Engineering Commons^™

Conversation Station, Davis Allen, Robert Bayer

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

We built a mobile application that improves speed and personalization in conversations for people struggling with verbal communication. Many people diagnosed with autism, Down syndrome, and other disorders face daily challenges involving communication due to speech impediments. Existing solutions allow users to communicate via speech cards or typing on a keyboard. However, these solutions make tradeoffs between personalization and speed, compromising what it takes to have fluid, natural) and rewarding conversations. Our solution speeds up personalized communication by applying Machine Learning principles, Artificial Intelligence, and Natural Language Processing. Our project will predict how a user will respond based on natural …

Taking Afrobarometer Data Everywhere, Christen Nguyen, Sean Thomas, Adrienne Tina

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

According to statistics gathered by research group Afrobarometer, many countries in Africa lack infrastructure and basic necessities. In fact, Afrobarometer knows the specific rates of need and availability sampled across thirty-six countries but more prosperous African countries do not know these numbers. These more developed countries are in a position to help their less fortunate neighbors if only made aware of the social and economic climate in the respective areas. Our partnership with Afrobarometer will allow us to advertise these statistics through the use of a mobile application. The data will be displayed in a way that is easy for …

Biofabrication Using Recombinant Spider Silk Proteins As A Biomaterial, Tamara B. Aigner, Elise K. Desimone, Thomas Scheibel

Biofabrication for Hierarchical in Vitro Tissue Models

Biofabrication for applications in regenerative medicine is a rapidly expanding field. Remarkable about this approach compared to traditional approaches is its feasibility for larger scale production at high quality and reproducibility. However, there is a lack of process-compatible materials for biofabrication due to the need for mild, aqueous processing conditions. More specifically, the solvents used must have neutral pH, and salts in proper osmolality, temperatures used cannot be too high or low, and so forth. The recombinant spider-silk protein eADF4(C16) (engineered Araneus diadematus fibroin 4) is biocompatible, biodegradable and hypoallergenic and can be provided in large quantities with consistent material …

Ambient Life, Ryan Scott, Shaun Suezaki

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Health Monitoring applications and devices are becoming very useful tools for people that want to take a more active role in their personal health. However, no current health-monitoring device is capable of harvesting its own power for operation. In our Senior Design project, we use an energy harvesting wireless sensor system that is designed to be easily worn on the wrist, or on the foot of an infant, in order to help people monitor their temperature and pulse rate. Our personal health-monitoring device operates using an Arduino pro mini microcontroller that reads in data from our sensors and passes them …

A Comparative Analysis Of Pretreatment Strategies On The Properties And Hydrolysis Of Brewers’ Spent Grain, Rajeev Ravindran, Swarna Jaiswal, Nissreen Abu-Ghannam, Amit Jaiswal

Articles

In this study, brewer’s spent grain (BSG) was subjected to a range pretreatments to study the effect on reducing sugar yield. Glucose and xylose were found to be the predominant sugars in BSG. Brewers spent grain was high in cellulose (19.21g/100g of BSG) and lignin content (30.84g/100g of BSG). Microwave assisted alkali (MAA) pretreatment was found to be the most effective pretreatment for BSG, where the pretreatment was conducted at 400W for 60s. A maximum reducing yield was observed with high biomass loading (1g/10ml), cellulase (158.76 μl/10ml), hemicellulase (153.3 μl/10ml), pH (5.4) and an incubation time (120h). Upon enzymatic hydrolysis, …

Evaluation Boundary And Design Method For Insulating Packages, Liao Pan, Jun Wang, Lixin Lu

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

To evaluate the failure potential of insulated packaging to heat outside, a so-called evaluation boundary for insulating packages was proposed for designing and estimating insulating packages based on the heat transfer law between the environment and a packaged product through packaging. Three evaluation parameters were suggested for describing the failure mechanism of insulating packages. The validity of the presented evaluation boundary was verified by the experimental data. Finally, a new design method of insulating packages based on the boundary was proposed and an application example was performed as a demonstration. The results indicated that the three evaluation parameters (which are …

Forge 2.0 Clean Burning Cook Stove, William Gebb, Matthew Lee, Thai Ha Sloan, Emily Gray-Gribble

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Team Forge 2.0 is a team of mechanical engineers that has designed, modified, and manufactured a cook stove that creates a clean burn in order to help relieve respiratory disease and harmful environmental impacts resulting from the combustion of biomass in developing nations. The stove is developed specifically for developing communities in Nicaragua that still use traditional cooking methods which contribute to premature deaths due to respiratory illness. The designed product is a cylindrical cooking device that has a unique air flow system which optimizes the gasification process. Gasification is the process in which gas released from the primary combustion …

Scu Cube, Matt Condino, Andrew Drape, Evan Eberhardt, Cooper Mcdonnell, Brayton Mcknight, Isaac Mcquillen, James Olwell, Laura Tschudy

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Traditional forms of communication such as landlines and cell phones are unreliable during disaster scenarios. It is difficult to coordinate relief efforts in the aftermath of a disaster due to the unavailability of reliable communication methods. The SCUCube is a 3U CubeSat designed to aid disaster relief communications. The satellite has an amateur radio primary payload that can send and receive standardized data packets with compatible radios, and also has an experimental attitude control system secondary payload. The semi-passive attitude control system uses a gravity gradient boom and a reaction wheel to stabilize the orientation of the satellite. In addition, …

A Review Of Injectable And Implantable Biomaterials For Treatment And Repair Of Soft Tissues In Wound Healing, Shih-Feng Chou, Simi Gunaseelan, Mhd Hussam Hijazi Kiellani, Venkata Vamsi Krishna Thottempudi, Pierre Neuenschwander, Huarong Nie

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The two major topics concerning the development of nanomedicine are drug delivery and tissue engineering.With the advance in nanotechnology, scientists and engineers now have the ability to fabricate functional drug carriers and/or biomaterials that deliver and release drugs locally as well as promote tissue regeneration. In this short review, we address the use of nanotechnology in the fabrication of biomaterials (i.e., nanoparticles and nanofibers) and their therapeutic function in wound healing as dressing materials. Furthermore, we discuss the use of surface nanofeatures to regulate cell adhesion, migration, proliferation, and differentiation, which is a crucial step in wound healing associated with …

Object Manipulation Using A Multirobot Cluster With Force Sensing, Matthew H. Chin

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

This research explored object manipulation using multiple robots by developing a control system utilizing force sensing. Multirobot solutions provide advantages of redundancy, greater coverage, fault-tolerance, distributed sensing and actuation, and reconfigurability. In object manipulation, a variety of solutions have been explored with different robot types and numbers, control strategies, sensors, etc. This research involved the integration of force sensing with a centralized position control method of two robots (cluster control) and building it into an object level controller. This controller commands the robots to push the object based on the measured interaction forces between them while maintaining proper formation with …

Conference Program, Jürgen Groll, Jos Malda

Biofabrication for Hierarchical in Vitro Tissue Models

No abstract provided.

Early Layout Design Exploration In Tsv-Based 3d Integrated Circuits, Mohammad Abrar Ahmed

Dissertations and Theses

Through silicon via (TSV) based 3D integrated circuits have inspired a novel design paradigm which explores the vertical dimension, in order to alleviate the performance and power limitations associated with long interconnects in 2D circuits. TSVs enable vertical interconnects across stacked and thinned dies in 3D-IC designs, resulting in reduced wirelength, footprint, faster speed, improved bandwidth, and lesser routing congestion. However, the usage of TSVs itself gives rise to many critical design challenges towards the minimization of chip delay and power consumption. Therefore, realization of the benefits of 3D ICs necessitates an early and realistic prediction of circuit performance during …

Data Analysis And Processing Techniques For Remaining Useful Life Estimations, John Scott Bucknam

Theses and Dissertations

In the field of engineering, it is important to understand different engineering systems and components, not only in how they currently perform, but also how their performance degrades over time. This extends to the field of prognostics, which attempts to predict the future of a system or component based on its past and present states. A common problem in this field is the estimation of remaining useful life, or how long a system or component functionality will last. The well-known datasets for this problem are the PHM and C-MAPSS datasets. These datasets contain simulated sensor data for different turbofan engines …

Comprehensive Silica Removal With Ferric Compounds For Industrial Wastewater Reuse, Ehren D. Baca

Civil Engineering ETDs

Cooling towers, integrated circuit (IC) manufacture and reverse osmosis (RO) generate copious amounts of wastewater high in colloidal and reactive silica inhibiting on-site or synergistic reuse. Silica present in cooling water can reach solubility limits via evaporation and form impervious scale on heat transfer surfaces that decreases efficiency. When water is treated by RO operating at high rejection, silica forms difficult-to-remove scale on the membrane feed side in the form of glassy patches and communities of aggregate particles, inhibiting aspirations for zero liquid discharge. Current methods for silica scale mitigation include abundant dosing with chemical antiscalents or complex operating schemes. …

Pilot Training Metrics At A Part 141 University Training Program, Steven Hampton, Dothag Truong, Ken Byrnes, Troy Techau

Publications

The study evaluates training at a collegiate flight training program providing metrics for time and costs from zero time to a Private Pilot. Training times for flights and activities are pulled from a sophisticated database used at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) and matched with flight and ground school lessons and then further subdivided to determine the amount of time spent training in areas of operation that are prescribed by the Federal Aviation Administration in the published Practical Test Standards and Airman Certification Standards for those seeking pilot licenses and ratings. Provided are mean times and costs for a prospective pilot …

Static Testing Of Propulsion Elements For Small Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Robert W. Deters, S.C. Kleinke, Michael S. Selig

Publications

The growing use of small multirotor aircraft has increased the interest in having better performance results especially with the propulsion system. The size of the propellers used on these aircraft operate at low Reynolds numbers that are typically less than 200,000. Static performance testing of ten propeller pairs (tractor and pusher) were completed and is the beginning of a systematic test of propellers used on multirotor systems. The propellers chosen for this initial set of tests were selected from four popular quadrotors. Besides testing the propellers provided with the aircraft, propellers that are sold as replacements from third-party companies were …

Miniaturizing America's Tallest Dam | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Engineers at Utah State University’s Utah Water Research Laboratory have constructed a 1:50 scale model of the Oroville Dam spillway.

Increasing Probability Of Mass-Mortality During Indian Heatwaves, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Rising global temperatures are causing increases in the frequency and severity of extreme climatic events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves. Here, we analyze changes in summer temperatures, the frequency, severity and duration of heatwaves, and heat-related mortality in India between 1960 and 2009, using data from the India Meteorological Department. Mean temperatures across India have risen by more than 0.5 °C over this period, with statistically significant increases in heatwaves. Using a novel probabilistic model, we further show that the increase in summer mean temperatures in India over this period corresponds to a 146% increase in the probability of …

China's Motorization Wave And The Place Of Emerging Technologies, Christopher Cherry

PSU Transportation Seminars

E-bikes, E-Cars, Carshare, Bikeshare, and Micro-EVs in China have shaken up the traditional motorization pathways that have occurred in developing countries in the past. The combination of emerging vehicle technologies, urban and environmental constraints, and heavy-handed policy make China's motorization processes unique in the world—but how China motorizes has far-reaching impacts based on sheer volume of vehicles and population.

This seminar discusses the results of a six-year NSF CAREER project to explore China's motorization processes, combining behavioral and environmental modeling approaches to assess the impacts of emerging vehicle technologies on motorization and ultimately environmental sustainability. The focus is mostly on …

Evaluation Of Concrete Constitutive Models For Impact Simulations, Guillermo A. Mata

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

The research documented in this thesis deals with computational analysis of reinforced concrete impacted by both hollow and solid missiles as a continuing effort on the work conducted by the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) and Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The analysis focuses on comparing two similar material models and their ability to capture the mechanistic response of a reinforced concrete slab subjected to impact loads. The analysis was performed using the Sandia National Laboratories computing software SIERRA Solid Mechanics to run the finite element model. The two constitutive models studied were the Holmquist-Johnson-Cook and Johnson-Holmquist 2 …

Smart Grid Technology In The Developing World, Jacob R. Young

Honors Projects

A smart grid is the integration of communication and information technologies with contemporary power infrastructure to enhance load service and to incorporate continually evolving end-use applications. It is the latest advancement in the areas of power generation, transmission and distribution. It has advanced beyond the traditional grid structure at every stage; a smart grid is capable of incorporating distributed generation (DG) renewable sources and has improved transmission capabilities through implementation of technologies such as Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS). Through the addition of control technology in the distribution network a smart grid is able to implement “self-healing” and other methods …

Acetone Production, Ali Ibrahim Neamah

The Hilltop Review

Iraq struggles with a lack of acetone production. This overall deficiency impacts the economy of countries like Iraq. Inasmuch, acetone is a vital chemical component for many items imported into this country such as nail polish remover. Therefore, a process of acetone production is proposed in this study.

The ideal process of producing acetone with 90.0% isopropyl alcohol (IPA) decomposition method is proposed within this study. The feed of the process is 100000 ton/ day. This amount of feed is suggested due to the demographic need of acetone for the Iraqi population as well as the surrounding Middle Eastern region. …

Balancing Of Production Line In A Bearing Industry To Improve Productivity, Sudharsan Sridhar, Balthilak Anandaraj, Santhosh B

The Hilltop Review

Line balancing addresses the issues of balancing production or assembly line and it generally minimizes the idle time for all the events and the combinations of workstations. Factors such as lack of materials, design changes in the product, labor position may also be needed for line balancing. We approached the industry and proposed a heuristic solution solving in two different platforms, by rearranging the existing tasks over the work stations, so that the idle time of the machines are reduced to minimum and the other is by using Timer Pro software where grouping of similar kind of activities are to …

Auto Generation Of Xliff Translation Documents From Proprietary File Formats, Kieran O'Connor, Geraldine Gray

The ITB Journal

The handling of proprietary documents by localisation vendors is time consuming and error prone, and represents a significant challenge to localisation projects. Vendors with many customers, each with its own set of document formats, must potentially support a document format set numbering in the hundreds or thousands. This paper describes an approach to automating the extraction of translatable text from a variety of file formats. The solution is based on XLIFF, language parsers, and XML transformations.

Implementing Test Patterns To Dynamically Assess Internet Response For Potential Voip Sessions Between Sip Peers, Declan Barber

The ITB Journal

The capability of VoIP to provide internet telephony is limited by the lack of homogeneous quality of service (QoS) mechanisms in the Internet. Whereas approaches which reserve QoS resources will work well in an end-to-end managed environment, they are not automatically suited to the heterogeneous nature of the Internet. It may be possible to adopt the 'chirp-sounder' approach uses in establishing the optimal frequency channel for a high frequency (HF) radio transmission which dynamically samples a range of possible transmission channels and uses the echoing of a an established test pattern to ascertain the quality of the potential links. The …

Developing Real-Time Multimedia Conferencing Services Using Java And Sip, Gavin Byrne, Declan Barber

The ITB Journal

This paper examines Java's suitability in creating real-time multimedia communications-based applications in Next Generation Networks (NGNs). We investigate some of the current enabling technologies provided by the Java plaiform which are concerned with the rapid development of realtime communications-based products and services. In particular, we look at creating a multiparty conferencing and collaboration service using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the JAIN Framework and present an approach which models multiparty conferencing applications by separating signaling and media transfer functionality. We map our model through the design stage to an implementation in Java. This paper is based on real experiences …

Web Enabled Embedded Devices, Anthony Keane, Brian Myler

The ITB Journal

The trend in manufacturing of computerised control systems has been to miniaturise the components while increasing the functionality of the systems. This has led to the development of small inexpensive hand-held computer devices coupled with the availability of a user friendly application development language, Java and public cost-effect communication networks has given the developer a programmable web-enabled embedded device. This paper investigates the steps involved in programming the Tiny InterNet Interface platform and analyses the limitations imposed by miniaturisation on this device.

Soft, Vertical Handover Of Streamed Multimedia In A 4g Network, Ger Cunningham, Philip Perry, Liam Murphy

The ITB Journal

In this paper the soft, vertical handover of streamed multimedia in a 4G network is considered. We propose a soft handover solution in which the mobile client controls the handover. This solution requires no modifications to existing wireless networks. The second stream required for the soft handover is duplicated just above the transport layer, rather than requiring the server to play out a second stream that needs to be synchronised with the existing stream. Such a scheme is outlined, and the results are presented that show how the scheme functioned in an emulated environment.

Measurement Of The Frequency Response Of Clinical Gas Analysers, Kabita Shakya, Catherine Deegan, Fran Hegarty, Charles Markham

The ITB Journal

A technique for the time and frequency response measurement of clinical CO2 analysers has been established. The time and frequency response of several analyser systems has been determined. This paper presents the case for the routine measurement of the dynamic performance of such systems in the context of their application in high-frequency ventilation schemes. The importance of these measurements has been demonstrated in the comparison of older and newer systems in the sense that older systems demonstrate significant deterioration in peiformance. In the context of the use of capnographs in life-support systems, it is essential to measure and monitor the …

Investigation Into The Correct Statistical Distribution For Oxide Breakdown Versus The Oxide Thickness Used In Integrated Circuit Manufacture, James Prendergast, Eoin O'Driscoll, Ed Mullen

The ITB Journal

A critical aspect of integrated circuit manufacturing is the reliability of the components, in particular the gate oxide of transistors and capacitors. Accelerated stress tests are used for reliability predictions of gate oxides. There are two statistical distributions, which can be applied to stress test failure data, namely the Lognormal or the Weibull distributions. The failure data can fit each distribution equally well. However the use of either distribution will give vastly different lifetime predictions and their correct use is crucial for accurate lifetime prediction. A statistical based test, developed with Monte Carlo data, which is designed to decide if …