Engineering Commons^™

Use Of Dynamic Visualizations For Engineering Technology, Industrial Technology, And Science Education Students: Implications On Ability To Correctly Create A Sectional View Sketch, Petros J. Katsioloudis, Daniel Dickerson, Vukica Jovanovic, Mildred V. Jones

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Spatial abilities, specifically visualization, play a significant role in the achievement in a wide array of professions including, but not limited to, engineering, technical, mathematical, and scientific professions. However, there is little correlation between the advantages of spatial ability as measured through the creation of a sectional-view sketch between engineering technology, industrial technology, and science education students. A causal-comparative study was selected as a means to perform the comparative analysis of spatial visualization ability. This study was done to determine the existence of statistically significant difference between engineering technology, industrial technology, and science education students’ ability to correctly create a …

Introducing Writing Assignments In Engineering Technology Courses To Enhance Technical Writing Skills And Critical Thinking, Otilia Popescu, Vukica M. Jovanovic

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

This study was prompted by the university wide initiative to improve students' technical writing skills across-the-curriculum by introducing low stakes writing assignments as early as in their freshman year. Effective written communication skills are important for engineering education, with critical thinking being one of the most important aspects of the learning process at the college level. However, the efforts in required core curriculum English and communication courses are not always further integrated into engineering curriculum. Introducing a technical paper writing assignment in lower division engineering courses had the purpose of helping students to be better prepared for major writing assignments …

Modelling Hydraulic Fracturing Propagation In Heterogeneous Reservoirs Using Cohesive Zone Methods, Miguel Alejandro Gonzalez-Chavez

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The recent success in exploiting low permeability shale reservoirs has heavily relied on hydraulic fracturing to produce hydrocarbons economically in disadvantaged reservoir conditions. Although horizontal drilling significantly increases the contact area between the wellbore and the reservoir, the objective of hydraulic fracturing is set on creating further expanded conductive flow paths into the reservoir. This research uses cohesive zone method to numerically simulate hydraulic fracture propagation in the presence of natural fractures in two- and three-dimensional model. The Cohesive element approach limits fracture propagation to some predefined paths. However, in highly fractured formations since hydraulic fractures are growing through a …

Evaluation Of Self-Healing Of Asphalt Concrete Through Induction Heating And Metallic Fibers, Yashwanth Pamulapati

LSU Master's Theses

Healing by means of induction heating is promising, however the effectiveness of this technology is yet to be demonstrated due to limited studies on cracking damage and fracture resistance property recoveries after healing. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that a new generation of asphaltic materials could be artificially healed while in-service by embedding metallic fibers in the mix and by applying a magnetic field at the surface. To achieve this objective, an open-graded friction course (OGFC) was successfully designed and prepared to incorporate up to 5% steel and aluminum fibers by weight of the mix. …

A Model Compound Study In Syngas Tar Reforming, Jaren Lee

LSU Master's Theses

Biomass or coal gasification are promising processes for renewable energy. However, a major operating problem in gasification is what to do with syngas byproducts such as H2S and tars (heavy hydrocarbons) that cause catalyst deactivation downstream. Studies have shown that rare earth oxides (REOs) doped with transition metals are promising catalysts for tar reforming in the presence of sulfur.(R. Li, Roy, Bridges, & Dooley, 2014) In Chapter 1, propane is studied as a model compound for tar reforming with transition metal-doped (e.g., Mn, Fe) REOs. These are compared to a typical commercial Ni/Al2O3 catalyst. The results showed that REO/TM catalysts …

Characterization Of Thermoplastic Fusion Bonding Of Microchannels Using Pressure Assisted Boiling Point Control System, Kavya Dathathreya

LSU Master's Theses

An innovative method of thermoplastic fusion bonding using a pressure assisted boiling point control (PABP) system was characterized to determine the optimum parameters for bonding polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) components containing microchannels and thin, 250 µm cover sheets. The PABP system enables precise control of the temperature boundary condition and the applied pressure by immersing the components being bonded in boiling water and varying the vapor pressure. Test structure geometries containing microchannels of two depths and four different aspect ratios were designed: 1:10 (Depth: 10µm, Width: 100 µm and Depth: 5µm, Width: 50 µm), 1:50 (Depth: 10µm, Width: 500µm and Depth: …

Production Of Fermentable Sugars From Energy Cane Bagasse, Saeed Oladi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lignocellulosic biomass contains cellulose and hemicellulose which are composed of hexose and pentose sugars. These sugars can be used in the sustainable production of fuels and chemicals. However, the recalcitrant nature of lignocellulosic biomass makes this conversion a challenging process. An effective pretreatment can remove lignin, solubilize the hemicellulose, decrease cellulose crystallinity, and prepare the biomass for enzymatic hydrolysis and conversion into green renewable chemicals. The research study presented in this dissertation addressed some of the challenges associated with the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into green fuels and chemicals. This study was divided into three main goals. The first goal …

Development Of Single-Well Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage Process For Enhanced Oil Recovery, Bikash Deep Saikia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

EOR application in prolific deepwater Gulf of Mexico (DGOM) reservoirs has remained a challenge. Exorbitant well cost (>200M$) precludes having extensive injection patterns and very characteristics of the reservoirs themselves are partly to blame for negligible EOR activity in DGOM. We have been able to develop and demonstrate a novel design in the form of Single Well – Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage (SW-GAGD) process, which is potentially cost effective, at the same time ensuring very high oil recoveries. In this design, a single well acts as an injector as well as a producer, thereby minimizing well cost. The efficacy …

Performance Evaluation Of Instrumented Geosynthetics Reinforced Paved Test Sections Built Over Weak Subgrade Using Accelerated Load Testing, Shadi Hanandeh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Weak soil is a common problem in road construction. Whether it is a temporary access road or a permanent road built over a weak subgrade, a large deformation of the subgrade can lead to deterioration of the paved or unpaved surface. Geosynthetics offer a potentially economical solution for stabilizing roads built over weak soil. Three sets of testing programs were be conducted in this study.The first testing program includes conducting accelerated load testing of full-scale geosynthetic reinforced test lanes using rolling wheel load facility; the second program included conducting laboratory cyclic plate loading test on geosynthetic reinforced test sections constructed …

Process Monitoring And Data Mining With Chemical Process Historical Databases, Michael Carl Thomas

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Modern chemical plants have distributed control systems (DCS) that handle normal operations and quality control. However, the DCS cannot compensate for fault events such as fouling or equipment failures. When faults occur, human operators must rapidly assess the situation, determine causes, and take corrective action, a challenging task further complicated by the sheer number of sensors. This information overload as well as measurement noise can hide information critical to diagnosing and fixing faults. Process monitoring algorithms can highlight key trends in data and detect faults faster, reducing or even preventing the damage that faults can cause. This research improves tools …

Strengthening Shear Deficient Thin-Walled Steel Beams By Bonding Pultruded Gfrp Sections, Tuna Ulger

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Rehabilitation and retrofitting methods offer economical and feasible alternatives for upgrading aged and deficient structures. Structural strengthening using Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites have been widely investigated by researchers and used in field applications. The main advantage of FRP composites is the superior mechanical properties they offer over traditional structural materials. One novel alternative of these retrofitting methods was developed at Louisiana State University and called “Strengthening-by-Stiffening” (SBS). In SBS, the external strengthening of shear deficient thin-walled steel structures is achieved by bonding pultruded FRP sections to buckling prone web panels. Contrary to the commonly used uniaxial tension resistance of …

Optimal Configuration Of Inspection And Rework Stations In A Multistage Flexible Flowline, Md. Shahriar Jahan Hossain

LSU Master's Theses

Inspection and rework are two important issues of quality control. In this research, an N-stage flowline is considered to make decisions on these two issues. When defective items are detected at the inspection station the items are either scrapped or reworked. A reworkable item may be repaired at the regular defect-creating workstation or at a dedicated off-line rework station. Two problems (end-of-line and multistage inspections) are considered here to deal with this situation. The end-of-line inspection (ELI) problem considers an inspection station located at the end of the line while the multistage inspection (MSI) problem deals with multiple in-line inspection …

A Study Of Fpga Resource Utilization For Pipelined Windowed Image Computations, Aswin Vijaya Varma

LSU Master's Theses

In image processing operations, each pixel is often treated independently and operated upon by using values of other pixels in the neighborhood. These operations are often called windowed image computations (or neighborhood operations). In this thesis, we examine the implementation of a windowed computation pipeline in an FPGA-based environment. Typically, the image is generated outside the FPGA environment (such as through a camera) and the result of the windowed computation is consumed outside the FPGA environment (for example, in a screen for display or an engine for higher level analysis). The image is typically large (over a million pixels 1000×1000 …

The Effects Of Carbon Nanotubes On Cells In A Synthetic Oxygen Carrier Enriched Alginate Scaffold, Joshua Paul Tate

LSU Master's Theses

Abstract Huge progress has been made in the development of three dimensionally printed tissue structures. With the use of cells, three dimensional printers, and CAD drawing software, donor identical structures can be fabricated. However, cell scaffolds currently lack significant mechanical integrity which can result in reduced cellular survival, attachment, and nutrient delivery. For this reason, multiple strategies have been developed to increase and improve mechanical stability within engineered constructs without having to sacrifice cell viability. The hypothesis of this paper was that incorporating Perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), a greenhouse gas, with single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT), a allotrope of carbon with a …

Analysis And Management Of The Price Volatility In The Construction Industry, Alireza Joukar

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The problem of price volatility as it pertains to material and labor is a major source of risk and financial distress for all the participants in the construction industry. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to address this problem from both viewpoints of risk analysis and risk management. This dissertation offers three independent papers addressing this goal. In the first paper using the Engineering News Record Construction Cost Index (ENR CCI), a predictive model is developed. The model uses General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) approach which facilitates both forecasting of the future values of the CCI, and capturing and …

Rapid Cooling Of Eastern Oysters (Crassostrea Virginica) Using An On-Board Icing Unit To Slow The Growth Of Vibrio Vulnificus And Vibrio Parahaemolyticus, Melody Amber Thomas

LSU Master's Theses

Oyster harvesting is a major industry along the Eastern and Gulf coasts of the United States. Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) spawn when the waters start to warm between May and October in the Gulf of Mexico. The warmer temperature creates a problem with an increase of bacteria. The two major bacteria affecting the oyster industry are Vibrio vulnificus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus. These bacteria are the leading causes of seafood-borne illnesses in the United States. This increase of V. vulnificus and V. parahaemolyticus has led to stricter time/temperature requirements for harvesting oysters. The regulations are not plausible for smaller vessels too …

Filter Performance Under Simulated Real-World Conditions, Qiang Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Evaluating the performance of filter media for filtration applications is essential to assure design engineers and users that filter device will deliver promised performance for specific applications under the environmental stress. The study of particle loading characteristics of filter media in the laboratory setting is typically performed under the steady flow conditions, i.e., at the constant particle concentration and flow rate. In reality, filtration products are operated under the situations that the flow rate and mass concentration of particles are varied in time. The success of translating the laboratory data to estimate the performance of filter media in the fields …

In-House Fabrication Of Multi-Sized Polystyrene Microcarriers For Neural Stem Cell Expansion, Jessica Forrester

Theses and Dissertations

The clinical demand for neural stem cells drives the need for a reproducible method used to generate a large quantity of well-characterized cells to support regenerative therapies. Microcarriers are currently being used as a scaffold for stem cell culture to aid in this expansion process because they provide a larger surface area while also requiring fewer cell passages compared to monolayer culture. The main objective of this project was to investigate how human neural stem cell attachment, proliferation, and multipotency would respond to three-dimensional (3D) culture using peptide-coated microcarriers of varying diameters. In this study, multi-sized polystyrene microcarriers were fabricated …

Fabricating Superhydrophobic And Superoleophobic Surfaces With Multiscale Roughness Using Airbrush And Electrospray, Karam N. Almilaji

Theses and Dissertations

Examples of superhydrophobic surfaces found in nature such as self-cleaning property of lotus leaf and walking on water ability of water strider have led to an extensive investigation in this area over the past few decades. When a water droplet rests on a textured surface, it may either form a liquid-solid-vapor composite interface by which the liquid droplet partially sits on air pockets or it may wet the surface in which the water replaces the trapped air depending on the surface roughness and the surface chemistry. Super water repellent surfaces have numerous applications in our daily life such as drag …

Exploration Of Erasure-Coded Storage Systems For High Performance, Reliability, And Inter-Operability, Pradeep Subedi

Theses and Dissertations

With the unprecedented growth of data and the use of low commodity drives in local disk-based storage systems and remote cloud-based servers has increased the risk of data loss and an overall increase in the user perceived system latency. To guarantee high reliability, replication has been the most popular choice for decades, because of simplicity in data management. With the high volume of data being generated every day, the storage cost of replication is very high and is no longer a viable approach.

Erasure coding is another approach of adding redundancy in storage systems, which provides high reliability at a …

Autonomous Navigation With Obstacle Avoidance For Unmanned Aircraft Systems Using Milp, James A. Devens

Theses and Dissertations

Autonomous coordination among multiple aerial vehicles to ensure a collision free airspace is a critical aspect of today’s airspace. With the rise of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in the military and commercial sectors, obstacle avoidance in a densely populated airspace is necessary. This thesis investigates finding optimal or near-optimal trajectories in real-time for aircraft in complex airspaces containing a large number of obstacles. The solution for the trajectories is described as a linear program subject to mixed integer constraints, known as a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP). The resulting MILP problem is solved in real time using a well-known, public …

Diagnostics And Degradation Investigations Of Li-Ion Battery Electrodes Using Single Nanowire Electrochemical Cells, Naveen Kumar Reddy Palapati, Naveen Kumar Reddy Palapati

Theses and Dissertations

Portable energy storage devices, which drive advanced technological devices, are improving the productivity and quality of our everyday lives. In order to meet the growing needs for energy storage in transportation applications, the current lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technology requires new electrode materials with performance improvements in multiple aspects: (1) energy and power densities, (2) safety, and (3) performance lifetime. While a number of interesting nanomaterials have been synthesized in recent years with promising performance, accurate capabilities to probe the intrinsic performance of these high-performance materials within a battery environment are lacking. Most studies on electrode nanomaterials have so far used …

The Molecular And Mechanical Mechanisms Of The Age-Associated Increase In The Severity Of Experimental Ventilator Induced Lung Injury, Joseph Ames Herbert

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

Background

The majority of patients requiring mechanical ventilation are over the age of 65 and advanced age is known to increase the severity of ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI) and mortality. However, the mechanisms which predispose aging ventilator patients to increased mortality rates are not fully understood.

Pulmonary edema is a hallmark of VILI and the severity of edema increases with age. Ventilation with conservative fluid management decreases mortality rates in acute respiratory distress (ARDS) patients, but has not been investigated in VILI. We hypothesized that age-associated increases in pulmonary edema promote age-related increases in ventilator-associated mortality. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) …

Pattern Recognition In Class Imbalanced Datasets, Nahian A. Siddique

Theses and Dissertations

Class imbalanced datasets constitute a significant portion of the machine learning problems of interest, where recog­nizing the ‘rare class’ is the primary objective for most applications. Traditional linear machine learning algorithms are often not effective in recognizing the rare class. In this research work, a specifically optimized feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed and developed to train from moderate to highly imbalanced datasets.

The proposed methodology deals with the difficulty in classification task in multiple stages—by optimizing the training dataset, modifying kernel function to generate the gram matrix and optimizing the NN structure. First, the training dataset is extracted …

Effects Of Antidepressants On Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell Differentiation On Clinically Relevant Titanium Surfaces, Nancy B. Ayad

Theses and Dissertations

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most frequently prescribed class of drugs worldwide and are implemented in the treatment of depression and other psychiatric disorders. SSRIs relieve depressive symptoms by modulating levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. SSRIs block the function of the serotonin transporter, thereby increasing concentrations of extracellular serotonin. However, serotonin levels in the neurons of the brain only account for 5% while the remaining 95% is present outside the brain. Serotonin receptors and transporter are located on bone resident cells (mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)), osteoblasts and osteoclasts, and serotonergic activity is believed to affect …

Sparse Adaptive Local Machine Learning Algorithms For Sensing And Analytics, Jack Cannon

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

The goal of digital image processing is to capture, transmit, and display images as efficiently as possible. Such tasks are computationally intensive because an image is digitally represented by large amounts of data. It is possible to render an image by reconstructing it with a subset of the most relevant data. One such procedure used to accomplish this task is commonly referred to as sparse coding. For our purpose, we use images of handwritten digits that are presented to an artificial neural network. The network implements Rozell's locally competitive algorithm (LCA) to generate a sparse code. This sparse code is …

3d Fpga Cell Matrix By Self-Assembly, Jeffrey Udall

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

Physical size limitations in miniaturizing two-dimensional (2D) transistors are becoming more difficult to overcome. In order to continue increasing the processing power of electronic circuits, new design paradigms are needed. Three-dimensional (3D) architectures provide a solution to this issue and are currently being implemented via wafer stacking. However, more significant gains in terms of packing and speed can be achieved by CMOS components with truly integrated 3D cellular architectures. One of these is the Cell Matrix, a self-configurable defect- and fault-tolerant architecture, which is ideally suited for ultra large-scale integration. For this project, we worked to expand the Cell Matrix …

Quantitative Comparison Of A Nanoengineered Alumina Coated Cnt Arrays To Sio2 Coated Cnts And Solution Based Delivery System, Shree Aier

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

To meet the growing need for nanoengineered biocompatible materials to serve as drug delivery platforms, in this research, carbon nanotube arrays were fabricated by chemical vapor deposition, followed by an alumina coating by the high yielding, tightly controlled atomic layer deposition. This nanoengineered vertically aligned alumina nanowire array serves as a platform for delivering antigens, which act as cancer adjuvants. The physicochemical characteristics of the nanowires (NWs) can significantly influence the delivery of a biomolecule to immune cells. To investigate the material characteristics, the delivery efficiency of the antigen using NWs was quantitatively assessed by flow cytometry. Further, the mechanism …

Design For Fractal Grid Generated Turbulence, Moira Gion

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

Fractal geometry can be used to find organization or order in something that appears to be in disorder, or chaos. Turbulence is viewed as one place where fractal geometry can be found in nature. The irregularity in fluid flow is dependent on the initial conditions. In the past, the idea of self-similarity has been used to develop statistical theories of energy cascade in a turbulent flow. Recent studies have done experiments on obstructing flows with fractal objects to observe intermittency, (or self-similarity) within a turbulent flow. Experiments on fractal grid generated turbulence has been performed by other research groups, so …

High-Performance Computing For Drought Prediction, Henry Cooney

Maseeh Summer Undergraduate Research Experience

In recent decades, there has been considerable interest in using satellite soil moisture data to examine the global water-energy cycle and manage water resources. Current satellites are limited in their sensing depth, and can only directly measure top soil layers. Using a particle filter, this data may be fused with the output of a hydrologic simulation to improve simulation results, and characterize a hydrologic system at the watershed level. However, this approach increases computational requirements dramatically, and requires rethinking to accommodate data scaling and achieve good performance.

We present a detailed performance study of several alternative implementations of the hybrid …