Engineering Commons^™

Recent Progress In Template-Assisted Synthesis Of Nitrogen-Doped Porous Carbons For Oxygen Electroreduction, Wenhan Niu, Ligui Li, Shaowei Chen

Journal of Electrochemistry

Nitrogen (N)-doped porous carbons are potential alternatives to precious metal catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) at the cathodes of proton exchange membrane fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Template-assisted synthesis has been used extensively as a robust and versatile method in the preparation of such carbon catalysts, where the ORR activity has been found to be dependent on various structural parameters, such as the concentrations and molecular configurations of the dopants, and the porosity, surface accessibility and electrical conductivity of the carbon materials. In this review, we summarize recent progress in this area of research focusing on the design, preparation …

Reconstruction Of Distributions Of Nanoparticles Or Electroactive Nano-Components In Electrochemical Arrays Based On Chronoamperometric Data, Alexander Oleinick, Oleksii Sliusarenko, Irina Svir, Christian Amatore

Journal of Electrochemistry

The main scope of this work was to elaborate and test a simple mathematical and numerical procedure for reconstructing the probability density distributions f(ρ) characterizing the distribution of electroactive or electrocatalytic nano-components present or deposited on the electrochemically-inert surface of a planar conductor based on the time-dependent chronoamperometric responses of the corresponding electrochemical array. The mathematical and numerical validity of the procedure was established for three types of arrays (one periodical, two involving random dispersions) involving near-spherical nano-components dispersed on a flat surface. Indeed, altogether, these three types represent most 2D-experimental electrochemical nano-arrays used for analytical or electrocatalytic purposes. This …

Comparative Studies Of Fe, Ni, Co And Their Bimetallic Nanoparticles For Electrochemical Water Oxidation, Maduraiveeran Govindhan, Brennan Mao, Aicheng Chen

Journal of Electrochemistry

The design of efficient, durable, and earth-abundant electrocatalysts via environmentally compatible strategies for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is a vital for energy conversion processes. Herein we report a facile approach for the fabrication of low-cost and earth abundant metal catalysts, including iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), CoNi, and CoFe nanoparticles (NPs) on titanium (Ti) substrates through a one-step electrochemical deposition. Field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrocopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and electrochemical techniques were employed to characterize these nanoparticles. Our electrochemical results revealed that among the five synthesized nanomaterials, the …

Resistive-Pulse Analysis Of Single Phospholipid Vesicles Using Quartz Nanochannels, Jonathan T. Cox, Bo Zhang

Journal of Electrochemistry

We report the uses of resistive-pulse method and quartz nanochannels for the detection and size analysis of single vesicles. Cylindrical shape quartz nanochannels have been used to detect single phospholipid vesicles ranging from 100 to 300 nm and polystyrene nanoparticles ranging from 170 to 400 nm in diameter. Translocations of single vesicles and nanoparticle were detected as individual square current pulses, which could be used to determine particle size. Our results show excellent agreement between the particle/vesicle sizes obtained from nanochannels and those from dynamic light scattering (DLS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). This electronic-based method was found to be …

The Agile Approach In Pharmaceutical Software Development, Priyal Bhargava

Honors Scholar Theses

The Agile development model is increasingly being adopted by the pharmaceutical industry for software development. Currently, there are several software projects under development by pharmaceutical companies that are using the Agile process. Other methodologies such as the Waterfall process, a traditional approach to project management, have evolved over time and been compared against the Agile method. Also there are conflicts of interest which should be taken into consideration when in a pharmaceutical setting such as abiding by FDA regulations. In addition, Agile’s sub-divisional approaches add to the versatility of how this iterative approach is applied in the pharmaceutical industry. The …

Patient-Derived Hydrogel As A Sacrificial Matrix For Efficient Cell Loading, Shalmli U. Joshi

Honors Scholar Theses

The field of tissue engineering focuses on delivering patient-derived stem cells to the body through the use of degradable biomaterials, such as hydrogels, which are infused into engineered scaffolds. Hydrogels act as templates to support and guide cells towards the regeneration of new tissue. In this study, we introduce a completely intraoperative procedure for obtaining a fibrin hydrogel for tissue engineering applications. In the past, fibrin hydrogel has been commonly formed by combining fibrinogen protein with animal-derived thrombin. Instead, we have developed an automated, and therefore reproducible, protocol to isolate and form fibrin hydrogel without the use of animal-derived thrombin. …

Exploiting Self-Organization In Bioengineered Systems: A Computational Approach, Delin Davis, Anna Doloman, Gregory J. Podgorski, Elizabeth Vargis, Nicholas S. Flann

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

The productivity of bioengineered cell factories is limited by inefficiencies in nutrient delivery and waste and product removal. Current solution approaches explore changes in the physical configurations of the bioreactors. This work investigates the possibilities of exploiting self-organizing vascular networks to support producer cells within the factory. A computational model simulates de novo vascular development of endothelial-like cells and the resultant network functioning to deliver nutrients and extract product and waste from the cell culture. Microbial factories with vascular networks are evaluated for their scalability, robustness, and productivity compared to the cell factories without a vascular network. Initial studies demonstrate …

Transport Planning In Delft, Netherlands, Jan Nederveen

PSU Transportation Seminars

While the Netherlands is known today for the highest bicycling rates in the world, this movement only began in the 1970s. Transportation policy has been one of the critical keys to reducing automobile trips in the Netherlands.

Visiting scholar Jan Nederveen will present on transportation planning in the compact, densely populated city of Delft. Delft has been a city since 1246, and the historic street pattern is still visible today. The city has grown to 100,000 residents and covers an area of 5 square kilometers. Twenty years ago, the council decided to change the transportation philosophy from a car-oriented system …

Semi-Annual Program Progress Performance Report For University Transportation Systems Pppr#7, Florida Solar Energy Center, David L. Block

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The Electric Vehicle Transportation Center (EVTC) supports the U.S. Department of Transportation's strategic goal of planning for near-term integration of alternative fuel vehicles as a means to build a sustainable transportation system. The project objectives are to evaluate technologies, standards, planning and policies to ensure seamless integration of electric vehicles (EVs) into a complex transportation network and electricity grid. The EVTC bridges the gap between deployment of electric vehicles and the traditional transportation system. This document is a summary of the activities until April 28, 2017.

Impact Of Nafion Loading And Anion Adsorption On The Synthesis Of Pt Monolayer Core-Shell Catalysts, Lijun Yang, Dustin Banham, Elod Gyenge, Siyu Ye

Journal of Electrochemistry

Carbon supported palladium (Pd) nanoparticles were used as a model core material for the synthesis of platinum (Pt) monolayer core-shell catalysts using rotating disk electrode method and a copper (Cu) under potential deposition technique. The impact of Nafion on the synthesis process was revealed by electrochemical testing with various Nafion contents. The existence of Nafion influenced the Cu under potential deposition, galvanic replacement and eventually the oxygen reduction reaction activity of the core-shell catalyst. However, as long as the Nafion content was less than 5 wt% in the test film, adding Nafion could help to bind catalyst onto the surface …

Comparison Of Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity Of Pt-Alloy Nanocubes, Yongan Tang, Lin Dai, Shouzhong Zou

Journal of Electrochemistry

Alloying Pt with the first row non-noble transition metals has been demonstrated to increase the catalytic activity toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), which is the cathode reaction of the proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) and metal-air batteries. However, how much the ORR activity improvement comes from the alloying elements remains controversial. In this paper, the nanocubes of PtMn, PtFe, PtCo, and PtNi with the similar size and composition were prepared and their ORR activities were explored, in order to investigate the effects of alloying elements on the catalytic activity. The use of cubic shape particles minimizes the contribution to …

Rutile Tio2 Nanosheet Arrays Planted On Magnetron Sputtered Ti Metal Layers For Efficient Perovskite Solar Cells, Nang Zhang, Meidan Ye, Xiaoru Wen, Changjian Lin

Journal of Electrochemistry

In this work, vertical rutile titanium oxide (TiO₂) nanosheet arrays (NSAs) were firstly hydrothermally grown on the top of thin titanium (Ti) metal layers which were loaded on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) substrates by the DF magnetron sputtering deposition method. After an annealing post-treatment, the Ti metal layers were transformed into the compact TiO₂ layers with a strong connection between the rutile TiO₂ NSAs and the FTO substrates. For comparison, the rutile TiO₂ NSAs were similarly planted over two compact TiO₂ layers fabricated through atomic layer deposition (ALD) and spin coating (SC) methods, …

Electrodeposition Of Ruo2 Layers On Tio2 Nanotube Array Toward Co2 Electroreduction, Bei Jiang, Lina Zhang, Xianxian Qin, Wenbin Cai

Journal of Electrochemistry

RuO₂/TiO₂ composite materials have multitude of electrocatalytic applications including but not limited to CO₂ reduction reaction (CO₂RR). RuO₂/TiO₂ electrodes were previously prepared by repetitive coating and thermal decomposition (TD) of a Ru(III) precursor solution on Ti substrate. In this work, electrochemical potential cycling is applied to deposit amorphous RuO₂ (α-RuO₂) layers onto TiO₂ nanotube array (TNA) (RuO₂^CV/TNA) preformed on Ti foil. SEM, GIXRD, and voltammetry are applied to characterize the structures of the resulting RuO₂^CV/TNA. Ru loading on the RuO_{2 …}

Darcie Christensen Wins Robins Award | College Of Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

College of Engineering undergraduate Darcie Christensen is among the winners of this year's Robins Awards.

Study Of Custom Tool Control In Aviation And Aerospace And Selection Of Materials And Manufacturing Process, Ethan C. Rowley

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Business and Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Ethan C. Rowley on April 27, 2017.

Feature Selection And Improving Classification Performance For Malware Detection, Carlos A. Cepeda Mora

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

The ubiquitous advance of technology has been conducive to the proliferation of cyber threats, resulting in attacks that have grown exponentially. Consequently, researchers have developed models based on machine learning algorithms for detecting malware. However, these methods require significant amount of extracted features for correct malware classification, making that feature extraction, training, and testing take significant time; even more, it has been unexplored which are the most important features for accomplish the correct classification.

In this Thesis, it is created and analyzed a dataset of malware and clean files (goodware) from the static and dynamic features provided by the online …

Smartvid.Io, Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

The collection, organization, and retrieval of industrial media is a pervasive challenge that is especially glaring for companies in the AEC industry. Construction projects often generate large volumes of pictures & videos from the field for tracking progress and communicating between engineers, contractors, and subcontractors. It is not uncommon for field personnel to capture hundreds of photos per week on any given jobsite.

Smartvid.io is a cloud-based software solution designed for the specific needs of industrial media. The application’s internal deep-learning engines, collectively nicknamed VINNIE (for ‘Very Intelligent Neural Network for Insight and Evaluation’), use speech and image recognition to …

Kinematics Of The Lower Extremities During Fundamental Martial Arts Tricking Techniques, Kevin P. Grassie

Honors Scholar Theses

Martial Arts Tricking (MAT) is a relatively new sport that combines martial arts, gymnastics, acrobatics, and breakdancing for the purposes of creating aesthetic and impressive combinations of kicks, flips and twists. It has been growing exponentially through social media and the overall athletic and entertainment communities. The sport is very unique in that the movements, with their blended influences, provide novel ways for athletes to generate and utilize their momentum in a creative way. The results often include off-axis flips and twists, single-leg landings, and complicated yet fluid techniques that easily chain together.

Due to the sport only being a …

Developments And Properties Of Plastic Mimicking Biopolymers For Food Packaging Application, Daniel I. Hefft

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Sustainability takes an ever increasing importance in the food industry. Here not only the selection of raw materials plays a role, but also packaging materials. Nowadays there is an increasing number of biodegradable and bio-compostable packaging materials available.

However, these materials are still not able to replace mineral oil based packaging materials completely, nevertheless they are becoming increasingly important, since there must be solutions to problems such as pollution of the oceans by plastic waste, growing piles of rubbish from growing population, etc.

The following literature review shows briefly recent developments on plastic mimicking biopolymers, as these materials guarantee great …

Surface Waves Extraction And Their Effect On Effective Material Parameters Of Metamaterials, Xiaoyan Y.Z. Xiong, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Wei E.I. Sha

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We investigate the influence of the finite width of the metamaterial slabs. The surface waves excited in finite-width slabs are numerically extracted by the rigorous coupled-wave analysis method. The magnitudes and decay rates of surface waves are analyzed for different materials and geometries. A general homogenization method based on the analysis of appropriately defined macroscopic fields in metamaterial cells is proposed to retrieve the effective material parameters as functions of position. The effects of surface waves on effective material parameters are studied.

Providing A Unique Stem Education Opportunity With A Five Day Eleomission, Robert J. Twiggs, Amin Djamshidpour, Matt Craft, Dale Nash, Hank Voss

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint presentation created by Robert Twiggs, Amin Djamshidpour, Matt Craft, Dale Nash, and Hank Voss titled "Providing a Unique STEM Education Opportunity with a Five Day ELEOMission" from April 26, 2017.

Optimizing The B.O.B., Valerie N. Washington, Douglas Starzec

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

The Kennesaw State University Department of Transportation manages the Big Owl Bus (B.O.B.). The B.O.B. has 9 routes which provide transportation around and between the Kennesaw and Marietta campuses, as well as to select off-campus apartment complexes and shopping centers. We utilized a number of methodologies to recommend improvements to the efficiency and accessibility of the B.O.B. We first used the vehicle routing problem to develop a binary integer linear programming model. This allowed us to determine a new set of routes that minimize total travel time across the routes. Next, we developed an integer non-linear programming model to assign …

X650f Power Solution, Joseph Reed, Joe Lund, Donald Yu, Jessica Iglesias, Daniel Ewell

Aviation Technology Undergraduate Student Research

This poster presents the problem of how that students coming out of the UAV minor and major are not getting enough flight time in the starting courses such as AT 209 and AT 219. Due to this, they are not as prepared as they should be for the higher level courses such as AT 309 and AT 319. Our end goal is to somehow increase the level of flight time in the earlier courses so that they can be prepared and ready for the next level courses.

X650f Power Enhancement, Joseph Reed, Joe Lund, Donald Yu, Jessica Iglesias, Daniel Ewell

Aviation Technology Undergraduate Student Research

This proposal seeks to define the purpose, goals, and scope of the X650F Power Enhancement project. Five members of Purdue’s Aeronautical Engineering Technology program are leading this project as part of their senior capstone research course. The purpose of said project is to look into the many possibilities of enhancing the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) power supply. This can open doors to several opportunities that can benefit both the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) program here at Purdue University, as well as the all of the students expected to go into the industry. The ideas looked into include, but are not …

Optimization Of Fluorescent Imaging In The Operating Room Through Pulsed Acquisition And Gating To Ambient Background Cycling, Kristian J. Sexton, Yan Zhao, Scott C. Davis, Shudong Jiang, Brian Pogue

Dartmouth Scholarship

The design of fluorescence imaging instruments for surgical guidance is rapidly evolving, and a key issue is to efficiently capture signals with high ambient room lighting. Here, we introduce a novel time-gated approach to fluorescence imaging synchronizing acquisition to the 120 Hz light of the room, with pulsed LED excitation and gated ICCD detection. It is shown that under bright ambient room light this technique allows for the detection of physiologically relevant nanomolar fluorophore concentrations, and in particular reduces the light fluctuations present from the room lights, making low concentration measurements more reliable. This is particularly relevant for the light …

College Of Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

College of Engineering & Computing: News & Publications (2010-2023)

• Dr. Lei Chen & Dr. Lixin Li Conduct Software System Safety Workshop at Robins Air Force Base

Hillman Composite Beam (Hcb®), Purdue Ect Team

ECT Fact Sheets Archive

The Hillman-Composite Beam (HCB®), is an innovative structural member for use in highway and railroad bridges as well as marine facilities. The HCB is essentially a lightweight reinforced concrete beam strengthened and protected by a corrosion-resistant and resilient Fiberglass Reinforced Polymer (FRP) shell.

The beam is comprised of three main components, a concrete arch (compression reinforcement), an FRP bottom flange encapsulating steel strands tying the ends of the arch together (tension reinforcement) and the FRP shell. Galvanized Rebar “shear connectors” are used to make the beam composite with the concrete deck in the same manner as pre-stressed concrete beams.

The …

Detection Of Pheromone Laying Event In Foraging Data Of Harvester Ants Using Change Point Analysis Method, Safeeul Bashir Safee

Computer Science ETDs

Communication is an important factor in the foraging performance of social insects, such as ants. During foraging, ants keep track of food sources by using memory (site fidelity) or by communicating through pheromones. Previous field experiments showed that the rate of seed collection depends on the distribution of food in the environment. If food is spatially clustered, then it is beneficial for ants recruit nest mates to collect seeds from large clusters. However, we do not know when the recruitment occurs in natural ant population. To explore this question, we used a power law distribution to arrange seeds in piles …

Information Technology News, Georgia Southern University

Information Technology: News & Publications (2012-2023)

• Dr. Lei Chen & Dr. Lixin Li Conduct Software System Safety Workshop at Robins Air Force Base

College Of Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

College of Engineering & Computing: News & Publications (2010-2023)

• CEIT Student Research Symposium Awards
• CEIT Golf Tournament 2017 Winners