Engineering Commons^™

Swummary: Self-Documenting Code, Keith Herbert, John Goldhamer, Dylan Ilvento

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Using Natural Language Summaries of Program Elements to Improve Code Search

There are countless people that are intimidated by reading computer programs, potentially driving away future engineers. Even current software developers, when moving from project to project, face downtime due to acclimating themselves with a new, poorly commented code base. Our project, which we call Swummary, strives to eliminate these problems by providing succinct natural language summaries of source code.

We were tasked with developing a functioning prototype of a natural language source code summarizer, based on the frameworks SrcML and Software Word Usage Model (SWUM), as well as the …

Hybrid Call Center: Amc Technology Llc, Tejas Trivedi, Joshua Stephens, Daniel Kim

Capstone Design Expo Posters

AMC Technology wanted to add voice over IP (VoIP) functionality to Salesforce.com (Customer Relationship Management system). As it is currently, Salesforce.com does not have voice functionality, in that you cannot place or receive calls using Salesforce. Adding voice functionality to Salesforce is incredibly useful because it eliminates the need for hardware phones and allows for a more modern and efficient approach to calling for companies that have/rely upon call centers, such as customers of AMC Technology whose products connect CTIs (Computer Telephony Interface) and CRMs. We used a voice service called Twilio to provide functionality with Salesforce. AMC Technology wanted …

Capital One Mobile Authentication: Authentication Using Biometric, Anh Dang, Hunter Miller, Matthew Mosca

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Capital One, a large US bank, is currently providing customers with a mobile servicing experience. One of the features of the mobile servicing app is easy and convenient access to account information. Capital One currently allows users to authenticate using a traditional username / password, their registered SureSwipe feature and even their finger on supported devices. The project's goal is to evaluate the viability of retinal recognition as a new method for biometric authentication.

By successfully developing this project, the application could offer retinal recognition as an additional biometric authentication option to customers. This can be used to help eliminate …

Phosphate And Selective Anion Removal Of Waste Water In Industrial Systems, Daniel Dillon, Campbell Mccolley, Laura Strukl

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Phosphorous is an essential nutrient for a functioning water ecosystem, however, heightened levels caused by waste water and agriculture can be damaging. High levels of PO43- cause toxic algae blooms, which kill wildlife and contaminate drinking water supplies. Therefore, cheap, efficient phosphate removal systems are beneficial for commercial settings in order to meet governmental standards. Similar research and technology can aid in the removal of toxic heavy metals in industrial waste water. Using a packed column with solid supported media, both phosphate and other selective anions were successfully removed from water. This was confirmed by inductively coupled plasma analysis. Constraints …

Low Cost Sterilization, Karima Abutaleb, Mahreen Azam, Eric Lara, Sarah Tracy

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The lack of proper surgical tool sterilization is an increasing issue in developing countries. Inadequate sterilization leads to disease transmission, infection and even death. While autoclaves, the current golden standard for sterilization, are effective, they are often rendered useless after breaking as the cost to repair and maintain them is incredibly high. This leads to the dependence on insufficient techniques such as the use of diluted bleach. Diluted bleach, while effective for disinfection, leads to the destruction of surgical tools over time, does not destroy spores, and is unsustainable, as it loses potency over time which leads to its otherwiseunnecessary …

Improved Device For Passive Foot Dorsiflexion For Prevention Of Dvt, Stephen Vinoba, Nigal Shah, Shreya Vatsala, Jawahar Baddula

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Postoperative patients are often too fatigued to walk around and often lay in bed for extended periods of time. This could lead to the development of deep vein thrombosis (DVT). DVT is a condition where blood accumulates in the veins instead of being pushed back to the heart. This can cause the formation of blood clots that can eventually lead to pulmonary embolism resulting in death. DVT is a condition that affects about 900,000 people in the United States. Since it is such a prevalent condition, it is important to develop methods of prevention for this condition.

The aim of …

General Solution Of The Wind Triangle Problem And The Critical Tailwind Angle, Nihad E. Daidzic

Aviation Department Publications

A general analytical solution of the navigational wind-triangle problem and the calculation of the critical tailwind angle are presented in this study among other findings. Any crosswind component will effectively create a headwind component on fixed course tracks. The meaning of a route track is lost with excessive crosswinds representing the bifurcation point between the possible and the impossible navigational solutions. Any wind of constant direction and speed will effectively reduce groundspeed and increase time-of-flight on closed-loop multi-segment flights. Effective wind track component consists, in general, of true and induced components. The average groundspeed of multiple-leg flights is a harmonic …

Optimization Of Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides Based Field- Effect- Transistors Via Contact Engineering, Meeghage Madusanka Perera

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Optimization of Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides based Field- Effect-Transistors via contact engineering

by

Meeghage M Perera

September , 2016

Advisor : Dr. Zhixian Zhou

Major: Physics (Condensed mater physics/nano-electronics)

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Layered transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs) have demonstrated a wide range of remarkable properties for applications in next generation nano-electronics. These systems have displayed many “graphene-like” properties including a relatively high carrier mobility, mechanical flexibility, chemical and thermal stability, and moreover offer the significant advantage of a substantial band gap. However, the fabrication of high performance field-effect transistors (FETs) of TMDs is challenging mainly due to the formation of …

The Design And Experimental Investigation Of Novel Double-Blade Wind Turbine Models Inspired By Houck's Concept, Laura E. Carpenter

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Energy can be captured from wind turbines efficiently today. However there's always room for improvement up to the Betz's limit of 59.3% efficiency. A novel wind turbine blade was designed with double blade rotor inspired by Houck's concept in an attempt to improve the efficiency of the horizontal axis wind turbine. Scaled wind turbine models with a diameter of 150 mm were designed in SolidWorks adjusting the parameters of stagger, gap, and decalage. The general design comprises of two modern blades attached by a curved flow guide at the tip. Fourteen blade models were designed and tested to obtain power, …

Porous Silica Coated Spherical Microresonator For Vapor Phase Sensing Of Ammonia At A Sub-Ppm Level, Arun Kumar Mallik, Gerald Farrell, Dejun Liu, Vishnan Kavungal, Qiang Wu, Yuliya Semenova

Conference Papers

A new type of fiber optic sensor for detection and quantification of ammonia (NH3) vapors is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. This sensor is based on a spherical silica micro resonator coated with porous silica gel. Whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in the micro resonator are excited by evanescent coupling to a tapered fiber with a 3.3 µm waist diameter. The optical properties of the porous silica layer change when it is exposed to ammonia vapor, leading to a spectral shift of the WGM resonant wavelengths. The sensitivity of the proposed sensor has been tested by exposing it to different low level …

On-Chip Integratable All-Optical Quantizer Using Strong Cross-Phase Modulation In A Silicon-Organic Hybrid Slot Waveguide, Zhe Kang, Jinhui Yuan, Xianting Zhang, Xinzhu Sang, Kuiru Wang, Qiang Wu, Binbin Yan, Feng Li, Xian Zhou, Kangping Zhong, Guiyao Zhou, Chongxiu Yu, Gerald Farrell, Chao Lu, Hwa Yaw Tam, P. K. A. Wai

Articles

High performance all-optical quantizer based on silicon waveguide is believed to have significant applications in photonic integratable optical communication links, optical interconnection networks and real-time signal processing systems. In this paper, we propose an integratable all-optical quantizer for on-chip and low power consumption all-optical analog-to-digital converters. The quantization is realized by the strong cross-phase modulation and interference in a silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) slot waveguide based Mach-Zehnder interferometer. By carefully designing the dimension of the SOH waveguide, large nonlinear coefficients up to 16,000 and 18,069 W−1/m for the pump and probe signals can be obtained respectively, along with a low pulse …

Remote Control Aircraft, Thomas Gutema, Catherine Jones, Judy Liang, Kendall Moore

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The purpose of the RC aircraft design was not to address a problem that has not been solved, but to redesign an aircraft with the intent to understand the practical applications of the building process. Our approach to completing this project involved two phases; the planning phase and the building phase. In the planning phase, we made selections for the airfoil, wing, fuselage, tail, elevators, and ailerons. These choices were made using aeronautical engineering concepts and theory. For the building phase, we focused on materials selection, fabrication, and testing.

During our design process, a lot of time went to choosing …

Formula Hybrid At Vcu: Epicyclic Power Distribution System, Brandon Rivera, Dmitriy Kirzhner, Maxwell O’Neill, Ryan Witko

Capstone Design Expo Posters

In today’s automotive industry, the need for more performance and power efficiency is ever increasing. However, with the growing concern of greenhouse gases and their impact on the environment, petrol burning cars need to be improved. Hybrid powertrains in automotive vehicles are being designed to increase fuel economy, reduce emissions, and improve engine efficiency through gearing all the while being competitive.

Our senior design team has developed an epicyclic power distribution (EPD) system which combines two independent power inputs from an electric motor and an internal combustion engine (ICE). This system has been designed specifically for the Formula Hybrid race …

Human Occupancy: A Non-Invasive Solution, Hamid Golgiri, Patrick Van Hoecke, Derrick Williams

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Currently, it is difficult to find an available location within a crowded setting. To solve this spatial issue, the team wants to be able to inform people of the density in commonly-occupied areas. To do this, they will need to develop Area Occupancy Device Modules (AODMs) to gather thermal readings. After which, the data will be sent to a central coordinator via mesh network communication. This coordinator will then interpret the data and display its analysis in a graphical user interface (GUI). The system is constrained in that it cannot gather defining characteristics of the people it’s observing. Additionally, the …

Multi-Channel Unbounded Optical Communication Through Modulation Of Led Lighting, Nicolás Andrade, Aaron Jones

Capstone Design Expo Posters

With the ever-increasing demand for more mobile bandwidth and higher data transfer rates, expansion into the Terahertz spectral range is inevitable. Modern Wi-Fi technologies (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) theoretically support data rates up to only a few Gbps. A newly emerging technology, Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) provides communication with potentially Tbps rates through LED lighting. One unique benefit of Li-Fi is that it can be used simultaneously for illumination and high-speed, secure (line-of-sight) communication. Li-Fi would be best utilized in conjunction with Wi-Fi and mobile LTE networks as it is more suitable for one-way short range communication due to relatively …

Fluid Routing System: Industrial Automation And Simulation, Sean De Arras, Andy Fabian, Shellie Lundquist

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) builds the biggest ships in the world. These ships store and deliver millions of gallons of fluids via computer-controlled networks of pipes, valves, pumps, and tanks. A working, small scale demonstrator of these systems is needed for NNS to use in training and educational demonstrations. The demonstrator needs to allow for functional control of physical parameters by implementing a working instrumentation and control (I&C) system. Core components of this system are a programmable logic controller (PLC), a software development platform, a simulator, and a graphical user interface (GUI) on a human machine interface (HMI).

Project deliverables …

Imir: Identifying Mirna Regulation In Diseases: Bioinformatics Tool, Jeremy Yu, Bolade Ottola, Theo Contes

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Cancer mutations involves various biological factors and cellular mechanisms involving genes, miRNAs, transcription factors (TFs), chemicals etc. Hence, understanding the activity and role of all of these factors can be exploited for therapeutics. To aid this, iMir, a web portal with multi-tabbed design, analysis and user-guide has been developed to search, analyze and visualize the miRNA-disease, miRNA-TF-gene, miRNA-drug associations. Agile methodology was adopted for the software development of this tool. Weekly requirements and goals were discussed, drafted and accomplished and subject to review, testing and documentation. Code integrated upon approval. iMir has been developed using MySQL as a database and …

Nebraska Summary: S1059a Massey Ferguson 7715s, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Nebraska Summary: S1073 New Holland T7.175, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Nebraska Summary: S1098 New Holland T6.145, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

The Spatial Sensitivity Analysis Of Evapotranspiration Using Penman-Monteith Method At Grid Scale, Sivarajah Mylevaganam, Chittaranjan Ray

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

The need to allocate the existing water in a sustainable manner, even with the projected population growth, has made to assess the consumptive use or evapotranspiration (ET), which determines the irrigation demand. As underscored in the literature, Penman-Monteith method which is a combination of aerodynamic and energy balance method is widely used and accepted as the method of estimation of ET. However, the application of Penman-Monteith relies on many climate parameters such as relative humidity, solar radiation, temperature, and wind speed. Therefore, there exists a need to determine the parameters that are most sensitive and correlated with dependent variable ( …

A Spatial Evapotranspiration Tool At Grid Scale, Sivarajah Mylevaganam, Chittaranjan Ray

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

The drastic decline in groundwater table and many other detrimental effects in meeting irrigation demand, and the projected population growth have force to evaluate consumptive use or evapotranspiration (ET), the rate of liquid water transformation to vapor from open water, bare soil, and vegetation, which determines the irrigation demand. As underscored in the literature, Penman- Monteith method which is based on aerodynamic and energy balance method is widely used and accepted as the method of estimation of ET. However, the estimation of ET is oftentimes carried out using meteorological data from climate stations. Therefore, such estimation of ET may vary …

Drone Journalism Lab Operations Manual, Matt Waite, Ben Kreimer

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

This text is a guide for safely conducting drone journalism field work. It takes into account America's current drone regulations, our understanding of the public's acceptance of drones, the state of drone technologies, and our own experiences. The number one goal of any drone journalism operation is safety. At no time should safety be compromised. If there is any doubt, return the drone, also known as an unmanned aerial system (UAS), to the landing zone and terminate the flight. Ethical journalism is responsible journalism, and flying a drone means taking responsibility for the safety of those near you, on the …

2016 Nebraska Water Monitoring Programs Report, Marty Link, Ryan Chapman

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is charged with monitoring, assessing, and to the extent possible, managing the state’s water resources. The purpose of this work is to protect and maintain high quality water and encourage or execute activities to improve poor water quality. Monitoring is done on nearly 17,000 miles of flowing rivers and streams, more than 134,000 acres of surface water in lakes and reservoirs, as well as the vast storage of groundwater in Nebraska’s aquifers.

2016 Scholarly Productivity Report, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Scholarly Productivity Reports

No abstract provided.

Establishing Performance Guarantees For Behavior-Based Robot Missions Using An Smt Solver, Feng Tang, Damian M. Lyons, Ronald Arkin

Faculty Publications

In prior work we developed an approach to formally representing behavior-based multi-robot programs, and the uncertain environments in which they operate, as process networks. We automatically extract a set of probabilistic equations governing program execution in that environment using a static analysis module called VIPARS, and solve these using a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) to establish whether stated performance guarantees hold for the program in that environment. In this paper we address the challenge of expanding the range of performance guarantees that are possible by using an SMT-solver instead of a DBN. We translate flow functions, which are recursive probabilistic …

Agarose Coated Spherical Micro Resonator For Humidity Measurements, Arun Mallik, Vishnu Kavungal, Yuliya Semenova, Dejun Liu

Conference Papers

A new type of fiber optic relative humidity (RH) sensor based on an agarose coated silica microsphere resonator is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in the micro resonator are excited by evanescent coupling using a tapered fiber with ~3.3 μm waist diameter. A change in the relative humidity of the surrounding the resonator air induces changes in the refractive index (RI) and thickness of the Agarose coating layer. These changes in turn lead to a spectral shift of the WGM resonances, which can be related to the RH value after a suitable calibration. Studies of the repeatability, …

Three-Dimensional Image Reconstruction Using Bundle Adjustment Applied To Multiple Texel Images, Bikalpa Khatiwada, Scott E. Budge

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The importance of creating 3D imagery is increasing and has many applications in the eld of disaster response, digital elevation models, object recognition, and cultural heritage. Several methods have been proposed to register texel images, which consist of fused lidar and digital imagery. The previous methods were limited to registering up to two texel images or multiple texel swaths having only one strip of lidar data per swath. One area of focus still remains to register multiple texel images to create a 3D model.

The process of creating true 3D images using multiple texel images is described. The texel camera …

Me-Em 2015-16 Annual Report, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Annual Reports

Table of Contents

• Alumni: Leading with Simulation
• Education: Simulating the Future
• Faculty: Advancing Simulation
• Graduate Seminar Series
• Enrollment & Degrees
• Graduates
• Department News
• Faculty & Staff
• Alumni
• Donors
• Contracts & Grants
• Patents & Publications

First Outdoor Characterisation Of A Pv Powered Suspended Particle Device Switchable Glazing, Aritra Ghosh, Brian Norton, Aidan Duffy

Articles

Suspended particle device (SPD) switchable glazing is a candidate intervention to adaptively control solar heat gain. A high voltage low alternating current (AC) to operate a large area SPD applications, can be provided by a photovoltaic (PV) array. The first outdoor characterisation of side-by-side comparison of PV-powered SPD glazing has been conducted. Using an inverter to convert direct current (DC) power from PV to AC a 40 Wp PV device continuously powered a 0.07 W SPD glazing. High inverter power losses were found due to high PV inverter sizing ratio, inverter high self-consumption, and low solar radiation. Low sizing ratio …