, the new dimension of flexibility provided by our algorithm allows for a more accurate analysis of power/ground mesh structures using RLC interconnect models. Specifically, we offer a method that employs a sparse approximate inverse technique to consider more reluctance coupling terms for increased accuracy of simulation. The inclusion of additional …

Camouflaging Timing Channels In Web Traffic, Sarah H. Sellke, Chih-Chun Wang, Saurabh Bagchi, Ness B. Shroff

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

Web traffic accounts for more than half of Internet traffic today. Camouflaging covert timing channels in Web traffic would be advantageous for concealment. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of disguising network covert timing channels as HTTP traffic to avoid detection. Extensive research has shown that Internet traffic, including HTTP traffic, exhibits self-similarity and long range persistence. Existing covert timing channels that mimic i.i.d. legitimate traffic cannot imitate HTTP traffic because these covert traffic patterns are not long range dependent. The goal of this work is to design a covert timing channel that can be camouflaged as HTTP traffic. …

Ccack: Efficient Network Coding Based Opportunistic Routing Through Cumulative Coded Acknowledgments, Dimitrios Koutsonikolas, Chih-Chun Wang, Y. Charlie Hu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Technical Reports

The use of random linear network coding (NC) has significantly simplified the design of opportunistic routing (OR) protocols by removing the need of coordination among forwarding nodes for avoiding duplicate transmissions. However, NC-based OR protocols face a new challenge: How many coded packets should each forwarder transmit? To avoid the overhead of feedback exchange, most practical existing NC-based OR protocols compute offline the expected number of transmissions for each forwarder using heuristics based on periodic measurements of the average link loss rates and the ETX metric. Although attractive due to their minimal coordination overhead, these approaches may suffer significant performance …

Risk Management And Assessment Of Upgrading And Standardizing Guardrail, Karen Zhu, Shuo Li

JTRP Technical Reports

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) has installed guardrail systems on interstate highways and other highways in accordance with a variety of standards throughout the years. Traffic volume has increased and the posted speeds have been raised on most INDOT’s interstate highways. Consequently, the characteristics of run-off-the-road (ROR) crashes may have changed. In the meantime, material prices have increased considerably and the guardrail maintenance and crash repair costs have increased accordingly. There is no doubt all these changes will not only greatly affect the ROR crash prediction, but also greatly affect the guardrail benefit/cost analysis. This study examined the current …

Solar Panel Experiment, John Hauger

Electrical Engineering

This senior project will focus on creating a suitable testing procedure for the provided solar panel system. The testing parameters will be based on the expected 60W output power of the system. The complete procedure will provide a thorough analysis of the power flow and overall efficiency of the system.

This senior project report will discuss the importance of this experiment in the Electrical Engineering curriculum, the system requirements and parameters tested in the design, and the provided results based on the test conditions. In addition, this report will include the complete testing procedure and recommendations for possible future additions …

An Experimental Study Of Potential Residential And Commercial Applications Of Small-Scale Hybrid Power Systems, Michael Anthony Acosta

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The research presented in this thesis provides an understanding of small-scale hybrid power systems. Experiments were conducted to identify potential applications of renewable energy in residential and commercial applications in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Solar and wind energy converted into electric energy was stored in batteries and inverted to power common household and commercial appliances. Several small to medium size hybrid power systems were setup and utilized to conduct numerous tests to study renewable energy prospects and feasibility for various applications. The experimental results obtained indicate that carefully constructed solar power systems can provide people living in isolated …

Theoretical Power Generation And Emissions, Experimental Validation, And Educational Application Of An Internal Combustion Engine, Trevor S. Elliott

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis addresses the use of experimental means to validate the theoretical power generation and the resulting emissions of an internal combustion (IC) engine. The results of this work will be used to instruct undergraduate engineering students about IC engine theory and prove IC engine theory experimentally. A 2001 GM Saturn 1.9 Liter is the designated IC engine. Thermodynamic, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer calculations were performed based on engine geometry and laboratory environment to obtain theoretical power and emissions values. A test apparatus including a dynamometer, gas analyzers, and computer data acquisition systems was utilized to obtain experimental power …

Entropy And Certainty In Lossless Data Compression, James Jay Jacobs

Dissertations

Data compression is the art of using encoding techniques to represent data symbols using less storage space compared to the original data representation. The encoding process builds a relationship between the entropy of the data and the certainty of the system. The theoretical limits of this relationship are defined by the theory of entropy in information that was proposed by Claude Shannon. Lossless data compression is uniquely tied to entropy theory as the data and the system have a static definition. The static nature of the two requires a mechanism to reduce the entropy without the ability to alter either …

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Using Electronic Faculty Course Portfolios To Showcase Classroom Practices And Student Learning, Paul Savory, Amy M. Goodburn

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Faculty course portfolios are a valuable medium for documenting and making visible the serious intellectual work of teaching. Developing a faculty course portfolio follows the same process one uses to explore a research question. Faculty members inquire, analyze, and document their teaching practices and the resulting student learning and then make the results accessible for use, review, and assessment by one’s peers. In this article, we introduce four types of electronic course portfolios that sponsor different forms of inquiry into student learning. We highlight the major components of each type, offer advice in developing them, and share examples of each. …

Modeling Of Metal-Ferroelectric-Insulator-Semiconductor Structures Based On Langmuir–Blodgett Copolymer Films, Timothy J. Reece, Stephen Ducharme

Stephen Ducharme Publications

Among the ferroelectric thin films used in field-effect transistor devices; the ferroelectric copolymer of polyvinylidene fluoride PVDF –CH2–CF2–, with trifluoroethylene TrFE –CHF–CF2–, has distinct advantages, including low dielectric constant, low processing temperature, low cost, and compatibility with organic semiconductors. The operation of a metal-ferroelectric insulatorsemiconductor structure with PVDF-TrFE as the ferroelectric layer was analyzed and optimized by numerical solution of the Miller and McWhorter model. A model device consisting of 20 nm PVDF/TrFE on a 10-nm-thick high-k dielectric buffer exhibits a memory window of 5 V with an operating voltage of 15 V. The operating voltage can be reduced to …

Singlemode-Multimode-Singlemode Optical Fibre Structures For Optical Sensing, Agus Muhamad Hatta

Doctoral

This thesis describes theoretical and experimental investigations on all-fibre multimode interference (MMI) devices using a singlemode-multimode-singlemode (SMS) fibre structure for use as a new type of edge filter for a ratiometric wavelength measurement system and as novel stand alone sensors. The use of two edge filters, so called X-type edge filters based on SMS fibre structures in a ratiometric wavelength measurement system is proposed and demonstrated. The use of X-type edge filters can improve the resolution and accuracy of wavelength measurement compared to the use of one edge filter in a conventional ratiometric system. Several aspects of the SMS edge …

Responses To “Comment On ‘Response To Plevin: Implications For Life Cycle Emissions Regulations’” And “Assessing Corn Ethanol: Relevance And Responsibility”, Adam Liska, Kenneth Cassman

Adam Liska Papers

This letter responds to two issues concerning the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity of corn-ethanol that were raised in discussions of our response (Liska and Cassman 2009) to Plevin’s article (2009), which critiques our original research (Liska et al. 2009) published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology. ... The suggestion by Anex and Lifset (2009) that corn-ethanol does not reduce GHG emissions by 47% compared to gasoline, but instead by “somewhere between” 35 to 40%, is unsubstantiated.

Pic Controlled Two-Band Stereo Audio Equalizer, Tim Brown

Electrical Engineering

The purpose of this project is to build a PIC (Peripheral Interface Controlled) controlled two-band stereo audio equalizer. The input audio from each stereo channel is separated into four different analog filters. The PIC has been programmed in BASIC and is used to route the audio signal to one of the four analog filters. Three of the filters have been preset to a certain frequency response (Jazz, Natural, and Bass), and the fourth filter has the unique ability to be controlled manually. Stereo potentiometers have been installed on the “Manual” filter to allow the user to change the frequency response …

Cyber Influence, William Hutchinson

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

This paper explores influence in the cyber-world and the ability and effectiveness of influence campaigns in this medium. It examines the possibilities of influence in the online world as examines the potential of mobile technologies in this area. The contentious link between influence and behavioural change is investigated. Counterinfluence in the context of radicalisation is also looked at. Whilst it is inevitable that the digital medium is and will be used for influence campaigns and will be influential regardless if there are concerted ‘campaigns’ or not, it effects in terms of behavioural change are still open to question.

Appraising Critical Infrastructure Systems With Visualisation, Graeme Pye, Matthew Warren

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

This paper explores the use of system modelling as an approach for appraising critical infrastructure systems. It reports on focus group findings with relation to the system modelling aspects of a critical infrastructure security analysis and modelling framework. Specifically, this discussion focuses on the interpretations of a focus group in terms of the likely benefits or otherwise of system visualisation. With the group focusing on its perceived value as an educational tool in terms of providing an abstract visualisation representation of a critical infrastructure system incident.

Safeguarding Australia From Cyber-Terrorism:A Proposed Cyber-Terrorism Scada Risk Framework For Industry Adoption, Christopher Beggs, Matthew Warren

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

Terrorist groups are currently using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to orchestrate their conventional physical attacks. More recently, terrorists have been developing a new form of capability within the cyber-arena to coordinate cyber-based attacks. This paper identifies that cyber-terrorism capabilities are an integral, imperative, yet under-researched component in establishing, and enhancing cyber-terrorism risk assessment models for SCADA systems. This paper is an extension of work previously published by Beggs and Warren 2008, it presents a high level overview of a cyber-terrorism SCADA risk framework that has been adopted and validated by SCADA industry practitioners. The paper proposes a managerial framework …

Interim Access To The International Space Station, Tyson Karl Smith

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis evaluates mission scenarios using the existing Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles for delivering the Crew Exploration Vehicle to the International Space Station. The Space Shuttle is scheduled to retire in the year 2011 and the Ares I is being developed to replace it. With its current schedule, the earliest that the Ares I will become fully operational is 2016. The configurations in this thesis are presented to narrow the gap in which the USA does not have direct access to the International Space Station. They also present "buy down" options for the USA human space operations, if the current …

Parshall Flume Staff Gauge Location And Entrance Wingwall Discharge Calibration Corrections, Bryan J. Heiner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Utah Water Research Laboratory, in conjunction with the State of Utah, initiated a study to determine the accuracy of a wide variety of flow measurement devices in Utah. The project selected 70 sites with flow measurement devices throughout the state. During the assessment each device had its physical condition and flow measurement accuracy documented.

Although a wide variety of flow measurement devices were tested, the majority were Parshall flumes. Many of the assessed Parshall flumes were not measuring flow to the specified ±5 percent design accuracy. Problems in flow measurement were due to issues with the staff gauge location …

Quantifying Surface Water And Groundwater Interactions In A High-Gradient Mountain Stream For Solute Transport, Noah M. Schmadel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

A study reach in a mountain stream highly influenced by groundwater was selected to test common data collection strategies used to characterize and quantify groundwater exchange processes necessary to predict solute transport. The data types collected include: high frequency discharge estimates with the use of rating curves, dilution gauging techniques with instantaneous tracer experiments, groundwater table and stream water surface elevations, vertical head gradients, and hydraulic conductivity estimates. The first two data types were categorized as stream gauging and the remaining three data types as site characterization. The stream gauging data were used to quantify net changes in stream discharge …

Native Earth Electric Field Measurements Using Small Spacecraft In Low Earth Orbit, John A. Pratt

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The use of small satellites to measure the native electric field of the earth has historically presented many problems as a result of the generally modest pointing capabilities of small satellites. In spite of this, the cost of small satellites makes them ideal for just such scientific missions. This thesis details many of the constraints of electric field measuring missions as well as the requirements on any spacecraft designed to accomplish such. The data from a small sounding rocket mission is then analyzed and its usefulness discussed. Possible other methods for use are also discussed.

Memory Architecture Template For Fast Block Matching Algorithms On Field Programmable Gate Arrays, Shant Chandrakar

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Fast Block Matching (FBM) algorithms for video compression are well suited for acceleration using parallel data-path architectures on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). However, designing an efficient on-chip memory subsystem to provide the required throughput to this parallel data-path architecture is a complex problem. This thesis presents a memory architecture template that can be parameterized for a given FBM algorithm, number of parallel Processing Elements (PEs), and block size. The template can be parameterized with well known exploration techniques to design efficient on-chip memory subsystems. The memory subsystems are derived for two existing FBM algorithms and are implemented on a …

Automatic People Counting And Matching, John Sallay

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis explores software algorithm for implementing a people counting and matching system to be used on a bus. A special camera is used, known as a texel camera, that generates depth and color information for a scene. This added information greatly facilitates both the tasks of matching and counting.

Although people counting is a relatively mature field, there are several situations in which current technologies are not able to count correctly. Several of these difficult situations are tested with 82% counting accuracy.

The idea of matching people on a bus is also developed. The goal is not to identify …

Embedded Spacecraft Thermal Control Using Ultrasonic Consolidation, Jared W. Clements

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Research has been completed in order to rapidly manufacture spacecraft thermal control technologies embedded in spacecraft structural panels using ultrasonic consolidation. This rapid manufacturing process enables custom thermal control designs in the time frame necessary for responsive space. Successfully embedded components include temperature sensors, heaters, wire harnessing, pre-manufactured heat pipes, and custom integral heat pipes. High conductivity inserts and custom integral pulsating heat pipes were unsuccessfully attempted. This research shows the viability of rapid manufacturing of spacecraft structures with embedded thermal control using ultrasonic consolidation.

Self-Healing Cellular Automata To Correct Soft Errors In Defective Embedded Program Memories, Varun Voddi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cells in ultra-low power Integrated Circuits (ICs) based on nanoscale Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) devices are likely to be the most vulnerable to large-scale soft errors. Conventional error correction circuits may not be able to handle the distributed nature of such errors and are susceptible to soft errors themselves. In this thesis, a distributed error correction circuit called Self-Healing Cellular Automata (SHCA) that can repair itself is presented. A possible way to deploy a SHCA in a system of SRAM-based embedded program memories (ePM) for one type of chip multi-processors is also discussed. The …