Engineering Commons^™

Enhancing The Interdisciplinary Curriculum In Cybersecurity By Engaging High-Impact Educational Practices, Li-Chiou Chen, Andreea Cotoranu

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

Locating Local Extrema Under Interval Uncertainty: Multi-D Case, Karen Villaverde, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we need to locate local maxima and/or local minima of a function which is only know with interval uncertainty. For example, in radioastronomy, components of a radiosource are usually identified by locations at which the observed brightness reaches a local maximum. In clustering, different clusters are usually identified with local maxima of the probability density function (describing the relative frequency of different combinations of values). In the 1-D case, a feasible (polynomial-time) algorithm is known for locating local extrema under interval (and fuzzy) uncertainty. In this paper, we extend this result to the general multi-dimensional case.

Technological Aspects Of Molecular Diagnosis Of Bacterial Infectious Diseases, Christine S. Booth

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is continually growing in its application, particularly in the field of molecular diagnosis of disease from clinical specimens. The main focus has been in the detection and identification of pathogens. However, quantitative PCR is increasingly utilized to determine initial pathogen load. A well-designed PCR protocol is required in all of these instances. Just as importantly, in the context of disease diagnosis; is the design of the sample processing methodology. The ideal method should concentrate the DNA and effectively isolate a high-quality DNA product, free of PCR inhibitors, while also being simple, reproducible and safe.

The …

Implementation Of Wireless Temperature Sensors For Continuous Condition Monitoring Of Railroad Bearings, Andoni Zagouris Ii

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

At present there are no existing bearing health monitoring systems capable of continuous monitoring of railroad bearings. Current wayside equipment is used to collect intermittent bearing temperatures, which at times could be every 65 km (~40 mi). To answer this need, IONX, LLC, a subsidiary of Amsted Rail, Inc., has developed low power Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSNs) which can be retrofitted to existing bearing adapters. The WSNs provide continuous monitoring of bearing temperatures as well as the current ambient temperature. Since the nodes are affixed to the bearing adapter surface, a correlation is necessary to estimate the bearing cup temperature …

Effect Of Deposition From Static Rocket Test Fires On Corn And Alfalfa, Scout Mendenhall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

A greenhouse study was conducted to determine the effects of deposition from static rocket test fires on corn and alfalfa. Seeds were germinated in a wide concentration range of depositional material, called test fire soil (TFS). Additionally, the impact of chloride and aluminum, two major components of test fire soil, on germination was also evaluated. Furthermore, plants were grown in packed columns and exposed to test fire soil, either in the root zone or on foliage. Tissue was weighed and analyzed to compare biomass production and plant composition.

Corn and alfalfa exposed to test fire soil in the root zone …

Bluebeats, Aaron Martinez, Jake Muir, Mishal Shah, Richard Wissemann

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Our group’s senior project is called BlueBeats. The BlueBeats product was created in order to provide a wireless audio gateway between Bluetooth enabled devices. Users of BlueBeats can use an Android or computer application to interface with the BlueBeats device. The Android and computer applications allow the user to easily scan for devices, add/remove devices from their personal list, and pair/connect with a selected Bluetooth enabled device. Once the user is connected to the BlueBeats device, he/she has two options. The first option occurs when the user connects the BlueBeats device to a device with speakers (using 3.5mm audio jack …

Effects Of Surface Roughness On The Indoor Particle Deposition Rate Constant, Shaojie Wang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - Dissertations

The purpose of this work was to quantify the deposition rate constants of size-classified particles on typical indoor surface materials as affected by the degree of surface roughness. The experiments were conducted in a small-scale acrylic chamber. The particle size range was from 0.723 to 5.048 £gm with 28 size bins. The air change rates were 6, 11 and 13 h-1. The TSI large particle aerosol generator 8108 was used to generate potassium chloride as test particles, and the TSI aerodynamic particle sizer (APS3321) was used to measure the particle number concentrations. Particle deposition rate constants were determined by regression …

A Double Cantilever Beam Specimen For Foam Core Fracture Characterization, Elio E. Saenz, Adrián Hernández-Pérez, Leif A. Carlsson, Anette M. Karlsson

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

This article presents the analysis and test results for a new sandwich double cantilever beam specimen for foam fracture characterization. The foam is sandwiched between two stiff and strong aluminum adherends. The specimen is analyzed using a modified version of the classical Kanninen elastic foundation model. Finite element analysis is conducted to determine the stress state near the crack tip and compliance of the double cantilever beam sandwich specimen. Model predictions are compared to experimental compliance data and crack growth paths for double cantilever beam specimens with polyvinyl chloride and polyethersulfone foams. The elastic foundation model and finite element analysis …

Real Time Shrinkage Studies In Photopolymer Films Using Holographic Interferometry, Mohesh Moothanchery, Izabela Naydenova, Viswanath Bavigadda, Suzanne Martin, Vincent Toal

Conference Papers

Polymerisation induced shrinkage is one of the main reasons why photopolymer materials are not more widely used for holographic applications. The aim of this study is to evaluate the shrinkage in an acrylamide photopolymer layer during holographic recording using holographic interferometry. Shrinkage in photopolymer layers can be measured by real time capture of holographic interferograms during holographic recording. Interferograms were captured using a CMOS camera at regular intervals. The optical path length change and hence the shrinkage were determined from the captured fringe patterns. It was observed that the photopolymer layer shrinkage is in the order of 3.5%.

Antipodal Vivaldi Antenna For Water Pipe Sensor And Telemetry, Giuseppe Ruvio, Domenico Gaetano, Max Ammann, Patrick Mcevoy

Articles

An antipodal Vivaldi antenna operates simultaneously for telemetry and sensing when placed conformally onto PVC pipes. Good radiation efficiency is realised and the antenna impedance matching remains stable when the pipe is empty or contains water. The Fidelity Factor performance based on an input Ultra Wideband Gaussian pulse is a suitable figure of merit to detect water presence. Different water levels and pipe conditions correspond to Fidelity Factors between 90% and 96%, which are a suitable dynamic range for sensing and the appropriate quality for pulse communications for remote monitoring.

A Tool For Selection Of Design For Manufacturing And Assembly Rules During Product Design Stage While Considering End Of Life Conditions, Vikrant Rayate

All Theses

The research presents a tool for selecting appropriate Design for Manufacturing and Design for Assembly rules during product design while considering Design for Disassembly rules and end-of-life recovery conditions. This tool exposes the relations between the various types of design rules and end-of-life recovery parameters. Four different relationship types are developed in this research: recovery conditions and recovery options relationship, Design for Disassembly rules and recovery options relationship, Design for Disassembly rules and recovery conditions relationship, Design for Disassembly rules, and Design for Manufacturing and Design for Assembly rules relationship. The purpose of this tool is to build these relations …

Piercing The Cloud And Marking The Onion: Removing The Anonymity Of The Tor Network, James Ashworth

All Theses

In this work, we extend previous work done on removing anonymity from The Onion Routing network (Tor). We explore previous techniques for removing Tor's anonymity developed on a private Tor network, and attempt to reproduce these results on the global public network.
We find that the previous work done on the private network is unable to be carried over to the public network. This is mainly due to the level of jitter on the public network overwhelming our earlier method for compromising Tor's anonymity. We develop a new method for compromising Tor's anonymity by using a clustering algorithm to analyze …

Surface Characterization Of Nephila Clavipes Dragline Silk, Benoit Faugas

All Theses

To design synthetic fibers for extreme applications, many research groups are trying to identify how the structure of natural fibers (such as spider silk) leads to desirable properties such as high tensile strength.
Spider silk is a biological fiber having mechanical properties that exceed those of the best man made fibers in terms of high tensile strength and large extensibility, this combination providing the silk with a large work of rupture. While the bulk structure, composition and properties have been intensively studied elsewhere, this study focuses on elucidating the Nephila clavipes spider dragline silk surface structure and composition, as well …

Digital Imperatives In Marketing: The Integration Of Communications And Technology To Target Consumers While Protecting Privacy, Catherine Dwyer, Randi Priluck

Cornerstone 3 Reports : Interdisciplinary Informatics

No abstract provided.

A New Metaheuristic Algorithm Motivated By The Rooting Phenomena In Plants, Behzad Nemati

All Theses

In this thesis, we present a new metaheuristic algorithm for analyzing challenging optimization problems. Initial testing reveals the potential for the algorithm, which is based on the rooting phenomena found in plants in nature, to quickly produce effective solutions to challenging combinatorial optimization problems in the class NP. We present computational results describing the proposed metaheuristic's efficacy for an important class of scheduling problems and discuss areas of future work and application.

Finite Element Modeling And Design Of Honeycomb Sandwich Panels For Acoustic Performance, David Griese

All Theses

Honeycomb cellular metamaterial structures offer many distinct advantages over homogenous materials because their effective material properties depend on both their constituent material properties and their geometric cell configuration. From this, a wide range of targeted effective material properties can be achieved thus supporting forward design by tailoring the honeycomb cellular materials and properties for specific applications. One area that has not been fully explored is the set of acoustic properties of honeycomb materials and how these can offer increased design flexibility when targeting acoustic performance. Understanding these relations, the designer can effectively tune designs to perform better in specific acoustic …

New Algorithms For High-Throughput Decoding With Low-Density Parity-Check Codes Using Fixed-Point Simd Processors, Jawone Kennedy

All Dissertations

Most digital signal processors contain one or more functional units with a single-instruction, multiple-data architecture that supports saturating fixed-point arithmetic with two or more options for the arithmetic precision. The processors designed for the highest performance contain many such functional units connected through an on-chip network. The selection of the arithmetic precision provides a trade-off between the task-level throughput and the quality of the output of many signal-processing algorithms, and utilization of the interconnection network during execution of the algorithm introduces a latency that can also limit the algorithm's throughput.
In this dissertation, we consider the turbo-decoding message-passing algorithm for …

Properties Of Metal-Graphene Contacts, Joachim Knoch, Zhihong Chen, Joerg Appenzeller

Birck and NCN Publications

We present a study on the metal-graphene contact properties. Utilizing a dual-gate field-effect transistor device, an energetic separation between the Fermi level and the Dirac point in the contact areas can be adjusted deliberately by applying an appropriate front-gate voltage that acts only on the channel. This front-gate voltage is compensated by an opposite large-area back-gate voltage, thereby mimicking the metal induced doping effect. A back-gate voltage sweep enables identifying two distinct resistance peaks-a result of the combined impact of the graphene cones in the contact and in the channel region. Comparing our experimental data with simulations allows extracting the …

Electric Field Tuning Of Spin Splitting In A Quantum Dot Coupled To A Semimagnetic Quantum Dot, Yuli Lyanda-Geller, T.L. Reinecke, G. Bacher

Birck and NCN Publications

We develop an approach for tuning the spin splitting and g-factor of a quantum dot by coupling it to semi-magnetic quantum dot and tuning the electric field. We show that spin splittings and g-factors of the states of a non-magnetic quantum dot coupled to semi-magnetic quantum dot can be enhanced orders of magnitude. Evaluations are made for coupled CdTe/CdMnTe quantum dots. These effects are caused by electric field control of repulsion of spin sublevels in the non-magnetic dot due to tunnel coupling of quantum dots. Electric field control of spin splittings in quantum dots is of potential interest in connection …

Thermal Conductivity Of Bulk And Thin-Film Silicon: A Landauer Approach, Changwook Jeong, Supriyo Datta, Mark S. Lundstrom

Birck and NCN Publications

The question of what fraction of the total heat flow is transported by phonons with different mean-free-paths is addressed using a Landauer approach with a full dispersion description of phonons to evaluate the thermal conductivities of bulk and thin film silicon. For bulk Si, the results reproduce those of a recent molecular dynamic treatment showing that about 50% of the heat conduction is carried by phonons with a mean-free-path greater than about 1 mu m. For the in-plane thermal conductivity of thin Si films, we find that about 50% of the heat is carried by phonons with mean-free-paths shorter than …

Spectroscopy Of A Deterministic Single-Donor Device In Silicon, M. Fuechsle, J. A. Miwa, S. Mahapatra, H. Ryu, S. Lee, O. Warschkow, L. C. L. Hollenberg, G. Klimeck, M. Y. Simmons

Birck and NCN Publications

We present a single electron transistor (SET) based on an individual phosphorus dopant atom in an epitaxial silicon environment. Using scanning tunneling microscope (STM) hydrogen lithography, the single impurity is deterministically placed with a spatial accuracy of ±1 lattice site within a donor-based transport device. Low temperature transport measurements confirm the presence of the single donor and show that the donor charge state can be precisely controlled via gate voltages. We observe a charging energy that is remarkably similar to the value expected for isolated P donors in bulk silicon, which is in sharp contrast to previous experiments on single-dopant …

Performance Comparison Of A Permissive Overreach Transfer Trip (Pott) Scheme Over Iec 61850 And Hard-Wire, José Luis Ruiz

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850 is a standard that allows communication integration of systems built from multivendor power protection relays. The standard describes the rules for integration of control, measurement, and protection functions within a power system network at the substation control levels. The standard was created with the idea of eliminating wiring in the substation and facilitating the communication between different relay vendors. This study implemented IEC 61850 standard in a Permissive Overreach Transfer Trip (POTT) scheme to protect a 166 mile, 230 kV transmission line using Generic Object Oriented Substation Events (GOOSE) messaging in the laboratory. Two …

Improving Optical Contact For Functional Near-Infrared Brain Spectroscopy And Imaging With Brush Optodes, Bilal Khan, Chester Wildey, Robert Francis, Fenghua Tian, Mauricio R. Delgado, Hanli Liu, Duncan Macfarlane, George Alexandrakis

Bioengineering Faculty Publications - Archive

A novel brush optode was designed and demonstrated to overcome poor optical contact with the scalp that can occur during functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and imaging due to light obstruction by hair. The brush optodes were implemented as an attachment to existing commercial flat-faced (conventional) fiber bundle optodes. The goal was that the brush optodes would thread through hair and improve optical contact on subjects with dense hair. Simulations and experiments were performed to assess the magnitude of these improvements. FNIRS measurements on 17 subjects with varying hair colors (blonde, brown, and black) and hair densities (0–2.96 hairs/mm2 ) …

Sparsity Enhanced Spatial Resolution And Depth Localization In Diffuse Optical Tomography, Venkaiah C. Kavuri, Zi-Jing Lin, Fenghua Tian, Hanli Liu

Bioengineering Faculty Publications - Archive

No abstract provided.

Acuta Enews May 2012 Vol. 41, No. 5

ACUTA Newsletters

In this issue...

1 Looking Back at 2011'2012

2 NSF Funding for Cyber-learning: Transforming Education

3 Choose Your VoIP Host Carefully

3 ACUTA Webinar: Creating a Project Management Office

4 7 Must-Haves in a UC Cloud Contract

5 Board Report

6 How Cross-Cultural Competency Will Build Workers' Global Agility

6 Annual Dues Invoices Mail May 1

7 Info Links

8 Welcome New Members

8 Check It Out

Vikis: The Can Collecting Robot, Eric Edwards, Leah Humiston, Jason Foulk

Computer Engineering

RoboRodentia is an annual school-wide robotics competition that has been held during Cal Poly’s Open House for the past thirteen years. The competition rules change from year to year as the objective of the competition changes, but an important aspect of the competition is that the robots run completely autonomously. This paper describes the development, design, and implementation of the RoboRodentia robot from Team Vikis. The technical specifications, robot components, individual responsibilities, and results are described in depth within this document.

Sole Power: Pedal Phone Charger Final Report, Nicole Hensley, Anthony Ruh, Krista Schmidt, Joseph Garcia

Mechanical Engineering

The device design was conceived to meet the energy needs of rural populations in India. These communities have cell phones but lack access to reliable grid power, especially during monsoon season. The charger is designed to be affordable, durable, and easily repairable for each owner family. It uses off-the-shelf components and is intended to be replicated by backyard manufacturing startups in developing countries.

Its purpose is to efficiently transfer human foot motion via a treadle, four-bar-linkage, and sprocket-chain step-up to drive a rotor & stator generator from a common gas scooter. The single-phase alternating current from the generator is passed …

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Carbon Foams For Repair And Reconstruction Of Bone Defects, Brock Holston Marrs, Rodney Andrews, Larry Cunningham Jr.

Center for Applied Energy Research Faculty Patents

The present invention relates to a tissue scaffold and a method of preparing a tissue scaffold for implantation. The tissue scaffold includes a body having a graphite foam core. At least a first portion of the external surface of that graphite foam core is covered by a composite material to provide additional mechanical strength to the scaffold.

The Effect Of Chlorine And Ozone In Controlling Microbes On Organically Grown Cilantro And Carrots, Adam Holtz

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This senior project investigates the relative efficacy of ozonated water and chlorinated water for the purpose of sanitizing freshly-harvested organic produce. The aim of this study was to assist the Cal Poly Organic Farm in deciding whether or not to invest in an ozone generator. The crops used for testing were grown organically in the same field. Carrots and cilantro were harvested and promptly treated with 5 ppm ozone solution or 25 ppm sodium hypochlorite solution. Carrots were sampled at 0, 7, and 14 days storage to determine microbial populations. Cilantro was similarly tested at 0, 6, and 12 days …

Parameterization Of Fao Aquacrop Model For Irrigated Cotton In The Humid Southeast U.S.A, Xin Qiao

All Theses

Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L) is cultivated in many countries under both rainfed and irrigated conditions. In the U.S.A., cotton is grown in 17 states across a vast region known as the Cotton Belt. In the Cotton Belt as with many parts of the world, irrigated cotton is a considerable water user, but for good reasons. Irrigation can boost yield as well as stabilize yield and quality by ensuring adequate soil water during the entire growing season or at least during critical growth stages in areas where water resources are limited. From 2002 to 2007, irrigated acreage in the western states …