Engineering Commons^™

Achieving The Vision Through High Ethical Standards, Sarah E. Bertke

Ohio Valley Regional Student Conference

No abstract provided.

Towards A Natural Proof Of Metrization Theorem For Space-Times, Vladik Kreinovich, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the early 1920s, Pavel Urysohn proved his famous lemma (sometimes referred to as "first non-trivial result of point set topology"). Among other applications, this lemma was instrumental in proving that under reasonable conditions, every topological space can be metrized.

A few years before that, in 1919, a complex mathematical theory was experimentally proven to be extremely useful in the description of real world phenomena: namely, during a solar eclipse, General Relativity theory -- that uses pseudo-Riemann spaces to describe space-time -- has been (spectacularly) experimentally confirmed. Motivated by this success, Urysohn started working on an extension of his lemma …

Selecting The Best Location For A Meteorological Tower: A Case Study Of Multi-Objective Constraint Optimization, Aline James, Craig Tweedie, Tanja Magoc, Vladik Kreinovich, Martine Ceberio

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Using the problem of selecting the best location for a meteorological tower as an example, we show that in multi-objective optimization under constraints, the traditional weighted average approach is often inadequate. We also show that natural invariance requirements lead to a more adequate approach -- a generalization of Nash's bargaining solution.

How To Relate Spectral Risk Measures And Utilities, Songsak Sriboonchitta, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Traditional decision theory describes human behavior and human preferences in terms of utility functions. In the last decades, it was shown that in many economic situations, a reasonable description of the actual decisions can be found if we use a different approach -- of spectral risk measures. In each of these approaches, we first need to empirically find the corresponding function: utility function in the traditional approach and the weighting function for spectral risk measures. Since both approaches provide a reasonable description of the same actual behavior (in particular, of the same actual economic behavior), it is desirable to be …

The Concept Of Proactive Traffic Management For Enhancing Freeway Safety And Operation, Mohamed Abdel-Aty, Anurag Pande, Liang Hsia

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Classes That Click: Fast, Rich Feedback To Enhance Student Learning And Satisfaction, John C. Chen, Dexter C. Whittinghill, Jennifer A. Kadlowec

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Loading Condition On Traction Coefficient Between Shoes And Artificial Turf Surfaces, Seth M. Kuhlman, Michelle B. Sabick, Ronald Pfeiffer, Benjamin Cooper, Jackie Forhan

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background. The interaction between a shoe and a turf surface is highly complex and difficult to characterize. Over the three decades since artificial turf was introduced, researchers have attempted to understand the traction caused by the interaction. However, some of the methodologies used for traction measurements have not capitalized on advances in currently available technology for testing and most testing conditions have not simulated realistic physiological loads.

Method of Approach. To assess the effect of test condition on traction results, the newly designed TurfBuster testing device was used to collect traction data on FieldTurf™ brand artificial turf under varying conditions. …

Towards Optimization Of A Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic Catalyst Chamber For A Monopropellant Microthruster, Andrew Vissotski

McNair Scholars Research Journal

The reduction in space vehicle size and mass presents the need to develop a proportionally smaller propulsion system for orbital station keeping. A Low Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic (LTCC) monopropellant micropropulsion device has been developed at BSU. The simple, robust design features a heterogeneous catalyst chamber used to decompose a rocket-grade hydrogen peroxide monopropellant, to produce thrust. Initial prototype testing indicates only partial peroxide decomposition requiring an in-depth analysis of the geometric layout of the devices to increase system efficiency. This study employs a control volume based methodology to analyze the performance of various catalyst chamber designs. This approach was chosen …

Energy Constrained Dominating Set For Clustering In Wireless Sensor Networks, Julia Albath, Mayur Thakur, Sanjay Kumar Madria

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Using partitioning in wireless sensor networks to create clusters for routing, data management, and other protocols has been proven as a way to ensure scalability and to deal with sensor network shortcomings such as limited communication ranges and energy. Choosing a cluster head within each cluster is important because cluster heads use additional energy for their responsibilities and that burden needs to be carefully passed around. Many existing protocols either choose cluster heads randomly or use nodes with the highest remaining energy. We introduce the energy constrained minimum dominating set (ECDS) to model the problem of optimally choosing cluster heads …

Flight Physician - April, 2010, Civil Aviation Medical Association

Browse all Civil Aviation Medical Association Newsletters

A twelve page newsletter of the Civil Aviation Medical Association. The newsletter provided news about civil aviation medicine and information related to the organization.

Why Polynomial Formulas In Soft Computing, Decision Making, Etc.?, Olga Kosheleva, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

We show that in many application areas including soft constraints reasonable requirements of scale-invariance lead to polynomial formulas for combining degrees (of certainty, of preference, etc.)

46th Conference On Senior Engineering Design, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

Senior Engineering Design Conference

The 46th Conference on Senior Engineering Design Projects was held on April 20, 2010 at the College of Engineering and applied Sciences on the Parkview Campus of Western Michigan University. The college sponsors the conference to showcase the work of its graduating seniors, who are required to complete a capstone project that puts into practice what they have learned. Many of the projects are sponsored by business and industry.

Effect Of Machining Feed On Surface Roughness In Cutting 6061 Aluminum, Mathew Kuttolamadom, Sina Hamzehlouia, Laine Mears

Publications

The general manufacturing objective during the fabrication of automotive components, particularly through machining, can be stated as the striving to achieve predefined product quality characteristics within equipment, cost and time constraints. The current state of the economy and the consequent market pressure has forced vehicle manufacturers to simultaneously reduce operating expenses along with further improving product quality. This paper examines the achievability of surface roughness specifications within efforts to reduce automotive component manufacture cycle time, particularly by changing cutting feeds. First, the background and attractiveness of aluminum as a lightweight automotive material is discussed. Following this, the methodologies employed for …

Contributors’ Preference In Open Source Software Usability: An Empirical Study, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The fact that the number of users of open source software (OSS) is practically un-limited and that ultimately the software quality is determined by end user’s experience, makes the usability an even more critical quality attribute than it is for proprietary software. With the sharp increase in use of open source projects by both individuals and organizations, the level of usability and related issues must be addressed more seriously. The research model of this empirical investigation studies and establishes the relationship between the key usability factors from contributors’ perspective and OSS usability. A data set of 78 OSS contributors that …

“Team Joe”, Ethan Draves, Chris Gallian, Matthew Janes, William Harshbarger

Service-Learning Program

Service Project Purpose: To design a backpack holder for Joe, who is in a wheelchair, that will bring his backpack from behind him to his side which will allow him to access it with more ease and help him keep from losing his items. Learning goals: To be able to apply critical thinking and problem solving skills during the engineering problem design process to help identify, analyze, and solve a real world problem that also benefits the community.

Perpetual Pavement Analysis For The Marquette Interchange Instrumentation Project, Nicholas James Hornyak

Dissertations (1934 -)

With the emergence of the mechanistic-empirical pavement design process, development of pavements rely on the structural response and fatigue characteristics of pavement materials due to traffic loads. In the past, pavement design has been almost entirely based on empirical data. One area of interest in designing hot-mix asphalt (HMA) pavements is the fatigue life of the pavement, which has been shown to be dependent on the horizontal strain in the pavement.

This research is focused on measuring the structural response of a pavement located within the Marquette Interchange Project in order to analyze fatigue behavior with great detail. Virtually all …

Nebraska Blueprint- Spring 2010

Nebraska Blueprint (Student Publication)

Table of Contents:

4 From the Editor

5 The Baja, Formerly Known as Mini

6 ASCE Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge

8 ASME Autonomous Material Sorter

10 AIAA: Design-Build-Fly

12 Human Powered Vehicle Rolls On

14 UNL Microgravity

Experimental Investigation Of Flow And Heat Transfer Characteristics Of R -134a In Microchannels, Abdullahel Bari

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the flow and heat transfer characteristics of liquid refrigerant R-134a in rectangular microchannels. The research concentrated mostly upon single-phase experiments with limited investigation of boiling phenomenon in microchannels. Tests were performed using rectangular microchannels with hydraulic diameters ranging from 112 μm to 210 μm and aspect ratios varying approximately from 1.0 to 1.5. The Reynolds number in the experiments ranged from 1,200 to 13,000 although most data were collected in the transition and turbulent flow regimes.

The experimental data for friction factor measurement had a similar trend as predicted by macroscale theory …

Dna Microarray Image Segmentation Using Active Contours Without Edges Method, Shenghua Ni

Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to build a better segmentation method for DNA microarray image processing. Segmentation is a partitioning process used to separate a spot area from a non-spot area in DNA microarrays. It directly affects the accuracy of gene expression analysis in the data mining process that follows. A number of DNA microarray segmentation methods have been proposed in the area, but even modern segmentation methods seem to have accuracy problems. In this dissertation, I will present a segmentation method based on the Active Contours Without Edges (ACWE) algorithm and apply it to two types of DNA …

Analysis Of Conjugated Polymer Nanotubules Formed By Template Wetting Nanofabrication, Steven D. Bearden Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

Semiconducting and optoelectric conjugated polymers have potential in micro and nano-electronic applications. Their widely tunable physical conformations and orientations make these polymers ideal material for engineering small scale devices. The polymers have been incorporated into several electronic devices including light-emitting diodes, solar cells, and field-effect transistors. Widespread adoption of these materials will not be a reality until the issues of poor device performance, short lifespans, and device degradation are resolved.

Nanostructures have been demonstrated to have improvements in molecular ordering and electronic transport. In the work presented here, tubular nanostructures of conjugated polymers fabricated by the template wetting nanofabrication process …

Towards Improved Trapezoidal Approximation To Intersection (Fusion) Of Trapezoidal Fuzzy Numbers: Specific Procedure And General Non-Associativity Theorem, Gang Xiang, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In some cases, our uncertainty about a quantity can be described by an interval of its possible values. If we have two or more pieces of interval information about the same quantity, then we can conclude that the actual value belongs to the intersection of these intervals.

In general, we may need a fuzzy number to represent our partial knowledge. A fuzzy number can be viewed as a collection of intervals (alpha-cuts) corresponding to different degrees alpha from [0,1]. In practice, we can only store finitely many alpha-cuts. Usually, we only store the lower and upper alpha-cuts (corresponding to alpha …

Access Control Contracts For Java Program Modules, Carlos E. Rubio-Medrano, Yoonsik Cheon

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Application-level security has become an issue in recent years; for example, errors, discrepancies and omissions in the specification of access control constraints of security-sensitive software components are recognized as an important source for security vulnerabilities. We propose to formally specify access control assumptions or constraints of a program module and enforce them at run-time. We call such specifications access control contracts. To realize access control contracts, we extended the JML language, a formal interface specification language for Java, and developed a prototype support tool that translates access control contracts to runtime checks. The access control contract reduces the vulnerability that …

Pretty Lights, Nicholas (Nick) Delmas, Matthew (Matt) Maniaci

Computer Engineering

Digital media players often include a visualization component that allows a user to watch a visualization synchronized to their music or videos. This project uses the visualization plugin API of an existing media playback program (WinAmp) but it displays its visuals using physical LED lights. Instead of outputting visuals to the computer screen, data is sent over USB to a micro controller that runs the LED lights. This project aims to give users a more visceral visual experience than traditional visualizations on the computer screen.

Neural Network Fatigue Life Prediction In Notched Aluminum Specimens From Acoustic Emission Data, Muhammed Arif Okur

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

This purpose of this research was to identify fatigue crack growth and predict failure for 7075-T6 aluminum notched bars under uniaxial tensile loading using acoustic emission (AE) data. The experiments performed in this study extend the results obtained by previous researchers who used maximum cyclic loads of 4,000, 3,000, and 2,000 pounds at a stress ratio of R = 0.0 and a frequency of 1 Hz to perform the fatigue tests. For this research the cyclic load remained at 2,000 pounds, but an additional ten specimens were tested in order to increase the amount of AE data available to the …

Effect Of Time Pressure And Task Uncertainty On Human Operator Performance And Workload For Autonomous Aerial Vehicle Missions, Trevor Petersen

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are being utilized at an increasing rate for a number of military applications. The potential for their use in the national airspace is also of interest to the Federal Aviation Administration, but there are some concerns about the safety of flying unmanned aircraft. The role of a UAS operator differs from that of a pilot in a manned aircraft, and this new role creates a need for a shift in interface and task design in order to take advantage of the full potential of these systems. This study examined the effect of time pressure and task …

On The Effective Elastic Properties Of Macroscopically Isotropic Media Containing Randomly Dispersed Spherical Particles, D. Cojocaru, Anette M. Karlsson

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

computational scheme for estimating the effective elastic properties of a particle reinforced matrix is investigated. The randomly distributed same-sized spherical particles are assumed to result in a composite material that is macroscopically isotropic. The scheme results in a computational efficient method to establish the correct bulk and shear moduli by representing the three-dimensional (3D) structure in a two-dimensional configuration. To this end, the statistically equivalent area fraction is defined in this work, which depends on two parameters: the particle volume fraction and the number of particles in the 3D volume element. We suggest that using the statistically equivalent area fraction,introduced …

Using Quality Attributes And Computational Intelligence To Generate And Evaluate System Architecture Alternatives, Atmika Singh, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper proposes an evolutionary algorithm based approach for evolving architecture alternatives using quality attributes as design drivers. A novel fuzzy architecture assessment approach is presented to quantitatively evaluate the set of possible solutions based on linguistic assessments of architecture quality attributes elicited from the stakeholders. The proposed approach makes a valuable contribution to the systems architecting knowledge base by presenting a measurable and quantifiable approach to architecture design and evaluation.

Impulse, Dana Hess, Kyle Johnson, Eric Landwehr, Cindy Rickeman

Impulse (Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering Publication)

College:
[Page] 2 The Hanson siblings: Karin and Erik Hanson, of Sioux Falls, find themselves in the spotlight outside their engineering environment and the focus of younger engineering students within the engineering community.
[Page] 4 Reviving a tradition: Engineering students are helping to make the Hobo Day parade the visual attraction it once was through a competitive float-building effort.
[Page] 6 Softball & engineering: Sisters Brittany, Brooke, and Brianna Postma are pretty good at figuring percentages, whether that be in the classroom or on the field.
[Page] 8 Engineering Expo leadership: ‘The Scrambler’ event helps launch Darin and Derek Waldner …

Marine Current Energy Devices: Current Status And Possible Future Applications In Ireland, Fergal O'Rourke, Fergal Boyle, Anthony Reynolds

Articles

There is a growing demand for the use of renewable energy technologies to generate electricity due to concerns over climate change. The oceans provide a huge potential resource of energy. Energy extraction using marine current energy devices (MCEDs) offers a sustainable alternative to conventional sources and a predictable alternative to other renewable energy technologies. A MCED utilises the kinetic energy of the tides as opposed to the potential energy which is utilised by a tidal barrage. Over the past decade MCEDs have become an increasingly popular method of energy extraction. However, marine current energy technology is still not economically viable …

Computational Study Of An Ingan/Gan Nanocolumn Light-Emitting Diode, Christoph Boecklin, Ratko G. Veprek, Sebastian Steiger, Bernd Witzigmann

Birck and NCN Publications

A comprehensive three-dimensional analysis of the operation of an In0.4Ga0.6N/GaN nanocolumn light-emitting diode is presented. Focus is put on the investigation of the nature and location of the emitting states. Calculations of strain and polarization-induced internal fields show that the strong lateral dependence of the potential gives rise to states confined to the periphery and to the center of the nanocolumn. However, lateral confinement of states near the column center is weak such that a quantum-well-like treatment of the remaining bound states seems appropriate where coherence is lost in the lateral directions. Within this picture, a coupled and self-consistent three-dimensional …