Engineering Commons^™

Non-Invasive Biomedical Imaging And Radiobiology Investigations In Pre-Clinical Prostate Tumor Models, Derek A. White

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Oxygen deficiency (hypoxia) in prostate tumors can hinder the biological effectiveness of radiotherapy. Therefore the ability to assess tumor hypoxia non-invasively in vivo in man could significantly improve therapy outcome. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is increasingly applied in clinical evaluation of prostate cancer. Therefore, an oxygen sensitive technique would be very attractive and the utility of oxygen-enhanced MRI (OE-MRI) has shown promise for predicting tumor growth delay in syngeneic rat prostate tumors following radiotherapy. In this dissertation, the overall goal was to investigate a potential imaging biomarker for predicting tumor response to image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT). First, I used in vivo …

Development Of Atlas-Guided Diffuse Optical Tomography To Investigate Age-Dependent Human Cognitive Functions Under Risk Decision Making, Lin Li

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

To better understand the age effect on neural correlates under risk decision-making stimulations, studies using advanced neuroimaging with a sufficient statistical power are desired. Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) of human brain functions is an emerging non-invasive neuroimaging technology. Compared to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), DOT is more cost-effective, more portable, and easier to conduct studies targeting on different age groups. However, current DOT is limited by its low spatial resolution and depth accuracy. It is thus imperative to develop a technique that can improve imaging quality of DOT and be used to investigate age-dependent human brain functions under risk decision …

Performance Of Full-Scale Ultra-High Performance Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Column Subjected To Extreme Earthquake-Type Loading And Effect Of Surface Preparation On The Cohesion And Friction Factors Of The Aashto Interface Shear Equation, Guillermo Palacios

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Buildings in areas of high seismicity may be subjected to large axial stresses as well as severe earthquake loading. In order to protect the integrity of these buildings, concrete columns must possess high compressive strength and adequate ductility. While the use of high strength concrete (HSC) may appear as an attractive alternative and can reduce the section size of first story columns, its increase in strength leads to an increase in brittleness compared to that of normal strength concrete. For that reason, HSC requires a large amount of transverse reinforcement to maintain adequate ductility, which leads to severe congestion in …

An Investigation Of The Effect Of Obstructive Sleep Apnea On Cerebral Hemodynamics In Relation With Systemic Hemodynamics, Raichel Mary Alex

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is a major sleep disorder affecting approximately 18 million adults in the US. Recent studies have observed cognitive impairments and brain structural changes in OSA subjects where these deficits were related to peripheral hypoxia and sleep fragmentation. Nonetheless, underlying cerebral hemodynamics and cerebral oxygenation might play an important role in the development of these impairments. Hence, in this study it is hypothesized that 1) OSA induces significant variations in cerebral hemodynamics, and 2) level of variations in cerebral hemodynamics can be related to the changes in systemic hemodynamics. To test these hypotheses, 8 hours of nocturnal …

Predicting Horizontal Pressure In 2-Stage Mse Structures, Thomas Patrick Taylor

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) structures have been successfully used in the United States as embankment support structures for heavy highway transportation projects since 1972. On project sites that have poor foundations and where large settlements are predicated a variation of MSE called 2-Stage MSE is utilized. As the name suggests, 2-Stage structures are constructed in two stages. Stage-1 consists of constructing a flexible faced MSE structure and Stage-2 consists of attaching a veneer to the face of the Stage-1 structure. The Stage-1 and Stage-2 structures are separated by a short distance forming a cavity that is filled with granular material. …

Experimental Evaluation Of Frp Strengthened Concrete Bridge Girders, Rakesh B. Jayanna

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

This report presents the details of research study on the use of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) sheets to strengthen the Pre-stressed concrete TxDOT Tx-28 bridge girders in flexure and shear. Four girders were subjected to destructive test in this research. First girder as control specimen without any CFRP applied on it, Second and third girders were flexural strengthened for one and two layers of CFRP and the forth girder is shear strengthened with one layer CFRP. Experimental phases along with the comparison of test results in terms of flexural and shear capacity of bridge girders, strains and deflections are …

A Unified Swcc-Clay Mineralogy Based Framework For Predicting Swell Behavior Of Expansive Soils, Alejandro Hernan Pino Bravo

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Expansive soils are spread over different climatic zones around the world with varying mineralogical content and microstructure, making the soil to absorb moisture between their mineral layers and therefore undergo volume changes. This behavior generates swell and shrinkage surface movements which affect the integrity of infrastructure built on them. A practice currently employed correlates swell-shrink behavior to soil index parameters, however, variable soil mineralogy limits this approach, which generates poor soil swell characterization. Thus, characterizing efforts must be emphasized on identification of real parameters governing the swell/shrink behavior, such as mineralogy, variation of suction with moisture content and pore distribution. …

The Strength Of Horizontal Shear Reinforcement With Limited Development, Regina Nyambura Waweru

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

In order for the composite action between the precast beam and the cast-in-place deck to be effective, sufficient horizontal (interface) shear strength needs to be provided at the interface of the two concrete elements to prevent slip. Horizontal shear strength is provided by three main components: the protrusions on the crack faces (cohesion/aggregate interlock), friction between the faces resulting from the normal compressive stress, and the dowel action of the reinforcing bars. AASHTO LRFD equation assumes that all reinforcement crossing the interface would be fully developed on both sides of the interface at ultimate shear strength. This study examines if …

Repair Of Impact-Damaged Prestressed Concrete Bridge Girder Using Glass Frp Rebar, Maria Angeles De La Flor Montero

Civil Engineering Theses - Archive

Overpass girders are risked by the impact of the traffic, over height vehicle, travelling under the structure, creating a hazard for the drivers over and under the bridge.When a bridge girder is damaged the repair solution adopted has to meet the following criteria:- Safety. The repaired structure has to provide a minimum level of service to guarantee the safety of the traffic during the life of the structure. - Repair time. To minimize the risk and the inconvenience for the traffic the repair time has to be minimum.- Economy. The adopted solution has not only to fulfill the previous requirements, …

Enhanced Viscoelastic Modeling Of Hot Mix Asphalt, Tito P. Nyamuhokya

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The primary objective of this research is to investigate the relationships between Compressive (CDM) and Tensile Dynamic Moduli (TDM) of Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) and develop a material model that predicts tensile dynamic modulus from known compressive dynamic modulus. Moreover, the research develops an enhanced visco-hyper-elastic Finite element model that incorporates both CDM and computed TDM to predict the structural response of a perpetual pavement structure subjected to wheel loading. In the laboratory, the Compressive and Tensile Dynamic Modulus parallel to the direction of compaction and Tensile dynamic modulus perpendicular to the direction of compaction were determined at different temperature …

Image Segmentation Approach For Realizing Zoomable Streaming Hevc Video, Zarna Patel

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

With increasing popularity of high resolution video format, video coding technology such as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) which can provide a substantially higher compression capability than the existing H.264/AVC standard has received increased attention. HEVC is the next generation compression technology lauded as the enabler for a host of new services and capabilities. Recently, multimedia applications and their use have grown dramatically in popularity due to mobile device adoption by the consumer market. However, a crucial challenge is to provide a better user experience for browsing videos on the limited and heterogeneous screen sizes. Streaming of an arbitrary region …

Real Time Surface Defect Measurement From Road Profile, Vivek Jolly

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) annually collects profile data over the state maintained highway network and uses the profile data to determine the ride quality based on a serviceability index (SI) and the International Roughness Index (IRI). The equation used at present to obtain the SI from the profile data is based on ride measurements from an old rating session in the 1960s. Several changes have taken place over the years that required re-evaluation of the ride equation, led to a TxDOT funded research in 2000 to evaluate the adequacy of the current equation. During this study, a new …

Statistical Analysis Of Indoor Uwb Channel Parameters In Different Wall Corridors And Through-Wall Environments, Sreevinay Netrapala

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

The indoor channel parameters appears different for Ultra Wide Band (UWB) systems than it does to narrow band systems. Generally UWB pulses are short and do not overlap in time like multipath sine waves. According to electromagnetic theory, lower frequencies have better penetrating properties. The combination of larger spectrum and lower frequencies possessed by UWB signals makes it easy to penetrate through walls, floors, doors, wood, ceilings, etc. This penetration property plays a very important role in indoor UWB communication system. This thesis presents the statistical analysis of large scale, small scale and time dispersal parameters in different wall corridor …

Realistic Interaction With Social Robots Via Facial Expressions And Neck-Eye Coordination, Sumit Kumar Das

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

In this thesis, we report on research work concerning various aspects of interaction between an android head and its environment. The research aims at building a reusable framework of interaction through facial expressions and vision which can be used for a wide range of humanoid robotic heads. The framework contains specially programmed modules that enable the android head to effectively interact with its environment via facial expressions and neck-eye coordinated motion.The object detection and tracking module enables the android head to detect and track objects and users through coordinated motions of neck and eye. The module has the capability of …

Motion Learning And Control For Social Robots In Human-Robot Interaction, Namrata Balakrishnan

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

In the domain of social robotics, robots have recently been used in conversational interaction with humans. In this thesis, research was conducted to help create a system for imitation learning. In this system, a trainer trains a robot to be a teacher. The robotic teacher interacts with other humans in order to teach them the task that the robot was trained on. The method of `Teaching by Demonstration' was used, where an ideal motion is performed by a trainer. This ideal motion is learned by the robot and replayed in the subsequent interaction with humans. If the replayed motion is …

Channel Estimation And Statistical Analysis Of Indoor Environment Using Ultrawideband Radio Technology, Shruthishree Bangalore Krishnamurthy

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Ultra-wideband technology finds various applications in radar technology, medical imaging, see-through-wall applications, surveillance and short distance communication applications. All of these applications require that the behavior of the channel be estimated giving a priori information about the various attributes of the channel like path loss, delay spread, channel capacity and so on. These parameters are the key to design an effective communication infrastructure suitable for the needs of the application.In this thesis, the main aim was to model the channel and extract the various parameters related to the channel through data processing methods. In particular, a classroom environment was chosen …

Embedded Data Acquisition Platform For Surface Measurements On Wet Concrete, Anuja Raikar

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

The early detection of roughness over newly poured wet concrete allows correction of the surface before concrete is hardened. The smoothness of the wet concrete can be monitored and controlled at an early stage saving additional effort and cost. The goal of this research study is to examine the techniques to detect the roughness over the surface of wet cement concrete. A sliding profiler is one of the techniques which estimates profile of the surface based on the bumps detected on freshly poured concrete. This thesis focuses on the data acquired by the sliding profiler using a different measurement sensor …

Application Of Random Indexing To Multi Label Classification Problems: A Case Study With Mesh Term Assignment And Diagnosis Code Extraction, Yuan Lu

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Many manual biomedical annotation tasks can be categorized as instances of the typical multi-label classification problem where several categories or labels from a fixed set need to assigned to an input instance. MeSH term assignment to biomedical articles and diagnosis code extraction from medical records are two such tasks. To address this problem automatically, in this thesis, we present a way to utilize latent associations between labels based on output label sets. We used random indexing as a method to determine latent associations and use the associations as a novel feature in a learning-to-rank algorithm that reranks candidate labels selected …

Determining Travel Behaviour In Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, Ahmed M. Mohammed, Hussain Dhafir Hussain, Ali Dawod Salman, Riza Rahmat, Nazri Burhan

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Petaling Jaya is a Malaysian city in the Petaling district of Selangor, over the past few years it has witnessed a dramatic growth in terms of population size and geographical importance. This has led to constant congestions throughout the city. A significant reduction in the annual cost of road accidents, congestion, energy consumption and pollution in the city can be obtained by implementing a modal shift from private vehicles to public transport. Urban transportation problems are highlighted in this study as well the factors that influence the use of private and public transportation. A survey was carried out on users …

Romania's Participation To The European Assessment Project Titled Hyunder, Multi-Criterial Analyses Of Salt Cavern Locations, Ioan Iordache, Dorin Schitea, Adriana Marinoiu, Mihaela Buga, Mihai Balan, Ioan Stefanescu, Adrian Gheorghe, Mihaela Iordache, Viviana Cigolotti (Ed.), Chiara Barchiesi (Ed.), Michela Chianella (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The scope of the work is to assess the potential, the actors and relevant business cases for large scale storage of renewable electricity by hydrogen underground storage in Romania. This presentation intends to provide a picture of the multi-criterial analyses of salt cavern locations in Romania.

The energy sector is facing with the necessity to store large energy quantities for short to long term in order to adapt to the increasingly intermittent renewable energy. The results of this presentation have originated from an ongoing European assessment project by the name of HyUnder (FCH JU, grant 303417) regarding utilization of salt …

Engineering Analytics: Research Into The Governance Structure Needed To Integrate The Dominant Design Methodologies, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the ASEM-IAC 2014, Cotter (2014) explored the current state of engineering design, identified the dominate approaches to engineering design, discussed potential contributions from the new field of data analytics to engineering design, and proposed an Engineering Analytics framework that integrates the dominate engineering design approaches and data analytics within a human-intelligence/machine-intelligence (HI-MI) design architecture. This paper reports research applying ontological engineering to integrate the dominate engineering design methodologies into a systemic engineering design decision governance architecture.

Warrior Information Network- Tactical Human View Models & Analysis, Holly A. H. Handley, Cansu Kandemir, Elnaz Dario

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The Human View collects and categorizes data to provide information and analyses on the human component of a system. This organization of human system data helps to understand what the impact of the technology on human performance may be. The first phase of this project completed exploratory work on different Human View techniques in the context of the Warrior Information Network - Tactical (WIN-T) system. This included creating a high-level diagram to provide a conceptual realization of a General Purpose User (GPU) interacting with the WIN-T system, creating engineering diagrams using the System Modeling Language (SysML) to render the Human …

A Demonstration Of The Bigdawg Polystore System, Aaron J. Elmore, Jennie Duggan, Michael Stonebraker, Magdalena Balazinska, Ugur Cetintemel, Vijay Gadepally, J. Heer, Bill Howe, Jeremy Kepner, Tim Kraska, Samuel Madden, David Maier, Timothy G. Mattson, S. Papadopoulos, J. Parkhurst, Nesime Tatbul, Manasi Vartak, Stan Zdonik

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents BigDAWG, a reference implementation of a new architecture for “Big Data” applications. Such applications not only call for large-scale analytics, but also for real-time streaming support, smaller analytics at interactive speeds, data visualization, and cross-storage-system queries. Guided by the principle that “one size does not fit all”, we build on top of a variety of storage engines, each designed for a specialized use case. To illustrate the promise of this approach, we demonstrate its effectiveness on a hospital application using data from an intensive care unit (ICU). This complex application serves the needs of doctors and researchers …

Composite Tie Rod Research, Design And Testing For Sae Baja, Amanda M. Nauman

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Composite materials have become increasing popular in recent years. For the Baja SAE team, composites are typically only used for body panels. To grow as a team and to earn additional points in design competition, it was decided to explore composite use in mechanical applications, specifically for the tie rods. Research was conducted, looking into composite materials basics, types, and material properties. Additionally, manufacturing was explored, including a few projects separate from the tie rod application. 3D models were created after the materials were selected, and FEA analysis was conducted on the parts. Once theoretical testing was finished, the physical …

Needed Computations Shortcutting Needed Steps, Sergio Antoy, Jacob Johannsen, Steven Libby

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We define a compilation scheme for a constructor-based, strongly-sequential, graph rewriting system which shortcuts some needed steps. The object code is another constructor-based graph rewriting system. This system is normalizing for the original system when using an innermost strategy. Consequently, the object code can be easily implemented by eager functions in a variety of programming languages. We modify this object code in a way that avoids total or partial construction of the contracta of some needed steps of a computation. When computing normal forms in this way, both memory consumption and execution time are reduced compared to ordinary rewriting computations …

S-Store: Streaming Meets Transaction Processing, John Meehan, Nesime Tatbul, Cansu Aslantas, Ugur Cetintemel, Jiang Du, Tim Kraska, Samuel Madden, David Maier, Andrew Pavlo, Michael Stonebraker, Kristin A. Tufte, Hao Wang

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Stream processing addresses the needs of real-time applications. Transaction processing addresses the coordination and safety of short atomic computations. Heretofore, these two modes of operation existed in separate, stove-piped systems. In this work, we attempt to fuse the two computational paradigms in a single system called S-Store. In this way, S-Store can simultaneously accommodate OLTP and streaming applications. We present a simple transaction model for streams that integrates seamlessly with a traditional OLTP system. We chose to build S-Store as an extension of H-Store, an open-source, in-memory, distributed OLTP database system. By implementing S-Store in this way, we can make …

Desiderata For A Big Data Language, David Maier

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Data management and analytics systems for big data have proliferated, including column stores, array databases, graphanalysis environments and linear-algebra packages. This burgeoning of systems has lead to a surfeit of language and APIs. It is time to consider a new framework that can span these systems and simplify the programming and maintenance of Big Data applications. There are two key goals for such a framework:

Portability: It should be relatively easy to move an application or tool developed on one platform to operate against another. As a corollary, back-end data and analytics services should be swappable in a particular …

3d Numerical Modelling Of Micropiles Interaction With Soil & Rock, Audai Kamal Theinat

Masters Theses

"A 5-span bridge along the Foothills Parkway of the Great Smoky Mountains, TN, was recently completed. Two out of the four piers were instrumented to measure the load transfer in the foundations. The foundations consisted of twenty 10-inch micropiles under the pile cap for each pier. Strain gages were installed and monitored at the different stages of construction. The objective of this research is to examine the interaction between the ground and micropiles using the field data performance and numerical modelling. The 3D computer model consists of the micropile foundation within the steep rock bedding planes and overburden soils. The …

Generation And Validation Of Optimal Topologies For Solid Freeform Fabrication, Purnajyoti Bhaumik

Masters Theses

"The study of fabricating topologically optimized parts is presented hereafter. The mapping of topology optimization results for Standard Tessellation Language (STL) writing would enable the solid freeform fabrication of lightweight mechanisms. Aerospace leaders such as NASA, Boeing, Airbus, European Aeronautic Defense And Space Company (EADS), and GE Aero invest in topology optimization research for the production of lightweight materials. Certain concepts such as microstructural homogenization, discretization, and mapping are reviewed and presented in the context of topology optimization. Future biomedical applications of solid freeform fabrication such as organ printing stand to save millions of lives through the robust development of …

Usage Based Topology For Dcns, Qing Yi, Suresh Singh

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many data center network topologies are designed to provide full bisection bandwidth for tens of thousands of servers in order to achieve high network throughput and server agility. However, the utilization rate of DCNs on average is below 10%, which results in a significant waste of network resources and energy. Many researchers propose consolidating network traffic flows to maximize the set of idle network equipment and switching them to low power mode to save energy. In this paper, we propose using skinnier network topologies to meet performance requirements of realistic loads thus saving not only energy but capital cost as …