Engineering Commons^™

Computer Controlled Vegetable Oil Fuel System, Joseph W. Souza

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Design Of A Sustainable Toilet, Meghan Pranger, Tommy Lauderdale, Joseph Benyon, Kyle Moore

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Relative Value Iteration For Average Reward Semi-Markov Control Via Simulation, Abhijit Gosavi

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper studies the semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) under the long-run average reward criterion in the simulation-based context. Using dynamic programming, a straightforward approach for solving this problem involves policy iteration; a value iteration approach for this problem involves a transformation that induces an additional computational burden. In the simulation-based context, however, where one seeks to avoid the transition probabilities needed in dynamic programming, value iteration forms a more convenient route for solution purposes. In this paper, hence, we present (to the best of knowledge for the first time) a relative value iteration algorithm for solving average reward SMDPs via …

Minimal Medium For Optimal Growth And Lipid Production Of The Microalgae Scenedesmus Dimorphus, Colin Welter, Jacob Schwenk, Bahar Kanani, John Van Blargan, Joanne M. Belovich

Chemical & Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications

The culture of Scenedesmus dimorphus at the laboratory scale has often been in standard microalgae media, such as 3N-Basal Bold medium (3N-BB), which contains 15 different chemicals. Given the extremely tight profit margins of large-scale production of biofuel from microalgae, it is important to identify the minimally sufficient quantities of nutrients necessary to maximize lipid productivity. The individual and interactive effects of six groupings of the components of 3N-BB medium on growth rate, lipid content, and total biomass yield of S. dimorphus were determined. Trace metal and vitamin concentrations were reduced to 1/6 the level of 3N-BB medium without adversely …

Design And Construction Of A Portable Gantry Hoist, Sam Hutcheson

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This report covers the design of a portable gantry hoist with a custom frame design. The design was based off of the materials that were available and practical for this project to save money. The portable gantry hoist will be rated for a 2 ton capacity. The casters, trolley, and hoist were the only parts purchased.

Design Of An Optical Position Sensor For Microfiber Actuators, Luxi Cheng

All Theses

This thesis introduces a new type of sensor that detects the position information of a paramagnetic microfiber and transforms it to computational electrical signal. The original purpose of the sensor is to solve the problem of feedback signal detection of the microfiber control system, which is the problem of detecting the position information for the microfiber. The microfiber will be presented as the experimental object of this sensor to test its capability. A novel optical based approach is used to transfer the position signal to a computer scrutable signal for further analysis.

The purpose of the sensor design comes from …

Speech Enhancement By Exploiting The Baseband Phase Structure Of Voiced Speech For Effective Non-Stationary Noise Estimation, Sanjay Patil

All Theses

Speech enhancement is one of the most important and challenging issues in the speech communication and signal processing field. It aims to minimize the effect of additive noise on the quality and intelligibility of the speech signal. Speech quality is the measure of noise remaining after the processing on the speech signal and of how pleasant the resulting speech sounds, while intelligibility refers to the accuracy of understanding speech. Speech enhancement algorithms are designed to remove the additive noise with minimum speech distortion.The task of speech enhancement is challenging due to lack of knowledge about the corrupting noise. Hence, the …

Interstitial Cell Seeding And Dynamic Conditioning Of Aortic Heart Valve Scaffolds, Allison Kennamer

All Theses

In 2011, U.S. Markets for Heart Valve Repair and Replacement Products estimated that roughly four million people in the United States are diagnosed with a heart valve disorder annually. And in the following year, the American Heart Association reported that approximately 35,000 deaths in the US were either directly or indirectly attributed to heart valve disease. Diseases of the heart valve are degenerative in nature and therefore progressively worsen unbeknownst to the patient until symptoms become clinically relevant. By this time, the valve is in such poor condition that complete replacement is often the only effective treatment. Current solutions are …

Development And Testing Of An Impact Plate Yield Monitor For Peanuts, Jacob Fravel

All Theses

Advancements in precision agriculture technologies such as yield monitors have allowed for improved management capabilities and reduced input costs for a number of crops. Most commercialized developments in yield monitoring systems and technologies to date have been directed for use with the major grain crops such as corn, soybeans and cereal grains. This research focuses on development and testing of an impact plate yield monitor system for the peanut harvest. Using a four row peanut combine in virginia type peanuts, 4.8 ha (12 ac) of simultaneous yield data were recorded from an Ag Leader® grain (impact plate) yield monitor and …

Chemical, Physical, And Moisture Release Characteristics Of Compost Based Potting Media, Tianzhen Wang

All Theses

A commercially available composted cow manure was used as a potting media amendment. A common base mix for woody ornamentals of 8 parts pine bark and 1 part sand was compared with 3 other mixes that contained 20%, 30%, and 40% compost (v/v). The remaining fraction of these three mixes was the base mix (bark and sand). Samples of the pine bark and compost were analyzed to determine the following plant nutrients and mineral concentrations: nitrogen (organic and soluble), carbon, P2O5, K2O, Ca, S, Mg, Mn, Cu, Zn, Na, Fe, and Al.

A Dynamic Programming Approach To Achieving An Optimal End State Along A Serial Production Line, Shih-Fen Cheng, Blake E. Nicholson, Marina A. Epelman, Daniel J. Reaume, Robert L. Smith

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In modern production systems, it is critical to perform maintenance, calibration, installation, and upgrade tasks during planned downtime. Otherwise, the systems become unreliable and new product introductions are delayed. For reasons of safety, testing, and access, task performance often requires the vicinity of impacted equipment to be left in a specific “end state” when production halts. Therefore, planning the shutdown of a production system to balance production goals against enabling non-production tasks yields a challenging optimization problem. In this paper, we propose a mathematical formulation of this problem and a dynamic programming approach that efficiently finds optimal shutdown policies for …

Limitations On High-Frequency Permeability Of Magnetic Materials, Konstantin N. Rozanov, Marina Koledintseva

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Engineering of magnetic composites with high microwave permeability is important for EMC/EMI and other applications. One of the challenging problems is to determine constraints on the achievable high-frequency permeability of magnetic composites. The objective of the present paper is to analyze the data available from the literature on the microwave permeability constraints and derive a generalized constraint condition. It is well known that in many practical occasions the actual magnetic frequency dispersion curves differ from the Lorentzian behavior. For these cases, an integral form of the constraint may be useful. Possible applications of the integral constraint are discussed for the …

A New Coulomb Gauge Based Electric Field Integral Equation Method, Xiaoyan Y.Z. Xiong, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Wei E.I. Sha, Yat Hei Lo

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The electric field integral equation (EFIE) method is one of the most commonly-adopted computational electromagnetic methods. Its popularity stems from the efficient surface triangulation, excellent numerical precision, and the powerful capability of handling open and complex geometries. However, when the frequency tends to zero, the method-of-moment (MoM) solution of EFIE using the Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) basis functions suffers from the low-frequency breakdown, where the contribution from the vector potential is extremely imbalanced with that from the scalar potential. As a result, the matrix representation of EFIE operator is highly ill-conditioned and cannot be inverted reliably and efficiently. © 2013 IEEE.

Reducing Computational Workload Of Electromagnetic Scattered Fields From Electrically Large Quadratic Surface At High Frequency, Yu Mao Wu, Weng Cho Chew, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We use the numerical steepest descent path (NSDP) method to calculate the highly oscillatory physical optics (PO) scattered fields on electrically large quadratic surfaces. The resultant phase behaviors of PO integrands are elliptic and hyperbolic on parabolic and saddle quadratic patches, respectively. The proposed method relies on deforming the integration path of the PO integral into the NSDPs on the complex plane. Numerical results of the PO scattered fields on these smooth conducting quadratic surfaces illustrate that the proposed NSDP method gains high accuracy while the workload is frequency independent. © 2013 IEEE.

One Dimensional Multiple Periodic Composite Right/Left Handed (Crlh) Structures, Zi Long Ma, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Shulabh Gupta, Wei E.I. Sha

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The wave-propagation characteristics in a one-dimensional multiple-periodic (MP) Composite right/left-handed (CRLH) structures is presented, where it is found that an increase in the number of unit cells in each supercell leads to new passbands and stopbands. To understand this phenomenon, the network parameters are employed for the theoretical analysis. Detailed dispersion characteristics and the relation between passbands and sub-periodicities are investigated using both analytical and full-wave results, and the reasons for their emergence is qualitatively discussed. Besides, its application to multi-band leaky-wave radiators is also suggested. © 2013 IEEE.

A Compact Hf/Uhf Dual Band Rfid Tag Antenna, Zi Long Ma, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Jingtian Xi, Terry Tao Ye

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a novel dual band RFID (radio frequency identification) tag antenna. Two challenges are faced: the compact dimension and the impaired bandwidth due to the couplings between two band structures. A spiral coil is designed to handle the HF (13.56MHz) near field coupling, and a diagonal symmetric design consisting of two meander lines are placed inside the coil for UHF band (915MHz). This structure supports multiple resonance modes around 915MHz to broaden the working bandwidth under the large inductive circumstance from the HF coil. The proposed antenna is easy to adjust by both coarse tuning and fine tuning. …

An Efficient Preconditioning Scheme For Eigenanalysis Of Inhomogeneously Loaded Rectangular Cavities, Qi I. Dai, Yat Hei Lo, Lijun Jiang, Weng Cho Chew

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An efficient preconditioning scheme for the eigenanalysis of inhomogeneously loaded rectangular cavities is presented. Such structures are modeled with the finite-difference frequency-domain (FDFD) method, while the desired interior eigen-spectra are sought for by Arnoldi iterations with the shiftand-invert operation. In large scale problems, the inversion can only be performed iteratively. A preconditioner is constructed in order to accelerate the inversion. It can effectively shrink the spectrum of the governing matrix, and can be solved for by using fast discrete sine and cosine transforms (DST's and DCT's). The efficiency of this scheme is demonstrated by several numerical examples. © 2013 IEEE.

Chipless Rfid Tags Based On Multiple Band-Rejected Planar Log-Periodic Antennas, Shulabh Gupta, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A passive chipless Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag is proposed based on the tailorable band-rejection property of the log-periodic (LP) antennas. The proposed tag principle is successfully demonstrated using full-wave simulations, where the absence and presence of the band-rejection in VSWR and thus radiation gain, is shown to carry the bit information. Due to the large number of dipole radiators on the LP aperture, the proposed tag can easily support large number of codes, providing a potential solution for limited number of bits in conventional chipless tags. © 2013 IEEE.

Modeling Radiated Emissions Through Shielding Boxes Based On The Tangential Electrical Field Samplings Over Openings, Ping Li, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The radiation from radiators such as PCBs inside an enclosed shielding box with ventilation slots is an important issue for electromagnetic compatibility or interference characterizations. In this paper, a two-step process is proposed based on the equivalence principle and the electric field integral equation method to complete the radiation prediction. The tangential electric fields over the slots on shielding boxes are first sampled to be the equivalent magnetic currents radiated from internal PCBs. In the second step, to avoid the computation of complex nonanalytical dyadic Green's functions when the field radiation is computed directly from the equivalent source, the surface …

Degrees Of Freedom Of The Single Antenna Gaussian Wiretap Channel With A Helper Irrespective Of The Number Of Antennas At The Eavesdropper, Mohamed Nafea, Aylin Yener

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Gaussian wiretap channel with a helper, i.e., a cooperative jammer, is considered and its secure degrees of freedom (s.d.o.f.) is computed. Previous work showed that the s.d.o.f. is upper bounded by 1 over 2 in this model when all parties are equipped with one antenna each. In this paper, the more challenging scenario where the eavesdropper has multiple antennas is tackled. Relying on structured signaling and cooperative jamming, specifically, by real interference alignment, it is shown that s.d.o.f. of 1 over 2 is achievable irrespective of the number of antennas the eavesdropper may have as long as the cooperative …

Finite Horizon Stochastic Optimal Control Of Uncertain Linear Networked Control System, Hao Xu, S. Jagannathan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, finite horizon stochastic optimal control issue has been studied for linear networked control system (LNCS) in the presence of network imperfections such as network-induced delays and packet losses by using adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) approach. Due to an uncertainty in system dynamics resulting from network imperfections, the stochastic optimal control design uses a novel adaptive estimator (AE) to solve the optimal regulation of uncertain LNCS in a forward-in-time manner in contrast with backward-in-time Riccati equation-based optimal control with known system dynamics. Tuning law for unknown parameters of AE has been derived. Lyapunov theory is used to show …

Scrap Dissolution In Molten Iron Containing Carbon For The Case Of Coupled Heat And Mass Transfer Control, Ajay Kumar Shukla, Brahma Deo, D. G.C. Robertson

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The scrap dissolution in an actual process like the BOF is affected both by mass transfer and heat transfer. In this paper, the mass transfer of carbon in liquid melt is considered along with heat transfer. The approaches used in this paper to model the scrap dissolution phenomenon include the application of Green's function, quasi-static, integral profile, and the finite difference approach for different Biot numbers. Mass transfer coefficients are calculated using the Chilton-Colburn's analogy for the case of forced convection. Since the quasi-static approach requires the least computational time, it is used for a detailed parametric study, including the …

Adjust Decision-Making Targets Based On Psychological Thresholds, Jian Liu, Shun Xiang Wu, Si Feng Liu, Qiao Wang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper study the impact of psychological thresholds (PTs) on the decision maker's (DM's) decision target when making decision. A new approach of decision making is proposed in this paper. First, we construct criterion expected functions according to three different types of criteria: profit type, cost-type and intermediate-type, respectively. Then, we calculate the local degree of satisfaction (LDS) of each object when PTs exists, in order to adjust the initial decision target to make up new decision table. Later, by weighting the criteria reaching the DM's degree of satisfaction (DS) along with information aggregation algorithm, we obtain the overall satisfaction …

Distributed Generation And Storage Optimal Control With State Estimation, F. Meng, D. Haughton, B. Chowdhury, Mariesa Crow, G. T. Heydt

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The increasing demand coupled with expanding installation of distributed resources call for the development of smart technologies to control and optimize distribution system operations. In this paper, a distributed generation and storage optimization algorithm is proposed using pricing signals as distribution locational marginal pricing (DLMP). This signal is used to optimize the day-ahead operation planning of distributed generation and energy storage. A distribution level state estimation algorithm is also designed. The main conclusion is that the proposed optimal control and state estimation will improve the energy efficiency and economic benefits in a digitally controlled distribution power system. © 2013 IEEE.

Capacitance Calculation For Via Structures Using An Integral Equation Method Based On Partial Capacitance, Hanfeng Wang, Siming Pan, Jingook Kim, Albert E. Ruehli, Jun Fan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a new integral equation formulation for via structures is developed for the capacitance extraction between vias and planes. The formulation is initially developed for axially symmetric geometries and then extended to axially asymmetric geometries by changing the circular ring cells to arc cells. The extended method can be used to calculate the shared-antipad via structure, which is widely used in high-speed differential signal interconnects. In addition, the image theory is used to handle inhomogeneous media, and a new technique is given to reduce computational costs for via-to-plane structures based on properties of the capacitance-matrix elements. The proposed …

Study Of Low-Rate Ook And Bpsk Transmission With Pn Sequence In Shallow Water Acoustic Communication, Jinxing Hao, Jintao Wang, Yahong Rosa Zheng

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This work shows some results of synchronization and channel estimation in simple underwater acoustic communication systems using On-off keying and binary phase-shift keying.

Novel Crack Sensor For Tsv-Based 3d Integrated Circuits: Design And Deployment Perspectives, Chun Zhang, Moongon Jung, Sung Kyu Lim, Yiyu Shi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The CTE mismatch-induced stress in 3D ICs may initiate cracks from the interface between a TSV and its dielectric liner and propagates them on the silicon substrate surface. If a crack grows beyond the keep-out-zone (KOZ) of a TSV, it will jeopardize the reliability of the devices along its propagation path. While such threat can be eliminated by a sufficiently large KOZ, significant area overhead will be incurred. Given the low probability of crack occurrence, we argue that a much more economical approach is to keep KOZ small and filter out bad chips with cracks growing beyond the KOZ during …

Study Of Cross Polarization Of Tapered Slot Antenna For Emc Measurements, Fenghan Lin, Jun Fan, Yihong Qi, Yongchang Jiao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Development of wireless technologies pushes for more accurate and more consistent EMC measurements. Antenna cross polarization is found to be a main contributor to the measurement errors. In this paper, full-wave analysis of E-field distribution of various slot lines is presented, which reveals that the bilateral tapered slot antenna has the widest impedance bandwidth and the lowest cross-polarization level simultaneously. The conclusions obtained in this paper will be used to develop an innovative wideband (from 700 MHz to 20 GHz) bilateral tapered slot antenna used for wireless EMC testing. © 2013 IEEE.

Eagle-Eye: A Near-Optimal Statistical Framework For Noise Sensor Placement, Tao Wang, Chun Zhang, Jinjun Xiong, Yiyu Shi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The relentless technology scaling has led to significantly reduced noise margin and complicated functionalities. As such, design time techniques per se are less likely to ensure power integrity, resulting in runtime voltage emergencies. To alleviate the issue, recently several works have shed light on the possibilities of dynamic noise management systems. Most of these works rely on on-chip noise sensors to accurately capture voltage emergencies. However, they all assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that the placement of the sensors is given. It remains an open problem in the literature how to optimally place a given number of noise sensors for …

Two-Stage List Sphere Decoding For Under-Determined Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Systems, Chen Qian, Jingxian Wu, Yahong Rosa Zheng, Zhaocheng Wang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A two-stage list sphere decoding (LSD) algorithm is proposed for under-determined multiple-input multiple-output (UD-MIMO) systems that employ N transmit antennas and Msystem; while Group 2 contains layers M+1 to N that contribute to the rank deficiency of the channel Gram matrix. Tree search algorithms are used for both groups, but with different search radii. A new method is proposed to adaptively adjust the tree search radius of Group 2 based on the statistical properties of the received signals. The employment of the adaptive tree search can significantly reduce the computation complexity. We also propose a modified channel Gram matrix to …