Engineering Commons^™

Turbulence Control In Wall Jets, Jonathan Latim

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The turbulent boundary layer has been the focus of many studies over the last century or so due to its engineering significance. Recent studies have shown that the turbulent boundary layer encapsulates extremely energetic large-scale structures which play a much more significant role in its dynamics than has been previously thought. Further, these large scales amplitude and frequency modulate the finer scales of turbulence. This offers a path to control wall turbulence by controlling the large-scales of the flow. The focus of this thesis is to establish ways to manipulate the energy of the large-scale structures in a model turbulent …

Measuring Access To Employment To Guide And Evaluate Public Transit Service Planning In New Orleans, Kevin Harrison

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

New software and technology is making it easier than ever before for public transportation planners to evaluate how quickly residents can reach jobs and other destinations. Because in the past it was difficult to measure access to opportunities, these concepts remained primarily in the theoretical and academic realms of research. This thesis reviews methods that could be used to evaluate routine bus service improvements and performs a comparative analysis of different methods in the context of New Orleans. There are many different variables in how the analysis could be performed, but this thesis focuses on the role that time of …

3-Axis Automated Probe Traverse For Aerodynamic Testing, Tananant Boonya-Ananta, Ricky Wai, Zander Oostman, Teyvon Brooks

Mechanical Engineering

Our primary objective is to design, build, and test an automated traverse to hold measurement probes in Cal Poly’s low speed wind tunnel. The device should cause minimal flow disturbance. It’s movements must be able to cover eighty percent of the three-dimensional test section. The device should have a mounting point for interchangeable probes. The assembly is to be integrated with the current frame structure on the wind tunnel test section, and should allow very minimal deflection of the measurement probe. The user should be able to control the motion of the traverse via a computer interface which supports automatic …

Revolutionized Additive Manufacturing, Matthew Walker, Winthrop Townsend, Luca Fuller

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Hydrocarbon Pool Fire Performance Of Fiber Reinforced Polymer (Frp) Strengthened And Thermally Insulated Bridge Girders, Eyosias Solomon Beneberu

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Highway bridges encounter various extreme load hazards, such as earthquake, flood, blast, collision, wind and fire during their design lives. The effect of accidental, natural or man-made fire on bridges is one of the least investigated which may be due to the assumption that bridge fire has a low probability of occurrence. However, a bridge failure survey showed that fire had caused more bridge collapse in the USA than earthquakes. The main objective of the current research is to study concrete bridges in general, and fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) strengthened bridge girders in particular against fire hazard. The research is …

Life Cycle Assessment Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Traditional Air Pollutants, Water Depletion, And Cumulative Energy Demand From 2-Mw Wind Turbines In Texas, Ali Alsaleh

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

¶One renewable energy source that has witnessed a significant growth in the recent years is wind energy, with the installation of new wind farms around the globe as well as the innovations in wind power technology, which have increased the efficiency of this source. Wind power generates electrical energy from the wind’s kinetic energy without causing emissions or pollution from power production; however, environmental effects are caused by the wind turbine manufacturing, transport, and other phases. Therefore, the overall goal of this study was to analyze the environmental effects associated with wind energy technology by taking into consideration the entire …

Chlorpyrifos Removal For Wastewater Reuse, Indran Kamalanathan

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Approximately 1.2 billion people around the world live in areas of physical water scarcity. This could increase to half of the world’s population by 2030 and could displace 24 to 700 million people unless steps are taken to ensure adequate water supply.¹ Water scarcity is an escalating issue within the United States, specifically in Western inland states with arid climates. This scarcity is encouraging communities to investigate tertiary level municipal wastewater treatment, allowing for reuse of wastewater. Unfortunately, wastewater contains numerous contaminants that are not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). …

Haul Truck Tires Recycling, Omkar Bhave

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The disposal of large Off-the-Road (OTR) tires is an increasingly important concern. These tires can weigh up to 8,450 pounds with an overall diameter and width of approximately 140.7 inches and 45.1 inches respectively. OTR tires are used for mining vehicles such as haul trucks, wheel loaders, backhoes, graders, and trenchers.[1] These new tires cost between $38,000 and $50,000 each, depending on multiple factors including oil prices and the cyclical nature of the industry. Haul trucks contain six tires per vehicle, and mines replace these tires around every 9-12 months.[2] Statistics regarding discarded OTR tires are not provided by the …

Plasmonic Pervaporation For Sustainable Mixture Separation, Ty Austin

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The U.S. Department of Energy suggests that ca. 40% of the total energy consumed in the chemical and refining industries is used for distillation.¹ One potentially energy efficient alternative is pervaporation, a membrane separation process that uses differences in solvent permeability and vaporization rates to encourage mixture separation. Pervaporation has become a valuable tool in the processes of producing biofuels, recovering water, and removing solvent.^2,3 However, implementation has been hindered by heating the feed to the membrane and cooling the unpermeated retentate to increase membrane throughput at a higher energy cost. Preliminary research has shown that locally heating …

M049 Effects Of Compaction And Soil Moisture On American Burying Beetles, W. Wyatt Hoback

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Silphid beetles in the genus Nicrophorus bury themselves during periods of inactivity, however, the influence of soil characteristics on burial behavior remains unclear. We examined soil preferences of the federally endangered Nicrophorus americanus, as well as of N. carolinus, N. marginatus, N. obscurus, and N. orbicollis, in a series of experiments. Differences in burial depth by sex were found for N. carolinus, N. marginatus, and N. obscurus, which are diurnal species. Both sexes of N. americanus bury to a mean depth of 18 cm. Soil preferences tested included sand versus sandy loam versus sandy loess, degrees of soil moisture, and …

Evaluation Of Dowel Bar Inserter Practices In Pcc Pavements With Magnetic Tomography Technology, Farshad Fallah, Yong-Rak Kim

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Dowel Bar Inserters (DBI) are automated mechanical equipment that position dowel bars in Portland Cement Concrete (PCC) after concrete is placed. Compared to the alternative approach, which is using dowel baskets, DBIs offer advantages in cost and speed of construction. However, as dowel bars are not anchored to the subgrade similar to dowel baskets, there is a concern about the quality of dowel placement using this equipment. Improper placement of dowel bars can lead to reduced load transfer between slabs, which results in pavement distresses such as faulting and spalling at joints. To determine the accuracy of dowel placement by …

A Bifunctional Nanocomposites Based Electrochemical Biosensor For In-Field Detection Of Pathogenic Bacteria In Food, Meng Xu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research focused on the application of electrochemical biosensors for the rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria, Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella Typhimurium, in foods. The possible presence of pathogenic bacteria in foods has always been a great threat to the wellbeing of people and the revenue of food companies. Therefore, the demand for rapid and sensitive methods to detect foodborne pathogens is growing. In this research, an impedimetric immunosensor was first developed for the rapid detection of E. coli O157:H7 and S. Typhimurium in foods. It was based on the techniques of immunomagnetic separation, enzyme labelling, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy …

Scaffold And Tissue Based Therapies To Improve Skeletal Muscle Regeneration After Volumetric Muscle Loss, Benjamin Kasukonis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Volumetric muscle loss (VML) is an injury to skeletal muscle characterized by a loss of more than 20% of a muscles volume. The combination of the bulk loss of tissue, transection and separation of myofibers proximal and distal to the injury, loss of innervation and blood supply, and the depletion of muscle progenitor cells results in permanent fibrosis and functional deficits due to loss of contractile tissue. Scaffolds, cells, and engineered constructs have been explored as potential therapeutic interventions to induce myogenesis at the site of a VML injury in animal models, in addition to limited clinical trials. This dissertation …

Just In Time Assembly (Jita) - A Run Time Interpretation Approach For Achieving Productivity Of Creating Custom Accelerators In Fpgas, Sen Ma

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The reconfigurable computing community has yet to be successful in allowing programmers to access FPGAs through traditional software development flows. Existing barriers that prevent programmers from using FPGAs include: 1) knowledge of hardware programming models, 2) the need to work within the vendor specific CAD tools and hardware synthesis. This thesis presents a series of published papers that explore different aspects of a new approach being developed to remove the barriers and enable programmers to compile accelerators on next generation reconfigurable manycore architectures. The approach is entitled Just In Time Assembly (JITA) of hardware accelerators. The approach has been defined …

Measuring Nonlinear Properties Of Graphene Thin Films Using Z-Scan Technique, Thekrayat Hassan Al Abdulaal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The nonlinear studies of two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials, specifically graphene, are very significant since graphene is finding its usefulness in handling the enormous heat in nanoscale high-density power electronics. Graphene has emerged to be a promising nanomaterial as an excellent heat spreader due to its high thermal conductivity. However, the experimental nonlinear study of graphene materials and their application in developing future optoelectronic devices demands for more developed research.

The research objective is first to build a precise, and sensitive technique to investigate and understand the thermal nonlinear properties, including nonlinear refractive index (n2), nonlinear absorption coefficient (β), and thermo-optic coefficient …

Design, Fabrication And Measurement Of A Plasmonic Enhanced Terahertz Photoconductive Antenna, Nathan Matthias Burford

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Generation of broadband terahertz (THz) pulses from ultrafast photoconductive antennas (PCAs) is an attractive method for THz spectroscopy and imaging. This provides a wide frequency bandwidth (0.1-4 THz) as well as the straightforward recovery of both the magnitude and phase of the transmitted and/or reflected signals. The achieved output THz power is low, approximately a few microwatts. This is due to the poor conversion of the femtosecond laser used as the optical pump to useable current inside the antenna semiconducting material. The majority of THz power comes from the photocarriers generated within ~ 100 nm distance from the antenna electrodes. …

Optimal Sensing And Transmission In Energy Harvesting Sensor Networks, Xianwen Wu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sensor networks equipped with energy harvesting (EH) devices have attracted great attentions recently. Compared with conventional sensor networks powered by batteries, the energy harvesting abilities of the sensor nodes make sustainable and environment-friendly sensor networks possible. However, the random, scarce and non-uniform energy supply features also necessitate a completely different approach to energy management.

A typical EH wireless sensor node consists of an EH module that converts ambient energy to electrical energy, which is stored in a rechargeable battery, and will be used to power the sensing and transmission operations of the sensor. Therefore, both sensing and transmission are subject …

Structure-Property Relationships Of Polyisobutylene-Block-Polyamide Thermoplastic Elastomers, Morgan Dunn Heskett

Master's Theses

Thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) are a class of polymer fit for a wide variety of applications due to their customizability. In the synthesis of these types of materials, an elastically-performing polymer, deemed the “soft block,” is combined with a stiffer “hard block” polymer, each of which can be selected based on their own specific properties in order to achieve desired material behavior in the final copolymer. Recently, the use of polyisobutylene as a soft block in combination with a polyamide hard block has been investigated for use in TPE synthesis. While the material showed some promising behavior, many properties were still …

Petrographic Analysis Of Ceramic Artifacts From Ban Di Kiln, Pattani Province, Thailand, W Dhanmanonda, S Hongrittipun, D Aussavamas

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

This research paper aims to investigate the components of archaeological ceramic artifacts collected from Ban Di kiln, Pattani province, Thailand. The procedure involves the petrographic examination of fragments of ceramic artifacts, focusing on raw materials, sources of materials, and production techniques. Ban Di ceramics date back to 16th and 17th centuries, the period in which ancient Patani had enjoyed its prosperity in domestic and foreign trade. This study shows that alluvial soils from coastal plains, with high content of sand, are predominant materials in the manufacture. The production process involves jiggering and hot pressing at the firing temperatures between 400-550 …

Hot Ductility And Hot-Shortness Of Steel And Measurement Techniques: A Review, G Sahoo, M Deepa, B Singh, A Saxena

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

Usage of steel scrap has become important in steel making from the view points of resource conservation and preventing environmental problems. High levels of steel scraps are used in the production of steel, especially, via electric arc furnaces (EAF). However, Copper, which is mainly contained in the scrap of cars and home electronic appliance, is problematic in mechanical workings at elevated temperatures and limits the usage of scrap iron. It is enriched at steel/scale interface by preferential oxidation of Fe, which leads to liquid embrittlement or surface cracking during hot working. This type of defect is well known as surface …

Ballistic Resistance Of Plain Woven P-Aramid Fabrics, B Kusuktham, S Udon, M Jitjaicham

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

This research investigated the ballistic resistance of p-Aramid fabric. Plain woven aramid fabrics were prepared to produce bulletproof vest having 5 kg of 32 fabric layers. The performance of the multilayer aramid fabrics in terms of ballistic resistance was evaluated by ballistic testing with the difference types of bullet. The damage of the fabric and the indentation of modeling clay behind the target were examined. The results showed that vests prepared from 18 - 32 fabric layers exhibited the ballistic resistance; the more the fabric layer the more the resistance performance. In addition, the indentation of the modeling clay decreased …

Dependence Of Electrical Resistivity On Plastic Deformation In Copper-Aluminum Alloy Cu0.975al0.025, J G Miranda Ramos, E Medrano Atencio, M Quiroga Agurto, F A Reyes Navarro

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

We measure changes of electrical resistivity after a plastic deformation. We supposed that the changes are due to a large density of dislocation present in the polycrystalline samples; therefore, we also measure the amount of dislocations after the plastic deformation. Thus, for our aim, we elaborated copper-aluminum alloys Cu0.975Al0.025; next, with them, we fabricated metallographic specimens, which were submitted to traction subsequently. We measured the electrical resistivity before and after the traction. The obtained results are discussed in a theoretical framework of dislocations.

Functional 3-D Cellulose And Nitrocellulose Paper-Based, Microfluidic Device Utilizing Elisa Technology For The Detection/Distinction Between Hemorrhagic And Ischemic Strokes, Alicia Leanne Holler

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis project is to demonstrate and evaluate an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) on a paper microfluidic device platform. The integration of ELISA technology onto paper microfluidic chips allows for a quantitative detection of stroke biomarkers, such as glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). Dye experiments were performed to confirm fluid connectivity throughout the 3D chips. Several chip and housing designs were fabricated to determine an optimal design for the microfluidic device. Once this design was finalized, development time testing was performed. The results confirmed that the paper microfluidic device could successfully route fluid throughout its channels at …

Outsourcing Of Building Information Modeling (Bim) Among General Contractors In The United States, James W. Fountain

Honors Theses

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a process used by AEC industry members that simulates a construction project in a multidimensional digital model and provides multitudes of project benefits from inception to occupancy. However, a variety of barriers impede a holistic BIM implementation. Because of these barriers, some general contractors are choosing to outsource the creation and/or utilization of BIM models to specialized Information Technology (IT) firms instead of performing these processes in-house. Since little literature currently exists for BIM outsourcing, this online survey-based study aimed to identify BIM outsourcing patterns among the general contractors across the US and the perceived …

Evaluation Of User Perceived Qoe In Mobile Systems Using Social Media Analytics, Ahmed Yaseen Mjhool

Theses and Dissertations

In mobile system environments, the quality perceived by users is inconstant and reliant on many factors such as cellular network, data connection, cost, coverage area, etc. Even though Quality of Service (QoS) management is enabled in most modern telecommunication systems, it does not guarantee the actual user’s perceived Quality of Experience (QoE) level. Many cellular networks rely on engineering test research, such as drive testing or smart mobile applications, to collect the required parameters in order to provide better service quality to users. However, this approach does not always yield customer satisfaction. Hence, user opinions should be considered. These opinions …

A Traders Guide To The Predictive Universe- A Model For Predicting Oil Price Targets And Trading On Them, Jimmie Harold Lenz

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

At heart every trader loves volatility; this is where return on investment comes from, this is what drives the proverbial “positive alpha.” As a trader, understanding the probabilities related to the volatility of prices is key, however if you could also predict future prices with reliability the world would be your oyster. To this end, I have achieved three goals with this dissertation, to develop a model to predict future short term prices (direction and magnitude), to effectively test this by generating consistent profits utilizing a trading model developed for this purpose, and to write a paper that anyone with …

Creating A Short Scale For In-Flight Experience Quality, Rian Mehta, Stephen Rice

Aeronautics Faculty Publications

Customer service and satisfaction is of great importance to aviation industry as it has an economic impact on the airlines. Customer’s in-flight experience, is tied into their satisfaction with that airline, and in turn has become an area of competition between airlines. This study seeks to develop a statistically valid and reliable scale to empirically measure the quality of the in-flight experience that a passenger would witness on a commercial airline flight within the United States. Actual consumers from the general public were used for each of the five stages of the process, along with input from aviation experts, to …

Virginia Space Pocketqube Launch Opportunity, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Professor Bob Twiggs titled "Virginia Space PocketQube Launch Opportunity" from December 1, 2016.

Investigating Co2 Removal By Ca- And Mg-Based Sorbents With Application To Indoor Air Treatment, Elliott T. Gall, Cem Sonat, William W. Nazaroff, Cise Unluer

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Indoor carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) levels serve as an indicator of ventilation sufficiency in relation to metabolic effluents. Recent evidence suggests that elevated CO 2 exposure (with or without other bioeffluents) may cause adverse cognitive effects. In shelter-in-place (SIP) facilities, indoor CO 2 levels may become particularly elevated. This study evaluates four low-cost alkaline earth metal oxides and hydroxides as CO 2 sorbents for potential use in indoor air cleaning applications. Sorbents studied were MgO, Mg(OH) 2 , Ca(OH) 2 and commercially available soda lime. Uncarbonated sorbents characterized with nitrogen adsorption porosimetry showed BET surface areas in the 5.6–27 …

Me-Em Enewsbrief, December 2016, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.