Engineering Commons^™

Gain-Margins And Phase-Margins Of Multivariable Time-Delay Systems, Tsung-Huang Ma, Chih-Min Lin, Fei Chao, Chun-Fei Hsu, Jih-Gau Juang, Ching-Hung Lee

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

In this paper, the gain-phase-margin tester method is applied to analyze the gain-margins (GMs) and phase-margins (PMs) of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) control systems with time-delays. The objectives of the proposed method are: (1) to present the basic definitions and physical meanings of GMs and PMs of MIMO control systems; (2) to give some important remarks on how to construct proper block diagrams for those systems originally expressed by state equations; (3) to analyze the GMs and PMs of a missile autopilot system. The analysis results are checked by the use of Nyquist plots and computer simulations.

Monocular Image-Based Local Collision-Free Path Planning For Autonomous Robots, I-Hsum Li, Ming-Chang Chen, Wei-Yen Wang, Shun-Feng Su, Yi-Han Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Monocular image-based local collision-free path planning for autonomous robots is presented in this paper. According to a pre-set pair of parallel lines, transformation equations from the image domain to the real world domain are easily defined. Moreover, the distances to obstacles in the robot’s visual domain can be estimated. Our proposed method can not only easily identify obstacles and wall edges, but also estimate the distances and plan a collision-free path. Besides, this paper successfully integrates an image processing module with a local collision-free path planning, and also applies them to the collision-free and path planning of a mobile robot. …

Load Transfer And Deformation Analyses Of Piled-Raft Foundation In Taipei Metropolitan, Der-Guey Lin, Wen-Tsung Liu, Jui-Ching Chou

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Piled-raft systems are often suitable for foundations of highrise buildings to increase the bearing capacity and reduce the excessive settlement of foundations. However, the conventional design of the piled-raft foundation commonly ignores the bearing effect of the raft. A parametric study on the piled-raft foundation performance including the bearing effect for typical Taipei Subsoil is investigated using 3D FDM program, FLAC 3D. Input parameters of the parametric study are back calculated from a series of static pile loading tests implemented on the jobsite of TIFC (Taipei International Financial Corporation or Taipei 101). Parametric study results show that the loadcarrying ratio …

Experimental Study Of Simulated Geophysical Buoyancy-Driven Vortical Flow, Mohammad Hady Makhmalbaf

Dissertations

This paper describes an experimental study on the flow within a rotating cylinder with a counter-rotating disk located below to mimic certain aspects of the unique flow structures of the Great Red Spot (GRS) in Jupiter using a simple laboratory setup. The special design of this setup makes it capable of spinning the side wall of a vertical cylinder in both directions as well as rotating the bottom of the cylinder independently, where both can rotate in wide ranges of spin rates. Also, different thermal conditions can be applied on the bottom of the disk. All of these conditions provide …

Open-Loop Electrowetting Actuation With Micro-Stepping, Qi Ni, Daniel E. Capecci, Nathan B. Crane

Faculty Publications

Microfluidic-driven mechanical actuation opens new possibilities for positioning and manipulating delicate small components. However, existing microfluidic actuation methods are not well-suited to positioning with high resolution. This paper reports a method for precise, open-loop control of droplet position in finite steps by varying the duty cycle of the input signal in electrowetting actuation. When wetted to a solid object, both the droplet and the solid can be actuated. Unlike conventional electrowetting actuation methods, positioning resolution in our proposed method can be much smaller than the size of the underlying electrodes without requiring closed loop feedback control system. Using a leaky …

Sound Data Collection And Transmission Noise Reduction, Bradley Cockrel

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The WKU Engineering Department Senior Student Team, The Synchronizers, has been contracted to modify a MTD transmission’s sound characteristics. This project entails developing a sound data acquisition apparatus and method, developing a sound test stand which will fully load the transmission and load characteristics, and suggesting modes of sound modification. The Sound Data Acquisition method entails using a specialized microphone calibrated to operate on IOS devices to measure Sound Intensity. The sound intensity will be found over a collective area, in order to evaluate to the sound power generated. The sound test stand will consist of a system designed to …

Optimizing An Organizational Program For Halton Company, Chandler Clark

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

A team of WKU Mechanical Engineering students is collaborating with Halton Company to create an organizational system for their plant. Each job performed at Halton is custom, leading to several different processes needing to be accounted for at once. The team is designing a program in Visual Studio that will be used to control the progression of the plant as well as store data to optimize future processes involved. Visual Studio will be implemented by summer of 2016 in order to give the team and company time to troubleshoot the program and insert optimizing options into the c ode of …

Code Girl, Amanda Holl

Computer Science and Engineering Master's Theses

Despite the growing importance of technology and computing, fewer than one percent of women in college today choose to major in computer science. Educational programs and games created to interest girls in computing, such as Girls Who Code and Made With Code, have been successful in engaging girls with interactive and creative learning environments, but they are too advanced for young girls to benefit from. To address the lack of educational, computer science games designed specifically for young girls, we developed a web-based application called Code Girl for girls age five to eight to customize their own avatars using Blockly, …

The Lagging State Of Renewable Energy In Kentucky, John Evans

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

It is evident that Kentucky's energy landscape is characterized primarily by coal and, to a lesser degree, natural gas and oil. It seems there's almost no room for renewable energy sources in Kentucky’s energy sector despite plentiful evidence of global climate change caused largely by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Other states are paving the way in the renewable energy industry by investing in solar, wind and geothermal energy among other forms while Kentucky continues to sit back seemingly content with utilizing energy practices that are several decades old. In this project, I will be addressing reasons for the …

Mechanisms And Solutions To The Brittle Solder Joint In Electroless Ni Plating, Xuan Wang, C. Key Chung

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Brittle solder joints in Electroless Ni electroless Pd immersion Au (ENEPIG) surface finishes are one of the key reliability issues in electronics assembly. Previous characterization of the reflow process has indicated that interfacial voids formed after solder reflow are responsible for the decreases in solder joint strength. However, the mechanisms behind the formation of these voids in the ENEPIG process remain unclear. In this paper, the interaction between various aspects of the ENEPIG process and solder joint strength were investigated. Surface roughness, morphology, and nano-pitting at the interface between electroless Pd and Ni-P were characterized. The size and density of …

Development Of An Associate Degree Level Course On Lean, Jeremy Espinoza

Master of Technology Management Plan II Graduate Projects

Lean training and education has become a focal point in both industry and the realm of academics; however, the need within the industry remains, and oftentimes companies must take on the additional and high expense of training new graduates once they enter the workforce. Often, the classes that students study in the lean methodology, if any are studied at all, are taught within other disciplines, and the instruction is in a general sense as opposed to in depth and hands on. Within the past eight years it has been referenced in different academic articles that students are not coming into …

Dynamics Of Wrist And Forearm Rotation In 3dof, Allan Peaden

Biomedical Engineering Western Regional Conference

Healthy upper limb movement generally involves multiple degrees of freedom moving in synchrony. Although these movements often appear simple, there are complex underlying forces required to give them their grace. Understanding these forces will both aid in developing our understanding of human motor control, and provide insight for the design of ergonomic and therapeutic devices. One cause for the complexity of these forces is coupling between the various degrees of freedom (DOF), where a displacement or motion in one DOF will induce a force in another. Coupling therefore requires applied compensatory forces in joints not directly involved in an intended …

Effects Of Wrist Orthoses On Wrist Dynamics, Daniel Seegmiller

Biomedical Engineering Western Regional Conference

Wrist orthoses are commonly used to cope with the myriad of disorders associated with the hand and wrist. These orthoses can be complex or simple, physician-prescribed or self-administered, custom-made or off-the-shelf, but one thing they all have in common is the desired goal to alter wrist motion in order to allow healing and facilitate proper wrist function. Although wrist orthoses have been in use for a very long time, there is little to no quantitative research into how they affect the dynamics of the wrist joint. Because the dynamics of the wrist-orthosis system are unknown, it is impossible to predict …

Dr. Elizabeth Vargis To Present At Tedxusu | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Aug. 12, 2016 – Assistant Professor of Biological Engineering Dr. Elizabeth Vargis will present at this year's TEDxUSU. Now in its fifth year, TEDxUSU will be held Oct. 28 in the Manon Caine Russell Kathryn Caine Wanlass Performance Hall on USU’s Logan campus.

Fuzzy-Genetic Algorithm Approach To Generate An Optimal Meta-Architecture For A Smart, Safe & Efficient City Transportation System Of Systems, Rahul Alaguvelu, David M. Curry, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A city's transportation infrastructure deeply affects its citizens' quality of life-from the freshness of food to the amount of frustration felt while commuting to work. Providing an optimal infrastructure has the possibility of dramatically improving the population's well-being. Since the transportation infrastructure is a system-of-systems (SoS) [1], it may be modelled and optimized for a given set of objectives [2]. In this manner, the city resources can be optimized for multiple objectives such as commute time, overall throughput, and sustainability. This is made possible by using a fuzzy assessor to map the individual objectives into a single overall fitness value …

X-Ray Absorption Fine Structure Of Zno Thin Film On Si And Sapphire Grown By Mocvd, Jieping Xin, Chieh Miao Chang, Chih Han Hsueh, Jyh Fu Lee, Jin Ming Chen, Hao Hsiung Lin, Na Lu, Ian T. Ferguson, Yongjing Guan, Lingyu Wan, Qingyi Yang, Zhe Chuan Feng

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

X-ray absorption fine structure has been used to study the electronic structure, and bond length of ZnO thin films grown on sapphire and Si substrates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) of O and Zn K-edge were shown, and a detailed analysis of extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) of Zn K-edge indicates that difference substrates result in the contraction of Zn-O bond length.

Bayesian Networks To Assess The Newborn Stool Microbiome, William E. Bennett Jr.

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In human stool, a large population of bacterial genes and transcripts from hundreds of genera coexist with host genes and transcripts. Assessments of the metagenome and transcriptome are particularly challenging, since there is a great deal of sequence overlap among related species and related genes. We sequenced the total RNA content from stool samples in a neonate using previously-described methods. We then performed stepwise alignment of different populations of RNA sequence reads to different indices, including ribosomal databases, the human genome, and all sequenced bacterial genomes. Each pool of RNA at each alignment step was subjected to compression to assess …

Nonaffine Rearrangements Of Atoms In Deformed And Quiescent Binary Glasses, Nikolai V. Priezjev

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

The influence of periodic shear deformation on nonaffine atomic displacements in an amorphous solid is examined via molecular dynamics simulations. We study the three-dimensional Kob-Andersen binary mixture model at a finite temperature. It is found that when the material is periodically strained, most of the atoms undergo repetitive nonaffine displacements with amplitudes that are broadly distributed. We show that particles with large amplitudes of nonaffine displacements are organized into compact clusters. With increasing strain amplitude, spatial correlations of nonaffine displacements become increasingly long-ranged, although they remain present even in a quiescent system due to thermal fluctuations.

Continuous Isolation Of Monocytes Using A Magnetophoretic-Based Microfluidic Chip, Jeff Darabi, Chuan Guo

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Monocytes play an important role in the immune system and are responsible for phagocytizing and degrading foreign microorganisms in the body. The isolation of monocytes is important in various immunological applications such as in-vitro culture of dendritic cells. We present a magnetophoretic-based microfluidic chip for rapid isolation of highly purified, untouched monocytes from human blood by a negative selection method. This bioseparation platform integrates several unique features into a microfluidic device, including locally engineered magnetic field gradients and a continuous flow with a buffer switching scheme to improve the performance of the cell separation process. The results indicate high monocyte …

Precast Concrete Pavement Practices Overview, Shiraz Tayabji

JTRP Affiliated Workshops

No abstract provided.

Overview Of Illinois Tollway Precast Panel System, Steve Gillen

JTRP Affiliated Workshops

No abstract provided.

Super-Slab® Precast Pavement System, Dan E. Moellman

JTRP Affiliated Workshops

No abstract provided.

Precast Concrete Pavement Practices—Generic System Use In Michigan, Texas & California, Shiraz Tayabji

JTRP Affiliated Workshops

No abstract provided.

Shape Optimization Of Supersonic Bodies To Reduce Sonic Boom Signature, Junhui Li

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In recent years there has been resurgence of interest by aerospace industry and NASA in supersonic transport aircraft. In recent studies, the emphasis has been on shape optimization of supersonic plane to reduce the acoustic signature of sonic boom resulting from the supersonic aircraft at high altitude in cruise flight. Because of the limitations of in-flight testing and cost of laboratory scale testing, CFD technology provides an attractive alternative to aid in the design and optimization of supersonic vehicles. In last decade, the predictive capability of CFD technology has significantly improved because of substantial increase in computational power, which allows …

High Voltage Power Supply Design For Photo Multiplier Tube, Anand Antony, Nikunj Agrawal

Small Satellite Conference

CubeSats are playing a vital role in the development of new compact technologies for small satellites and because of their promising potential, the CubeSats have been widely embraced by universities for conducting space research projects. IITMSAT is a student driven Nano-satellite embraced by IIT Madras leading to the development of Space-based Proton-Electron Energy Detector (SPEED). It is a payload that is being developed to be launched on-board IITMSAT. The scientific objective of the payload is to gather data on the variations in the charge particle flux below the inner Van Allen radiation belts. SPEED is designed to obtain energy spectra …

Iov Mission Of A Mini-Hall Effect Thruster (Het), On-Board S-50 Micro-Satellite Class Platform, V. Stanzione, N. Melega, T. Misuri

Small Satellite Conference

SITAEL HT-100 Hall Effect Thruster (mini-HET) is one of the smallest and lowest power HET ever developed in Europe, whose performance and characteristics represent the state-of-the-art of this technology (power range between 140 and 300W, covering thrust levels from 5 to 15 mN). For HT-100 IOV purpose, SITAEL proposes to embark it (with relevant propulsion S/S built around) on its micro-platform (namely S-50, already used in the frame of ESA ESEO Project), which is a low cost/rapid development/qualified platform, ideal for IOD/IOV missions. A specific in-orbit validation mini-HET operative profile has been identified and acts as a main driver for …

Multi-Point Measurements Of The Aurora With A Cubesat Swarm, J. Brent Parham, Aleks Zosuls, Brian Walsh, Joshua Semeter

Small Satellite Conference

Space weather research is data-starved and small satellites offer an opportunity to the community. Over the past few years, Boston University’s Center for Space Physics has been developing a 6U CubeSat that deploys a small swarm of magnetometers to measure the fine-scale structure of the Birkeland currents that create the Aurora. By using direct three-axis measurements, spatially distributed, we hope to probe the plasma currents and fuse the data with other data products from ground-based optical and radio measurements. Boston University’s broad expertise in space physics and engineering systems offers a strong platform to foster a close relationship between those …

Cubesat Handling Of Multisystem Precision Time Transfer, Nathan Barnwell, Watson Attai, Lucas Bassett-Audain, Maria Carrasquilla, John Chavez, Jon Dewald, Olivia Formoso, John Hanson, Belgacem Jaroux, Asia Nelson, Tyler Noel, Anh N. Nguyen, Seth Nydam, Ken Oyadomari, Jessie Pease, Cedric Priscal, Tyler Ritz, Steven Roberts, Paul Serra, Jan Stupl, Evan Waxman, Jasper Wolfe, John W. Conkin

Small Satellite Conference

No abstract provided.

Constellation Design Considerations For Smallsats, Andrew E. Turner

Small Satellite Conference

Design, implementation and operation of constellations using Smallsats are discussed. Due to the modest budgets allocated for these small spacecraft, economic considerations are paramount and optimal results must be obtained with a minimum number of spacecraft. Favorable orbits, preferably low Earth orbits (LEO) with minimum inclination, reduce launch cost and optimize Earth observation and communications, however mission requirements and/or rideshare opportunities may involve higher altitude and/or inclination. Candidate orbits including circular LEO with equatorial near-zero inclination, moderate inclination, polar and sun-synchronous inclinations are considered. The focus is on 600 km altitude since this lies within the regime currently used by …

Silicon Carbide Optical Telescopes In "Small Satellite" Constellations, Flemming Tinker, Chip Ragan, Alberto Bodden, Kevin Dahlberg

Small Satellite Conference

Optical telescopes are used in small satellites for imaging and laser applications serving markets such as earth resources, marine monitoring, communications and weather forecasting. Aluminum and glass are traditional materials used in telescope optical components but have mass and/or thermal properties that impact launch cost and on-station optical performance.

In constellation applications where a telescope is the primary payload, both the telescope and any required thermal mitigation mass becomes a large cost consideration due to its multiplication by the number of satellites launched and launch cost per kg. The use of alternate telescope materials that reduce mass and/or thermal sensitivity …