Engineering Commons^™

Special Issue: Selected Papers From Idetc 2015, Venkat N. Krovi, Andrew P. Murray, James Schmiedeler

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This second IDETC Special Issue, containing 19 papers from researchers in seven countries on three continents, seeks to cap- ture the current interest topics and latest results from the 39th ASME Mechanisms and Robotics (M&R) conference. The topics span the synthesis and analysis of novel mechanisms and robots as well as their validation in a variety of applications. The papers are organized with contributions to the core theoretical methodol- ogies of M&R (five papers) appearing first. The application areas that follow are micro air vehicles (MAVs) (two papers), modular robotics (three papers), origami applications (three papers), medi- cal robotics (three …

Effect Of Fiber Material On Ozone Removal And Carbonyl Production From Carpets, Omed A. Abbass, David J. Sailor, Elliott T. Gall

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Indoor air quality is affected by indoor materials such as carpets that may act as sources and/or sinks of gas-phase air pollutants. Heterogeneous reactions of ozone with carpets may result in potentially harmful products. In this study, indoor residential carpets of varying fiber types were tested to evaluate their ability to remove ozone, and to assess their role in the production of carbonyls when exposed to elevated levels of ozone. Tests were conducted with six types of new unused carpets. Two sets of experiments were conducted, the first measured ozone removal and ozone deposition velocities, and the second measured primary …

Support Vector Machines And Artificial Neural Networks: Assessing The Validity Of Using Technical Features For Security Forecasting, James Dipadua

Dissertations

Stock forecasting is an enticing and well-studied problem in both finance and machine learning literature with linear-based models such as ARIMA and ARCH to non-linear Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). However, these forecasting techniques also use very different input features, some of which are seen by economists as irrational and theoretically unjustified. In this comparative study using ANNs and SVMs for 12 publicly traded companies, derivative price “technicals” are evaluated against macro- and microeconomic fundamentals to evaluate the efficacy of model performance. Despite the efficient market hypothesis positing the ill-suitability of technicals as model inputs, this …

Anisoplanatic Electromagnetic Image Propagation Through Narrow Or Extended Phase Turbulence Using Altitude-Dependent Structure Parameter, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Ali Mohamed

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The effects of turbulence on anisoplanatic imaging are often modeled through the use of a sequence of phase screens distributed along the optical path. We implement the split-step wave algorithm to examine turbulence-corrupted images.

High-Affinity Phosphate-Binding Protein (Pbp) For Phosphorous Recovery: Proof Of Concept Using Recombinant Escherichia Coli, Yu Yang, Wendy Ballent, Brooke K. Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Phosphorus (P) is a critical, non-renewable nutrient; yet excess discharges can lead to eutrophication and deterioration of water quality. Thus, P removal from water must be coupled with P recovery to achieve sustainable P management. P-specific proteins provide a novel, promising approach to recover P from water. Bacterial phosphate-binding proteins (PBPs) are able to effectively remove phosphate, achieving extremely low levels in water (i.e. 0.015 mg-P L⁻¹). A prerequisite of using PBP for P recovery, however, is not only removal, but also controlled P release, which has not yet been reported. Phosphate release using recombinant PBP-expressing Escherichia coli …

The Bridge Newsletter Winter 2016, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

The Bridge Newsletter

-World's only cold-formed steel conference
-2016 Alumni of Influence
-National intelligence leader speaks
-Senne Memoria

Development And Implementation Of High Fidelity Human Models For The Investigation Of Blast And Non-Penetrating Projectile Impact, Candice F. Cooper

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

Military operations abroad have highlighted the effects of several types of physical traumas including traumatic brain injury and behind armor blunt trauma. While previous approaches toward understanding and mitigating trauma caused by blast or blunt impact relied upon physical testing of animal subjects, post mortem human subjects, or human tissue surrogates, recent advances in computational capability have spurred a growing area of research in computational investigations into wound injury and its mitigation. The development of high-fidelity human torso and head-neck-torso models are presented here. These models are employed in blast and non-penetrating projectile impact simulations in order to demonstrate the …

Predictions Of Ponderosa Pine Resiliency To Climate Change In The Cebolla Canyon Watershed, New Mexico, Breana N. Chavez

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

This project was designed to understand the potential impacts of climate change on soil moisture and the resiliency of ponderosa pine in the forested region of the Cebolla Canyon watershed (Cebolla), located in eastern New Mexico. Much of the watershed is administered as public domain land by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This project aims to help BLM managers understand how climate change is projected to impact ponderosa pine seedling establishment and mature ponderosa pine productivity in Cebolla.

Current and potential future soil moisture regimes in Cebolla were simulated on three hills using HYDRUS-1D. The soil moisture regimes …

Preface-Jes Focus Issue On Electrolysis For Increased Renewable Energy Penetration, B. Pivovar, M. Carmo, K. Ayers, X. Zhang, J. O'Brien

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Today represents a particularly exciting time, as our planet’s energy system is undergoing major changes due to dramatically decreasing renewable energy prices and increasing societal concerns over greenhouse gas emissions, criteria pollutants (arsenic, mercury, NOx, particulate matter), and climate change. These factors are pushing society toward deep decarbonization of our energy system, perhaps the most challenging issue facing the planet today. Unfortunately, wind and solar energy, while both promising generation sources, come with intermittency challenges and have limitations in their abilities to impact industrial and transportation sector demands where fossil fuel energy carriers based on chemical bonds have …

Puddle Jumping: Spontaneous Ejection Of Large Liquid Droplets From Hydrophobic Surfaces During Drop Tower Tests, Babek Attari, Mark M. Weislogel, Andrew Paul Wollman, Yongkang Chen, Trevor Snyder

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Large droplets and puddles jump spontaneously from sufficiently hydrophobicsurfaces during routine drop tower tests. The simple low-cost passive mechanism can in turn be used as an experimental device to investigate dynamic droplet phenomena for drops up to 104 times larger than their normal terrestrial counterparts. We provide and/or confirm quick and qualitative design guides for such “drop shooters” as employed in drop tower tests including relationships to predict droplet ejection durations and velocities as functions of drop volume, surface texture, surface contour, wettability pattern, and fluid properties including contact angle. The latter is determined via profile image comparisons with numerical …

Engineering Synthetic Feedback To Promote Recovery Of Self-Feeding Skills In People With Sensory Deficits Due To Stroke, Alexis Krueger

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Kinesthesia refers to sensations of limb position and movement, and deficits of upper limb kinesthetic feedback are common after stroke, impairing stroke survivors’ ability to perform the fundamental reaching and stabilization behaviors needed for daily functions like self-feeding. I attempt to mitigate the negative impact of post-stroke kinesthesia deficits by evaluating the utility of vibrotactile sensory substitution to restore closed-loop kinesthetic feedback of the upper limb. As a first step, this study evaluated performance in healthy individuals during fundamental reaching, stabilization, and tracking behaviors while using supplemental vibrotactile feedback encoding either limb state information or goal-aware error information. First, I …

Characterization Of Histological Changes In The Microvasculature Of Rat Skeletal Muscle After Spinal Cord Injury, Sally Lin

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there are histological changes in the microvasculature of rat skeletal muscle following chronic spinal cord injury both above and below the level of injury. This study is important because microvascular structure likely impacts muscle performance and cardiovascular health. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only study to investigate microvascular structure within rat skeletal muscle after spinal cord injury. We hypothesized structural remodeling would occur in both the myofibers and microvasculature, which would then manifest in differences in myofiber cross sectional area and microvascular diameter, wall thickness, wall to …

Optimization Of The Bowtie Gap Geometry For A Maximum Electric Field Enhancement, Tsenguun Byambadorj

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Optimization of the geometry of a metallic bowtie gap at radio frequency is presented in this thesis. Since the design and fabrication of a plasmonic device (nanogap) at nanoscale is challenging, the results of this study can be used to estimate the best design parameters for nanogap structure. The geometry of the bowtie gap including gap size, tip width, metal thickness, and tip angle are investigated at macroscale to find the maximum electric field enhancement across the gap. This thesis focuses on the simulation portion of a work that consists of experimental and simulation platforms. The simulation platform is created …

Evaluation Of An Actuated Wrist Orthosis For Use In Assistive Upper Extremity Rehabilitation, Devon Holley

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a neurological condition caused by damage to motor control centers of the brain. This leads to physical and cognitive deficiencies that can reduce an individual’s quality of life. Specifically, motor deficiencies of the upper extremity can make it difficult for an individual to complete everyday tasks, including eating, drinking, getting dressed, or combing their hair. Physical therapy, involving repetitive tasks, has been shown to be effective in training normal motion of the limb by invoking the neuroplasticity of the brain and its ability to adapt in order to facilitate motor learning. Creating a device for use …

Data Fusion For Vision-Based Robotic Platform Navigation, Andrés F. Echeverri

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Data fusion has become an active research topic in recent years. Growing computational performance has allowed the use of redundant sensors to measure a single phenomenon. While Bayesian fusion approaches are common in general applications, the computer vision community has largely relegated this approach. Most object following algorithms have gone towards pure machine learning fusion techniques that tend to lack flexibility. Consequently, a more general data fusion scheme is needed. The motivation for this work is to propose methods that allow for the development of simple and cost effective, yet robust visual following robots capable of tracking a general object …

Analysis Of Fatigue Crack Propagation In Welded Steels, Roberto Angelo Demarte

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This thesis presents the study of fatigue crack propagation in a low carbon steel (ASTM A36) and two different weld metals (AWS A5.18 and AWS A5.28). Fatigue crack propagation data for each weld wire is of interest because of its use for predicting and analyzing service failures. Fatigue crack growth test specimens were developed and fabricated for the low carbon steel base metal and for each weld wire. Weld specimens were stress relieved prior to fatigue testing. Specimens were tested on a closed-loop servo hydraulic test machine at two different load ratios. Fatigue test data was collected to characterize both …

Plasticized Polymer Coatings For Sh-Saw Sensors For High Sensitivity And Long-Term Monitoring Of Btex Analytes In Liquid Phase, Pintu Adhikari

Master's Theses (2009 -)

BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene) are constituents of crude oil and hazardous to human health. Among them, benzene has the lowest maximum contaminant level for drinking water because of its carcinogenicity. Spills or leakage from underground storage tanks or hazardous waste sites can contaminate nearby groundwater with these volatile organic compounds. Therefore, it is very important to detect the presence of BTEX contamination as early as possible in order to start the remediation process and maintain a healthy environment. To develop an in-situ continuous monitoring sensor system, shear horizontal surface acoustic wave (SH-SAW) sensor devices are being investigated …

Analysis Of Interference Between Electromagnetic Articulography And Electroglottograph Systems, Kelly Vonderhaar

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) has become an integral tool for researchers and clinicians who seek to characterize speech kinematics. The position and orientation of the articulators – which include the jaw, lips, and tongue – are recorded by attaching sensors to the articulators and tracking the movement of the sensors through an electromagnetic field. This has been used by researchers and clinicians to better understand dysarthria and synthesize speech, among other applications. Another speech tool, electroglottography (EGG), is used to analyze the movement of the vocal folds during speech production. This is achieved by measuring the time variation of the contact …

Fitplay Games: Increasing Exercise Motivation Through Asynchronous Social Gaming, Dario Carlos Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Many factors contribute to people's physical inactivity, but among the leading factors is a lack of motivation. Fitness trackers have been shown to encourage an increase in exercise, but they are frequently abandoned within a few short months. For this thesis I developed and asynchronous-play social gaming platform, FitPlay Games, to fill the gap in motivation left by current fitness trackers. By providing users with a variety of asynchronous cooperative and competitive gaming styles, this platform enable them to find a motivation technique that works best for their lifestyle and fitness prowess. The platform encourages prolonged use of fitness trackers, …

Rotational Strength And Stiffness Of Shallowly Embedded Base Connections In Steel Moment Frames, Kevin N. Hanks

Theses and Dissertations

Shallowly embedded column base connections with unreinforced block out concrete are a common method of connecting steel columns to their foundation. There has been little research done to accurately quantify the effects of this block out concrete on the connection strength and rigidity, and therefore there is nothing to aid the practicing engineer in accounting for this in structural analysis. Due to this lack of understanding, engineers have typically ignored the effects of shallow block out concrete in their analysis, presumably leading to a conservative design. Recent research has attempted to fill this gap in understanding. Several methods have been …

Computational Fluid Dynamics Study Of Molten Steel Flow Patterns And Particle-Wall Interactions Inside A Slide-Gate Nozzle By A Hybrid Turbulent Model, Mahdi Mohammadi-Ghaleni, Mohsen Asle Zaeem, Jeffrey D. Smith, Ronald J. O'Malley

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Melt flow patterns and turbulence inside a slide-gate throttled submerged entry nozzle (SEN) were studied using Detached–Eddy Simulation (DES) model, which is a combination of Reynolds–Averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) and Large–Eddy Simulation (LES) models. The DES switching criterion between RANS and LES was investigated to closely reproduce the flow structures of low and high turbulence regions similar to RANS and LES simulations, respectively. The melt flow patterns inside the nozzle were determined by k–ε (a RANS model), LES, and DES turbulent models, and convergence studies were performed to ensure reliability of the results. Results showed that the DES model has significant …

Changing Trends In Wave Heights In The U.S. Mid-Atlantic Region, Hillary Lane

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The pace and effects of climate change are an area of constant focus for coastal engineers as evolving patterns in the atmosphere worldwide affect the oceans and coasts on a regional and global scale. Surface waves respond to changing wind patterns both locally and from propagating swell, and the difficulty in predicting future wind patterns is well-established. Expectations that climate change will result in more frequent and intense coastal storms and consequently greater wave heights in the North Atlantic are still unrealized, and recent forecasts from a variety of atmosphere-ocean coupled global climate models instead predict decreasing wave heights through …

Efficient Domain Decomposition Algorithms And Applications In Transportation And Structural Engineering, Paul W. Johnson Iii

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Domain decomposition is a divide-and-conquer strategy. In the first part of this dissertation, a new/simple/efficient domain decomposition partitioning algorithm is proposed to break a large domain into smaller sub-domains, in such a way as to minimize the number of system boundary nodes and to balance the work load for each sub-domain. This new domain decomposition algorithm is based on the network’s shortest path solution. Numerical results indicate that the new Shortest Distance Decomposition Algorithm outperformed the most widely used METIS algorithm in 21 out of 27 tested (transportation) examples. In the second part of this dissertation, another new/simple and highly …

Parametric Investigation Of A Laboratory Drop Test To Simulate Base Acceleration Induced By Wave Impacts Of High Speed Planing Craft, John D. Barber

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

High speed operations in a small craft can be physically punishing and, in some circumstances, even dangerous for the crew. The aspect of small craft operations that make them punishing for the crew is wave slamming generated by wave impacts as the craft is traveling over the seas at high speed.

The initial step of this thesis effort was to perform a literature survey to determine what knowledge existed within the technical and academic community about wave slamming and simulating them with drop tests.

Eventually, a final experiment strongly influenced by the experiment model found in (Protocol 1, 2014) was …

Physical Layer Secret Key Agreement Using One-Bit Quantization And Low-Density Parity-Check Codes, John A. Snoap

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Physical layer approaches for generating secret encryption keys for wireless systems using channel information have attracted increased interest from researchers in recent years. This paper presents a new approach for calculating log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) for secret key generation that is based on one-bit quantization of channel measurements and the difference between channel estimates at legitimate reciprocal nodes. The studied secret key agreement approach, which implements advantage distillation along with information reconciliation using Slepian-Wolf low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, is discussed and illustrated with numerical results obtained from simulations. These results show the probability of bit disagreement for keys generated using the …

Improvement Of Work Process Performance With Task Assignments And Mental Workload Balancing, Cansu Kandemir

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The outcome of a work process depends heavily on which tasks assigned to which employees. However, sometimes-optimized assignments based on employees’ qualifications may result in an uneven and ineffective workload distribution among them. Likewise, an even workload distribution without considering the employee's qualifications may cause unproductive employee-task matching that results in low performance of employees. This trade-off is even more noticeable for work processes during critical time junctions, such as in military command centers and emergency rooms that require being fast and effective without making errors.

This study proposes that optimizing task-employee assignments according to their capabilities while also keeping …

Using Everyday Objects To Engage Students In Standards Education, Margaret Phillips, Paul Mcpherson

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This paper describes an innovative approach to standards education in an undergraduate mechanical engineering technology design course. The work is focused on making standards appeal to students by using “everyday objects” (e.g. toaster, ladder, grill, etc.) as catalysts to introduce the topic of standards in a way that connects to students’ daily lives. The project involves instructor-librarian collaboration to incorporate information literacy and campus library resources into the standards curricula, so that students not only become familiar with standards resources, but also proficient at searching for and locating the documents. Preliminary results and observations indicate this is an effective approach …

Development Of A Mathematical Model To Estimate Intra-Tumor Oxygen Concentrations Through Multi-Parametric Imaging, Chung-Wein Lee, Keith Stantz, Phd

School of Health Sciences Faculty Publications

Background

Tumor hypoxia is involved in every stage of solid tumor development: formation, progression, metastasis, and apoptosis. Two types of hypoxia exist in tumors—chronic hypoxia and acute hypoxia. Recent studies indicate that the regional hypoxia kinetics is closely linked to metastasis and therapeutic responses, but regional hypoxia kinetics is hard to measure. We propose a novel approach to determine the local pO2 by fusing the parameters obtained from in vivo functional imaging through the use of a modified multivariate Krogh model.

Methods

To test our idea and its potential to translate into an in vivo setting through the use of …

High-Level Multi-Objective Model For Microgrid Design, Siamak Talebi

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, there is vast inclination toward using renewable energy in rural areas away from the main electricity generation plants. Small airports located in rural areas are good candidates to apply sustainable energy for electrical power needs. Because of the intermittency of the renewable sources, it is important to have energy storage to guarantee an uninterrupted and stable power supply for end users. In this work, a high-level micro grid model is proposed considering making decisions about different factors such as different renewable sources capacity, storage and system capacity. A multi-objective model of a microgrid high-level design is used to formulate …

Thermal Analysis Of Continuous And Patterned Multilayer Films In The Presence Of A Nanoscale Hot Spot, Jia-Yang Juang, Jinglin Zheng

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Thermal responses of multilayer films play essential roles in state-of-the-art electronic systems, such as photo/micro-electronic devices, data storage systems, and silicon-on-insulator transistors. In this paper, we focus on the thermal aspects of multilayer films in the presence of a nanoscale hot spot induced by near field laser heating. The problem is set up in the scenario of heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), the next-generation technology to overcome the data storage density limit imposed by superparamagnetism. We characterized thermal responses of both continuous and patterned multilayer media films using transient thermal modeling. We observed that material configurations, in particular, the thermal …