Engineering Commons^™

Water Resources And Hydrologic Forecasting, Jim Nelson

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

This research will advance stream forecasting capabilities by harnessing the power of cloud computing and visualization technologies.

Interpersonal Implications, James Smith

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Developing tools and processes that support trust building and effective collaborative interactions between players in the built environment

Lithium-Ion Batteries, Dean R. Carreon Romero

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Electrochemical systems are fundamental to numerous applications, including batteries, fuel cells, and electrolysis. Accurate modeling of these systems is essential for improving their efficiency, performance, and longevity. This research focuses on the process of modeling electrochemical systems and conducting experiments to measure the local electronic and ionic conductivity of electrodes.

Microfluidics, Armando P. Carreon Romero

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

his research focuses on leveraging micro and nanofabrication techniques to develop advanced microfluidic devices and systems. These innovations hold promise for a wide range of applications, from biomedical diagnostics to environmental monitoring and optical communications.

Advanced Microwave Remote Sensing, David Long

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

New Techniques for reconstruction SIR/AVE optimized for ASCAR. Bayes estimator selection to optimally select between wind-only, and rain-only correction

Tissue Engineering, Alonzo Cook

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

This research will drive significant advancements in biomedical engineering, addressing critical health issues across cardiovascular repair, neuroscience, vision, renal function, and orthopedics. By developing innovative technologies and therapies, the study aims to improve patient outcomes and quality of life

Adsorption Kinetics Of Bovine Serum Albumin To Strong Anion Exchange Adsorbents: Application Of The Pore Diffusion Model To Resins And Membranes, Sarah Catherine Jensen

Graduate Theses - Chemical Engineering

The replacement of traditional bead-based chromatography by membranes has gained recent interest in the bioseparations industry. However, membranes have drawbacks such as lower binding capacity that make them unrealistic for some applications. The goal of this work is to compare the adsorption kinetics of anion exchange bead-based resin and membranes both on a theoretical modeling level and experimental level. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was adsorbed to Q Sepharose FastFlow resin and Sartobind Q membrane to obtain adsorption equilibrium characteristics and kinetic data. A numerical solution was used to fit the pore diffusion model to the data and estimate a pore …

Anti-Forensics: Furthering Digital Forensic Science Through A New Extended, Granular Taxonomy, Kevin Conlan, Ibrahim Baggili, Frank Breitinger

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Anti-forensic tools, techniques and methods are becoming a formidable obstacle for the digital forensic community. Thus, new research initiatives and strategies must be formulated to address this growing problem. In this work we first collect and categorize 308 antidigital forensic tools to survey the field. We then devise an extended anti-forensic taxonomy to the one proposed by Rogers (2006) in order to create a more comprehensive taxonomy and facilitate linguistic standardization. Our work also takes into consideration anti-forensic activity which utilizes tools that were not originally designed for antiforensic purposes, but can still be used with malicious intent. This category …

Biomedical Engineering, William Pitt

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

Polymeric biomedical materials and drug delivery, with recent emphasis on blood sepsis diagnostics. Today I am looking for collaboration in mathematical modeling of instabilities in sheared 2 phase flow.

A System Of Solar Devices In Public Places For Helping Meet Energy Demand, John Salmon

BYU Research Development Office Research Networking Conference

The BYU Engineering and System Design Lab has an alternative energy research group exploring how to embed solar devices throughout our community and campus

Simultaneous Behavior Onset Detection And Task Classification For Patients With Parkinson Disease Using Subthalamic Nucleus Local Field Potentials, Nazanin Zaker Habibabadi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to develop of methods for behavior onset detection of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), as well as to investigate the models for classification of different behavioral tasks performed by PD patient. The detection is based on recorded Local Field Potentials (LFP) of the Subthalamic nucleus (STN), captured through Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) process.

One main part of this work is dedicated to the research of various properties and features of the STN LFP signals of several patients' behavior conditions. Features based on temporal and time-frequency analysis of the signals are developed and implemented. Evaluation and comparison of …

An Experimental Investigation Of Self-Excited Combustion Dynamics In A Single Element Lean Direct Injection (Ldi) Combustor, Rohan M. Gejji

Open Access Dissertations

The management of combustion dynamics in gas turbine combustors has become more challenging as strict NOx/CO emission standards have led to engine operation in a narrow, lean regime. While premixed or partially premixed combustor configurations such as the Lean Premixed Pre-vaporized (LPP), Rich Quench Lean burn (RQL), and Lean Direct Injection (LDI) have shown a potential for reduced NOx emissions, they promote a coupling between acoustics, hydrodynamics and combustion that can lead to combustion instabilities. These couplings can be quite complex, and their detailed understanding is a pre-requisite to any engine development program and for the development of predictive capability …

Modeling Fluid Interactions With The Rigid Mush In Alloy Solidification, Alexander J. Plotkowski

Open Access Dissertations

Macrosegregation is a casting defect characterized by long range composition differences on the length scale of the ingot. These variations in local composition can lead to the development of unwanted phases that are detrimental to mechanical properties. Unlike microsegregation, in which compositions vary over the length scale of the dendrite arms, macrosegregation cannot be removed by subsequent heat treatment, and so it is critical to understand its development during solidification processing. Due to the complex nature of the governing physical phenomena, many researchers have turned to numerical simulations for these predictions, but properly modeling alloy solidification presents a variety of …

Promoting Teaming Metacognition, Lee Kemp Rynearson

Open Access Dissertations

Improving students’ capacity to effectively perform teaming skills is a crucial outcome for engineering education, and has been the subject of considerable prior and ongoing research. Based upon review of research on teaming, it was hypothesized that greater awareness of appropriate opportunities to use teaming skills in authentic contexts would lead to greater teaming skills employment over time. Further, it was hypothesized that greater psychological safety in student teams would lead to more students choosing to employ appropriate teaming skills over time. An intervention to achieve such increases could therefore be expected to promote student teaming skills performance improvement. Seeking …

Modeling Picking On Pharmaceutical Tablets, Shrikant Swaminathan

Open Access Dissertations

Tablets are the most popular solid dosage form in the pharmaceutical industry because they are cheap to manufacture, chemically and mechanically stable and easy to transport and fairly easy to control dosage. Pharmaceutical tableting operations have been around for decades however the process is still not well understood. One of the common problems faced during the production of pharmaceutical tablets by powder compaction is sticking of powder to the punch face, This is known as 'sticking'. A more specialized case of sticking is picking when the powder is pulled away form the compact in the vicinity of debossed features. In …

Particle Modeling Of Non-Equilibrium Field Emission Driven Rf Microplasmas, Siva Sashank Tholeti

Open Access Dissertations

Non-equilibrium microplasmas at atmospheric pressures have been investigated for active flow control, micropropulsion and electronic display applications to name a few. The operational voltages for these microplasmas are on the order of kilovolts. When the electric field at the electrodes reaches GV/m or tens of GV/m either due to reduced interelectrode spacing and surface irregularities or due to carefully designed nanostructures on the electrodes, quantum processes such as field emission and field ionization come into effect. These can potentially reduce the operational voltages of microplasma devices by an order of magnitude. Due to the rarefied and non-equilibrium nature of these …

Modeling, Control, And Impact Analysis Of The Next Generation Transportation System, Feng Zhu

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation aims to develop a systematic tool designated for connected and autonomous vehicles, integrating the simulation of traffic dynamics, traffic control strategies, and impact analysis at the network level.

The first part of the dissertation is devoted to the traffic flow modeling of connected vehicles. This task is the foundation step for transportation planning, optimized network design, efficient traffic control strategies, etc, of the next generation transportation system. Chapter 2 proposes a cell-based simulation approach to model the proactive driving behavior of connected vehicles. Firstly, a state variable of connected vehicle is introduced to track the trajectory of connected …

Toward Risk Assessment 2.0: Safety Supervisory Control And Model-Based Hazard Monitoring For Risk-Informed Safety Interventions, Francesca Favaro, Joseph Saleh

Faculty Publications

Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) is a staple in the engineering risk community, and it has become to some extent synonymous with the entire quantitative risk assessment undertaking. Limitations of PRA continue to occupy researchers, and workarounds are often proposed. After a brief review of this literature, we propose to address some of PRA׳s limitations by developing a novel framework and analytical tools for model-based system safety, or safety supervisory control, to guide safety interventions and support a dynamic approach to risk assessment and accident prevention. Our work shifts the emphasis from the pervading probabilistic mindset in risk assessment toward the …

Catalytic Pyrolysis Of Poly Vinyl Chloride As A Viable Way Of Waste Management, Randy Santos, Foster A. Agblevor

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The main purpose of this investigation is to achieve the dechlorination and cracking of PVC producing a low chlorinated oil using a single step process; finding and using a suitable adsorbent that captures the chlorine released in the decomposition of the Poly Vinyl Chloride in the solid phase; then use the adsorbent to enhance red mud chlorine absorption activity. Find an alternative viable use for the waste PVC and red mud that will reduce landfilling. Calcium Hydroxide was selected as the main chlorine adsorbent since it captured 75% chlorine in the solid phase. The calcium hydroxide was mixed with red …

Organizing Historical Agricultural Data And Identifying Data Integrity Zones To Assess Agricultural Data Quality, Elizabeth Marie Hawkins

Open Access Dissertations

As precision agriculture transitions into decision agriculture, data driven decision- making has become the focus of the industry and data quality will be increasingly important. Traditionally, yield data cleaning techniques have removed individual data points based on criteria primarily focused on the yield values. However, when these methods are used, the underlying causes of the errors are often overlooked and as a result, these techniques may fail to remove all of the inaccurate data or remove “good” data. As part of this research, an alternative to data cleaning was developed. Data integrity zones (DIZ) within each field were identified by …

Laboratory Characterization Of #2q-Rok Sand, Wilson Fernando Espinoza Chavez

Open Access Theses

A series of laboratory tests were performed in a sand commercially known as #2Q-ROK to determine its response to loading. #2Q-ROK is a poorly-graded, clean silica sand composed of 99% of quartz (SiO2). Its specific gravity is 2.65 and its maximum and minimum void ratios are 1.03 and 0.7, respectively. In the absence of crushing, the #2Q-ROK sand direct shear critical-state friction angle is 32.8° and the ring shear critical-state friction angle is 29.6°.

One-dimensional compression tests were performed on samples compressed to a normal stress of 24,851.36kPa for time periods ranging from 4 hours to 11 days. The maximum …

Integration Of Structural Health Monitoring And Intelligent Transportation Systems For Bridge Condition Assessment: Current Status And Future Direction, Sakib Mahmud Khan, Sez Atamturktur, Mashrur Chowdhury, Mizanur Rahman

Publications

Recent catastrophic bridge failures clearly indicate the urgent need for improving interval-based bridge inspection procedures that are qualitative and subjective in nature. Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) can mitigate the deficiencies of interval-based inspection techniques and provide real-time diagnostic information regarding the bridge structural health. SHM is not flawless however; the variability in the vehicle characteristics and traffic operational conditions makes it prone to false diagnosis. Recent advancements in the integration of SHM with intelligent transportation systems (ITS) demonstrate the successful use of ITS devices (e.g., traffic cameras, traffic detectors) in the analysis of bridge responses to multimodal traffic with varying …

Engineering Professor Receives Prestigious Dam Safety Award | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Aug 1, 2016 – Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Dr. Blake Tullis will be awarded the 2016 ASDSO Terry L. Hampton Medal from the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The award will be presented Sept. 12 as part of the Dam Safety 2016 conference in Philadelphia, Penn. The Terry L.Hampton Medal was established in 2007 by ASDSO’s Advisory Committee (ADCOM) to recognize Terry L. Hampton’s lifetime achievements in the field of hydrology and hydraulics and his contribution to the ADCOM. Dr. Tullis will be the fifth to receive the award.

Methamphetamine Absorption By Skin Lipids: Accumulated Mass, Partition Coefficients, And The Influence Of Fatty Acids, K. Parker, G. Morrison

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Occupants of former methamphetamine laboratories, often residences, may experience increased exposure through the accumulation of the methamphetamine in the organic films that coat skin and indoor surfaces. The objectives of this study were to determine equilibrium partition coefficients of vapor-phase methamphetamine with artificial sebum (AS-1), artificial sebum without fatty acids (AS-2), and real skin surface films, herein called skin oils. Sebum and skin oil-coated filters were exposed to vapor-phase methamphetamine at concentrations ranging from 8 to 159 ppb, and samples were analyzed for exposure time periods from 2 h to 60 days. For a low vapor-phase methamphetamine concentration range of …

Improving The Laboratory Design Of Asphalt Mixtures To Enhance Asphalt Pavement Durability, Ali Hekmatfar

Open Access Dissertations

Most departments of transportation, including Indiana’s, currently use the Superpave mixture design method to design asphalt mixtures. This method specifies that the optimum asphalt content for a given gradation be selected at 4 percent air voids. During construction, these mixtures are typically compacted to 7-8 percent air voids. If mixtures were designed to be more compactable in the field they could be compacted to the same density as the laboratory mixture design, which would increase pavement durability by decreasing the in-place air voids. The objective of this research was to enhance the asphalt mixture design method in order to increase …

Evaluating The Two-Stage Ditch As A New Best Management Practice, Andi Hodaj

Open Access Dissertations

A two-stage ditch involves modifications of a traditional drainage ditch to resemble more the features of a natural stream. The idea is to create or simulate extended benches on both sides of the ditch that would develop naturally over a period of time in a stream because of geomorphological processes. Previous research in Indiana and Ohio has shown that two-stage ditches offer the potential to reduce sediment load and extend the interaction time between water and vegetation on the benches allowing larger uptake of nutrients from the vegetation on the extended benches, and increasing the denitrification rates in the bench …

The Role Of Mechanical Loading In Chondrocyte Signaling Pathways, Qiaoqiao Wan

Open Access Dissertations

Chondrocytes are a predominant cell type present in articular cartilage, whose integrity is jeopardized in joint degenerative diseases such as osteoarthritis (OA). In the chondrocytes of patients with OA, the elevated levels of inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1β (IL1β) and tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) have been reported. These cytokines contribute to degradation of cartilage matrix by increasing activities of proteolytic enzymes. In addition to their contribution to proteolytic enzymes, these cytokines adversely affect anabolic activity of chondrocytes by inhibiting the production of proteoglycans and type II collagen. Therefore, blocking the action of these cytokines is a potential strategy …

Diagnostic Quality Assessment Of Compressed Sensing Accelerated Magnetic Resonance Neuroimaging., Mohammad Kayvanrad, Amy Lin, Rohit Joshi, Jack Chiu, Terry Peters

Robarts Imaging Publications

PURPOSE: To determine the efficacy of compressed sensing (CS) reconstructions for specific clinical magnetic resonance neuroimaging applications beyond more conventional acceleration techniques such as parallel imaging (PI) and low-resolution acquisitions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Raw k-space data were acquired from five healthy volunteers on a 3T scanner using a 32-channel head coil using T2 -FLAIR, FIESTA-C, time of flight (TOF), and spoiled gradient echo (SPGR) sequences. In a series of blinded studies, three radiologists independently evaluated CS, PI (GRAPPA), and low-resolution images at up to 5× accelerations. Synthetic T2 -FLAIR images with artificial lesions were used to assess diagnostic accuracy for …

The Role Of Organic Matter In The Fate And Transport Of Antibiotic Resistance, Metals, And Nutrients In The Karst Of Northwest Arkansas, Victor Lee Roland Ii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Organic matter (OM) in the environment acts as a nutrient, but may also act as a transport vector for harmful chemical compounds and bacteria. Acetate is a labile form of OM produced during fermentation in anaerobic lagoons used to store animal fecal-waste from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Dry and liquid fertilizers from CAFOs pose a threat to groundwater by introducing excessive amounts of nutrients (e.g. OM, nitrate and ammonia), metals, and antibiotic compounds. In the epikarst of Northern Arkansas in the Buffalo River watershed additional input of labile dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from liquid CAFO waste-fertilizers was hypothesized to …

Asbestos Cement Pipe Condition Assessment And Remaining Service Life Prediction, Abiy Melles Ghirmay

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research details a condition assessment of asbestos cement (AC) pipe within in the Bella Vista Village Property Owners Association water distribution system. Bella Vista Village contains appropriately 300 miles of AC pipe with nominal diameters from 6-14 inch. The goal of the research is to determine the current condition of AC pipe within the system and predict future performance of the pipes. AC pipe samples were obtained from 23 locations disturbed across the distribution system with nominal pipe diameters of 6-8 inch. Estimates of current level of degradation were obtained using phenolphthalein staining and hardness measurements of each sample. …