Engineering Commons^™

Mechanics-Based Analysis Of Selected Features Of The Exoskeletal Microstructure Of Popillia Japonica, Liang Cheng, Liyun Wang, Anette M. Karlsson

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

We explore key mechanical responses of the layered microstructure found in selected parts of the exoskeletons (pronotum, leg and elytron) of Popillia japonica (Japanese beetle). Image analyses of exoskeleton cross-sections reveal four distinct layered regions. The load-bearing inner three regions (exocuticle, mesocuticle, and endocuticle) consist of multiple chitin-protein layers, in which chitin fibers align in parallel. The exocuticle and mesocuticle have a helicoidal structure, where the stacking sequence is characterized by a gradual rotation of the fiber orientation. The endocuticle has a pseudo-orthogonal structure, where two orthogonal layers are joined by a thin helicoidal region. The mechanics-based analyses suggest that, …

Modeling And Simulation Of Interactions Between Blast Waves And Structures For Blast Wave Mitigation, Wen Peng

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Explosions occur in military conflicts as well as in various industrial applications. Air blast waves generated by large explosions move outward with high velocity, pressure and temperature. The blast waves not only incapacitate military and civilian personnel, but also damages buildings, vehicles, and other properties. Hence, there has been extensive research on how to mitigate blast wave effects. Understanding the interactions between blast waves and structures is a very important step in the development of devices for blast wave mitigation. The objective of this dissertation is to explore the complicated physical problem of blast waves impacting structures. The structures comprise …

Adaptive Distributed Fair Scheduling For Multiple Channels In Wireless Sensor Networks, Maciej Jan Zawodniok, Jagannathan Sarangapani, Steve Eugene Watkins, James W. Fonda

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A novel adaptive and distributed fair scheduling (ADFS) scheme for wireless sensor networks (WSN) in the presence of multiple channels (MC-ADFS) is developed. The proposed MC-ADFS increases available network capacity and focuses on quality-of-service (QoS) issues. when nodes access a shared channel, the proposed MC-ADFS allocates the channel bandwidth proportionally to the packet's weight which indicates the priority of the packet's flow. The packets are dynamically assigned to channels based on the packet weight and current channel utilization. The dynamic assignment of channels is facilitated by use of receiver-based allocation and alternative routes. Moreover, MC-ADFS allows the dynamic allocation of …

Contract Time Optimization Methodologies For Highway Construction Projects, Yi Jiang, Huaxin Chen

JTRP Technical Reports

This study was conducted to develop methodologies for appropriately determining the monetary values of I/D rates of highway construction projects in Indiana. In this study, a comprehensive literature review was performed to identify possible effective methodologies for work zone effects, construction impacts, and contract time optimization. The highway production rates were developed in a previous study. The production rates were validated and adjusted with the help from INDOT field engineers. The weighin- motion (WIM) collected traffic data were obtained, processed, and analyzed to provide input data for user cost calculations at highway work zones. Construction data were obtained and processed …

Moisture Sensitivity Of Hot Mix Asphalt Mixtures In Nebraska -- Phase Ii, Ingryd Pinto, Hoki Ban, Yong-Rak Kim

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

No abstract provided.

Classification Of Marl Soils, Chulmin Jung, Sochan Jung, Antonio Bobet, Nayyar Zia Siddiki

JTRP Technical Reports

Field and laboratory tests were conducted to investigate the degree of uniformity and quality that is obtained with chemical treatment of the subgrade with LKD using current construction techniques. An INDOT road project under construction was selected for the research. A 140-m long subgrade section was chemically treated with LKD with a target thickness of 16 inches, which is the current standard practice, while another 140-m long section was treated with a target thickness of 14 inches. DCP tests were done at each section to obtain the stiffness (or strength) of the chemically-treated and natural (untreated) subgrade soil layers. LWD …

Analysis Of Γ-Irradiated Synthetic Bone Grafts By ²⁹Si Mas-Nmr Spectroscopy, Calorimetry And Xrd, D. Boyd, S. Murphy, Mark R. Towler, A. W. Wren, S. Hayakawa

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ca-Sr-Zn-Si glasses have demonstrated excellent biocompatibility both in vitro using the MTT assay with L929 mouse fibroblast cells, and in vivo using healthy and ovariectomized female Wistar rats. However, the biological evaluation of the materials was performed on glass granules that were autoclaved, rather than γ-irradiated; the sterilisation procedure required prior to implantation of these materials in the human body. Given the fact that when a glass is exposed to ionizing radiation changes in its physical properties can take place, it is imperative to determine whether the structure of such glasses will be altered as a result of exposure to …

Particle Swarm Optimization Tuned Flatness-Based Generator Excitation Controller, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy, E. C. Anene, U. O. Aliyu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An optimal transient controller for a synchronous generator in a multi-machine power system is designed using the concept of flatness-based feedback linearization in this paper. The computation of the flat output and corresponding controller for reduced order model of the synchronous generator is presented. The required feedback gains used to close the linearization loop is optimized using particle swarm optimization for maximum damping. Typical results obtained for transient disturbances on a two-area, four-generator power system equipped with the proposed controller on one generator and conventional power system stabilizers on the remaining generators are presented. The effectiveness of the flatness-based controller …

Effect Of Stress Ratio On The Fatigue Behavior Of A Friction Stir Processed Cast Al-Si-Mg Alloy, S. Jana, Rajiv S. Mishra, J. B. Baumann, G. Grant

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The effect of friction stirs processing (FSP) on the fatigue life of a cast Al-7Si-0.6 Mg alloy at stress ratios of R = 0 and R = -1 was evaluated. Two types of specimen geometry were used for the FSPed condition, through thickness processed and partial thickness processed. at R = 0, the microstructural refinement enhanced the fatigue life by a factor of 15, whereas at R = -1 the improvement in fatigue life was 5-fold. in light of these observations, various closure mechanisms were examined. © 2009 Acta Materialia Inc.

Continuous Steel Production And Apparatus, Kent D. Peaslee, Jörg Peter, D. G. C. Robertson, Brian G. Thomas, Lifeng Zhang

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A process for continuous refining of steel via multiple distinct reaction vessels for melting, oxidation, reduction, and refining for delivery of steel continuously to, for example, a tundish of a continuous caster system, and associated apparatus.

Field Investigation Of Subgrade Lime Modification, Chulmin Jung, Sochan Jung, Antonio Bobet, Nayyar Zia Siddiki

JTRP Technical Reports

No abstract provided.

Developing Processes And Criteria For External Reviews Of Scholarly Teaching, Paul Savory, Amy M. Goodburn

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

This workshop explores theoretical questions and practical strategies for how to develop peer reviewers for faculty required to document their scholarly teaching. After reading two mini case-studies of how faculty have documented the intellectual work of their teaching, participants will engage in guided discussion about reviewing and assessing such work and about developing faculty communities equipped to do such work. Presenter(s) also will seek feedback on guidelines that they have developed for external reviewers of SOTL work.

Measurement And Analysis Of Shocks To Products Packaged In Pails In Single Parcel Ground Shipments, Sher Paul Singh, Jay Singh, Pakapol Kittipinyovath

Industrial Technology and Packaging

The objective of this study was to measure and analyse the shocks and impacts experienced by pails in the single parcel distribution environment, with and without a secondary corrugated shipper. The study was conducted in the FedEx Ground shipping environment in the USA. Instrumented 5 gal pails were shipped with and without an outer corrugated box, and with and without handling (precautionary warning) labels, from East Lansing, Michigan to destinations in California and New York. Data recorders were used to collect and analyse shock distribution data (drop heights, drop orientations and number of drops). The results showed that the precautionary …

Extraction And Characterization Of Natural Cellulose Fibers From Common Milkweed Stems, Narendra Reddy, Yiqi Yang

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Natural cellulose fibers with cellulose content, strength, and elongation higher than that of milkweed floss and between that of cotton and linen have been obtained from the stems of common milkweed plants. Although milkweed floss is a unique natural cellulose fiber with low density, the short length and low elongation make milkweed floss unsuitable as a textile fiber. The possibility of using the stems of milkweed plant as a source for natural cellulose fibers was explored in this research. Natural cellulose fibers extracted from milkweed stems have been characterized for their composition, structure, and properties. Fibers obtained from milkweed stems …

Particle Resuspension In The Columbia River Plume Near Field, Emily Y. Spahn, Alexander R. Horner-Devine, Jonathan Nash, David A. Jay, Levi Kilcher

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Measurements of suspended sediment concentration, velocity, salinity, and turbulent microscale shear in the near-field region of the Columbia River plume are used to investigate the mechanisms of sediment resuspension and entrainment into the plume. An east-west transect was occupied during spring and neap tide periods in August 2005 and May 2006, corresponding to low and high river discharge conditions, respectively. During the high-discharge period the plume is decoupled from the bottom, and fine sediment resuspended from the bottom does not leave the benthic boundary layer. The primary modes of sediment transport associated with the plume are advection of sediment from …

Seismic Vulnerability Of Oregon State Highway Bridges: Mitigation Strategies To Reduce Major Mobility Risks, Albert Nako, Craig Shike, Jan Six, Bruce Johnson, Peter Dusicka, Selamawit Tesfayesus Mehary

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Oregon Department of Transportation and Portland State University evaluated the seismic vulnerability of state highway bridges in western Oregon. The study used a computer program called REDARS2 that simulated the damage to bridges within a transportation network. It predicted ground motions for a specific location and magnitude of earthquake, resulting bridge damage and the cost of the damage, as well as the cost to the public for traffic delays due to detours around damaged bridges. Estimated damage and delay costs were presented for major highways in the region.

A Model For Sustainable Humanitarian Engineering Projects, Evan A. Thomas, Bernard Amadei, Robyn Sandekian

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The engineering profession should embrace a new mission statement?to contribute to the building of a more sustainable, stable, and equitable world. Recently, engineering students and professionals in the United States have shown strong interest in directly addressing the needs of developing communities worldwide. That interest has taken the form of short-and medium-term international trips through Engineers Without Borders?USA and similar organizations. There are also several instances where this kind of outreach work has been integrated into engineering education at various US institutions such as the University of Colorado at Boulder. This paper addresses the challenges and opportunities associated with balancing …

Touch-Screen Sd Card Text Reader, Samia Rahman

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Adaptive Multicast On Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Using Tree-Based Meshes With Variable Density Of Redundant Paths, Sangman Moh, Sang Jun Lee, Chansu Yu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Multicasting has been extensively studied for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) because it is fundamental to many ad hoc network applications requiring close collaboration of multiple nodes in a group. A general approach is to construct an overlay structure such as multicast tree or mesh and to deliver a multicast packet to multiple receivers over the overlay structure. However, it either incurs a lot of overhead (multicast mesh) or performs poorly in terms of delivery ratio (multicast tree). This paper proposes an adaptive multicast scheme, called tree-based mesh with k-hop redundant paths (TBM _k ), …

Active Disturbance Rejection Control For Mems Gyroscopes, Qing Zheng, Lili Dong, Dae Hui Lee, Zhiqiang Gao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

A new control method is presented to drive the drive axis of a Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) gyroscope to resonance and to regulate the output amplitude of the axis to a fixed level. It is based on a unique active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) strategy, which actively estimates and compensates for internal dynamic changes of the drive axis and external disturbances in real time. The stability analysis shows that both the estimation error and the tracking error of the drive axis output are bounded and that the upper bounds of the errors monotonously decrease with the increase of the controller bandwidth. …

Energy Efficient Rgbw Pixel Configuration For Light-Emitting Displays, Neveen Shlayan, Rama Venkat, Paolo Ginobbi, Ashok K. Singh

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

A study on LED displays has been conducted exploring a more efficient method for color generation than the traditional method. The study is comprehensive and thoroughly performed employing various sets of experiments in order to examine the functionality of the new proposed scheme which includes a literature review, theoretical modeling based on a scientific study, experimental data measurements of a developed prototype, and statistical data based on a survey. This study resulted in very interesting outcomes that may lead to a tremendous change in the existing LED display technology.

Effects Of Sea-Surface Conditions On Passive Fathometry And Bottom Characterization, Steven L. Means, Martin Siderius

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recently, a method has been developed that exploits the correlation properties of the ocean’s ambient noise to measure water depth (a passive fathometer) and seabed layering [M. Sideriuset al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am.120, 1315–1323 (2006)]. This processing is based on the cross-correlation between the surface noise and the echo return from the seabed. To quantitatively study the dependency between processing and environmental factors such as wind speed, measurements were made using a fixed hydrophone array while simultaneously characterizing the environment. The measurements were made in 2006 in the shallow waters (25m)approximately 75km off the coast of Savannah, GA. …

Demonstration Of A Bias Tunable Quantum Dots-In-A-Well Focal Plane Array, Jonathan Andrews, Woo-Yong Jang, Jorge E. Pezoa, Yagya D. Sharma, Sang Jun Lee, Sam Kyu Noh, Majeed M. Hayat, Sergio Restaino, Scott W. Teare, Sanjay Krishna

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Infrared detectors based on quantum wells and quantum dots have attracted a lot of attention in the past few years. Our previous research has reported on the development of the first generation of quantum dots-in-a-well (DWELL) focal plane arrays, which are based on InAs quantum dots embedded in an InGaAs well having GaAs barriers. This focal plane array has successfully generated a two-color imagery in the mid-wave infrared (i.e. 3–5 μm) and the long-wave infrared (i.e. 8–12 μm) at a fixed bias voltage. Recently, the DWELL device has been further modified by embedding InAs quantum dots in InGaAs …

Sensor Integration For Low-Cost Crash Avoidance, Stephane M. Roussel

Master's Theses

This report is a summary of the development of sensor integration for low-cost crash avoidance for over-land commercial trucks. The goal of the project was to build and test a system composed of low-cost commercially available sensors arranged on a truck trailer to monitor the environment around the truck. The system combines the data from each sensor to increase the reliability of the sensor using a probabilistic data fusion approach. A combination of ultrasonic and magnetoresistive sensors was used in this study. In addition, Radar and digital imaging were investigated as reference signals and possible candidates for additional sensor integration. …

Traffic Signal Control With Ant Colony Optimization, David T. Renfrew

Master's Theses

Traffic signal control is an effective way to improve the efficiency of traffic networks and reduce users’ delays. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic based on the behavior of ant colonies searching for food. ACO has successfully been used to solve many NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems and its stochastic and decentralized nature fits well with traffic flow networks. This thesis investigates the application of ACO to minimize user delay at traffic intersections. Computer simulation results show that this new approach outperforms conventional fully actuated control under the condition of high traffic demand.

The Next Generation Router System Cooling Design, Garrett A. Glover

Master's Theses

Advancements in the networking and routing industry have created higher power electronic systems which dissipate large amounts of heat while cooling technology for these electronic systems has remained relatively unchanged. This report illustrates the development and testing of a hybrid liquid-air cooling system prototype implemented on Cisco’s 7609s router. Water was the working fluid through cold plates removing heat from line card components. The water was cooled by a compact liquid-air heat exchanger and circulated by two pumps. The testing results show that junction temperatures were maintained well below the 105°C limit for ambient conditions around 30°C at sea level. …

A Rapid Prototyping Method For Constructing A Complex Three-Dimensional Substrate, Kathryn Jacoba Hart

Master's Theses

Cell culturing on three-dimensional structures has increased the possibilities in tissue engineering and bioreactor research. These structures enable cells to differentiate, proliferate, mobilize, and function in a conformation that more accurately mimics in vivo conditions. Computer generated models aid in development and rapid alteration of three-dimensional cell substrates, defining their internal structure as well as their external morphology. The rapid transition from substrate design to a viable culture is imperative to quickly advance research in biomedical and tissue engineering applications.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the feasibility of a rapid prototyping process by selectively cross-linking and assembling …

Aerodynamic Performance Enhancement Of A Naca 66–206 Airfoil Using Supersonic Channel Airfoil Design, David Michael Giles

Master's Theses

Supersonic channel airfoil design techniques have been shown to significantly reduce drag in high-speed flows over diamond shaped airfoils by Ruffin and colleagues. The effect of applying these techniques to a NACA 66-206 airfoil is presented. The design domain entails channel heights of 8-16.6% thickness-to-chord and speeds from Mach 1.5-3.0. Numerical simulations show an increase in the lift-to-drag ratio for airfoils at Mach 2.5 at a 35,000-ft altitude with a 12% channel height geometry showing a benefit of 17.2% at 6-deg angle of attack and a sharp channel leading edge. Wave drag is significantly reduced while viscous forces are slightly …

On Coupling A Lumped Parameter Heart Model And A Three-Dimensional Finite Element Aorta Model, H. J. Kim, Irene E. Vignon-Clementel, C. A. Figueroa, John F. Ladisa, K. E. Jansen, Jeffrey A. Feinstein, Charles A. Taylor

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Aortic flow and pressure result from the interactions between the heart and arterial system. In this work, we considered these interactions by utilizing a lumped parameter heart model as an inflow boundary condition for three-dimensional finite element simulations of aortic blood flow and vessel wall dynamics. The ventricular pressure–volume behavior of the lumped parameter heart model is approximated using a time varying elastance function scaled from a normalized elastance function. When the aortic valve is open, the coupled multidomain method is used to strongly couple the lumped parameter heart model and three-dimensional arterial models and compute ventricular volume, ventricular pressure, …

Comparison Of Cumulative Planimetry Versus Manual Dissection To Assess Experimental Infarct Size In Isolated Hearts, Matthias L. Riess, Samhita S. Rhodes, David F. Stowe, Mohammed Aldakkak, Amadou K.S. Camara

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction

Infarct size (IS) is an important variable to estimate cardiac ischemia/reperfusion injury in animal models. Triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) stains viable cells red while leaving infarcted cells unstained. To quantify IS, infarcted and non-infarcted tissue is often manually dissected and weighed (IS-DW). An alternative is to measure infarcted areas by cumulative planimetry (IS-CP).

Methods

We prospectively compared these two methods in 141 Langendorff-prepared guinea pig hearts (1.44 ± 0.02 g) that were part of different studies on mechanisms of cardioprotection. Hearts were perfused with Krebs–Ringer's and subjected to 30 min global ischemia after various cardioprotective treatments. Two hours after reperfusion …