Engineering Commons^™

New Design Of Nasogastric Decompression Tube That Incorporates A Self-Cleaning Brushing Mechanism, Nichole Abla, Lindsay Rucker, Paige Schroder

Senior Theses

Many hospitalized patients require the removal of secretions that accumulate in the stomach and must be removed by a nasogastric tube, which unfortunately clogs often. This project outlines the redesign of the nasogastric tube that will ideally prevent nasogastric tube clogging by incorporating a brush mechanism and a contracting tip mechanism, to act as preventative measures against clogging.

Heat Integration Of An Aniline Production Process To Optimize Cost Savings And Reduce Energy Usage, Dillon Ashby

Senior Theses

The purpose of this project was to individually complete a heat integration optimization for my group’s senior design project, a process for the large-scale production of aniline.

Non-Invasive Detection Of Moving And Stationary Human With Wifi, Chenshu Wu, Zheng Yang, Zimu Zhou, Xuefeng Liu, Yunhao Liu, Jiannong Cao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Non-invasive human sensing based on radio signals has attracted a great deal of research interest and fostered a broad range of innovative applications of localization, gesture recognition, smart health-care, etc., for which a primary primitive is to detect human presence. Previous works have studied the detection of moving humans via signal variations caused by human movements. For stationary people, however, existing approaches often employ a prerequisite scenario-tailored calibration of channel profile in human-free environments. Based on in-depth understanding of human motion induced signal attenuation reflected by PHY layer channel state information (CSI), we propose DeMan, a unified scheme for non-invasive …

Project Labyrinth: Exploration Of Modulating Guitar Signals, Joseph Andrews, Andrew Patterson

Senior Theses

The overall objective of this project is to create a guitar pre-amplifier in the casing of an effects pedal. The pedal must be able to modulate amplitude and pitch. More specifically, the design for this pedal will include floating frequency filtering, phase shifting, and amplitude modulation.

Evoking History Through Sound: A Soundscape Concept For Ghosts Of The Horseshoe, Connor Patrick Bain

Senior Theses

Sound has always been treated as a second citizen in our society. Our society places so much emphasis on the visual that hearing, a sense that we cannot ever shut out from our minds, is taken for granted. This thesis argues that you can never ignore sound and proposes a design cycle for creating a soundscape for a critical interactive, then implementing that cycle for "Ghosts of the Horseshoe."

Rlt-S: A Web System For Record Linkage, Robert H. Aseltine, Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, Abdullah-Al Mamun

UCHC Articles - Research

Abstract

Background

Record linkage integrates records across multiple related data sources identifying duplicates and accounting for possible errors. Real life applications require efficient algorithms to merge these voluminous data sources to find out all records belonging to same individuals. Our recently devised highly efficient record linkage algorithms provide best-known solutions to this challenging problem.

Method

We have developed RLT-S, a freely available web tool, which implements our single linkage clustering algorithm for record linkage. This tool requires input data sets and a small set of configuration settings about these files to work efficiently. RLT-S employs exact match clustering, blocking on …

Power Reductions With Energy Recovery Using Resonant Topologies, Ignatius S.A. Bezzam

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

The problem of power densities in system-on-chips (SoCs) and processors has become more exacerbated recently, resulting in high cooling costs and reliability issues. One of the largest components of power consumption is the low skew clock distribution network (CDN), driving large load capacitance. This can consume as much as 70% of the total dynamic power that is lost as heat, needing elaborate sensing and cooling mechanisms. To mitigate this, resonant clocking has been utilized in several applications over the past decade. An improved energy recovering reconfigurable generalized series resonance (GSR) solution with all the critical support circuitry is developed in …

Electric Vehicle And Roadway (Evr) Facility Operational | Utah State University Power Electronics Lab, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Utah State University's new Electric Vehicle and Roadway(EVR) test facility is complete and is nearing full operation. Construction on the test track and lab building is complete and new equiptment, including a state of the art dynamometer for testing vehicle capabilities, has arrived. The facility will be fully operable by September 2015.

Students Compete In 2nd Annual Electric Bike Race | Utah State University Power Electronics Lab, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Students in the Electric Vehicle Lab course (ECE 6930) competed in the second annual Electric Bike Race. The students designed and built the bikes as a part of the course, and then had a race at the end of the year to see whose bike was the fastest. The Electric Vehicle Lab is the final course in a sequence of courses on Power Electronics at USU.

A Guide For Planning A Bike Share System At The University Of Nebraska–Lincoln, Wade M. Schuldt

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

The purpose of this document is to serve as a framework for planning a bicycle share system at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with the possible inclusion of the City of Lincoln, Nebraska, in the system. This document provides a background review of the evolution of bike share systems and the recent rapid growth of these systems around the world. The document describes planning methodologies used in other locations and the lessons learned from the bike share systems around the world, as to what processes should be pursued to implement a successful bike share system. With the University of Nebraska-Lincoln move …

Fossil-Fuel-Fired Power Plant, Kunlei Liu, James K. Neathery

Center for Applied Energy Research Faculty Patents

A power plant includes a boiler, a stream turbine generator, a post combustion processing system, a feed water regeneration processing system and a heat exchanger. Heat from the heat exchanger is used to regenerate (a) a reagent that absorbs carbon dioxide from flue gas and (b) a water-lean desiccant used to increase plant operating efficiency.

Global Navigation Satellite System Signal Decomposition And Parameterization Algorithm, Marshall E. Haker, John F. Raquet

AFIT Patents

A method and apparatus is provided for intra-PIT signal decomposition of a signal received with RF front end hardware. The method begins by aligning a signal received by RF front end hardware into integer multiples of a duration of a pseudorandom noise code sequence. A search grid is computed based on an integer multiple of the aligned signal. A plurality of initial ray parameters associated with the computed search grid is coarsely estimated. Using the coarsely estimated plurality of initial ray parameters, a fine estimation of the plurality of initial ray parameters is initiated utilizing stochastic search and optimization techniques. …

Motion In The Field: A Study Of Movement In Computer Science, Catherine Martin

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In this project, I use a system that combines the use of a motion controller to obtain information about physical motion of a user with the transmission of outputs to a quadcopter that interacts with the physical environment. In the manual mode, the user sends commands to the quadcopter using hand controls. I utilized an existing system but increased usability to prevent accidental flight and created commands that are more intuitive for the user. In the automatic mode, the user gives a single command to the motion controller and it runs the A* path planning algorithm over a representation of …

Measuring The Effect Of Vegetated Roofs On The Performance Of Photovoltaic Panels In Combined Systems, Hamid Hawi Kadham Ogaili

Dissertations and Theses

Recent studies suggest that integration of photovoltaic panels with green roofs may improve the performance of both. While vegetation may provide a benefit by reducing the net radiation load on the underside of the photovoltaic (PV) panels, it may also affect convective cooling of panels, and consequently, panel efficiency. Both effects likely diminish with the height of the PV panel above the roof, although placing PV panels too close to the vegetation increases the risk of the plants growing over the edges of, and shading the PV panel. There is a gap in the literature with respect to evaluating these …

Towards A Dynamic Clamp For Neurochemical Modalities, C. M. Rivera, H.-J. Kwon, A. Hashmi, Gu Yu, J. Zhao, J. Gao, J. Xu, Wei Xue, A. G. Dimitrov

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

The classic dynamic clamp technique uses a real-time electrical interface between living cells and neural simulations in order to investigate hypotheses about neural function and structure. One of the acknowledged drawbacks of that technique is the limited control of the cells’ chemical microenvironment. In this manuscript, we use a novel combination of nanosensor and microfluidic technology and microfluidic and neural simulations to add sensing and control of chemical concentrations to the dynamic clamp technique. Specifically, we use a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip to generate distinct chemical concentration gradients (ions or neuromodulators), to register the concentrations with embedded nanosensors and use the processed …

Bio-Inspired Structural Colors Produced Via Self-Assembly Of Synthetic Melanin Nanoparticles, Ming Xiao, Yiwen Li, Michael C. Allen, Dimitri D. Deheyn, Xiujun Yue, Jiuzhou Zhao, Nathan C. Gianneschi, Matthew D. Shawkey, Ali Dhinojwala

Polymer Science Faculty Research

Structural colors arising from interactions of light with submicron scale periodic structures have been found in many species across all taxa, serving multiple biological functions including sexual signaling, camouflage, and aposematism. Directly inspired by the extensive use of self-assembled melanosomes to produce colors in avian feathers, we set out to synthesize and assemble polydopamine-based synthetic melanin nanoparticles in an effort to fabricate colored films. We have quantitatively demonstrated that synthetic melanin nanoparticles have a high refractive index and broad absorption spanning across the UV–visible range, similar to natural melanins. Utilizing a thin-film interference model, we demonstrated the coloration mechanism of …

Naturalized Communication And Testing, Marly Roncken, Swetha Mettala Gilla, Hoon Park, Navaneeth Prasannakumar Jamadagni, Christopher Cowan, Ivan Sutherland

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We ”naturalize” the handshake communication links of a self-timed system by assigning the capabilities of filling and draining a link and of storing its full or empty status to the link itself. This contrasts with assigning these capabilities to the joints, the modules connected by the links, as was previously done. Under naturalized communication, the differences between Micropipeline, GasP, Mousetrap, and Click circuits are seen only in the links — the joints become identical; past, present, and future link and joint designs become interchangeable. We also “naturalize” the actions of a self-timed system, giving actions status equal to states — …

Impact Of Prognostic Uncertainty In System Health Monitoring, Robert M. Vandawaker, David R. Jacques, Jason K. Freels

Faculty Publications

Across many industries, systems are exceeding their intended design lives, whether they are ships, bridges or military aircraft. As a result failure rates can increase and unanticipated wear or failure conditions can arise. Health monitoring research and application has the potential to more safely lengthen the service life of a range of systems through utilization of sensor data and knowledge of failure mechanisms to predict component life remaining. A further benefit of health monitoring when combined across an entire platform is system health management. System health management is an enabler of condition based maintenance, which allows repair or replacement based …

Uas Capabilities And Performance Modeling For Application Analysis, Brent Terwilliger, Dennis Vincenzi, David Ison, Rene Herron, Todd Smith

Publications

Our team of researchers from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Worldwide has been actively compiling published performance data associated with commercially-off-the-shelf (COTS) group 1 to 3 fixed-wing and vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in an effort to develop statistical models of each category. The captured data, which includes maximum speed, cruise speed, endurance, weights, wind limitations, and costs, is used to calculate capabilities including range (one-way and return), time to objective, station keeping duration, maneuver requirements, and derive limited missing information (e.g., component speeds and weights). The benefit from assembling such a unified collection of information and the calculation …

3d Printing In Healthcare, Caleb Branch

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Technology is everywhere. Technology surrounds every aspect of 21^st century life. It is in the cell phones we use, the cars we drive, and even the food we eat. A large portion of modern technology used is taken for granted and overlooked. Despite this, some technology fields continue to grow. Biomedical engineering, specifically 3D printing’s applications to healthcare, has been often overlooked until. Regardless of its status in the mainstream, 3D printing is prosperous in healthcare and its future looks bright. This piece analyzes 3D printing in healthcare. It hones in on the finer details of each specific topic, …

Section Abstracts: Astronomy, Mathematics And Physics With Material Science

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of the Astronomy, Mathematics, and Physics with Material Science Section for the 93rd Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 21-23, 2015, James Madison University, Richmond, Virginia

Section Abstracts: Biomedical And General Engineering

Virginia Journal of Science

Abstracts of the Biomedical and General Engineering Section for the 93rd Annual Meeting of the Virginia Academy of Science, May 21-23, 2015, James Madison University, Richmond, Virginia

Integration Of Information Literacy Skills To Mechanical Engineering Capstone Projects, Farshid Zabihian, Mary L. Strife, Marian G. Armour-Gemmen

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Searching for information and using that information appropriately is an essential part of every engineering design project. It has been reported that design engineers spend about 30% of their time searching for information. Experience shows that even senior level students have not received proper training, either directly or indirectly, in information literacy (IL). They usually search for information intuitively. For mechanical and aerospace engineering students at West Virginia University Institute of Technology (WVU Tech), the Mechanical Engineering System Design I and II courses (MAE 480 and 481) are probably the last chance to teach students about IL. In this project, …

Study Of Laser Speckle Scattering In Vitreous Humor Models, Wanseok Oh

Graduate Theses - Physics and Optical Engineering

When a highly high coherent light propagates through a medium, interactions between light and the medium produces a unique intensity speckle pattern that is dependent on several factors such as particle size in the medium, wavelength of the light, concentration of medium, and scattering angle. Speckle patterns from either static or dynamic specimens have been studied using optical techniques due to its non-invasive nature. Speckle patterns from biological specimens (dynamic) are different from that of the static specimens since random movement of molecules (Brownian motion) in the biological specimen affect the light interactions and thereby the intensity of the speckles …

Optical Bistability With Two Serially Integrated Inp-Soas On A Chip, Michael Edward Plascak

Graduate Theses - Physics and Optical Engineering

A photonic switch using two series-connected, reverse-biased semiconductor optical amplifiers integrated onto a single device has been proposed and switching operation has been verified experimentally. The switching operates on two principles; an electrical bistability arising from the connection of two p-i-n structures in series, and the quantum confined Stark effect in reverse-biased multiple quantum well structures. The result is an electroabsorption modulation of the light through the SOAs due to the alternating voltage states. The system simultaneously produces outputs with both inverted and non-inverted hysteresis behavior, with experimental switching speeds demonstrated up to 400 kHz for a reverse-bias voltage of …

A Heart Rate Finger Ring And Its Smartphone App Through Customized Nfc, Yang Liu

Graduate Theses - Electrical and Computer Engineering

Population aging has become one of the most critical problems in contemporary society. Families and organizations are striving to provide better healthcare to the elderly and handicapped for their better living conditions. Due to these situations, the demand for remote health monitoring continues to grow rapidly. With the development of new technologies, such as smaller sensors and microcontrollers, the increasing widespread use of smartphones, and new wireless communication methods, a wireless body area network system can be constructed to provide more sophisticated solutions to satisfy this demand. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate that such a system is …

Design Improvements Of Wirelesshart Enabled Field Device, Yuxuan Zeng

Graduate Theses - Electrical and Computer Engineering

WirelessHART, as an improvement of HART (Highway Addressable Remote Transducer), provides a simple, reliable, and cost-effective method to deliver information without the trouble of wiring in the field. WirelessHART is being used more and more in field devices. Several years ago, Endress + Hauser (U.S.) Automation Instrumentation Inc. designed a WirelessHART solution by attaching a wireless adapter to a field device. The goal of this thesis is to improve the WirelessHART solution of Endress + Hauser to make it less expensive, smaller, and less power-consuming. The work is done in two parts. The first part is to redesign an I/O …

A Comparative Evaluation Of Cadaveric And Composite Femur Models For Total Hip Arthroplasty, Anderson Lynn Adams

Graduate Theses - Biology & Biomedical Engineering

Composite bones are often used in testing of orthopedic implants due to their relative ease of use and low inter-specimen variability when compared to cadaveric bones. Tests were run to ensure that the composite bones remained an acceptable model for cadaver bones throughout surgical manipulation. Composite (n=6) and cadaver (n=6) femur specimen were subjected to a total hip arthroplasty (THA). Flexural rigidity, axial stiffness, and axial strain measurements were taken at various stages in the surgical process. The composite and cadaver specimen were not found to behave similarly in either flexural rigidity or axial stiffness tests. The results showed a …

Report To The Utah Legislature Number 2015-01: A Performance Audit Of Projections Of Utah's Water Needs, John M. Schaff

All In-stream Flows Material

The Division of Water Resources’ projections indicate that Utah’s statewide demand for water will outstrip the currently developed supply in about 25 years. Some believe the state can address its growing demand for water through conservation and by developing local supplies, including the conversion of agriculture water to municipal use. Others believe the state’s growing demand for water will require the development of major new sources of supply that will cost billions of dollars. Considering the importance of water to the health, social and the economic well-being of our state’s residents, it is essential that the division provide the best …

Segmentation Of Pulmonary Nodules In Computed Tomography Using A Regression Neural Network Approach And Its Application To The Lung Image Database Consortium And Image Database Resource Initiative Dataset, Temesguen Messay, Russell C. Hardie, Timothy R. Tuinstra

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present new pulmonary nodule segmentation algorithms for computed tomography (CT). These include a fully-automated (FA) system, a semi-automated (SA) system, and a hybrid system. Like most traditional systems, the new FA system requires only a single user-supplied cue point. On the other hand, the SA system represents a new algorithm class requiring 8 user-supplied control points. This does increase the burden on the user, but we show that the resulting system is highly robust and can handle a variety of challenging cases. The proposed hybrid system starts with the FA system.

If improved segmentation results are needed, the SA …