Engineering Commons^™

Heat Pipe Design For Absorption Chiller Refrigerators Powered By Cookstoves, Paola Flores, Eduardo Melendez

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

We developed an inexpensive refrigeration system that will operate off-grid through the use of reclaimed heat from cookstoves. The refrigerator will serve as a reliable storage unit that will maintain vaccines at a proper temperature range. This report focuses on the various components that make up our Cool Stove project. The overall system and subsystems are laid out and explained. We also address the reason why we believe this project will be beneficial to individuals in developing countries. In addition, we provide detail on the work that we have accomplished and on the results that we have achieved. We created …

Microfluidic Detection Of Biogenic Amines, Trenton Nagasawa, Partha Vora, Nnaoma Agwu, Joshua Tan

Bioengineering Senior Theses

For our study of Microfluidic Detection of Biogenic Amines, we have designed a microfluidic device to separate and detect different biogenic amine concentrations using amperometric detection. The goal of this project is to identify and quantify biogenic amines form the neural fluid extracted from the pericardial cavity of the Jonah crabs (Cancer Borealis). The device that we designed utilizes polydimethylsiloxane (commonly known as PDMS) along with a carbon paste electrode and a palladium decoupler. Using capillary electrophoresis (CE) along with amperometric detection, we aim to separate biogenic amines and detect them with amperometric detection.

Complementing Lca With Qualitative Organisational Study For Improving Waste Management Governance – Illustrated By A Comparative Case On Metal Packaging, Mathias Lindkvist, Henrikke Baumann, Maria Ljunggren Söderman

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

We here present a novel method that combines the life cycle approach with qualitative organisational study for environmentally effective waste management. While LCA is useful for producing a systems overview of the environmental performance, it does not provide further guidance on systems management since the actors and activities that uphold them are not systematically studied. The human dimension is particularly manifest in waste management where many types of actors (private, public, consumers, legislators, sector organisations) interact in complex ways.

Our method, with which we study Product Chain Organisation (PCO), is designed to complement LCA. Descriptions and accounts of actors interacting …

Life Cycle Assessment Of Msw Kerbside Separate Collection System Applied To Small Communities, Giovanni De Feo, Carmela Malvano, Sabino La Rocca

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

This study reports Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of kerbside municipal solid waste (MSW) collection for hypothetical communities of ten different sizes (varying between 1000 and 10,000 inhabitants, incremented by 1000). It evaluates the economy of scale for MSW collection system in municipalities in terms of their environmental performance, essentially building on a previous study that evaluated the costs and the induced environmental impacts of such systems (De Feo and Malvano, 2012). The scope of assessment includes the management phase (i.e. facilities for treatment and disposal), and the collection and transport phase (i.e. vehicles). The Function of the LCA study was …

Municipal Solid Waste Collection Evaluation Tool As Basis For Lca Of Msw Management, Dirk Weichgrebe, Christopher Speier, Moni Mohan Mondal

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

The City of Bangalore, India, with 11 million inhabitants is currently investigating the improvement of the municipal solid waste collection system due to low efficiency and significant environmental impacts of the prevalent collection system. The present door-to-door collection covers only 50 % of the generated MSW whereas the rest is discharged at Litter Spots (30 %) and complemented by street sweeping waste (20 %). This presentation describes the conceptual design of an appropriate and innovative MSW collection system for Bangalore on the basis of a MSW collection evaluation tool.

This collection tool is developed to project and simulate different scenarios …

Cook Stove Powered Refrigeration: Cool Stove 2, Robert Bernal

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Lack of refrigeration contributes to the death of over 3.7 million children and the loss of 200 tonnes of food every year in developing countries. While 1.21 billion people in developing countries do not have access to electricity to operate traditional refrigerators, 38% of individuals within developing countries use biomass fuel to cook. The scope of my project was to produce a viable solution for refrigeration for these individuals in developing countries through the use of thermosyphons that utilize reclaimed thermal energy from cook stoves to power absorption chillers. Over the span of my project I was able to confirm …

Waterproofing Shape-Changing Mechanisms Using Origami Engineering; Also A Mechanical Property Evaluation Approach For Rapid Prototyping, Andrew Jason Katz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My work has been focused on compliant mechanisms, origami engineering, and rapid prototyping. Two of the projects that I worked on were focused on compliant mechanisms and origami engineering. The similar goal of both of those projects was to create an origami membrane whose kinematics mimic that of an existing mechanism. The first project created an origami membrane to mimic the kinematics of a planar shape-changing mechanism. This mechanism was a square shaped unit-cell which could shear, compress, and expand in its own plane. In addition to waterproofing the mechanism, the first project also sought to optimize the dimensions of …

Droplet-Based Mechanical Actuator Utilizing Electrowetting Effect, Qi Ni

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this work is to quantify the key design parameters such as the load capacity, actuation force, positioning repeatability, and reliability for droplet-based electrowetting actuators. Due to the fact that surface tension dominates gravity at both the mesoscale and microscale, droplet-based actuators can provide adequate force in manipulation tasks at those scales. Electrowetting, which uses an electric field to modulate the apparent surface tension of the liquid-ambient, provides a method to actuate droplets, which in turn transports the object carried by the droplet.

Most previous electrowetting actuation efforts have concentrated on manipulating droplets in a closed two-plate configuration. …

The Design And Testing Of A Novel Batch Photocatalytic Reactor And Photocatalyst, Shawn Sasser

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With an ever-increasing human population, the importance in having sustainable energy resources is becoming increasingly evident, as the current energy habits have brought about massive atmospheric pollution in the form of CO₂ emissions, resulting in a rise in the average global temperature. To battle the effects of climate change, many alternative energy resources have been investigated. Among these, photocatalytic conversion of CO₂ to renewable hydrocarbon fuels such as methane and methanol is one of the most desirable, as it provides the opportunity to utilize the sun’s energy to convert CO₂ to renewable fuels. The work in this …

Habitat For Humanity Apartment Complex Redesign, Megan August, Molly Bencomo, Ashley Waite

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

This project consists of the redesign of a three-story apartment complex for Habitat for Humanity that will be constructed in Walnut Creek, CA in 2017. A project in Fremont, CA served as the basis for the design. However, the height of the complex in Fremont exceeded the Walnut Creek Building Code height limitations, making the redesign of this timber structure necessary. The challenge was to reduce the structural space between stories to 9.5 inches in order to achieve comfortable interior clearances and meet the City of Walnut Creek’s height restriction. The structural components for Building Type A in the Las …

Quantitative Risk Evaluation Of Obstacle Limitation Surfaces For Final Approaches At Airports, Amila Silva, Alexandre G. De Barros

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Obstacle limitation surfaces (OLS) are the main safeguard against objects that can pose a hazard to aircraft operations at and around airports. The standard dimensions of the most of those surfaces were estimated using the pilot’s experience at the time when they were included in the standard documents. As a result, some of these standards may have been overestimated, while others may not provide an adequate level of safety. With airports moving to the Safety Management System (SMS) approach to design and operations safety, proper evaluation of the level of safety provided by OLS at specific sites becomes important to …

Estimation Of Performance Airspeeds For High-Bypass Turbofans Equipped Transport-Category Airplanes, Nihad E. Daidzic

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Conventional Mach-independent subsonic drag polar does not replicate the real airplane drag characteristics exactly and especially not in the drag-divergence region due to shock-induced transonic wave drag. High-bypass turbofan thrust is a complicated function of many parameters that eludes accurate predictions for the entire operating envelope and must be experimentally verified. Fuel laws are also complicated functions of many parameters which make optimization and economic analysis difficult and uncertain in the conceptual design phase. Nevertheless, mathematical models and predictions have its important place in aircraft development, design, and optimization. In this work, airspeed-dependent turbofan thrust and the new fuel-law model …

Live, Samuel Kujovich, Griffin Cook, Tyler Selewicz

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Music streaming applications that do not require listeners to actually own the music they listen to are quickly become the most popular and most cost effective way to listen to music. These applications however are limited in their capabilities for playlist collaboration, specifically for real time collaboration. When an app does provide a way for users to collaborate on playlists, the users must be friends who have explicitly granted each other access to edit playlists. Our solution aims to improve on existing applications by allowing users to collaborate on music playlists in real time based on their immediate location.

Live …

Life Cycle Assessment As A Tool For Resource Optimisation Of Continuous Basalt Fibre Production In Iceland, Kamal Azrague, Marianne Rose Inman, Lisbeth-Ingrid Alnæs, Reidun Dahl Schlanbusch, Birgir Jóhannesson, Thorsteinn Ingi Sigfusson, Eythor Rafn Thorhallsson, Hjalti Franzson, Arni B. Arnason, Sirje Vares

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

Continuous Basalt Fibre (CBF) is a structural material formed from molten rocks and is analogous to glass fibre. The concept of using molten rock to form fibres dates back to the start of the last century. The inception of more comprehensive research took place in the 1970s, by former Soviet countries. The largest active mines today are located in Ukraine and Russia. The market is steadily developing as production becomes more economically viable, and CBF becomes more readily known and tested. Continuous basalt fibres are ideally suited for demanding applications that require high temperatures, chemical resistance, durability, mechanical strength and …

Lca To Start And Perform Green Public Procurement For Funeral Products, Francesco Baldoni, Valeria Bettini, Alessandro Buosi, Roberto Bortolotti

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

AMNU S.p.A. is an Italian multi-utility company, whose owner are local municipalities, which operates basically in the territory of the Province of Trento in urban waste collection and transport.

In the last years AMNU has started the “new” activity of funeral service that has a wide public concern and is a source of deep connection with the the territory.

Funeral services and cemetery's management are becoming more and more important and therefore AMNU has moved forward in the environmental path and this is the objective of this work: to integrate procurement tenders for the funeral products industry by inserting environmental …

Development Of A Database Of Material Flow Analysis For Agro‐Food Processing Craft Villages In Red River Delta Of Vietnam, Nguyet Thi Tran, Dirk Weichgrebe

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

Vietnam is a developing country with approximately 70 % of inhabitants dependent on agricultural practice for a living. Agro-food processing craft villages, a typical feature of rural areas, appeared before 1930 as the result of the secondary activities of farmers. Over time, they have developed rapidly, and represent a huge but unstable production sector carried out by village residents. Among 5400 craft villages they account the second largest share. Agro-food processing craft villages concentrate predominantly in the region of Red River Delta of Vietnam and currently are loosely regulated. However, fast increase in quantity and the inappropriate management of solid …

Environmental Assessment Of Light Weighting Solutions For Automotive Components: Results, Trade‐Off And Challenges From Real Case Studies, S. Maltese, L. Zanchi, M. Delogu, M. Pierini, R. Riccomagno

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

In the last few decades, the automotive industry is facing the most deal with sustainability programs due to the increase of legislate limits on CO2 emissions and vehicle recyclability rate. Consequently, decisions on products design and development go together with environmental considerations, by starting to look for the employment of lighter materials, thus reducing vehicle mass weight and therefore fuel consumption and CO2 emissions during the dominant operation stage of a vehicle’s life cycle. To tackle this problem many of today automotive components are made of alternative materials like plastics, polymer composites, lighter metals which should lead to weight reduction …

Innovations In Traumatic Hemorrhage, Joseph Anthony Ikaika Choy, Nicholas Domek, John “Patrick” Tavelli

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Traumatic hemorrhagic injuries present a great problem to humanity and a challenge to medicine in the modern world. Current methods of treating these injuries in the field are ineffective and often extremely overkill or injurious. These methods are particularly inadequate when applied to the continuous high pressure bleeding that occurs from arterial wounds. Our project focuses on lowering the barriers to entry to innovation in the field of bleeding treatment by creating a low cost model of the human circulatory system. This model can function as a low-cost testing platform for novel bleeding treatments developed by companies and individuals that …

Design And Validate A Synthetic Circuit For Detecting Pathway Signaling In Mammalian Cells, Darisha Jhutty, Nicholas Parker

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Synthetic circuits provide novel ways for scientists to program and probe mammalian cell behavior. This allows for enhanced research tools and chemical sensors. Our project works with an engineered synthetic circuit and monitors the output of the circuit using green fluorescent protein( GFP) and luciferase. Expression of GFP is both quantifiable and observable over a time period in living cells. Luciferase can be detected by an assay in lysed cells to give data on overall expression of the circuit. By measuring and comparing output of this circuit over time, we can create a model to demonstrate the lack of expression, …

This Desert Moss Has Developed The Ultimate Water Collection Toolkit | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

LOGAN, UTAH – June 6, 2016 – Finding water in the desert is a relatively easy task for a species of moss that seems to flourish in even the most arid regions. That’s according to a new study by a team of scientists and engineers who wanted to understand how Syntrichia caninervis succeeds despite its limited and inconsistent water supplies.

The findings show for the first time how the highly evolved bryophyte survives in extremely arid environments thanks in part to its specialized water collection and transportation toolkit.

Exosome Engineering And Imaging, Joseph Losacco, Sophie Mcdevitt, Zachary Stickney

Bioengineering Senior Theses

There are many new pharmaceuticals being developed for the treatment of various diseases. One of the major issues these drugs face is the ability to enter a cell or the area of treatment. The current methods for drug delivery are often arduous to complete and do not make it to the diseased area because they are targeted by the immune system. In order to improve the ability for drugs to reach the desired area we propose the use of exosomes. Exosomes are subcellular vesicles that are responsible for the transport of biomaterials or signals within the cell and to other …

Aptamer Based Hybrid-Assay For Early Stage Disease Diagnosis, Riley S. Parsons, Mari A. Ueno

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The objective of the project is to use aptamers, oligonucleotides designed to selectively bind target molecules, to develop a methodology for building an enzyme-linked aptasorbent assay (ELASA). This assay is designed to detect the presence of a target protein nucleolin that is overexpressed on the surface of cancer cells, and it would act as a novel diagnostic method for the disease. The success of our project would also confirm the feasibility of using an ELASA as a diagnostic tool to detect the presence of thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1), a protein known to experience glycosylation changes in human endometrioid ovarian cancer tissue. Our …

Complete Design Methodology Of A Massively Parallel And Pipelined Memristive Stateful Imply Logic Based Reconfigurable Architecture, Kamela Choudhury Rahman

Dissertations and Theses

Continued dimensional scaling of CMOS processes is approaching fundamental limits and therefore, alternate new devices and microarchitectures are explored to address the growing need of area scaling and performance gain. New nanotechnologies, such as memristors, emerge. Memristors can be used to perform stateful logic with nanowire crossbars, which allows for implementation of very large binary networks that can be easily reconfigured. This research involves the design of a memristor-based massively parallel datapath for various applications, specifically SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) like architecture, and parallel pipelines. The dissertation develops a new model of massively parallel memristor-CMOS hybrid datapath architectures at …

Microfluidic E. Coli Detection, Kyle Pietrzyk, Scott Fukuoka, Andres Maldonado-Liu, Andy Ly

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

In both developed and developing countries, there is a need for a fast diagnostic system to detect pathogens within a fluid sample. In developing a microfluidic platform, which utilizes a microfluidic chip and an optical detection method, doors may be opened for new methods of determining pathogen concentration in fluid. Most biological reactions are not instantaneous. A flow-controlling mechanism with no power requirement may be implemented in the microfluidic platform. As a proof-of-concept, our device uses a microfluidic chip, smartphone, and microlens to detect E. coli concentrations in water. The detection method is based on the latex agglutination assay which …

Tunable Split-Ring Resonators Using Germanium Telluride, C. H. Kodama, Ronald A. Coutu Jr.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We demonstrate terahertz (THz) split-ring resonator (SRR) designs with incorporated germanium telluride (GeTe) thin films. GeTe is a chalcogenide that undergoes a nonvolatile phase change from the amorphous to crystalline state at approximately 200 degrees C, depending on the film thickness and stoichiometry. The phase change also causes a drop in the material’s resistivity by six orders of magnitude. In this study, two GeTe-incorporated SRR designs were investigated. The first was an SRR made entirely out of GeTe and the second was a gold SRR structure with a GeTe film incorporated into the gap region of the split ring. These …

Conference Program, Umberto Arena, Thomas Astrup, Paola Lettieri, Roland Clift

Life Cycle Assessment and Other Assessment Tools for Waste Management and Resource Optimization

No abstract provided.

Swiftgpu: Fostering Energy Efficiency In A Near-Threshold Gpu Through A Tactical Performance Boost, Prabal Basu, Hu Chen, Shamik Saha, Koushik Chakraborty, Sanghamitra Roy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we investigate the challenges of preserving energy-efficiency in a Near-Threshold Computing (NTC) GPU. Two key factors can significantly undermine the efficacy of GPUs at NTC: (a) elongated delays at NTC make the GPU applications severely sensitive toMulti-cycle Latency Datapaths (MLDs) within the GPU pipeline; and (b) process variation (PV) at NTC induces a substantial performance variance. To address these emerging challenges, we propose SwiftGPU - -an energyefficient GPU design paradigm at NTC. SwiftGPU dynamically adjusts the degree of parallelization, and the speed of the MLDs within each stream core of the GPU. The proposed scheme achieves an …

Catching The Flu: Emerging Threats From A Third Party Power Management Unit., Rajesh Jayashankarashridevi, Chidhambaranathan Rajamanikkam, Koushik Chakraborty, Sanghamitra Roy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Power management units (PMU) have come into the spotlight with energy efficiency becoming a first order constraint in MPSoC designs. To cater to the exponential rise in power events, and to meet the demands of tight power and energy budgets, PMUs are evolving to more complex and intelligent designs. In an era defined by energy efficient computing, a malicious circuit embedded in a third party PMU can adversely affect the operation of the entire MPSoC. This work presents and evaluates two covert security threats, P-VIRUS and DROWSY, designed using a malicious third party PMU. Further, we propose a non-invasive IP …

Dango (Doings And Goings On)- Vol. 22 | Issue 3, Haley Stien, Cecily Towell, Rusty Towell, Matthew Kimball, Vicente Rojas, Zhaojia Xi, Caleb Hicks, Reuben Byrd, Joshua Daniel Martinez, Mike Daugherity, Paul Carstens, Donald Isenhower

DANGO: Doings and Goings On: Summer Research Newsletter, Department of Engineering and Physics

Summer Research Newsletter for ACU's Engineering and Physics Department

Effect Of Original Layer Thicknesses On The Interface Bonding And Mechanical Properties Of Ti-Al Laminate Composites, Minyu Fan, Joseph P. Domblesky, Kai Jin, Liang Qin, Shengqiang Cui, Xunzhong Guo, Naksoo Kim, Jie Tao

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

It is of great significance in high-temperature aeroengine applications for large-surface-area TiAl laminate composites to be fabricated into Ti-Al₃Ti parts by plastic forming and subsequent vacuum hot pressing. Then the original layer thicknesses have an important influence on the interface bonding and mechanical properties of TiAl laminate composites, but only few reports about it have been published so far. In the present study, vacuum hot pressing was employed to fabricate TiAl laminate composites using Ti and Al foils of different thickness. The resulting interface bond and mechanical properties of TiAl laminate composites were then studied to determine the …