Engineering Commons^™

An Introduction To The Special Issue On Geoscience Papers Of The Future, Cédric H. David, Yolanda Gil, Christopher J. Duffy, Scott D. Peckham, S. Karan Venayagamoorthy

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Advocates of enhanced quality for published scientific results are increasingly voicing the need for further transparency of data and software for scientific reproducibility. However, such advanced digital scholarship can appear perplexing to geoscientists that are seduced by the concept of open science yet wonder about the exact mechanics and implications of the associated efforts. This special issue of Earth and Space Science entitled "Geoscience Papers of the Future" includes a review of existing best practices for digital scholarship and bundles a set of example articles that share their digital research products and reflect on the process of opening their scientific …

Broadband And Mobile Internet Services In Nonmetropolitan Nebraska, Rebecca Vogt, Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel, Randolph Cantrell, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy

Rural Futures Institute: Publications

A recent Pew Research Center survey revealed that home broadband adoption has plateaued in the United States. In addition, there has been an increase in adults who use a smartphone to access the Internet but do not have traditional broadband service in their home. Given these national trends, how do rural Nebraskans access the Internet? Are they accessing the Internet from their cell phones? Are they subscribing to high-speed Internet services at home? How satisfied are they with their Internet services? How important do they feel Internet access is for various items? This paper provides a detailed analysis of these …

Dielectric Anomalies Of Both Chiral And Achiral Nematogens Near The Isotropic To Mesogenic Phase Transition, Garrett Justin Godfrey

Wayne State University Dissertations

The dielectric properties of nematic liquid crystals were studied in both the achiral and chiral limits. For achiral nematics, the literature documents that pretransitional curvature occurs for polar molecules on both sides of the nematic and isotropic phase transition. This curvature is due to anti-parallel dimer formation. However, past models have failed to quantitatively describe pretransitional curvature. Through a generalization of the order parameter, a macroscopic model has been developed to mathematically describe the pretransitional curvature on the isotropic side of the transition. The new model was fitted to dielectric data from the literature. Meaningful parameter estimates were extracted.

The …

Saros: A Social-Aware Opportunistic Forwarding Simulator, Soumaia Al Ayyat

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

Many applications are being developed to leverage the popularity of mobile opportunistic networks. However, building adaptive testbeds can be costly and challenging. This challenge motivates the need for effective opportunistic network simulators to provide a variety of opportunistic environment setups, and evaluate proposed applications and protocols with a comprehensive set of metrics. This paper presents SAROS, a simulator of opportunistic networking environments with a variety of interest distributions, power consumption distributions, imported real traces, and social network integration. The simulator provides a wide variety of evaluation metrics that are not offered by comparable simulators. Finally, SAROS also implements several opportunistic …

Solar Thermal Collector, Hazel Tickner, Tyson Nakamura

All Undergraduate Projects

During the course of this project, a solar thermal collector and supporting stand were designed and manufactured to be used during Mechanical Engineering Technology labs. Students will be able to use the collector to heat water, with the sun being the only heat source. The collector was designed by calculating surface area limitations, estimated solar input, and desired efficiency, to find the required water flow rate. From there, the necessary pipe lengths and diameters were determined, and the solar thermal collector was constructed. Two pipe paths were manufactured: a curved path, and a manifold path. Students will be able to …

Atv Rack Extension, Trista Smith

All Undergraduate Projects

This project represents a new way to carry multiple ATVS on a truck without having to tow a trailer behind the truck. There are two ATV racks involved, one sits in the bed of the truck and will hold two ATV’s that are parallel with the truck. The second rack (new rack) attached to the first rack resting on and overhanging the open tailgate. The third ATV sits perpendicular to the truck. The rack extension has critical requirements like weight, load, and dimensional sizing. Analysis was conducted to ensure that the pins that connect the two racks would withstand the …

Tabletop Die Cast System, Brad C. Barringer

All Undergraduate Projects

The project was to design, manufacture, and test a tabletop die cast system to be used as lab equipment in MET 257 – Casting Processes. The motivation for this project was the MET 257 – Casting Processes instructor’s desire to physically demonstrate the die casting process, but they were unable to find a system that would meet all of their requirements. They required a system design that was small, portable, would fit in the foundries limited space, had an open concept to allow students to see what was occurring during the pour, and compatibility with the foundries current equipment. The …

Shellfish Bag Maker, Trevor R. Reher

All Undergraduate Projects

When commercially harvesting shellfish specifically clams and oyster, plastic mesh bags are commonly used to place shellfish in after harvesting on beaches. The issues is taking the raw bag material used for harvest and cutting it to a specified length. The material comes on a 2000 ft. spool and needs to be cut to a length of 54 in. Using an existing but out dated machine, a bench mark was made that the new design must be 10% more efficient for the customer to invest money into building the machine. Using mechanical machine design and computer designing software the machine …

Flag Raising Device, Josh Quintero

All Undergraduate Projects

The motivation for this project stems from a lifetime of boating with father Richard Jones. One problem that many people encounter, including Richard, was when towing someone behind a boat, is the difficulty with handling the warning flag. This flag is used to show other surrounding boats that someone has fallen into the water behind their boat. This warns other boats to stay far away from that area to keep safe from running over the swimmer. Although, when holding the flag in the boat, it can be hard to see at times. The boat driver, or other people standing in …

Hydraulic Sprayer Boom Upgrade, Chad R. Omlin

All Undergraduate Projects

Title and Author: Agriculture sprayer hydraulic boom upgrade by Chad Omlin (engineering Technologies, Safety, and Construction)

Abstract: Today’s agriculture industry is all about being the most efficient with your time, land, employees, and machinery. One thing that has made farming more efficient has been the use of hydraulics. Having a sprayer unit with manual booms is not being efficient with your time and/or employees. To make the sprayer unit more efficient, hydraulic cylinders were added. Sketched solutions were analyzed using statics and mechanics of materials principles. Drawings were completed for the successful analysis solutions. Solid works software was used to …

Icarus Avionics Device, Robert A. Gread

All Undergraduate Projects

The Federal Aviation Administration recently released a statement that personal and homemade aircraft accidents could be reduced significantly with the addition of Angle of Attack information for the pilot. Installing most available devices on modern aircraft requires extensive fitting and modification at great expense. Furthermore, modification of older and vintage aircraft may not be desirable. The introduction of a simple, non-invasive device that provides the same information would increase safety and be marketable. Utilizing this opportunity and setting a range of requirements including cost, weight, ease of installation, and reliability, analysis was performed on different methods purposed to accomplish the …

Met 314 Torque Measurement, Jose Bejar

All Undergraduate Projects

As part of the Mechanical Engineering Technology program, students are required to take a Thermodynamics class. In this class one of the labs they do consists of an air motor running a water pump. The professor teaching that class wanted a device that would fit within the lab rig which would calculate the torque produced by the motor. Therefore this project consists of building a device that will allow the case (body) of the air motor to fully rotate opposite to the rotation of the shaft in order to measure the torque the motor produces at certain revolutions per minute. …

Paper Airplane Building Machine: Paper Folding Mechanism, Abdullah Y. Alshahrani

All Undergraduate Projects

The project was motivated by an ASME 2016 design challenge. The challenge was to design and manufacture a device that would turn a single sheet of paper into a paper airplane and launch it. The project is divided into three portions. The three portions are the frame and paper loading, folding mechanism, and launching. The circumference equation is used, to determine what the proper speed of the paper loading motor is. Notably, a slow rpm motor is needed for the loading mechanism to prevent the paper from being damaged. To avoid any deflection in the frame, the total weight of …

Asme Mini-Baja Rc Car (Steering And Suspension Systems), Michael E. Cox

All Undergraduate Projects

The issue that this project is concerned with is how to design and build a drivetrain, steering and suspension systems for an RC car. The systems must be simple and functional. Furthermore, these systems will be designed to fit on a small chassis and not interfere with each other. They also need to be strong and durable enough to propel the car forward and maneuver through various obstacles and be built in a way that is easy to take apart and repair quickly. These design problems were approached using basic mechanical design concepts such as gear kinematics, spur and bevel …

On Event-Triggered Adaptive Architectures For Decentralized And Distributed Control Of Large-Scale Modular Systems, Ali Albattat, Benjamin C. Gruenwald, Tansel Yucelen

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The last decade has witnessed an increased interest in physical systems controlled over wireless networks (networked control systems). These systems allow the computation of control signals via processors that are not attached to the physical systems, and the feedback loops are closed over wireless networks. The contribution of this paper is to design and analyze event-triggered decentralized and distributed adaptive control architectures for uncertain networked large-scale modular systems; that is, systems consist of physically-interconnected modules controlled over wireless networks. Specifically, the proposed adaptive architectures guarantee overall system stability while reducing wireless network utilization and achieving a given system performance in …

Microfocusing At The Pg1 Beamline At Flash, S. Dziarzhytski, N. Gerasimova, Rene Goderich, T. Mey, M. Rübhausen, F. Siewert, H. Weigelt, G. Brenner

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) refocusing mirror system installed at the PG1 branch of the plane-grating monochromator beamline at the soft X-ray/XUV free-electron laser in Hamburg (FLASH) is designed to provide tight aberration-free focusing down to 4 µm × 6 µm full width at half-maximum (FWHM) on the sample. Such a focal spot size is mandatory to achieve ultimate resolution and to guarantee best performance of the vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) off-axis parabolic double-monochromator Raman spectrometer permanently installed at the PG1 beamline as an experimental end-station. The vertical beam size on the sample of the Raman spectrometer, which operates without entrance slit, defines and …

Ingan Leds For General Lighting: Overcoming Efficiency Droop At High Current Injection, Nicolas Andrade

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

According to the Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook report in 2011, the United States alone consumed 97.8 quadrillion Btus (quads) of primary energy in 2010. Roughly 41% of this energy was consumed for electricity use, with 18% of the electricity being dedicated to lighting. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated light consumption of this scale translates to CO2 production equivalent to 70% of the emissions from all of the world's light passenger vehicles. Pollution levels at this rate caused 18,200 premature deaths, 2,100,000 days of medication, and 29 million cases of lower respiratory symptoms.

Risk And Safety Of Complex Network Systems, Xiao-Bing Hu, Adrian V. Gheorghe, Mark S. Leeson, Supeng Leng, Julien Bourgeois, Xiaobo Qu

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Complex Adaptive Behavior: Pragmatic Idealism, Mustafa Canan, Andres Sousa-Poza

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The introduction of new concepts is a driver of organizational evolution and transformation. A newly introduced concept can introduce new meaning that is disparate to existing understanding. A new concept may also be interpreted in multiple ways, thereby introducing several disparate meanings. The disparity is resolved through adaptation. The disparity introduces complex adaptive behavior to the organization, requiring suitable changes to its management and design. The development of corresponding doctrine for new concepts, and training for the organization's constituents become indispensable. In so doing, constituents can be involved in the adaptation process through direct participation, and thereby include the cognitive …

Modeling Social, Economic, Technical & Environmental Components In An Energy System, Ange-Lionel Toba, Mamadou Seck

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Energy system models have become the main supporting tool for energy policy. Modern challenges in energy policy require energy systems models that integrate technical, environmental and societal aspects of the energy systems. In this paper, we introduce a conceptual model for an energy system model that specifies the relationships between social, technical, environmental, and economic aspects of an energy system. This conceptual model presented in the IDEF0 language will serve as a basis for a computational energy systems model. © 2016 The Authors.

Developing Critical Collaboration Skills In Engineering Students: Results From An Empirical Study, Pilar Pazos, Nina Magpili, Zikai Zhou, Luis J. Rodriguez

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In highly technical organizations, work is becoming increasingly distributed; requiring practicing engineers to master virtual collaboration skills while acquiring expertise in a range of collaboration technologies. Although there has been great emphasis on developing collaboration competencies in the engineering curriculum, empirical evidence of successful strategies for distributed team settings is scarce. As an attempt to fill this gap this study investigates the impact of a scalable intervention in developing virtual collaboration skills. The intervention, based on instructional scaffolds embedded with collaboration technologies, is aimed at supporting specific processes including planning, goal setting, clarifying goals and expectations, communication, coordination and progress …

A Qualitative Inquiry Into The Role Of Web-Based Collaboration Tools And Instructional Scaffolds In The Facilitation Of Team Processes, Nina Magpili, Pilar Pazos, Preetham S. Ullal

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Learning has expanded beyond take-home assignments and lectures. Team-based learning, for instance, supports the extended development of students by offering further education through collaborating with others. This type of learning develops teamwork skills that have become essential skills for students in today’s complex work environment. Furthermore, the use of online collaboration tools in virtual teams adds complexity to the collaboration process. This trend calls for valuable insights related to enhancing online team-based collaboration to ensure team success and learning. Scaffolds provide a promising approach because they support team processes online by providing guidance through the use of tools, activities and …

Energy Sustainability Of Turkey In The Case Of Lng, Omer Ilker Poyraz, Omer Keskin, Resit Unal

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Energy is both vital and strategic element for a nation to sustain its fundamental activities like security, logistics, heating, etc. Countries sustain their energy demands through internal or external sources. In the case of not being able to maintain energy demands from their internal sources, they would need to import their requirements. Whenever they need to buy raw materials, they have to build terminals to process the raw material into the required form. The dependency on the imports may cause the importing country to weaken its advantage in international conflicts, unemployment, and welfare. Therefore, countries aim to mitigate dependence to …

A Hierarchical Statistical Engineering Modeling Methodology, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the ASEM-IAC 2015, Cotter (2015) proposed a systemic joint deterministic-stochastic dynamic causal Bayesian statistical engineering model that addressed the knowledge gap needed to integrate deterministic mathematical engineering models within a stochastic framework. However, Cotter did not specify the modeling methodology through which statistical engineering models could be developed, diagnosed, and applied to predict systemic mission performance. This paper updates research into the development a hierarchical statistical engineering modeling methodology and sets forth the initial theoretical foundation for the methodology.

The Effect Of Impeded Information Sharing And Transparency On Power Differentials And Organizational Dysfunction, Mustafa Canan, A. Sousa-Poza

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The constituents of an organization have to interact with each other. The purpose of the interaction is to maintain flow of information, to exchange knowledge, to share individual situational awareness, and to give rise to an organizational shared awareness. The rate of information exchange is constrained by multiple factors and impacts the effectiveness of the communication in an organization. For instance, extensive communication may not result in informativeness all the time. Communication channels induce constraints between the interacting agents. These constraints can impede information flow. Impeding information flow will result in an accumulation of knowledge with a particular agent. Consequently, …

Commercial Driver’S License (Cdl) Workflow Study, Steven Andrew Martin, Candice Y. Wallace, Valerie J. Keathley, Jennifer R. Walton

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Kentucky uses federally funded, time-limited (FFTL) employees to handle some of the administrative work necessary to meet federal compliance standards for commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs). The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has decided not to continue funding FFTLs for these purposes, meaning that states will have to find other ways to meet CDL program requirements and maintain compliance. Given the potential ramifications of losing federal transportation and enforcement funding due to lack of compliance with federal standards, it is imperative that state lawmakers act to ensure KYTC has the resources to carry out its mandated functions. The study delineates …

Operational And Water Quality Analysis For The City Of Akron's Water Treatment Plant And Distribution System, Chelsea James

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Chlorination is one of the most common methods of treating pathogens and ensuring microbial water quality in water treatment and distribution. As chlorinated water leaves the source and travels through the water distribution system, the chlorine reacts with both the organic compounds (dissolved organic carbon, DOC) in the source water and the corrosion or biofilm of the pipe walls. The chlorine concentration, or chlorine residuals, at any point in the water distribution system is a good measure of water quality. At the same time, chlorination produces disinfection byproducts as the chlorine also reacts with other naturally-occurring materials in the water. …

Bytewise Approximate Matching: The Good, The Bad, And The Unknown, Vikram S. Harichandran, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Hash functions are established and well-known in digital forensics, where they are commonly used for proving integrity and file identification (i.e., hash all files on a seized device and compare the fingerprints against a reference database). However, with respect to the latter operation, an active adversary can easily overcome this approach because traditional hashes are designed to be sensitive to altering an input; output will significantly change if a single bit is flipped. Therefore, researchers developed approximate matching, which is a rather new, less prominent area but was conceived as a more robust counterpart to traditional hashing. Since the conception …

Analysis Of The Fm Radio Spectrum For Secondary Licensing Of Low-Power Short-Range Cognitive Internet Of Things Devices, Derek T. Otermat, Ivica Kostanic, Carlos E. Otero

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The analysis presented in this paper indicates that the FM radio spectrum is underutilized in the areas of the continental United States that have a population of 100000 or less. These locations have vacant FM radio spectrum of at least 13 MHz with sufficient spectrum spacing between adjacent FM radio channels. The spectrum spacing provides the required bandwidth for data transmission and provides enough bandwidth to minimize interference introduced by neighboring predicted and unpredicted FM radio stations and other low-power short-range Internet of Thing (IoT) devices. To ensure that low-power short-range IoT devices maintain reliable communications vacant radio spectrum, such …

Mitigation Of Wellbore Instability In Deviated Wells By Using Geomechanical Models And Mpd Technique, Husam Raad Abbood

Masters Theses

"During drilling operations for the E oilfield in the Mishrif formation in southern Iraq, stuck pipe presents a significant wellbore stability problem for deviated wells. In this study, two solutions are utilized to address this problem. The first approach is a 1-D Geomechanical model of the Mishrif formation compiled based on the state of stress and rock strength parameters. It is utilized to assess the contribution of borehole collapse leading to the stuck pipe problems. The results of this study show that wells characterized by stuck pipe are drilled along azimuths which promote wellbore collapse. Three different failure criteria, the …