Engineering Commons^™

Use Of Oids And Iis In En13606, Damon Berry, Jostein Ven, Gerard Freriks, David Moner

Reports

No abstract provided.

Reliability Estimation Of Complex Numerical Problems Using Modified Conditional Expectation Method, Christopher D. Eamon, Bulakorn Charumas

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research Publications

A simulation-based structural reliability analysis method is presented. It is intended as an alternate approach to estimate reliability for problems for which most-probable point of failure methods fail and when computational resources are limited. The proposed method combines conditional expectation and estimating the PDF or CDF of a selected portion of the limit state. In the proposed approach, complex limit state functions are simplified to two random variable problems. The success of the simplification depends on the quality of the CDF estimate. Results indicate that the method may provide accurate and efficient solutions for some difficult reliability problems.

Application Of An Inverse-Hysteresis Iterative Control Algorithm For Afm Fabrication, Seth Ashley

Theses and Dissertations

An iterative control algorithm (ICA) which uses an approximate inverse-hysteresis model is implemented to compensate for hysteresis to precisely fabricate features on a soft polymer substrate using an atomic force microscope (AFM). The AFM is an important instrument in micro/nanotechnology because of its ability to interrogate, manipulate, and fabricate objects at the micro/nanoscale. The AFM uses a piezoelectric actuator to position an AFM-probe tip relative to the sample surface in three dimensions. In particular, precision lateral control of the AFM-probe tip relative to the sample surface is needed to ensure high-performance operation of the AFM. However, precision lateral positioning of …

Effects Of Thermal Gradient And Fines Content On Frost Heave Of An Alaska Base Material, Adam Ray Homewood

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research was to investigate the effects of thermal gradient and fines content and the interaction between these two factors on the frost heave characteristics of a typical Alaska base material. The laboratory frost heave testing involved one type of aggregate base material, three thermal gradients, and three fines contents in a full-factorial experimental design with two replicates. The aggregate was classified in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials soil classification system as A-1-a; the thermal gradients were 0.15, 0.30, and 0.45 ºC/cm; and the fines contents were 6, 8, and 10 percent. After …

Cybersecurity: Growing Like Topsy!, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses cybersecurity in an intelligence context – what it is, what it does to us, and the sudden (and somewhat unplanned) increase in financial support for the area.

Auxiliary State Variables For Rotor Crack Detection, Zbigniew Kulesza, Jerzy T. Sawicki

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

In the present study, a new model-based method for rotor crack detection and crack location is proposed. The finiteelement model of the rotor-bearing system accounts for the breathing mechanism of the crack. The model of the rotor system is augmented with an auxiliary single-degree-of-freedom oscillator. The observer is designed and the estimates of its two auxiliary state variables are proposed as crack indicators. The crack location along the shaft is determined by designing a set of observers, which calculate the values of these indicators for different possible crack locations along the shaft. The proposed method is validated numerically and the …

Perpetual Exploration Of Relational Information And Enhanced Star Glyphs For Multi-Source Data Visualization, Andrew Crowell

Theses and Dissertations

Information Visualization is an area of research concerned with the presentation of abstract data in a visual format. It has many diverse applications in fields of software engineering, information sciences, biology, chemistry, and medical, among others. This thesis is primarily concerned with the application of information visualization to the display of directed graphs and to the display of multivariate data for analysis. Two novel applications will be presented that are both advancements in the field of information visualization. The first application applies to the visualization and navigation of large or infinite graphs and networks. The quality of a graph drawing …

A Review Of Zero Discharge Wastewater Treatment Systems Using Reed Willow Bed Combinations In Ireland, Sean O'Hogain, Liam Mccarton, Anna Reid, John Turner

Conference papers

The concept of a reed willow bed combination has the potential to achieve a zero discharge wastewater treatment system. This paper will present results from a two year study to monitor the performance of a reed willow bed facility at Lynches Lane, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Outline design specifications for the facility will be presented. Monitoring results for a two year period including influent and effluent parameters, rainfall, potential evapotranspiration, and soil classification will be presented and discussed. During the two year monitoring period the system achieved a zero discharge. This paper will discuss the potential widespread application of similar systems …

Absolute Blood Velocity Measured With A Modified Fundus Camera, Donald D. Duncan, Paul Lemaillet, Mohamed Ibrahim, Quan D. Nguyen, Matthias Hiller, Jessica C. Ramella-Roman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We present a new method for the quantitative estimation of blood flow velocity, based on the use of the Radon transform. The specific application is for measurement of blood flow velocity in the retina. Our modified fundus camera uses illumination from a green LED and captures imagery with a high-speed CCD camera. The basic theory is presented, and typical results are shown for an in vitro flow model using blood in a capillary tube. Subsequently, representative results are shown for representative fundus imagery. This approach provides absolute velocity and flow direction along the vessel centerline or any lateral displacement therefrom. …

Handling External Events Efficiently In Gillespie's Stochastic Simulation Algorithm, Brad Geltz

Theses and Dissertations

Gillespie's Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (SSA) provides an elegant simulation approach for simulating models composed of coupled chemical reactions. Although this approach can be used to describe a wide variety biological, chemical, and ecological systems, often systems have external behaviors that are difficult or impossible to characterize using chemical reactions alone. This work extends the applicability of the SSA by adding mechanisms for the inclusion of external events and external triggers. We define events as changes that occur in the system at a specified time while triggers are defined as changes that occur to the system when a particular condition is …

Study Of Load Transfer Efficiency Of Airfield Rigid Pavement Joints Based On Stresses And Deflections, Ashish Wadkar

Theses and Dissertations

The concept of joint load transfer efficiency is very important and fundamental to Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) airfield rigid pavement thickness design procedures. The FAA procedure assumes 25% of stress applied to the edge is transferred to the adjoining slab. Moreover, since it is not convenient or practical to measure stress-based load transfer efficiency [LTE (S)], field measurement of load transfer efficiency includes computation of the ratio of unloaded slab deflection to loaded slab deflection. Falling weight deflectometer (FWD) generally serves the purpose of measurement of deflection-based load transfer efficiency [LTE (6)]. The true load transfer is defined by stress …

The Virtual Hip: An Anatomically Accurate Finite Element Model Based On The Visible Human Dataset, Jonathan M. Ford

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to determine if element decimation of a 3-D anatomical model affects the results of Finite Element Analysis (FEA). FEA has been increasingly applied to the biological and medical sciences. In order for an anatomical model to successfully run in FEA, the 3-D model’s complex geometry must be simplified, resulting in a loss of anatomical detail. The process of decimation reduces the number of elements within the structure and creates a simpler approximation of the model. Using the National Library of Medicine’s Visible Human Male dataset, a virtual 3-D representation of several structures of the …

Assessment Of State Recycling Regulations In The United States, Nazli Yesiller, James L. Hanson, Samuel A. Vigil

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This investigation was conducted to identify the current status of state recycling regulations in U.S. using an extensive survey. Questions were included regarding: baseline waste generation and recycling trends; recycling regulatory trends; quantitative thresholds; integration of science, engineering, and economic principles; material properties; and legislative status of regulations. The majority of the surveyed states had regulations for recycling activities, which were less strict than solid waste regulations, and required permits for operation of recycling facilities. A low percentage of the states regulated generators, transporters, and handlers and a high percentage regulated recyclers. In general, transfer stations and recycling centers were …

Modernización De Proyectos De Riego, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

Un diseño moderno es el resultado de un proceso de reflexión, el cual selecciona la configuración y componentes físicas considerando un programa de operación bien definido y realista basado en el concepto de servicio.

Medición De Gasto En Canales De Riego Y...Otras Cosas, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

Nuestra opción preferida para Eiqupos de “flujo crítico ” (vertedor or aforador) son Aforadores Replogle (Garganta Larga)

Ebec Phase Ii Wind Energy Project Feasibility Study: Asa Project 10-060, Final Report, Applied Science Associates, Inc.

East Bay Energy Consortium Documents

Subsequent to the Phase I preliminary wind energy feasibility and siting study EBEC contracted again with ASA to perform a Phase II study with the scope of performing a detailed feasibility study of developing a project at the Tiverton site. The detailed study, presented herein, evaluated the project size and layout options, siting considerations, procurement and development considerations, ownership structures, financing opportunities, and legislation considerations. The results are presented as four different options for EBEC to act as owner, developer and operator, evaluating the associated development cost and potential revenue streams as well as a third party developer owned and …

Selection And Recognition Of Landmarks Using Terrain Spatiograms, Damian M. Lyons

Faculty Publications

A team of robots working to explore and map an area may need to share information about landmarks so as to register their local maps and to plan effective exploration strategies. In previous papers we have introduced a combined image and spatial representation for landmarks: terrain spatiograms. We have shown that for manually selected views, terrain spatiograms provide an effective, shared representation that allows for occlusion filtering and a combination of multiple views.

In this paper, we present a landmark saliency architecture (LSA) for automatically selecting candidate landmarks. Using a dataset of 21 outdoor stereo images generated by LSA, we …

Uncertainty In Partially Ordered Sets As A Natural Generalization Of Intervals: Negative Information Is Sufficient, Positive Is Not, David Mireles, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many real-life applications, we have an ordered set: a set of all space-time events, a set of all alternatives, a set of all degrees of confidence. In practice, we usually only have a partial information about an element x of this set. This partial information includes positive knowledge: that a <= x or x <= a for some known a, and negative knowledge: that it is not true that a <= x or x <= a for some known a. In the case of a total order, the set of all elements satisfying this partial information is an interval. We show that in the general case of a partial order, the corresponding analogue of an interval is a convex set. We also show that in general, to describe partial knowledge, it is sufficient to have only negative information about x but it is not sufficient to have only positive information.

Nanoindentation Of Annealed And As-Sputtered Thin Films Of Nickel Titanium Shape Memory Alloys, Matthew Tyson Lewis

Master's Theses

The bottom-up processing techniques used for making Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices can produce material properties different from bulk processing. The material properties must be evaluated with the process parameters used and for changes in the process parameters. The mechanical properties are needed to design MEMS devices. A material of interest for MEMS devices is nickel titanium (NiTi) shape memory alloy (SMA) because of the high work output (~107 J/m3). This thesis will focus on the fabrication of thin film NiTi by DC magnetron sputtering deposition and testing mechanical properties of the fabricated films by nanoindentation. Thin film NiTi SMA was …

Energy Storage:Maximising Irelands Wind Energy Potential, Damien Kelly

ME in Sustainable Electrical Energy Systems

Ireland plan's to generate up to 40% of its electricity from wind generation by 2020. This thesis outlines the problems that may be faced by the electricity system and illustrates the benefits that large scale energy storage can bring to the electricity system when trying to integrate large amounts of wind energy. Energy storage is currently a topical subject in Ireland as wind penetration increases and problems such as curtailment loom. This thesis outlines the storage capacities required to sufficiently aid the integration of wind energy in Ireland and outlines the value that large scale energy storage can bring to …

Why Feynman Path Integration?, Jaime Nava, Juan Ferret, Vladik Kreinovich, Gloria Berumen, Sandra Griffin, Edgar Padilla

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To describe physics properly, we need to take into account quantum effects. Thus, for every non-quantum physical theory, we must come up with an appropriate quantum theory. A traditional approach is to replace all the scalars in the classical description of this theory by the corresponding operators. The problem with the above approach is that due to non-commutativity of the quantum operators, two mathematically equivalent formulations of the classical theory can lead to different (non-equivalent) quantum theories. An alternative quantization approach that directly transforms the non-quantum action functional into the appropriate quantum theory, was indeed proposed by the Nobelist Richard …

Expanding Algorithmic Randomness To The Algebraic Approach To Quantum Physics: Kolmogorov Complexity And Quantum Logics, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Physicists usually assume that events with a very small probability cannot occur. Kolmogorov complexity formalizes this idea for non-quantum events. We show how this formalization can be extended to quantum events as well.

Strings Lead To Lattice-Type Causality, Francisco Zapata, Essau Ramirez, Joel A. Lopez, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Traditional causality relation of special relativity is a lattice in the simplest case of 1-D space (2-D space-time), but it is no longer a lattice in the actual 3-D space (and 4-D space-time). We show that if we take into account effects of string theory, then we get a lattice-type causality relation even for the 4-D space-time.

Scale Dependence Of Radar Rainfall Uncertainty: Initial Evaluation Of Nexrad's New Super-Resolution Data For Hydrologic Applications, Bong Chul Seo, Witold F. Krajewski

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study explores the scale effects of radar rainfall accumulation fields generated using the new super-resolution level II radar reflectivity data acquired by the Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) network of the Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) weather radars. Eleven months (May 2008-August 2009, exclusive of winter months) of high-density rain gauge network data are used to describe the uncertainty structure of radar rainfall and rain gauge representativeness with respect to five spatial scales (0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8 km). While both uncertainties of gauge representativeness and radar rainfall show simple scaling behavior, the uncertainty of radar rainfall is …

Surface Morphology Of Platelet Adhesion Influenced By Activators, Inhibitors And Shear Stress, Melanie Groan Watson

Doctoral Dissertations

Platelet activation involves multiple events, one of which is the generation and release of nitric oxide (NO), a platelet aggregation inhibitor. Platelets simultaneously send and receive various agents that promote a positive and negative feedback control system during hemostasis. Although the purpose of platelet-derived NO is not fully understood, NO is known to inhibit platelet recruitment. NO's relatively large diffusion coefficient allows it to diffuse more rapidly than platelet agonists. It may thus be able to inhibit recruitment of platelets near the periphery of a growing thrombus before agonists have substantially accumulated in those regions.

Results from two studies in …

Study Of Top And Bottom Photonic Gratings On Gan Led With Error Grating Models, Simeon S. Trieu, Xiaomin Jin

Electrical Engineering

The gallium nitride (GaN) light-emitting-diode (LED) top-bottom (or transmission-reflection) grating simulation results with error grating model are presented. The microstructure GaN bottom hole and top pillar gratings are calculated and compared with the non-grating (flat) case. Grating shapes simulated are either conical or cylindrical. A direct comparison of 181 different combined transmission-reflection grating cases using the finite difference time domain method is presented. The simulation results show that simple or direct combinations of the optimized top grating with the optimized bottom grating only produce a 42% light extraction improvement compared to the non-grating case, which is much lower than that …

Refining The Digital Device Hierarchy, F. Chevonne Dancer, David Dampier

Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering Faculty Research

Smartphones are increasing in popularity due to functionality, portability, convenience and affordability. Because of this, examiners must acquire and analyze these devices when criminal activity is suspected to have occurred. In order to obtain this information, it has to be extracted in a way that is repeatable and testable. There are several process models available for use, but the ad-hoc approach is on the rise. The dilemmas are that ad-hoc approaches and the forensic investigative process models available are not well suited for the examination of such devices. These approaches may cause the validity of investigator skill and methods to …

A Junction And Drop-Shaft Boundary Conditions For Modeling Free Surface, Pressurized, And Mixed Free Surface-Pressurized Transient Flows, Arturo S. León, Xiaofeng Liu, Mohamed S. Ghidaoui, Arthur R. Schmidt, Marcelo H. García

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A junction and drop-shaft boundary conditions (BCs) for one-dimensional modeling of transient flows in single-phase conditions (pure liquid) are formulated, implemented and their accuracy are evaluated using two Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models. The BCs are formulated for the case when mixed flows are simulated using two sets of govern- ing equations, the Saint Venant equations for the free surface regions and the compressible water hammer equations for the pressurized regions. The proposed BCs handle all possible flow regimes and their combinations. The flow in each pipe can range from free surface to pressurized flow and the water depth at …

Analysis Of Transformer Ratings In A Wind Farm Environment, John Mccarthy

ME in Sustainable Electrical Energy Systems

The grid connection transformer is one of the most expensive components of a wind farm development. If a transformer is under-utilised, this indicates that the initial capital outlay on the transformer was excessive. Overloading can lead to accelerated aging and increased losses. This project will investigate whether it is possible, by understanding the load profiles and stress conditions in a wind farm environment, to overload a transformer above its nameplate rating, thus reducing the capital outlay costs in developing a wind farm. The paper will investigate a specific wind farm overloading scenario and examine whether it is feasible, and financially …

The Operation Of Hybrid Reed Bed And Willow Bed Combinations In Ireland - Zero Discharge And The Potential For No Monitoring Of Domestic Applications Of This Combination, Sean O'Hogain, Liam Mccarton

Conference papers

This paper will briefly trace the development of reed beds, the treatment mechanisms involved and the evolution of the more popular designs, with emphasis on the hybrid reed bed. It will also present a review of the concept of using willow beds to deal with waste water. It will examine the Danish guidelines. It will also review the application of willows to treat effluent from a hybrid reed bed system and the evolution of this system in Wales. The theory of willow bed treatment will also be discussed with particular emphasis on the factors that effect evapotranspiration. Two alternative designs …