Engineering Commons^™

Extracting Continuum-Like Deformation And Stress From Molecular Dynamics Simulations, Lili Zhang, John Jasa, George Gazonas, Antoine Jerusalem, Mehrdad Negahban

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

We present methods that use results from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to construct continuum parameters, such as deformation gradient and Cauchy stress, from all or any part of an MD system. These parameters are based on the idea of minimizing the difference between MD measures for deformation and traction and their continuum counterparts. The procedures should be applicable to non-equilibrium and inhomogeneous systems, and to any part of a system, such as a polymer chain. The resulting procedures provide methods to obtain first and higher order deformation gradients associated with any subset of the MD system, and associated expressions for …

Blast-Induced Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Through Ear Canal: A Finite Element Study, Praveen Akula, Yi Hua, Linxia Gu

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Purpose The role of ear canal in transmitting blast waves to the brain is not clear. The goal of this work is to characterize the influence of ear canal on blast-induced mild traumatic brain injury through a computational approach.

Methods A three-dimensional human head model with single-side ear canal details was reconstructed from computed tomography images. The ear canal was positioned either facing the incident blast wave or facing away from the blast wave.

Results The blast wave-head interaction has demonstrated that the overpressure within the ear canal was substantially amplified when the ear directly faced the blast wave. When …

Differences In Waste Generation, Waste Composition, And Source Separation Across Three Waste Districts In A New York Suburb, Omkar Aphale, Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Six tonnes of discards and recyclables from three waste districts in a New York suburb were sorted in 2012. The districts were chosen because one had a higher recycling percentage, one had median performance, and one was a low performing district. ASTM standards were followed for the waste composition sorting. The results showed, as expected, that the waste district with the highest recycling rate appeared to have the highest separation efficiencies, leading to greater amounts of recyclable materials being source separated. The waste districts also had different overall waste generation, both in terms of the amounts of wastes generated, and …

A Management Framework For Municipal Solid Waste Systems And Its Application To Food Waste Prevention, Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Waste management is a complex task involving numerous waste fractions, a range of technological treatment options, and many outputs that are circulated back to society. A systematic, interdisciplinary systems management framework was developed to facilitate the planning, implementation, and maintenance of sustainable waste systems. It aims not to replace existing decision-making approaches, but rather to enable their integration to allow for inclusion of overall sustainability concerns and address the complexity of solid waste management. The framework defines key considerations for system design, steps for performance monitoring, and approaches for facilitating continual system improvements. It was developed by critically examining the …

Quantification Of Food Waste Disposal In The United States: A Meta-Analysis, Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes, Jessica Gurevitch

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Food waste has major consequences for social, nutritional, economic, and environmental issues, and yet the amount of food waste disposed in the U.S. has not been accurately quantified. We introduce the transparent and repeatable methods of meta-analysis and systematic reviewing to determine how much food is discarded in the U.S., and to determine if specific factors drive increased disposal. The aggregate proportion of food waste in U.S. municipal solid waste from 1995 to 2013 was found to be 0.147 (95% CI 0.137-0.157) of total waste, which is lower than that estimated by USEPA for the same period (0.176). The proportion …

Sustainable Disposal Of Coal Processing Waste Streams, Mohammad Rezaee

Theses and Dissertations--Mining Engineering

Modern coal preparation facilities incorporate a wide array of solid-solid and solid-liquid separation processes for rejecting mineral matter to meet market specifications. The coarse mineral matter is typically placed into engineered refuse piles whereas the fine refuse is either stored in impoundments or co-disposed with the coarse refuse. The discharge water from the refuse material represents an environmental concern due to the potential release of trace elements, and the subsequent elevation of total dissolved solids and conductivity. The research findings reported in this dissertation addresses sustainable coal processing waste disposal through using strategies aimed at minimizing the environmental impacts. To …

Dynamic Phases, Pinning, And Pattern Formation For Driven Dislocation Assemblies, Caizhi Zhou, Charles Reichhardt, Cynthia Olson Reichhardt, Irene J. Beyerlein

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We examine driven dislocation assemblies and show that they can exhibit a set of dynamical phases remarkably similar to those of driven systems with quenched disorder such as vortices in superconductors, magnetic domain walls, and charge density wave materials. These phases include pinned-jammed, fluctuating, and dynamically ordered states, and each produces distinct dislocation patterns as well as specific features in the noise fluctuations and transport properties. Our work suggests that many of the results established for systems with quenched disorder undergoing plastic depinning transitions can be applied to dislocation systems, providing a new approach for understanding pattern formation and dynamics …

Integrated Freight Network Model: A Gis-Based Platform For Transportation Analyses, Ted H. Grossardt, John Ripy, Benjamin L. Blandford, Michael Shouse

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The models currently used to examine the behavior transportation systems are usually modespecific. That is, they focus on a single mode (i.e. railways, highways, or waterways). The lack of integration limits the usefulness of models to analyze the intermodal movement of freight. This project developed a GIS-based model of the three primary surface modes as well as intermodal connections. The resulting Integrated Freight Network Model (IFNM) accommodates highly detailed about shipping costs, transfer costs, traffic volumes (including non-freight auto traffic), and network interconnectivity properties. As a proof of concept, the research team conducted an exploratory analysis that asked what the …

Design Of An All-In-One Embedded Flight Control System, Joel D. Elmore

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes an all-in-one flight control system (FCS) that was designed for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The project focuses on the embedded hardware aspect of a stand-alone system with low-cost and reliability in mind.

Designed Synthesis Of Nanoporous Organic Polymers For Selective Gas Uptake And Catalytic Applications, Pezhman Arab

Theses and Dissertations

Design and synthesis of porous organic polymers have attracted considerable attentions during the past decade due to their wide range of applications in gas storage, gas separation, energy conversion, and catalysis. Porous organic polymers can be pre-synthetically and post-synthetically functionalized with a wide variety of functionalities for desirable applications. Along these pursuits, we introduced new synthetic strategies for preparation of porous organic polymers for selective CO₂ capture.

Porous azo-linked polymers (ALPs) were synthesized by an oxidative reaction of amine-based monomers using copper(I) as a catalyst which leads to azo-linkage formation. ALPs exhibit high surface areas of up to 1200 …

Visual Slam And Surface Reconstruction For Abdominal Minimally Invasive Surgery, Bingxiong Lin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Depth information of tissue surfaces and laparoscope poses are crucial for accurate surgical guidance and navigation in Computer Assisted Surgeries (CAS). Intra-operative Three Dimensional (3D) reconstruction and laparoscope localization are therefore two fundamental tasks in CAS. This dissertation focuses on the abdominal Minimally Invasive Surgeries (MIS) and presents laparoscopic-video-based methods for these two tasks.

Different kinds of methods have been presented to recover 3D surface structures of surgical scenes in MIS. Those methods are mainly based on laser, structured light, time-of-flight cameras, and video cameras. Among them, laparoscopic-video-based surface reconstruction techniques have many significant advantages. Specifically, they are non-invasive, provide …

A Comparative Study Of Dual-Tree Algorithms For Computing Spatial Distance Histogram, Chengcheng Mou

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Particle simulation has become an important research technique in many scientific and engineering fields in latest years. However, these simulations will generate countless data, and database they required would therefore deal with very challenging tasks in terms of data management, storage, and query processing. The two-body correlation function (2-BCFs), a statistical learning measurement to evaluate the datasets, has been mainly utilized to measure the spatial distance histogram (SDH). By using a straightforward method, the process of SDH query takes quadratic time. Recently, a novel algorithm has been proposed to compute the SDH based on the concept of density map (DM), …

Combinational Watermarking For Medical Images, Thrilok Chakravarthy Chinna Narayana Swamy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Digitization of medical data has become a very important part of the modern healthcare system. Data can be transmitted easily at any time to anywhere in the world using Internet to get the best diagnosis possible for a patient. This digitized medical data must be protected at all times to preserve the doctor-patient confidentiality. Watermarking can be used as an effective tool to achieve this.

In this research project, image watermarking is performed both in the spatial domain and the frequency domain to embed a shared image with medical image data and the patient data which would include the patient …

Reducing The Control Burden Of Legged Robotic Locomotion Through Biomimetic Consonance In Mechanical Design And Control, Caitrin Elizabeth Eaton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Terrestrial robots must be capable of negotiating rough terrain if they are to become autonomous outside of the lab. Although the control mechanism offered by wheels is attractive in its simplicity, any wheeled system is confined to relatively flat terrain. Wheels will also only ever be useful for rolling, while limbs observed in nature are highly multimodal. The robust locomotive utility of legs is evidenced by the many animals that walk, run, jump, swim, and climb in a world full of challenging terrain.

On the other hand, legs with multiple degrees of freedom (DoF) require much more complex control and …

Synthesis And Fabrication Of Graphene/Conducting Polymer/Metal Oxide Nanocomposite Materials For Supercapacitor Applications, Mohamad Khawaja

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rising energy consumption worldwide is leading to significant increases in energy production with fossil fuels being the major energy source. The negative environmental impact of fossil fuel use and its finite nature requires the use of alternative sources of energy. Solar energy is a clean alternative energy source; however, its intermittent nature is a major impediment that needs to be reduced or eliminated by the development of cost effective energy storage. Thermal storage in tanks filled typically with molten salt at elevated temperatures is widely used in concentrating solar power plants to generate electricity during periods of low daytime …

Region Of Interest Based Compression Of Grayscale Images, Adhokshaja Achar Budihal Prasad

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Image compression based on Region of Interest (ROI) has been one of the hot topics of interest in image processing. There is not a single widely accepted method for detecting the ROI automatically form an image. To reduce the transmission bandwidth and storage space requirements of gray scale images, an algorithm is suggested for detecting the ROI automatically based on Tsallis entropy method.

Tsallis entropy method is used to segment the image into two segments, the ROI and the background. These two segments can then be compressed at different rates, to avoid losing information in the ROI while achieving a …

Patient Populations, Clinical Associations, And System Efficiency In Healthcare Delivery System, Yazhuo Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The efforts to improve health care delivery usually involve studies and analysis of patient populations and healthcare systems. In this dissertation, I present the research conducted in the following areas: identifying patient groups, improving treatments for specific conditions by using statistical as well as data mining techniques, and developing new operation research models to increase system efficiency from the health institutes’ perspective. The results provide better understanding of high risk patient groups, more accuracy in detecting disease’ correlations and practical scheduling tools that consider uncertain operation durations and real-life constraints.

Improvements On Scientific System Analysis, Vladimir Grupchev

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thanks to the advancement of the modern computer simulation systems, many scientific applications generate, and require manipulation of large volumes of data. Scientific exploration substantially relies on effective and accurate data analysis. The shear size of the generated data, however, imposes big challenges in the process of analyzing the system. In this dissertation we propose novel techniques as well as using some known designs in a novel way in order to improve scientific data analysis.

We develop an efficient method to compute an analytical query called spatial distance histogram (SDH). Special heuristics are exploited to process SDH efficiently and accurately. …

Geostatistical Examination Of The Geotechnical Portland Bes Databases With Emphasis On Silt, Alex K. Baumann

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Willamette Valley silt deposits from historical catastrophic flood events present a difficult problem for subsurface engineers practicing in the Portland, Oregon area. Silts exhibit behavior of two very well-documented soil types, but publications containing mechanical properties for silts are scant, especially for local silts. Thus, the need for links between real Portland site investigation data and silt properties is high. To further exemplify the need for documented knowledge of local silts, this project reveals the evolving state of practice to incorporate more Pacific Northwest seismic analyses in preparation for a subduction zone earthquake. The geotechnical Portland BES databases contain thousands …

Comparing Mode Shares For Non-Residential Destinations In Urban And Suburban Environments, Tasnia Subrin

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

To ensure facility for multimodal transportation is one of the most important concerns in today's transportation sector, with initiatives being taken to make multimodal transportation popular. The built environment variables have a strong relationship with transportation mode choice, but whether that relationship holds true in urban and suburban neighborhoods in the same manner has not been considered. Using data for three non-residential land uses, this research explores whether the built environment variables in suburban areas influences mode share like it does in urban areas. We used survey data conducted at the establishments regarding respondents' travel characteristics from a previous study, …

Dynamic Response Of Glass Under Low-Velocity Impact And High Strain-Rate Compression Loading, Seyed Soheil Daryadel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this research, the dynamic response and energy absorption characteristics of four different types of commercially available glass have been investigated experimentally. Soda Lime, Starphire, Borosilicate, and Fused Silica were characterized using a Dynatup 8250 drop weight impact test system, and a modified Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB). In the low-velocity punch-shear experiment, similar trend has been observed for all glass types, and Starphire and Borosilicate demonstrated the highest total energy absorption. High strain-rate SHPB compression tests were carried out on cylindrical glass samples at two different strain-rates. Borosilicate shohigher compressive strength and energy absorption in comparison to the other …

Impact Of Repeaters On The Performance Of Indoor Visible Light Communications, Refi̇k Çağlar Kizilirmak

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this study, we examine the performance of fixed gain amplify-and-forward repeaters for visible light communication (VLC) systems. We present the wireless optical channel model for VLC with the repeater and we evaluate the bit-error-rate (BER) performance for pulse-position modulation over the multipath channel with additive white Gaussian noise. The results reveal that when a repeater is placed, both the BER and the illuminance performance can be improved at any location in a typical office space. The benefit of VLC repeaters is also discussed when the channel from the source to the destination is shadowed. It is found that when …

Impact Of Large-Scale Installation Of Led Lamps In A Distribution System, Sohel Uddin, Hussain Sharef, Olav Krause, Azah Mohamed, Mohammad Abdul Hannan, Naz Niamul Islam

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The aim of this paper was to examine the utilization of a large number of nonlinear light emitting diode (LED) lamps in a distribution system and its impact on system power quality. Initially, harmonic and others electrical characteristics were identified by carrying out an experiment on four types of LED lamps available on the local market. On the basis of the identified characteristics, a new LED lamp model was developed in MATLAB Simulink. This model is called the time-dependent current source model and gives more accurate results than the fixed current source model. Then this model was applied to a …

The Journal Of Undergraduate Research: Volume 13

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

This is the complete issue of the South Dakota State University Journal of Undergraduate Research, Volume 13.

High Definition 3d Printing – Comparing Sla And Fdm Printing Technologies, Tyler Finnes

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

For consumer level additive manufacturing, there are currently two main methods to 3D print objects: Stereo lithography and Fused Deposition Modeling. Both processes add material, layer by layer, to create objects. Stereo lithography (SLA) uses a UV light source to selectively cure resin while Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) extrudes semi-liquid plastic in a specific layout to create objects. As with most technologies, both styles of printing have advantages and disadvantages. The biggest advantage of SLA 3D printing is very high resolution. SLA 3D printing can produce objects with more than double the resolution of FDM printers. The mUVe 3D SLA …

Applications Of Ultrasonic Non-Destructive Testing In 3d Printing, Parker Lawley

The Journal of Undergraduate Research

To determine the capabilities of ultrasonic non-destructive testing methods in 3D printing, test specimens were designed to evaluate advantages and limitations in using ultrasoundC-scanning to determine 3D printing effectiveness. A Matlab program was written to process the data obtained from the UTwin software and ultrasound tank, as well as produce 3D models of the parts being tested. Thickness, types of features, and various printing methods were evaluated to determine how these characteristics vary in effectiveness of C-scan imaging. Results from the UTwin software C-scans were compared to the Matlab program’s imaging and three-dimensional modeling. After determining the capabilities of ultrasonic …

A Shear-Based Parameterization Of Turbulent Mixing In The Stable Atmospheric Boundary Layer, Jordan M. Wilson, Subhas K. Venayagamoorthy

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this study, shear-based parameterizations of turbulent mixing in the stable atmospheric boundary layer (SABL) are proposed. A relevant length-scale estimate for the mixing length LM of the turbulent momentum field is constructed from the turbulent kinetic energy Ek and the mean shear rate S as. Using observational data from two field campaigns-the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) experiment and the 1999 Cooperative Atmosphere-Surface Exchange Study (CASES-99)- is shown to have a strong correlation with LM. The relationship between LM and corresponds to the ratio of the magnitude of the tangential components of the turbulent momentum flux …

Hydraulic Design Of Baffles In Disinfection Contact Tanks, Zachary H. Taylor, Jeremy S. Carlston, Subhas Karan Venayagamoorthy

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study focuses on understanding the hydraulic design of baffled contact tanks using computational fluid dynamics simulations. In particular, we address the key question: for a given footprint of a rectangular tank with a specified inlet width (Winlet), how does the hydraulic efficiency of a baffled tank depend on the configuration of internal baffles? In an effort to address this question, a carefully conceived parametric study consisting of 30 high-resolution two-dimensional (planar) simulations was conducted to quantify the hydraulic efficiency of a laboratory scale tank as a function of dimensional relationships between key baffle design dimensions (baffle opening length Lbo, …

Model-Based Verification For Simulink Design, Victor Oke

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Testing a Model-Based design is the only way to determine the correctness of the designed model but not enough to conclude that the design is error free. Verification exposes all the design errors and describes the functionality of the system. Assertion based verification helps to determine whether the model obey the actual design requirements. This thesis work is mainly based on verification of a Water Tank control system modeling using SIMULINK model.

On The Catalytic Activity Of Palladium Nanoparticles-Based Anodes Towards Formic Acid Electro-Oxidation: Effect Of Electrodeposition Potential, Islam M. Al-Akraa Dr., Ahmad M. Mohammad Prof, Mohamed S. El-Deab Prof, Bahgat E. El-Anadouli Prof

Chemical Engineering

In this investigation, the catalytic activity of palladium nanoparticles (PdNPs)-modified glassy carbon (GC) (simply noted as PdNPs/GC) electrodes towards the formic acid electro-oxidation (FAO) was investigated. The deposition of PdNPs on the GC substrate was carried out by a potentiostatic technique at different potentials and the corresponding influence on the particles size and crystal structure of PdNPs as well as the catalytic activity towards FAO was studied. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) demonstrated the deposition of PdNPs in spherical shapes and the average particle size of PdNPs deposited at a potential of 0 V vs. Ag/AgCl/KCl(sat.) was the smallest (ca. 8 …