Engineering Commons^™

Implementation Of Agile Project Management In The Classroom, Michael Jerrod Myers

Theses and Dissertations

The world of engineering and engineering practices is advancing rapidly. In response to this rapid change, engineering education practices have to advance to ensure students are properly trained for the workforce. The purpose of this report is to address and substantiate the hypothesis that if engineering instruction incorporated Agile project management methods, then students will be challenged by professors to accomplish course objectives with a systematic and timely approach that will improve assessment performance metrics and present the framework of how agile methods of project management can be integrated into the classroom. The agile methods incorporated will also encourage the …

Effects Of Process Variants On Metallurgical And Mechanical Properties In Friction Stir Welding Of Aluminum Alloys, Xiaomin Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Conventional shoulder friction stir welding (CSFSW) produces uneven heat input through welded material thickness: higher close to the top and lower close to the bottom. When CSFSW is applied on certain aluminum alloys, such as 7xxx and 2xxx series high strength aluminum alloys which contain low melting point intermetallic, overheating and local melting may happen close to weld crown. Stationary shoulder friction stir welding (SSFSW) may generate much more uniform heat input through plate thickness than CSFSW due to the non-rotating shoulder and rotating pin. Therefore, overheating and local melting are expected to be avoided in SSFSW. Furthermore, local properties …

Evaluation Of Concrete Degradation Using Acoustic Emission: Data Filtering And Damage Detection, Marwa A. Abdelrahman

Theses and Dissertations

The prevalence of aging and deteriorating infrastructure in the U.S. has raised concerns regarding its level of serviceability, reliability, and vulnerability to natural disasters. This issue has gained attention recently and efforts are being conducted to accelerate the delivery of enhanced nondestructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) methods. Acoustic emission (AE) is a strong candidate for these applications due to its high sensitivity and potential for damage detection in different materials. However, several challenges associated with the technique hinder the development of automated, reliable, real-time SHM using AE.

This study aims to advance the use of AE for …

Interest Detection In Image, Video And Multiple Videos: Model And Applications, Yuewei Lin

Theses and Dissertations

Interest detection is detecting an object, event, or process that draws attention. In this dissertation, we focus on interest detection in images, video and multiple videos. Interest detection in an image or a video is closely related to visual attention. However, the interest detection in multiple videos needs to consider all the videos as a whole rather than considering the attention in each single video independently.

Visual attention is an important mechanism of human vision. The computational model of visual attention has recently attracted a lot of interest in the computer vision community mainly because it helps find the objects …

Development Of A Pressure Swing Adsorption (Psa) Cycle For Co2 Capture From Flue Gas Using A 4-Bed Psa Apparatus, Joshua White

Theses and Dissertations

Pressure swing adsorption is an effective way to capture CO2 from flue gases in energy plants. Pressure swing adsorption utilizes an adsorbent’s selectivity to a specific compound to remove it from a feed stream. Zeolite 13X was used for this research to obtain a high purity and recovery of CO2 at a higher feed flow than previous research. The first part of the work was to use in house FORTRAN based Dynamic Adsorption Process Simulator (DAPS) that uses the finite difference method and the time adaptive Differential- Algebraic Equation (DAE) solver called DASPK to narrow down appropriate experiment criteria for …

Rational Design And Synthesis Of Pt/Silica-Alumina Metal-Acid Bifunctional Catalysts, Jadid Ettaz Samad

Theses and Dissertations

In the domain of rational catalyst design and synthesis, Strong Electrostatic Adsorption (SEA) has been applied with tremendous potential and use. In this study, SEA method has been advanced to thick slurries as well as to mixed oxide systems with a view to synthesizing stable, active and selective catalysts fine-tuned for specific applications.

The main objective was to synthesize metal-acid bifunctional catalysts with controlled ratio and proximity between metal and acid sites in order to analyze their effects on a bifunctional reaction. At first, the difference in charging behavior of silica and alumina in solution was used to selectively deposit …

Techno Economical Analysis Of Solid Oxide Iron-Air Redox Battery For Power Generation And Energy Storage, Farzana Yasmeen

Theses and Dissertations

The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation. Due to increasing environmental constraints associated with greenhouse gas emissions and uncertainty in the supply of fossil fuels, power systems of the future will become more reliable on renewable power source. To overcome the intermittency issue of renewable power, a promising cost effective electricity-storage systems is vital. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has established detailed cost targets for energy storage system. One of the targets is capital cost which should be under $150/kWh for new technology. Another target …

Rational Synthesis To Optimize Ruthenium-Based Biomass Conversion Catalysts, Shuo Cao

Theses and Dissertations

With worldwide petroleum resources dwindling and greenhouse gas emissions rising, it is urgent to find renewable replacements for petroleum-derived products. A biomass-derived chemical with high potential as a platform intermediate, γ-valerolactone (GVL) can be readily synthesized by hydrogenation of levulinic acid (LA), itself a common biomass intermediate, using supported Ru catalysts. Overall, vapor phase hydrogenation is more energy sensitive as the higher boiling point of LA (~245°C) and requires a high energy input, comparable to liquid phase hydrogenation, which is more economical. To date the literature on many novel biomass conversion processes such as the hydrogenation of LA to GVL …

Improved Assessment Of The Magnitude And Acceleration Of Prehistoric Earthquakes In The South Carolina Coastal Plain, Emad Gheibi

Theses and Dissertations

Seismically-induced soil liquefaction is one the most hazardous geotechnical phenomenon that can cause loss of life and devastating damage to infrastructure. Proper estimation of critical ground motion parameters (e.g. peak ground acceleration and earthquake magnitude) is vital for seismic design of new structures and retrofit of existing structures, especially in regions such as the South Carolina Coastal Plain (SCCP) where the frequency of re-occurrence of large earthquakes is low (studies of paleoliquefaction features have revealed seven, large, prehistoric earthquakes occurring within the last 6000 years) and the locations of potential sources are not exactly known. Moreover, due to mechanical and …

Exploitation Of Food Industry Waste For High Value Products, Rajeev Ravindran, Amit Jaiswal

Articles

A growing global population calls for an increasing demand for food production and processing industry associated with it, and consequently generation of large amounts of food waste. This problem is further intensified due to slow progress in the development of effective waste management strategies, and less measure for the proper treatment and disposal of waste. Food waste is a reservoir of complex carbohydrates, proteins, lipids and nutraceuticals and can form the raw materials for commercially important metabolites. The current legislation on food waste treatment prioritises the prevention of waste generation and least emphasises disposal. Recent valorisation studies for food supply …

Digital Forensics In Law Enforcement: A Needs Based Analysis Of Indiana Agencies, Teri A. Cummins Flory

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Cyber crime is a growing problem, with the impact to society increasing exponentially, but the ability of local law enforcement agencies to investigate and successfully prosecute criminals for these crimes is unclear. Many national needs assessments have previously been conducted, and all indicated that state and local law enforcement did not have the training, tools, or staff to effectively conduct digital investigations, but very few have been completed recently. This study provided a current and localized assessment of the ability of Indiana law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate crimes involving digital evidence, the availability of training for both law enforcement …

Verification Of Recovered Digital Evidence On The Amazon Kindle, Marcus Thompson, Raymond Hansen

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Amazon Kindle is a popular e-book reader. This popularity will lead criminals to use the Kindle as an accessory to their crime. Very few Kindle publications in the digital forensics domain exist at the time of this writing. Various blogs on the Internet currently provide some of the foundation for Kindle forensics. For this research each fifth generation Kindle was populated with various types of files a typical user may introduce using one method, the USB interface. The Kindle was forensically imaged with AccessData’s Forensic Toolkit Imager before and after each Kindle was populated. Each file was deleted through …

Making Sense Of Email Addresses On Drives, Neil C. Rowe, Riqui Schwamm, Michael R. Mccarrin, Ralucca Gera

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Drives found during investigations often have useful information in the form of email addresses which can be acquired by search in the raw drive data independent of the file system. Using this data we can build a picture of the social networks that a drive owner participated in, even perhaps better than investigating their online profiles maintained by social-networking services because drives contain much data that users have not approved for public display. However, many addresses found on drives are not forensically interesting, such as sales and support links. We developed a program to filter these out using a Naïve …

Countering Noise-Based Splicing Detection Using Noise Density Transfer, Thibault Julliand, Vincent Nozick, Hugues Talbot

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Image splicing is a common and widespread type of manipulation, which is defined as pasting a portion of an image onto a second image. Several forensic methods have been developed to detect splicing, using various image properties. Some of these methods exploit the noise statistics of the image to try and find discrepancies. In this paper, we propose a new counter-forensic approach to eliminate the noise differences that can appear in a spliced image. This approach can also be used when creating computer graphics images, in order to endow them with a realistic noise. This is performed by changing the …

A Cross-Sectional Investigation Of The Relationships Education, Certification, And Experience Have With Knowledge, Skills, And Abilities Among Aviation Professionals, Daryl Watkins, Jason M. Newcomer, Matthew P. Earnhardt, James W. Marion, Rose A. Opengart, Aaron M. Glassman

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The aviation industry is a complex system with many different segments and as such, makes hiring the right person a complicated endeavor. Previous research suggested that knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are composed of elements that include education, certification, and experience (ECE). The relative importance of ECE is dependent on the type of job within the aviation sector. The objective of this mixed-methods concurrent triangulation study was to examine aviation industry professionals’ perceived relationship between their ECE and the development of their KSAs. The convenience sample consisted of 404 professionals in the aviation industry who completed the KSA Composite Measure …

Determination Of Rejected Landing Roll Runway Point-Of-No-Return And Go-Around In Transport Category Airplanes, Nihad E. Daidzic, Ph.D., Sc.D.

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The decelerate-accelerate-takeoff maneuver in transport category airplanes has been discussed. Mathematical model based on total energy conservation has been used to calculate the rejected landing point-of-no-return on a runway which will still enable the airplane to safely execute go-around and achieve regulatory screen heights and takeoff safety speeds. After this point has been exceeded or below the point-of-no-return speed no go-around should ever be considered. Landing long and fast and/or decelerating on slippery runways may very well result in an overrun which could be prevented if the go-around is attempted before reaching this critical runway point. The point-of-no-return on the …

Evidential Reasoning For Forensic Readiness, Yi-Ching Liao, Hanno Langweg

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

To learn from the past, we analyse 1,088 "computer as a target" judgements for evidential reasoning by extracting four case elements: decision, intent, fact, and evidence. Analysing the decision element is essential for studying the scale of sentence severity for cross-jurisdictional comparisons. Examining the intent element can facilitate future risk assessment. Analysing the fact element can enhance an organization's capability of analysing criminal activities for future offender profiling. Examining the evidence used against a defendant from previous judgements can facilitate the preparation of evidence for upcoming legal disclosure. Follow the concepts of argumentation diagrams, we develop an automatic judgement summarizing …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Electronic Voting Service Using Block-Chain, Kibin Lee, Joshua I. James, Tekachew G. Ejeta, Hyoung J. Kim

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Cryptocurrency, and its underlying technologies, has been gaining popularity for transaction management beyond financial transactions. Transaction information is maintained in the block-chain, which can be used to audit the integrity of the transaction. The focus on this paper is the potential availability of block-chain technology of other transactional uses. Block-chain is one of the most stable open ledgers that preserves transaction information, and is difficult to forge. Since the information stored in block-chain is not related to personally identify information, it has the characteristics of anonymity. Also, the block-chain allows for transparent transaction verification since all information in the block-chain …

Java Based Visualization And Animation For Teaching The Dijkstra Shortest Path Algorithm In Transportation Networks, Ivan Makohon, Duc T. Nguyen, Masha Sosonkina, Yuzhong Shen, Manwo Ng

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Shortest path (SP) algorithms, such as the popular Dijkstra algorithm has been considered as the "basic building blocks" for many advanced transportation network models. Dijkstra algorithm will find the shortest time (ST) and the corresponding SP to travel from a source node to a destination node. Applications of SP algorithms include real-time GPS and the Frank-Wolfe network equilibrium.

For transportation engineering students, the Dijkstra algorithm is not easily understood. This paper discusses the design and development of a software that will help the students to fully understand the key components involved in the Dijkstra SP algorithm. The software presents an …

Internet Of Things To Smart Iot Through Semantic, Cognitive, And Perceptual Computing, Amit P. Sheth

Publications

Rapid growth in the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in a massive growth of data generated by these devices and sensors put on the Internet. Physical-cyber-social (PCS) big data consist of this IoT data, complemented by relevant Web-based and social data of various modalities. Smart data is about exploiting this PCS big data to get deep insights and make it actionable, and making it possible to facilitate building intelligent systems and applications. This article discusses key AI research in semantic computing, cognitive computing, and perceptual computing. Their synergistic use is expected to power future progress in building intelligent systems …

Synthesis Of Well Dispersed Supported Metal Catalysts By Strong Electrostatic Adsorption And Electroless Deposition, John Meynard Macasero Tengco

Theses and Dissertations

Enhancing the catalytic performance of heterogeneous catalysts can be done by increasing active site count as well as modification of the physico-chemical characteristics of the catalyst material. For supported metal nanoparticles this can be achieved by decreasing particle size, thus increasing dispersion or metal utilization on the surface of the particles, while modification of metal properties can be attained by addition of a secondary metal that has a strong interaction to the primary metal, beneficial for a given reaction. In addition, the accessibility of the metal surface is necessary for reliable performance of catalysts. For carbon supported catalysts, Temperature Programmed …

Estimating Local Average Power In A Line-Of-Sight Indoor Channel: Spatial Sampling And Processing, Israt Jahan Disha

Theses and Dissertations

Modeling of indoor radio channels has been a dynamic area of research in recent years because of the increasing demand for indoor wireless communications. In order to efficiently deploy such indoor systems, a good knowledge of the indoor wireless channel’s characteristics are required. One important characteristic is an accurate propagation path loss model. For developing such models various measurements have been carried out. In modeling propagation path loss in complex indoor environments, accurate and fast algorithms for estimating the local mean signal level are essential; these are also of use for power control and handoff decisions. These local mean power …

Electrochemical Reduction Of Carbon Dioxide On Carbon Nanostructures: Defect Structures & Electrocatalytic Activity, Pranav Parag Sharma

Theses and Dissertations

The advantages of the electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide to fuels using renewable energy sources are two-fold: (1) it has the potential to accomplish a carbon-neutral energy cycle and (2) it can provide an approach to tackle the environmental challenges caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Although thermodynamically possible, the kinetics of carbon dioxide reduction to fuels remains challenging and therefore, an efficient and robust electrocatalyst is needed to promote the reaction. The ideal catalyst for the electrochemical CO2 reduction must be capable of mediating multiple proton-coupled electron transfer reactions at low overpotentials, suppressing the concurrent hydrogen evolution reaction, converting …

Deformation Induced Martensitic Transformation In 304 Stainless Steels, Junliang Liu

Theses and Dissertations

304 stainless steel is an austenitic steel widely used for various applications due to a good combination of strength and ductility and relative low cost. It is known to be metastable as the austenite phase can transform into martensite under stress. In this work, a new method (in-situ tensile TEM) and the traditional method (ex-situ tensile tests and TEM, XRD characterization) were used to investigate the mechanisms of deformation-induced martensitic transformation in 304SS samples at different temperatures.

The ex-situ tensile tests were conducted under a strain rate of 10-3 s-1 until rupture. After the tensile tests, the fractured area was …

Regular Expression Synthesis For Blast Two-Hit Filtering, Jordan Bradshaw

Theses and Dissertations

Genomic databases are exhibiting a growth rate that is outpacing Moore's Law, which has made database search algorithms a popular application for use on emerging processor technologies. NCBI BLAST is the standard tool for performing searches against these databases, which operates by transforming each database query into a filter that is subsequently applied to the database. This requires a database scan for every query, fundamentally limiting its performance by I/O bandwidth. In this dissertation we present a functionally-equivalent variation on the NCBI BLAST algorithm that maps more suitably to an FPGA implementation. This variation of the algorithm attempts to reduce …

Efficient Partitioning And Allocation Of Data For Workflow Compositions, Annamaria Victoria Kish

Theses and Dissertations

Our aim is to provide efficient partitioning and allocation of data for web service compositions. Web service compositions are represented as partial order database transactions. We accommodate a variety of transaction types, such as read-only and write-oriented transactions, to support workloads in cloud environments. We introduce an approach that partitions and allocates small units of data, called micropartitions, to multiple database nodes. Each database node stores only the data needed to support a specific workload. Transactions are routed directly to the appropriate data nodes. Our approach guarantees serializability and efficient execution.

In Phase 1, we cluster transactions based on data …

Assessment, Prevention And Remediation Of Corrosion In Weathering Steel Transmission Line Poles, Matthew Bruce Barragan

Theses and Dissertations

Electric utilities routinely use weathering steel (WS) in transmission line structures, capitalizing on corrosion resistance and associated cost savings. The formation of a protective iron-oxide patina on uncoated above-ground WS surfaces depends on the operating environment and exposure conditions. In fact, exposure to common aggressive environments, such as those found in sulfate-contaminated industrial areas and chloride-laden coastal areas, may dramatically hinder the corrosion resistance of WS transmission line structures.

To assess the corrosion behavior of WS transmission line poles, field inspections were conducted at five test sites comprising diverse operating environments and pole designs. These sites included three locations in …

Miniaturized Rf Components With A Novel Tunable Engineered Substrate For Wireless Communication Systems, Yujia Peng

Theses and Dissertations

There is an increasing demand for reliable sensor system capable of remote sensing and measuring interesting data. Although large communication range can be achieved, active wireless communication systems are still suboptimal in longtime applications due to their harmful battery supply. Inductively coupled passive devices, with the advantages in safe long-term implanting, structural simplicity, small fabrication footprint and low-cost production, are preferred in chronic monitoring, but little work has been done to optimize the performance of these systems, especially under some design constraints.

The model and optimization of an inductively coupled wireless pressure sensor system is presented in this dissertation. With …