Engineering Commons^™

Qualitative Evaluation Of Transportation Construction Related Social Costs And Their Impacts On The Local Community, Amanda Ferguson

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Although construction is valuable after completion, it can cause many disturbances throughout the duration of the project. These negative impacts, such as economic losses and annoyances, which face the community surrounding a construction project, are referred to as social costs. They are the inconveniences that confront the general public and take many forms such as traffic delays and congestion, decreased revenue, increased accidents, and air and noise pollution. Social costs negatively affect the surrounding environment and everyday quality of life. Social costs are often not incorporated into construction design, planning or budgets. This can be attributed to the complexity of …

Development Of A Flexible Pavement Design Procedure Based On The Mechanistic - Empirical Pavement Design Guide: A Case Study, Ali Qays Abdullah

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

This research developed design tables of new flexible pavement structures for New York State Department of Transportation based on the Mechanistic Empirical Design Guide (MEPDG). The design tables were developed using the MEPDG software for Regions 1, 3, and 7 for Upstate part of New York State and for Regions 8, 10, and 11 for the Downstate part of New York State. The MEPDG software was used to run design cases for combinations of: climate conditions, traffic volume, subgrade soil stiffness (Mr) and pavement structures. The conditions that the MEPDG was used to run were: the road structures classified as …

Application Of Scanning Correlation Spectroscopy Techniques To Quantify Dna Double Strand Break Repair Kinetics In The Living Cell After Exposure To Γ-Rays And Radiomimetic Chemicals, Salim Abdisalaam

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

The kinetics of most proteins involved in DNA damage sensing, signaling and repair following ionizing radiation exposure cannot be quantified by current live cell fluorescence microscopy methods. This is because most of these proteins, with only few notable exceptions, do not attach in large numbers at DNA damage sites to form easily detectable foci in microscopy images. As a result a high fluorescence background from freely moving and immobile fluorescent proteins in the nucleus masks the aggregation of proteins at sparse DNA damage sites. Currently, the kinetics of these repair proteins are studied by laser-induced damage and Fluorescence Recovery After …

Application Of Ellipse For Horizontal Alignment, Farzin Maniei

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

In highway design, horizontal alignments provide directional transition of roadways. Three categories of horizontal transition curves are simple circular curves, compound circular curves, and spiral circular curves. Compound and spiral curves, as alternatives to a simple circular curve, are often more costly since they are longer in length and require additional right-of-way. These costs differences are amplified at higher design speed. This study presents calculations associated with using a single elliptical arc in lieu of compound or spiral curves in situations where the use of simple circular curves is not prudent due to driver safety and comfort considerations. The study …

Development Of Sers Nanoprobes For Multiplexed And Multi-Modality Molecular Diagnosis Of Cancer, James Otieno Nyagilo

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Importance of cancer diagnosis and staging through molecular biomarker detection is evident in the increasing number of molecular biomarkers being discovered that are associated with specific cancers types with their role in disease severity and progression being elucidated. Development of molecular imaging modalities capable of simultaneously detecting multiple molecular biomarkers will have a major impact on research, detection, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of cancer. Combining molecular imaging with high resolution structural imaging can potentially deliver a cancer diagnostic imaging platform with superior resolution and sensitivity. Nanotechnology, specifically in the form of functionalized metal nanoparticles exhibit unique chemical and electromagnetic properties …

Micro-Device For Selective Isolation And Cytology Of Cancer Cells, Yuan Wan

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Early detection and isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can enable early cancer diagnosis and more effective therapeutics. Aptamers have emerged as probe molecules that have binding affinities comparable to antibodies but specificities better than those of antibodies. Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) is the most frequently overexpressed receptor in all human malignancies. The expression levels of EGFR in cancer cells can be over 100 times higher than those in normal cells. It is an attractive target for cancer therapy and cancer cell isolation.This dissertation focuses on two different areas: developing strategies for anti-EGFR aptamer based cancer cell isolation, and …

Performance Comparison Of High Density Polyethylene Pipe, Chandan Venkatesh

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

The current and forecasted major challenge faced by water utilities is delivering potable water efficiently with minimum loss to end users. Water pipe failure has negative impact not only local communities but also on the nation's economy. The American Water Works Association (AWWA) has estimated that it will cost over $250 billion to replace and renew the nation's water pipes over the next 20 years. According to the 2009 American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Report Card, seven billion gallons of water are lost in this country every day!Every pipe has unique properties with advantages and limitations. During a pipe's …

Effect Of Stress And Suction Histories Dynamic Properties Of Statically Compacted Silty Sand, William Allan Douglas

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

This paper is devoted to the analysis of the experimental study whose intent is to find the effect of the stress/suction history on the dynamic properties of silty sand subjected to small- to mid-strains. The practical application of this study includes determining the effect on soil stiffness properties of increased soil suction (transpiration of water) followed by loading induced by shallow foundations and vice versa. Small-strain stiffness properties such as shear modulus, material damping, and shear wave velocity, are important subsoil parameters for proper analysis and design of unsaturated earth structures subject to static and dynamic loading. Traditional soil testing …

An Evaluation Of Failure Modes For Cast Iron And Ductile Iron Water Pipes, Ameya Brahmanand Paradkar

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

The need to evaluate the performance of cast iron and ductile iron water pipes is of great importance since they are the most common pipe materials for water mains. The concern in the water industry is about the cost involved in repairs and replacement of water pipes due to failure. The rate of pipe failures increases as the design life ends and become a financial burden on the water industry. This thesis evaluates the failure modes for the two most used pipe materials for water mains in the United States which are cast iron and ductile iron pipes. A study …

Development Of Traffic Inputs For The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide In New York State, Ferdous Intaj

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Proper characterization of traffic data is a prerequisite for the determination of appropriate traffic inputs to Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG). The development of proper traffic inputs helps reflect the traffic conditions over the life of pavement which would decrease the maintenance, repair and traffic disruptions and improve the traffic conditions of a road network.The objective of the study was to characterize the traffic data and suggest the site-specific, regional or state wide average values for traffic inputs to MEPDG for New York State. Vehicle class distribution (VCD), monthly distribution factors (MDF), hourly distribution factors (HDF), average number of axle …

Selective Catalytic Reduction Of Nitric Oxide Over Cerium-Doped Activated Carbons, Annaprabha Athappan

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) with ammonia for diesel engine NOx reduction using activated carbon (AC) was studied. Comparisons of unmodified and cerium-doped Granular Activated Carbon (GAC), Activated Carbon Fiber (ACF), and Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) were conducted. Physical and chemical properties and durability of the catalysts were examined using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS), carbon hydrogen and nitrogen (CHN) analysis, X-ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray Photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), Braunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analysis and density analysis. Experiments were carried in a fixed bed column at various temperatures from 100º to 400º …

Visualising Urban Flooding Scenarios Using Video Game Technology, William Elliott Lynn

Theses

This thesis investigates the application of computer graphics to the visualisation of urban flooding scenarios. The demand for urban flooding visualisations is presented in the context of an EU wide climate change response strategy. An analysis of the requirements from various stakeholders is presented and a strategy that addresses these requirements is synthesised. A study on the appropriate computer graphics methods and technologies is outlined and limitations of current technologies are assessed. Systems that solve these limitations are described and the result of usability and user acceptance testing are offered as evidence.

Characterization Of Sub-10 Nm Pores In Silicon-Dioxide, Joseph A. Billo

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Biomarkers have become an integral part of oil exploration. Gas Chromatography (-Mass Spectrometry) is performed to an oil sample to acquire biomarkers from the sample. The presence, lack of, or abundance of a given compound (or biomarker) in the geochemical results of an oil sample depict(s) a property or properties of the source rock and the oil. For example, the abundance of pristane and lack of phytane in an oil sample are characteristic of a shale source rock, such as the Eagle Ford, will show a high pristane to phytane ratio. The Eagle Ford shale formation is cretaceous in age; …

Infrared Imaging Method For Thermographic Characterizing Of Medical High Intensity Focused Ultrasound Devices, Mohammadreza Jahangir Moghadam

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

With new improvements in high-end commercial R&D Infrared camera technologies many challenges have been overcome for exploring high speed Infrared imaging, the ability to capture fast varying phenomena without image blur, acquire enough data to properly characterize dynamic energy, and increase the dynamic range without compromising the number of frames per second. This study presents a noninvasive method for determining the spatial and thermal heating profiles in a phantom tissue generated by High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) beam by using Infrared imaging. A high speed Infrared camera was placed above a tissue mimicking material that was heated at the focal …

Time Invariant Modeling Of Higher Order Dc-Dc Converters, Lei Niu

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

A time invariant modeling technique is proposed for higher order dc-dc converters, including Cuk, SEPIC, and Zeta converters. This thesis also investigates some issues involved in applying existing averaging techniques such as circuit averaging, state space averaging, generalized state space averaging, Krylov-Bogoliubov-Mitropolsky method, and Floquet theory, to model the dynamic behaviors of higher order converters. The proposed methodology is shown to provide better accuracy compared to existing techniques, and distinguishes between different types of carrier signals of modulation, for instance, sawtooth and isosceles triangle carrier signal. This thesis offers a straightforward systematic procedure and summarizes this procedure with a list …

Design And Printed Circuit Board Level Implementation Of A Narrow Band Lc Vco, Anjan Govindaraju

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

A Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) using a 0.6 µm CMOS technology has been designed and fabricated. The design's tuning range is from 390 MHz to 410 MHz, with the center frequency being 400 MHz. The oscillator is powered by a 2.5 volt power supply. The controlling voltage varies from 0.87 to 1.6 volts. Simulation of the LC VCO was carried out in the Advanced Design System (ADS) program. For the printed circuit board level implementation, the layout was first performed using the ADS program, and then its image was transferred on to a printed circuit board. The device footprints were …

A Real-Time Embedded Fpga Interface For An Ethernet Based Line Laser, Subrahmanya Ramaswamy

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Profile measurement systems developed at the Transportation Instrumentation and Embedded systems Lab (TIL) at the University of Texas at Arlington are used by Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to compute the profile of the road. The systems use certain basic sensors such as a laser, start sensor, distance encoder and accelerometer. The data samples from these sensors are acquired and stored for further processing. The data is processed in real-time using a road profiling algorithm to calculate the profile. This research effort investigates the feasibility of implementing the existing system using FPGA components and specifically for interfacing the laser to …

Modeling And Identification Of Thermally Actuated Micro-Robots, Sai Kalyan Yelike

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

This thesis explains the system identification of thermally actuated micro-robots and actuators developed at UTA-NGS (Next Generation Systems) and ARRI (Automation Robotics Research Institute). The energy used to power these actuators are externally-supplied voltage and class IV Laser sources. The micro-robots actuated with class IV laser sources have displacements recorded through a camera. Applied laser input waveforms and micro-robot's positional displacement are used for system identification of the Micro-robot. Various system identification methods (non-recursive and recursive) are used for creating a mathematical model of the physical system (Micro-robot). A similar approach is followed for micro-actuators known as chevron actuators powered …

Implementation And Analysis Of Directional Discrete Cosine Transform In H.264 For Baseline Profile, Shreyanka Subbarayappa

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

H.264/AVC [1] is a video coding standard that has a wide range of applications ranging from high-end professional camera and editing systems to low-end mobile applications. They strive to achieve maximum compression efficiency without compromising the quality of video. To this end many coding tools are defined in the coder. Transform coding is one among them. Transform Coding represents the signal/image (that is currently in time/spatial domain) in another domain (transform domain), where most of the energy of the signal/image is concentrated in a fewer number of coefficients. Thus the insignificant coefficients can be discarded after transform coding to achieve …

Performance Analysis And Implementation Of Mode Dependent Dct/Dst In H.264/Avc, Priyadarshini Anjanappa

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Video communications require significant amounts of information transmission. Video compression involves the bitrate reduction of a digital video signal carrying visual information. Compression can be a lossless or a lossy operation. Because of the immense volume of video information, lossy operations are mainly used for video compression. H.264 is a video compression standard that defines a wide set of coding tools to achieve compression. Transform coding is a lossy compression technique that exploits statistical dependencies between image pixels by converting them into coefficients with little or no dependencies. Block transform coding is widely used in image and video compression systems, …

Silicon Defect Recognition, Aditi S. Godbole

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

An algorithm is presented for the recognition of four types of defects present in silicon wafer images. Defect recognition is achieved by following a 3-step process: segmentation, feature extraction and classification.Multiple image segmentation algorithms are tried for locating and isolating the defects present in the silicon wafer images. The proposed image segmentation technique is based on simple concept of threshold based segmentation and edge detection based segmentation. Combination of four segmentation algorithms based on above mentioned techniques are used such that each segmentation algorithm specializes in segmenting a certain type of defect, thereby ensuring high chances of correct segmentation. Out …

Super-Resolution With Better Edge Enhancement, Gaurav Hansda

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Super resolution image reconstruction is a promising technique of digital imaging which attempts to generate a raster image with a higher resolution than its source. The source can consist of one or more images or frames. This thesis focuses on single-frame super-resolution i.e. the source is a single raster image. Changing the resolution directly refers to resampling the image. Specific algorithms have been designed for scaling up, scaling down and rotating images that deliver high quality results. Process of scaling up or super-resolution is the primary focus of this thesis, which in contrast scaling down or rotating deals with the …

Interference Mitigation In 4g Lte-A Heterogenous Networks, Rohan Nag Kummithe

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Long Term Evolution (LTE) complements 3G networks with high data rates, low latency and a flat, IP-based architecture. It also allows operators to use a new and a much wider spectrum when compared to the previous standards. To further enhance this and to achieve the constraints set by the International Mobile Telecommunication-Union (IMT-U), 3GPP has been working on various aspects of the LTE-Advance standard which has been officially termed as 4G network.Apart from the enhancements in the radio link, the next performance leap in wireless networks will come from an evolved network topology. The concept is to improve spectral efficiency …

Analytical Evaluation Of Frequency Reuse For Ofdma Cellular Networks, Anis Davoudi

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

In this thesis, the goal is to arrive at tractable general expressions for probability of coverage and achievable rate for a typical mobile user. For this purpose, the grid network model is replaced with the Poisson Point Process model. Later, the scenario has been made narrower and then, it is assumed that the power of the interference signals has exponential distribution, which has helped to greatly simplify the formulas. Then, to evaluate the effect of frequency reuse on the probability of coverage and the average achievable rate in the new model, these results have been simulated. Frequency reuse had a …

Circuit Pools: Preventive Information Leak Attacks In Salsa Through Cached Lookups, Anahita Davoudi

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

An improvement in preventing information leak attacks has been proposed by enhancing the path building process using pair of nodes obtained from lookups done by each initiator randomly. Using a pool of pairs locally produced for each initiator by random lookups done by that node; improves anonymity for the circuit initiator. The percentages of how many pools each pair belongs to, availability of each pair, and number of circuit attempts are analyzed for different number of both pool size and redundancy level. With these modifications and additions, the performance of the system has improved against the Conventional Continuous Stage Attack, …

Effect Of Surface Roughness On Slip Flow In Nanoscale Polymer Films, Anoosheh Niavarani, Nikolai Priezjev

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Design Charts For Circular Fins Of Arbitrary Profile Subject To Radiation And Convection With Wall Resistances, G. Zhang, Benjamin T.F. Chung

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research

In this work, the optimization for a radiative-convective annular fin of arbitrary profile with base wall thermal resistances is considered. A fourth order Runge-Kutta method is used to solve the associated non-linear governing equa-tions. Further differentiations yield the optimum heat transfer and the optimum fin dimensions. To facilitate the thermal design, design charts for optimum dimensions are proposed. Furthermore, the fin effectiveness for the optimal annular ra-diative-convective fins is presented to check the practicality of the design.

http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874396X01206010015

Estimation Of Evapotranspiration And Water Budget Components Using Concurrent Soil Moisture And Water Table Monitoring, Mandana Rahgozar, Nirjhar Shah, Mark Ross

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Simultaneous measurements of soil moisture profiles and water table heads, along a flow path, were used to determine evapotranspiration (ET) along with other components of the water budget. The study was conducted at a small-scale (~0.8 Km2) hydrologic monitoring field site in Hillsborough County, Florida, from January 2002 to June 2004. Frequency Domain Reflectometry soil moisture probes, installed in close proximity to water table monitoring wells were used to derive changes in the soil water storage. A one-dimensional transect model was developed; changes in the soil water storage and water table observations served as input to determine all vertical and …

Wireless Channel Equalization In Digital Communication Systems, Sammuel Jalali

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Our modern society has transformed to an information-demanding system, seeking voice, video, and data in quantities that could not be imagined even a decade ago. The mobility of communicators has added more challenges. One of the new challenges is to conceive highly reliable and fast communication system unaffected by the problems caused in the multipath fading wireless channels. Our quest is to remove one of the obstacles in the way of achieving ultimately fast and reliable wireless digital communication, namely Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI), the intensity of which makes the channel noise inconsequential.

The theoretical background for wireless channels modeling and …

Performance Analysis Of Diversity Techniques In Wireless Communication Systems: Cooperative Systems With Cci And Mimo-Ofdm Systems, Mohammed Akhoirshida

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This Dissertation analyzes the performance of ecient digital commu- nication systems, the performance analysis includes the bit error rate (BER) of dier- ent binary and M-ary modulation schemes, and the average channel capacity (ACC) under dierent adaptive transmission protocols, namely, the simultaneous power and rate adaptation protocol (OPRA), the optimal rate with xed power protocol (ORA), the channel inversion with xed rate protocol (CIFR), and the truncated channel in- version with xed transmit power protocol (CTIFR). In this dissertation, BER and ACC performance of interference-limited dual-hop decode-and-forward (DF) relay- ing cooperative systems with co-channel interference (CCI) at both the relay …