Engineering Commons^™

Design And Testing Of A Turbidity Sensor For Grain Size Measurements, Sara Rebeca Martin Cid

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

Grain-size analysis is a measurement of the size distribution of individual particles in a soil sample. The major features of grain-size analysis are the destruction or dispersion of soil aggregates into discrete units by chemical, mechanical, or ultrasonic means and the separation of particles according to size limits by such means as sieving and sedimentation, as well as other methods.

Soil particles span a large size range, varying from boulders (exceeding 0.25 m in size) down to submicron clays (Grain-size distribution curves are used extensively by civil engineers to evaluate materials used for foundations, road fills, and other construction purposes. …

An Ontology Design Pattern For Cartographic Map Scaling, David Carral, Simon Scheider, Krzysztof Janowicz, Charles Vardeman Ii, Adila A. Krisnadhi, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The concepts of scale is at the core of cartographic abstraction and mapping. It defines which geographic phenomena should be displayed, which type of geometry and map symbol to use, which measures can be taken, as well as the degree to which features need to be exaggerated or spatially displaced. In this work, we present an ontology design pattern for map scaling using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) within a particular extension of the OWL RL profile. We explain how it can be used to describe scaling applications, to reason over scale levels, and geometric representations. We propose an axiomatization …

Characterization Of An Affitoid Variable Region To Be Used For Mdm-2 Detection In Elisa Microarray, Graham Reinhard

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) microarray using peptoid-based affinity reagents, referred to as affitoids, is potentially a very powerful tool for the early detection of cancer and other complex diseases. Current detection methods for cancer are inadequate because most are imaging techniques and require that the cancer has progressed far enough for growths to be visible, which is often far too late for treatment to be effective. One possible way to overcome this issue is to use a biological detection technique that is able to detect proteins that are secreted specifically by cancerous cells (referred to as biomarkers). These biomarkers …

Optimizing Load Control For A Residential Microgrid In A Collaborative Environment, Majid Ahmadi

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Theses - Archive

This research is aimed to develop an analytical model for a Residential Microgrid under a collaborative environment. In order to maximize profit, Collaborative Consumption (C.C) as a community-based social agreement has been developed in a model to capture consumer behavior, and modeling Residential Microgrids in such environment has been investigated in this research for the first time. This study will introduce a framework for Residential Microgrids using a unique method of demand response based on the particular characteristics of residential loads. Moreover, such a framework enables consumers to participate actively in the supply side of the electricity market. Indeed, consumers …

Consequences Of Four-Point, Strap-Type Wheelchair Tiedown And Occupant Restraint System Practices On Wheelchair Passenger Safety In Fixed-Route Transit., Zdravko Salipur

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many wheelchair users rely upon fixed route public transportation using large accessible transit vehicles (LATVs) for independent transportation to and from work, healthcare appointments and leisure activities. A substantial number of these wheelchair users may not be able to transfer from their wheelchair to a motor vehicle seat during transit. It is necessary to afford these wheelchair users the same level of safety as occupants seated in motor vehicle seats. Therefore, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that LATVs be equipped with wheelchair securement and occupant restraint systems (WTORS). The four-point tiedowns and occupant restraints are the primary means …

Full Depth Reclamation: Bringing Developing Countries' Transportation Up To Speed, Sadie Smith

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Often, a direct correlation is observed between a country’s transportation network and economic development. Evidence of this is observed all over the world. Full Depth Reclamation (FDR) is a roadway recycling technique that mills and mixes the existing roadway with a stabilizing agent and then re-compacts the mixture to create a thicker, stabilized pavement layer. This method is both cost effective and environmentally friendly, making it a very appealing option as the need to rehabilitate or increase the structural capacity of existing roads grows. In this study, the material characterization of FDR was examined as a composite material of both …

Decision Support Systems For Assembly Line Planning -Modular Subsytems For A Large Scale Production Management System, Rahul Renu

All Theses

In the domain of assembly lines, process sheets are entities that carry assembly process descriptions (work instructions), assembly time estimations, product workspaces and other configuration management and control information. These process sheets get assigned to workstations during the process of assembly line balancing. In this research two tools have been developed to aid in the assembly line planning process. In order to ensure that assembly line workers do not intrude upon each other's workspace, two assembly processes operating on the same product workspace must not be assigned to the same station. Generating and maintaining product workspace information for every process …

Helicopter Toy And Lift Estimation, Said Shakerin

All Faculty Articles - School of Engineering and Computer Science

A $1 plastic helicopter toy (called a Wacky Whirler) can be used to demonstrate lift. Students can make basic measurements of the toy, use reasonable assumptions and, with the lift formula, estimate the lift, and verify that it is sufficient to overcome the toy's weight.

Acuta Enews May 2013 Vol. 42, No. 5

ACUTA Newsletters

In this Issue...

1 ACUTA Honors 4 Schools, 3 Individuals

2 Convergence (or when the Stars Are Aligned)

2 View 8 Conference Session

Three Predictions for Higher Ed Residential Networking

3 Get Full Access to eSchool News Online

4 Info Links

5 Mobile Voice Policies Are MIA!

6 Board Report

6 Annual Dues Invoices Mailed May 1

7 Welcome New Members

7 Check It Out

8 Annual Conference Photo Section

Meter Gate Calibration And Accuracy Analysis, Ryan Fulton

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Decision Support Tool For Operations Management Course And Instructor Scheduling, Morgan Ulesich

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The goal of this project is develop a decision support tool that will assist the Operations Management Department at the University of Arkansas with scheduling courses and instructors for the upcoming academic year. The staff of the department dreads this time each year because it takes countless hours to complete the daunting task. Creating an abstract mathematical model will assist the department in scheduling the courses. The model will have the ability to optimize the schedule of the courses and instructors from a large number of variables and constraints that the department requires. An optimization software package can solve the …

Noise-Insensitive Prognostic Evaluation Of Historic Masonry Structures, Ashley Haydock

All Theses

In recent years, a significant amount of research has been directed towards the development of prognostic methodologies to forecast the future health state of an engineering system assisting condition based maintenance. These prognostic methods, having furthered the maintenance practices for mechanical systems, have yet to be applied to historic masonry structures, many of which stand in an aged and degraded state. Implementation of prognostic methodologies to historic masonry structures can advance the planning of successful conservation and restoration efforts, ultimately prolonging the life of these heritage structures. This thesis presents a review of prognostic concepts and techniques available in the …

Dynamic Transcriptional Response Of Escherichia Coli To Inclusion Body Formation, Faraz Baig

All Theses

Escherichia coli is used intensively for recombinant protein production due to its many unique advantages, but one key challenge with the use of E. coli is the tendency of recombinant proteins to misfold and aggregate into insoluble inclusion bodies (IBs). The presence of IBs stresses cells and can hinder overall growth. Additionally, IBs contain high concentrations of recombinant protein in an inactive form and thus require recovery steps to salvage functional recombinant protein. Currently, no universally effective method exists to prevent IB formation in recombinant E. coli. Further research into the gene expression response to insoluble recombinant protein may …

Biohydrogen Production By Thermotoga Neapolitana In Agricultural Media, David Morris

All Theses

In this study the production of hydrogen gas by eubacteria Thermotoga neapolitana was investigated. The organism was grown using varying media of cull peach solids and soybean meal. Hydrogen, co-products, and sugar concentrations were observed and compared.
T. neapolitana grew in medium containing peaches and soybean meal as carbon and nitrogen sources, respectively, and produced hydrogen gas. A standard medium containing glucose and yeast extract produced the most hydrogen at 31.5 mmol H2/L-medium. Withholding the vitamins and minerals from the standard the media had a significant effect on hydrogen production reducing the amount of gas produced to 25.8 mmol H2/L-medium. …

Analytical Evaluation Of Adaptive Transmission Protocols For Markov Models Of Channels With Fading And Moderate Shadowing, Sneha Latha Kottapalli

All Theses

Adaptive transmission protocols are often employed to communicate over wireless channels with fading and other time-varying propagation losses. The protocols compensate for the propagation losses and maintain high throughput by adjusting transmission parameters in response to the channel variations. Performance evaluations for practical adaptive transmission protocols typically require simulation of both the time-varying processes and the procedure by which the protocol derives information about the channel quality. In this thesis, we develop an analytical method to evaluate the performance of two practical protocols, an adaptive coding protocol and an adaptive modulation and coding protocol, which rely on statistics derived from …

The Effect Of Packaging Material Properties On Consumer Food Quality Perception In Quick-Service Restaurants, Emily Thackston

All Theses

The majority of menu items available in quick-service restaurants (QSR) are consumed directly from a container or package. The main reasons consumers choose to eat fast food are because it is convenient, prepared quickly, a good value, and inexpensive. Therefore, the packaging becomes an integral part of the food product and from a consumer perspective must be consistent with their expectations and motives for choosing to eat fast food. Prior research has directly linked characteristics of consumer food packaging experience to their perception of its contents. The purpose of this research is to determine if consumer quality perception of food …

New Approach For Minimizing Human Errors In Hospital Operating Rooms By Using Rfid Alerting Systems, Hamid S. Ghoraishi

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Theses - Archive

Patient safety is an increasing concern in health care due to the fact the increasing number of medical errors. Most fatal medical errors happen in hospital operating rooms. This research proposes a unique approach that decreases medical errors in hospital operating rooms using an RFID-based technology to alert doctors and nurses when the wrong tool enters to the operating area, via text message.Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a portion of a new growth in the information era where items equipped with chips that can process data automatically will progressively become an essential part of everyday life. RFID permeates through many …

A Sustainability Based Framework To Make A Strategic Outsourcing Decision For Warehouses In The Electronics Industry, Chendur Murugananthan Anand

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Theses - Archive

Over the course of last decades, sustainability matured from an abstract concept to an important source of corporate legitimacy. Supply chain management plays an important role in shaping and framing sustainability, due to the high level of external value added in many industries (Hofmann, Busse, Bode, & Henke, 2013). It is critical to accurately monitor and determine inventory holding costs and its impacts on decision making as it can be a representation of almost half of the overall assets of an organization. The concept of outsourcing stems from the traditional make-or-buy and subcontracting questions that companies have dealt with for …

Aluminium-Free Glass Polyalkenoate Cements: Ion Release And In Vitro Antibacterial Efficacy, A. W. Wren, J. P. Hansen, S. Hayakawa, Mark R. Towler

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Glass polyalkenoate cements (GPCs) have exhibited potential as bone cements. This study investigates the effect of substituting TiO₂ for SiO₂ in the glass phase and the subsequent effect on cement rheology, mechanical properties, ion release and antibacterial properties. Glass characterization revealed a reduction in glass transition temperature (T_g) from 685 to 669 C with the addition of 6 mol % TiO₂ (AT-2). Magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (MAS-NMR) revealed a shift from -81 ppm to -76pmm when comparing a Control glass to AT-2, indicating de-polymerization of the Si network. The incorporation of TiO_{2 …}

Study Of Immobilizing Cadmium Selenide Quantum Dots In Selected Polymers For Application In Peroxyoxalate Chemiluminescence Flow Injection Analysis, Christopher S. Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two batches of CdSe QDs with different sizes were synthesized for immobilizing in polyisoprene (PI), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), and low-density polyethylene (LDPE). The combinations of QDs and polymer substrates were evaluated for their analytical fit-for-use in applicable immunoassays. Hydrogen peroxide standards were injected into the flow injection analyzer (FIA) constructed to simulate enzyme-generated hydrogen peroxide reacting with bis-(2,4,6-trichlorophenyl) oxalate.

Linear correlations between hydrogen peroxide and chemilumenscent intensities yielded regression values greater than 0.9750 for hydrogen peroxide concentrations between 1.0 x 10^-4 M and 1.0 x 10^-1 M. The developed technique’s LOD was approximately 10 ppm. Variability of the prepared …

Analysis And Mitigation Of The Cubesat Dynamic Environment, Steve M. Furger

Master's Theses

A vibration model was developed for CubeSats inside the Poly-Picosatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD). CubeSats are fixed in the Z axis of deployers, and therefore resonate with deployer peaks. CubeSats generally start fixed in the X and Y axes, and then settle into an isolated position. CubeSats do not resonate with deployers after settling into an isolated position. Experimental data shows that the P-POD amplifies vibration loads when CubeSats are fixed in the deployer, and vibration loads are reduced when the CubeSats settle into an isolated position. A concept for a future deployer was proposed that isolates CubeSats from the deployer …

Stability Control Of Triple Trailer Vehicles, Michael O'Neal Arant

All Dissertations

While vehicle stability control is a well-established technology in the passenger car realm, it is still an area of active research for commercial vehicles as indicated by the recent notice of proposed rulemaking on commercial vehicle stability by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, 2012). The reasons that commercial vehicle electronic stability control (ESC) development has lagged passenger vehicle ESC include the fact that the industry is generally slow to adopt new technologies and that commercial vehicles are far more complex requiring adaptation of existing technology. From the controller theory perspective, current commercial vehicle stability systems are generally passenger …

Multifunctional Nanophosphors For Tissue Imaging And Drug Delivery, Hongyu Chen

All Dissertations

X-rays have been used for non-invasive high-resolution imaging of thick biological specimens since their discovery in 1895. They are widely used for structural imaging of bone, metal implants, and cavities in soft tissue. Recently, a number of new contrast methodologies have emerged which are expanding X-ray's biomedical applications to functional as well as structural imaging. However, traditional X-ray imaging provides high spatial resolution imaging through tissue but do not measure chemical concentrations. In this dissertation, we describe an X-ray excited optical luminescence (XEOL) technique which uses a scanning X-ray beam to irradiate Gd2O2S phosphors and detect the resulting visible luminescence …

Sustained Release Of Estrogens From Pegylated Nanoparticles For Treatment Of Secondary Spinal Cord Injury, John Barry

All Dissertations

Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is a debilitating condition which causes neurological damage and can result in paralysis. SCI results in immediate mechanical damage to the spinal cord, but secondary injuries due to inflammation, oxidative damage, and activated biochemical pathways leading to apoptosis exacerbate the injury. The only currently available treatment, methylprednisolone, is controversial because there is no convincing data to support its therapeutic efficacy for SCI treatment. In the absence of an effective SCI treatment option, 17β-estradiol has gained significant attention for its anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic abilities, all events associated with secondary. Sadly, 17β-estradiol is associated with systemic adverse …

Aerosol Delivery As A Method For Enhancing Remedial Application In Contaminated Vadose Zones, Richard Hall

All Dissertations

Remediation of contaminated vadose zones is often hindered by an inability to effectively distribute liquid- or solid-phase amendments. Many amendment-based approaches, such as bioremediation, chemical oxidation, and reactive barriers have been successful in saturated formations. However, these remedial approaches have seen limited application in unsaturated materials, largely because of difficulties delivering amendments.
Aerosol delivery is a promising approach for distributing amendments in contaminated vadose zones. The amendments are aerosolized, creating a cloud of micron to sub-micron-scale liquid droplets held suspended in a gas by Brownian motion. During injection into porous media, the aerosol particles are transported along with the gas …

Highly Sensitive Fiber-Based Devices For Gene And Protein Analysis, Victor Maximov

All Dissertations

Single cell probing has found a number of applications in different areas of research. It can help us to better understand cell-to-cell interactions; it has found numerous applications in immunology, cancer research, detection of pathogenic infections and genetic abnormalities. The single cell analysis is very important in stem cells research and development of cells. The main obstacle in the single cell analysis is the small amount of analyte that a single cell could provide. Another difficulty is connected to the cell-to-cell variability inside the uniform population due to the differences of single cells in size, activity, mitotic stage, and functions. …

Impedance Analysis Of Dielectric Nanoparticles Enabled Via A Self-Assembled Monolayer, Sasidhar Siddabattuni, Thomas P. Schuman, Vladimir Petrovsky, Fatih Dogan

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Impedance spectroscopy has been shown to be a powerful tool to investigate the dielectric characteristics of powders suspended in suitable liquids. The electrical and dielectrical contributions of different components of the slurry can be extracted from the impedance spectra through measurement of frequency-dependent relaxations. However, for ferroelectric powders that possess innate surface conductivity, such as BaTiO₃, nanoparticles have sufficient conductivity to exclude low frequency fields that preclude impedance characterization of the particle core. In this work, the slurry technique is shown to be effective for dielectric characterization of not only micrometer-sized particles through equivalent circuit modeling but also …

There's No Money In Linked Data, Prateek Jain, Pascal Hitzler, Krzysztof Janowicz, Chitra Venkatramani

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Linked Data (LD) has been an active research area for more than 6 years and many aspects about publishing, retrieving, linking, and cleaning Linked Data have been investigated. There seems to be a broad and general agreement that in principle LD datasets can be very useful for solving a wide variety of problems ranging from practical industrial analytics to highly specific research problems. Having these notions in mind, we started exploring the use of notable LD datasets such as DBpedia, Freebase, Geonames and others for a commercial application. However, it turns out that using these datasets in realistic settings is …

Biomarkers Of Fatigue: Metabolomics Profiles Predictive Of Cognitive Performance, Nicholas J. Delraso, Deirdre A. Mahle, John J. Schlager, Donald L. Harville, Scott R. Chaiken, Danelle K. Roddy, Mari Chamberlain, Paul E. Anderson, Nicholas V. Reo, Michael L. Raymer, Isaie Sibomana

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Cognitive performance and fatigue are well known to be inversely related. Continuous and sustained actions in operational environments typically lead to reduced sleep normally required to perform optimally. These operational environments subject the warfighter to intense physical and mental exertion. Because fatigue continues to be an occupational hazard, leading to cognitive defects in performance, there has been a recognized need for real-time detection technologies that minimize fatigue-induced mishaps. I the current study, 23 subjects were subjected to 36h of sleep deprivation and cognitive psychomotor vigilance and automated neuropsychological assessment metric tests were conducted over the last 24 h of sleep …

A Model-Free Approach To Vehicle Stability Control, Chinmay Pandit

All Theses

This project explored the feasibility of using measured responses of a passenger car together with a fuzzy logic based control algorithm to sense the onset of under-steer (or loss of steering control) and mitigate or eliminate it. The controller is simple and robust and, unlike existing controllers, instead of comparing the vehicle response to that of an idealized model it makes decisions based solely upon the measured response of the car.
Simulations were conducted (using CarSim) of various vehicles executing the skid pad and the double lane change tests to characterize the vehicle behavior. Consistent and qualitatively similar patterns in …