Engineering Commons^™

Cruise Ship Preliminary Design: The Influence Of Design Features On Profitability, Justin Epstein

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a means to estimate the physical and performance characteristics of a preliminary cruise ship design. The techniques utilized to estimate these characteristics are showcased in the user-friendly interface known as the Cruise Ship Analysis Tool (CSAT). Using the CSAT, the implications that design feature decisions in the preliminary design stage have on a cruise ship’s profitability is analyzed. Then, the most profitable design feature assemblage among a finite number of varying design feature combinations is estimated and compared among cruise ship designs with different passenger carrying capacities. Profitability is analyzed using the measure of merit (MOM) known …

An Empirical Study Of Semantic Similarity In Wordnet And Word2vec, Abram Handler

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis performs an empirical analysis of Word2Vec by comparing its output to WordNet, a well-known, human-curated lexical database. It finds that Word2Vec tends to uncover more of certain types of semantic relations than others -- with Word2Vec returning more hypernyms, synonomyns and hyponyms than hyponyms or holonyms. It also shows the probability that neighbors separated by a given cosine distance in Word2Vec are semantically related in WordNet. This result both adds to our understanding of the still-unknown Word2Vec and helps to benchmark new semantic tools built from word vectors.

Design And Software Validation Of Coded Communication Schemes Using Multidimensional Signal Sets Without Constellation Expansion Penalty In Band-Limited Gaussian And Fading Channels, Milton I. Quinteros

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

It has been well reported that the use of multidimensional constellation signals can help to reduce the bit error rate in Additive Gaussian channels by using the hyperspace geometry more efficiently. Similarly, in fading channels, dimensionality provides an inherent signal space diversity (distinct components between two constellations points), so the amplitude degradation of the signal are combated significantly better.

Moreover, the set of n-dimensional signals also provides great compatibility with various Trellis Coded modulation schemes: N-dimensional signaling joined with a convolutional encoder uses fewer redundant bits for each 2D signaling interval, and increases intra-subset minimum squared Euclidean distance (MSED) to …

Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis Of An Ideal Anguilliform Swimming Motion, Charles Rogers

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

There is an ongoing interest in analyzing the flow characteristics of swimming fish. Biology has resulted in some very efficient motions and formulating these motions is of interest to engineers. One such theory was written by Dr. William Vorus and Dr. Brandon Taravella involving ideal efficiency. It is therefore interesting to test the calculations to see if it is possible to design a motion that can create thrust without necessarily creating vorticity. The computational fluid dynamics software of ANSYS Fluent was used to calculate the resulting flow field of the eel motion to compare with the theoretical values.

Modal Characterization And Structural Dynamic Response Of A Crane Fly Forewing, Jose E. Rubio

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This study describes a method for conducting the structural dynamic analysis of a crane fly (family Tipulidae) forewing under different airflow conditions. Wing geometry is captured via micro-computed tomography scanning. A finite element model of the forewing is developed from the reconstructed model of the scan. The finite element model is validated by comparing the natural frequencies of an elliptical membrane with similar dimensions of the crane fly forewing to its analytical solution. Furthermore, a simulation of the fluid-structure interaction of the forewing under different airflows is performed by coupling the finite element model of the wing with a …

Investigation Of The Quenching Characteristics Of Steel Components By Static And Dynamic Analyses, Pratik Sarker

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Machine components made of steel are subjected to heat treatment processes for improving mechanical properties in order to enhance product life and is usually done by quenching. During quenching, heat is transferred rapidly from the hot metal component to the quenchant and that rapid temperature drop induces phase transformation in the metal component. As a result, quenching generates some residual stresses and deformations in the material. Therefore, to estimate the temperature distribution, residual stress, and deformation computationally; three-dimensional finite element models are developed for two different steel components – a spur gear and a circular tube by a static and …

Parallel Computing Of Particle Filtering Algorithms For Target Tracking Applications, Jiande Wu

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Particle filtering has been a very popular method to solve nonlinear/non-Gaussian state estimation problems for more than twenty years. Particle filters (PFs) have found lots of applications in areas that include nonlinear filtering of noisy signals and data, especially in target tracking. However, implementation of high dimensional PFs in real-time for large-scale problems is a very challenging computational task.

Parallel & distributed (P&D) computing is a promising way to deal with the computational challenges of PF methods. The main goal of this dissertation is to develop, implement and evaluate computationally efficient PF algorithms for target tracking, and thereby bring them …

Impact Of Hub Location On The Performance Of Wireless Body Area Networks For Fitness Applications, Vit Sipal, Domenico Gaetano, Patrick Mcevoy, Max Ammann

Articles

This letter compares the propagation properties of Wireless Body Area Networks for three different locations (head, foot and waist) of the hub/internet gateway on the human body. The wireless channels between the hubs and four nodes (chest, back, and upper arms) are measured on a female and a male subject performing push-ups and squats. A framework using spider plots is used for cumulative performance description. The results show that the best overall performance is for hub located on the left temple and the worst overall performance is achieved for a hub on the waist. These results are expected to stimulate …

Two-Dimensional Layered Mos2 Biosensors Enable Highly Sensitive Detection Of Biomolecules, Joonhyung Lee, Piyush Dak, Yeonsung Lee, Heekyeong Park, Woong Choi, Muhammad Ashraful Alam, Sunkook Kim

Birck and NCN Publications

We present a MoS₂ biosensor to electrically detect prostate specific antigen (PSA) in a highly sensitive and label-free manner. Unlike previous MoS₂-FET-based biosensors, the device configuration of our biosensors does not require a dielectric layer such as HfO₂ due to the hydrophobicity of MoS₂. Such an oxide-free operation improves sensitivity and simplifies sensor design. For a quantitative and selective detection of PSA antigen, anti-PSA antibody was immobilized on the sensor surface. Then, introduction of PSA antigen, into the anti-PSA immobilized sensor surface resulted in a lable-free immunoassary format. Measured off-state current of the device …

A Reversible And Stable Flake-Like Licoo2 Cathode For Lithium Ion Batteries, Tao Wei, Rui Zeng, Yongming Sun, Yunhui Huang, Kevin Huang

Faculty Publications

A dense and thick flake-like cathode structure was demonstrated to have a preferential crystallographic orientation for Li+ migration and a better tolerance to cracking, both of which enable a reversible and stable capacity at moderate rates from 0.1 to 2 C.

2014 Fall Engr333 Project Final Report, John Sherwood, Jonathan Crow, Nicolaas Ourensma, Zak Devries, Andy Frandsen, Jack Kregel, Ryan Rhodes, Connor Vandongen, Schieffer Kwong, Jee Myung Kim, Matthew Deyoung, Jeff Demaagd, Tyler Devries, Doug Faber, Garrick Hershberger, Jake Derooy, Dustin Brouwer, David Evenhouse, Patrick Anderson, Thomas Brown, Ed Smit, Joel Smith, Thane Symens, Kaitlyn Weinstein, Seth Koetje, Nick Memmelaar, Austin Juza, Matt Ramaker, Ryan Demeester, Jordan Newhof, Wes Richards, Josh Vanderbyl

ENGR 333

The net-zero homes project that this class worked on throughout the semester was designed to determine what it would take to bring a home in Grand Rapids, Michigan to the status of net-zero and whether or not it is feasible to do so. The idea behind a net-zero home is to reduce the energy usage in the home, whether it is by lifestyle changes, insulation additions, or by appliance upgrades, and then produce the remaining energy deficit from renewable sources, so that the homeowner has a net usage of zero at the end of the year. This report details the …

Molecular-Like Hierarchical Self-Assembly Of Monolayers Of Mixtures Of Particles, P. Singh, Md. Shahadat Hossain, S. K. Gurupatham, K. Shah, E. Amah, D. Ju, M. Janjua, S. Nudurupati, I. Fischer

Publications and Research

We present a technique that uses an externally applied electric field to self-assemble monolayers of mixtures of particles into molecular-like hierarchical arrangements on fluid-liquid interfaces. The arrangements consist of composite particles (analogous to molecules) which are arranged in a pattern. The structure of a composite particle depends on factors such as the relative sizes of the particles and their polarizabilities, and the electric field intensity. If the particles sizes differ by a factor of two or more, the composite particle has a larger particle at its core and several smaller particles form a ring around it. The number of particles …

Scheduling And Cooperative Control Of Electric Vehicles' Charging At Highway Service Stations, Florida Solar Energy Center, Azwirman Gusrialdi

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This is a re-print version of a publication for the 53rd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Los Angeles, California, USA, December 15-17, 2014. Due to their limited ranges, electric vehicles (EVs)need to be periodically charged during their long-distance travels on a highway. Compared to the fossil-fuel powered vehicles, the charging of a single EV takes much more time(up to 30 mins versus 2 mins). As the number of EVs on highways increases, adequate charging infrastructure needs to be put in place. Nonetheless waiting times for EVs to get charged at service stations could still vary significantly unless an appropriate …

Class-Based Interference Management In Wireless Networks, Mohammad Arif Hossain, Mostafa Zaman Chowdhury, Shakil Ahmed, Yeong Min Jang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Research

Technological advancement has brought revolutionary change in the converged wireless networks. Due to the existence of different types of traffic, provisioning of Quality of Service (QoS) becomes a challenge in the wireless networks. In case of a congested network, resource allocation has emerged as an effective way to provide the excessive users with desirable QoS. Since QoS for non-real-time traffic are not as strict as for real-time traffic, the unoccupied channels of the adjacent cells can be assigned to the non-real-time traffic to retain QoS for real-time traffic. This results in the intensified bandwidth utilization as well as less interference …

Analysis Of Heart Rate Variability Amongst Cyclists Under Perceived Variations Of Risk Exposure, Ronan Doorley, Vikram Pakrashi, Eoin Byrne, Samuel Comerford, Bidisha Ghosh, John A. Groeger

NIMBUS Articles

Cycling as a mode of travel provides an opportunity for many people to increase their levels of regular physical activity and contribute to their mental and physical health. Heart rate is often used as a means of measuring the intensity and energy expenditure of physical activity. However, heart rate is also linked to emotional factors such as anxiety and fear. Perceptions of risk due to external factors such as other road users and infrastructure may arouse such emotions in urban cyclists. The present study set out to investigate whether or not perceptions of risk among urban cyclists may lead to …

Joint Representation Of Translational And Rotational Components Of Self-Motion In The Parietal Cortex, Adhira Sunkara

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Navigating through the world involves processing complex visual inputs to extract information about self-motion relative to one's surroundings. When translations (T) and rotations (R) are present together, the velocity patterns projected onto the retina (optic flow) are a combination of the two. Since navigational tasks can be extremely varied, such as deciphering heading or tracking moving prey or estimating one's motion trajectory, it is imperative that the visual system represent both the T and R components. Despite the importance of such joint representations, most previous studies have only focused on the representation of translations. Moreover, these studies emphasized the role …

Ultrasound-Mediated Optical Imaging And Focusing In Scattering Media, Yuta Suzuki

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Because of its non-ionizing and molecular sensing nature, light has been an attractive tool in biomedicine. Scanning an optical focus allows not only high-resolution imaging but also manipulation and therapy. However, due to multiple photon scattering events, conventional optical focusing using an ordinary lens is limited to shallow depths of one transport mean free path (lt'), which corresponds to approximately 1 mm in human tissue.

To overcome this limitation, ultrasonic modulation (or encoding) of diffuse light inside scattering media has enabled us to develop both deep-tissue optical imaging and focusing techniques, namely, ultrasound-modulated optical tomography (UOT) and time-reversed ultrasonically encoded …

Theoretical Investigation Of The Catalytic, Liquid-Phase Hydrodeoxygenation Of Organic Acids And Esters, Sina Behtash

Theses and Dissertations

With worldwide fossil fuel resources dwindling and greenhouse gas emissions rising, it is urgent to find renewable liquid fuel alternatives from e.g. biomass to meet the world’s growing energy demand. Lipid feedstocks and pyrolysis oils from woody biomass can be utilized for the production of second-generation biofuels via a catalytic hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) process. The conversion of fatty acids and esters plays an important role in the activity and selectivity of these processes. Understanding the HDO reaction mechanism of organic acids and esters on metal surfaces is a prerequisite for the rational design of new HDO catalysts specifically designed for upgrading …

Quantifying Individual Losses In A Direct Methanol Fuel Cell, Jennifer Rae Ruffing

Theses and Dissertations

The performance of a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is complicated due to the complex interactions of kinetic and transport processes. As a result, changes in one aspect of the cell have consequences in other aspects, which are difficult to elucidate from the full-cell polarization (i.e. voltage vs. current) behavior that fuel cell researchers often use to characterize the performance of their systems. The objective of this work was to develop a strategy to use current and voltage relationships from anode half cells, cathode half-cells, and a hydrogen pump, coupled with methanol crossover data and a mathematical model, to quantify …

Metabolic Engineering Of Cyanobacteria For Photosynthetic Production Of Drop-In Liquid Fuels, Bertram Michael Berla

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Cyanobacteria are oxygenic phototrophs with great potential as hosts for renewable fuel and chemical production. They grow very quickly (compared with plants) and can use sunlight for energy and CO2 as a carbon source (unlike yeast or E. coli). While cyanobacteria have been engineered to make many chemicals that are native and non-native parts of their metabolism, this work is concerned with the production of heptadecane in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. Heptadecane is in a class of natural products produced by all cyanobacteria, but in quantities insufficient for industrialization. Towards this future goal, we have built enabling systems for the …

Toward Improved Computational Tools For Electronic Transport Analysis And Their Use In The Development Of Materials For Energy Applications, Maria Stoica

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

With the rapid rise in computational speed and capacity of massively parallel computing clusters in recent years, theoretical screening of large, previously unexplored sets of complex compounds to find materials with a given set of desired properties is quickly becoming a reality. In order to maximize the predictive ability of these large-scale computations, it is desirable to develop accurate post-processing algorithms that can efficiently manipulate electronic structure data to produce theoretical predictions of experimentally observable quantities. To address this need, the work of this dissertation has been to expand existing \textit{ab initio} methods for determining electronic properties of bulk complex …

Reduced Astrocyte Viability At Physiological Temperatures From Magnetically Activated Iron Oxide Nanoparticles, Nicholas J. Schaub, Deniz Rende, Yuan Yuan, Ryan J. Gilbert, Diana Andra Borca-Tasciuc

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) can generate heat when subjected to an alternating magnetic field (AMF). In the European Union, SPIONs actuated by AMF are used in hyperthermia treatment of glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Current data from clinical trials suggest that this therapy improves patient life expectancy, but their effect on healthy brain cells is virtually unknown. Thus, a viability study involving SPIONs subjected to an AMF was carried out on healthy cortical rat astrocytes, the most abundant cell type in the mammalian brain. The cells were cultured with amino silane- or starch-coated SPIONs with or …

Scheduling Of Container Handling Equipment In Marine Container Terminals, Narges Kaveshgar

Theses and Dissertations

To improve the competitiveness of marine container terminals, it is critical to minimize the makespan of a container vessel. The makespan is defined as the latest completion time among all handling tasks of the container vessel. Lower makespan (i.e. lower vessel turn time) can be achieved through better scheduling of the container handling equipment during vessel operations. The scheduling of terminal equipment is an operational problem, and a detailed schedule for each type of equipment operating in the terminal is necessary. Several studies have applied operations research techniques to optimize the processes of equipment in a terminal. This dissertation investigates …

High-Performance Meta-Genomic Gene Identification, Ibrahim Savran

Theses and Dissertations

Computational Genomics, or Computational Genetics, refers to the use of computational and statistical analysis for understanding the structure and the function of genetic material in organisms. The primary focus of research in computational genomics in the past three decades has been the understanding of genomes and their functional elements by analyzing biological sequence data. The high demand for low-cost sequencing has driven the development of highthroughput sequencing technologies, next-generation sequencing (NGS), that parallelize the sequencing process, producing thousands or millions of sequences concurrently. Moore’s Law is the observation that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two …

A Four-Dimensional Image Reconstruction Framework For Pet Under Arbitrary Geometries, Aswin John Mathews

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a functional imaging modality with applications ranging from the treatment of cancer, studying neurological diseases and disease models. Virtual-Pinhole PET technology improves the image quality in terms of resolution and contrast recovery. The technology calls for having a detector with smaller crystals placed near a region of interest in a conventional whole-body PET scanner. The improvement is from the higher spatial sampling of the imaging area near the detector. A prototype half-ring PET insert built to study head-and-neck cancer imaging was extended to breast cancer imaging. We have built a prototype half-ring PET insert for …

Novel Mobile Computation Offloading Framework For Android Devices, Meng Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The thesis implements an offloading framework for GoogleTM AndroidTM based on mobile devices. Today, the full potential for smartphones may be constrained by certain technical limits such as battery endurance and computational performance. Modern mobile applications own more powerful functions but need larger computation and faster frame rate, which consume more battery energy. Using the proposed offloading framework, mobile devices can offload computational intensive workload to servers to save battery energy consumption and reduce the execution time. The framework can also enable software developers to easily build and deploy services on the servers to support mobile devices to run computationally …

Real-Time Temperature Imaging Using Ultrasonic Change In Backscattered Energy, Weiyuan Zhao

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Thermal therapy from low-temperature cryosurgery to high-temperature ablation of tumors and unwanted electrical pathways has gained increased attention. Temperature imaging (TI) from magnetic resonance studies is the de facto standard for volumetric estimation of temperature. Ultrasound has the advantages of being cheap, portable, non-invasive and non-ionizing. Our group showed in predictions for single scatterers, simulations of scatterer populations and measurements in 1D, 2D and 3D, that CBE changed monotonically with temperature with 1^oC accuracy. An obstacle to clinical application of CBE TI is estimation of temperature in real time, which is limited by time for motion compensation (MC). …

A Reinforcement-Learning Framework For Interpreting Trial-By-Trial Motor Adaptation To Novel Haptic Environments, Ranjan Patrick Khan

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Motor adaptation is often considered to occur under the influence of sensory signals, which is usually readily available for humans performing most motor tasks. However, humans can also use reward or other qualitative feedback to reinforce previous actions and perform adaptation. In these experiments, we introduce reward feedback to a traditional motor adaptation experiment: reach adaptation to a velocity-dependent force field. Drawing from the literature of computer science and machine learning, we use a reinforcement-learning framework to interpret the pattern of force generation and reward-prediction errors and observe the effects of concurrent and isolated reward and sensory feedback.

It is …

Aerosol Techniques For Deposition And Characterization Of Biological And Biomimetic Sensitizers For Solar Devices, Vivek B. Shah

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Nano-structured columnar films synthesized by the aerosol chemical vapor deposition (ACVD) system are unique, and have proved to be useful for fabricating solar cells and in other applications. The film formation by ACVD process involves three main phenomenon - aerosol formation and growth, deposition, and restructuring. In this work, thin film formation by the ACVD process is simulated by combining three models - (A) particle formation in gas phase by atrimodal model, (B) particle deposition onto heated substrate by a Brownian dynamics model and (C) sintering on the heated substrate by a multi-particle geometric sintering model (MPGSM). Modelling and simulation …

Preface, Wen-Hsiang Hsieh

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

No abstract provided.