Engineering Commons^™

Design And Experiments Of A Sic Power Mosfet-Based Bidirectional Switching Power Pole (Bspp), Hussain Khthear Sayed Subhii

Theses and Dissertations

This research presents the design and experiments of a SiC power MOSFET-based bidirectional switching power pole (BSPP) by benefiting from the advantages of SiC power MOSFETs: high-speed switching, high power density, high operating temperatures, and low power losses. The main goal of this research is to design a printed circuit board (PCB) prototype with a minimum parasitic inductance to improve the switching transient performance of the SiC MOSFETs for the BSPP application. The effects of the parasitic inductance of the PCB power traces were investigated, for the BSPP application, based on the experimental, simulation, and theoretical analyses. The PCB prototypes …

Project Halon: Engaging Secondary Students In High-Altitude Ballooning Experiments, James M. Taylor Jr., Derrick A. Nero

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Project HALON Overview

•Fewer US STEM graduates

•Shortage of STEM educators

•Lack of engaging, high quality STEM material in the classroom

•Potentially results in lower global economic competitiveness

Experiment Constraints

•Project brings together STEM major mentors and educators

•Builds understanding of research and operational challenges

•Students get excited about more complex experiments (CubeSATs)

HALON: High Altitude Learning Over Nebraska

•High altitude balloon lift platform

•Student-designed experiments tailored to student team abilities

•NASA-inspired near-space systems engineering process for tradeoffs

•Engagement / mentoring for pre-service and in-service educators

The Sustainability Of Ion Exchange Water Treatment Technology, Adib Amini

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigated using a life cycle environmental and economic approach to evaluate IX technology for small potable water systems, allowing for the identification and development of process and design improvements that reduce environmental impacts and costs. The main goals were to evaluate conventional IX in terms of life cycle environmental and economic sustainability, develop a method for improving designs of IX systems from a environmental and economic sustainability standpoint, evaluate potential design improvements, and make the research findings accessible to water professionals through user-friendly tools and frameworks that take into account their feedback. This research provides an understanding, from …

Investigation Of Synthetic Spider Silk Crystallinity And Alignment Via Electrothermal, Pyroelectric, Literature Xrd, And Tensile Techniques, Troy Munro, Tristan Putzeys, Michael Wubbenhorst, Christ Glorieux, Cameron G. Copeland, Randolph V. Lewis, Changhu Xing, Heng Ban

Faculty Publications

The processes used to create synthetic spider silk greatly affect the properties of the produced fibers. This paper investigates the effect of process variations during artificial spinning on the thermal and mechanical properties of the produced silk. Property values are also compared to the ones of the natural dragline silk of the N. clavipes spider, and to unprocessed (as-spun) synthetic silk. Structural characterization by scanning pyroelectric microscopy is employed to provide insight into the axial orientation of the crystalline regions of the fiber and is supported by XRD data. The results show that stretching and passage through liquid baths induce …

Catalyzed Synthesis Of Zinc Clays By Prebiotic Central Metabolites, Marcelo I. Guzman, Ruixin Zhou, Kaustuv Basu, Hyman Hartman, Christopher J. Matocha, S. Kelly Sears, Hajatollah Vali

Chemistry Faculty Publications

How primordial metabolic networks such as the reverse tricarboxylic acid (rTCA) cycle and clay mineral catalysts coevolved remains a mystery in the puzzle to understand the origin of life. While prebiotic reactions from the rTCA cycle were accomplished via photochemistry on semiconductor minerals, the synthesis of clays was demonstrated at low temperature and ambient pressure catalyzed by oxalate. Herein, the crystallization of clay minerals is catalyzed by succinate, an example of a photoproduced intermediate from central metabolism. The experiments connect the synthesis of sauconite, a model for clay minerals, to prebiotic photochemistry. We report the temperature, pH, and concentration dependence …

Technology Assessment Model Of Developing Geothermal Energy Resources For Supporting Electrical System: The Case For Oregon, Ahmed Shehab Alshareef

Dissertations and Theses

The demand for energy is increasing worldwide. All applications contributed to increase the demand of all energy industry, and therefore the effect on the environment and the rise in pollution increased significantly. This is considered a large problem, and researchers focused their research on renewable energy for reducing the cost of energy in the future. Geothermal energy has significant impact as a source of electricity generation since it will not harm the environment. There are more than twenty countries that benefit from geothermal plants, which generate more than 6000 megawatts .Three alternatives of geothermal energy technology (GHP, Direct use of …

Use Of Chemical And Isotopic Identifiers To Characterize Ground Water Contamination Near Two Uranium Mill Sites, Central Nm, Mitchell T. Schatz

Civil Engineering ETDs

Chemical and isotopic signatures were used to discriminate between anthropogenic ground water and naturally occurring constituents. The U-234/U-238 activity ratio (AR) was determined in 34 samples from several aquifers underlying two former uranium mills near Milan, NM. Disposal of uranium ore waste into unlined tailings resulted in ground water contamination in the Lower San Mateo Creek Basin area. Ground water contamination from uranium mills have impacted the local ground water for residents down-gradient from the mills.

Previous studies that used uranium isotopes identified activity ratios of mill-derived uranium were near the secular equilibrium of 1, and those from natural ground …

Molecular-Size Selective Zeolite Membrane Encapsulated Novel Catalysts For Enhanced Biomass To Liquid (Btl) Processes, Ummuhan Cimenler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

80% of energy usage in the word comes from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) and among the fossil fuels, oil is the most consumed energy source especially in transportation. However, due to concerns about energy demand and energy sustainability, global warming and dependency on foreign oil, generation of renewable fuels is crucial for transportation. Biomass to Liquid (BTL) is a promising process available to produce renewable liquid fuels. BTL fuels have great potential to meet the growing demand for liquid fuels, mitigating climate change, and providing value to rural areas. However, there are two major challenges with biofuels produced …

Strategies For Reducing Preventable Hospital Readmissions On Medicare Patients, Andres Patricio Garcia-Arce

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The high expenditure of healthcare in the United States (U.S.) does not translate into better quality of care. Indeed, the U.S. healthcare system is recognized by its lack of efficiency and waste (which represents about 20% of the country’s healthcare expenses). Lack of coordination is one of the most referenced causes of waste in the U.S. healthcare system, and preventable hospital readmissions have been acknowledged to be evidence of poor coordination of care. In fiscal year 2013, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established financial penalties for inpatient care reimbursements in hospitals with excessive readmissions. All the same, …

Propagating Degrees Of Truth On An Argumentation Framework: An Abstract Account Of Fuzzy Argumentation, Pierpaolo Dondio

Conference papers

This paper proposes a computational framework to reason with conflicting and gradual evidence. The framework is a synthesis of Dung’s seminal work in argumentation semantics with multi-valued logic. Abstract grounded semantics is used to identify the conditions under which a conclusion can be accepted, while multi-valued logic operators are used to quantify the degree of truth of such conditions. We propose a truth-compositional recursive computation based on the notion of irrelevant arguments, and we discuss examples using the major multi-valued logics: Godel’s, Zadeh’s and Łukasiewicz's logic.

A Drosophila Model To Examine Collective Migration During Retinogenesis, Caroline Pena, Stephanie Zhang, Mildred Kamara, Tadmiri Venkatesh, Maribel Vazquez

Publications and Research

Retinal dysfunction is often caused by aberrant neural cell migration during development. In this study, we observed the migration of neural cells of the Drosophila melanogaster after marking cells of the 3rd instar larvae with the GAL4-UAS expression system when exposed to a concentration gradient of FGF-8 through the use of a microfluidic device. The glial and neuronal cell ratio in the developing brain was determined through immunofluorescent staining and observation. In future studies, a microfluidic device that mimics the developing Drosophila brain and retina will be designed in order to better understand the biological factors that affect the migration …

An Approach To Robust Homing With Stereovision, Fuqiang Fu, Damian Lyons

Faculty Publications

Visual Homing is a bioinspired approach to robot navigation which can be fast and uses few assumptions. However, visual homing in a cluttered and unstructured outdoor environment offers several challenges to homing methods that have been developed for primarily indoor environments. One issue is that any current image during homing may be tilted with respect to the home image. The second is that moving through a cluttered scene during homing may cause obstacles to interfere between the home scene and location and the current scene and location. In this paper, we introduce a robust method to improve a previous developed …

The Design And Optimization Of Cooperative Mobile Edge, Xueqing Huang

Dissertations

As the world is charging towards the Internet of Things (IoT) era, an enormous amount of sensors will be rapidly empowered with internet connectivity. Besides the fact that the end devices are getting more diverse, some of them are also becoming more powerful, such that they can function as standalone mobile computing units with multiple wireless network interfaces. At the network end, various facilities are also pushed to the mobile edge to foster internet connections. Distributed small scale cloud resources and green energy harvesters can be directly attached to the deployed heterogeneous base stations.

Different from the traditional wireless access …

Forensic Research On Detecting Seam Carving In Digital Images, Jingyu Ye

Dissertations

Digital images have been playing an important role in our daily life for the last several decades. Naturally, image editing technologies have been tremendously developed due to the increasing demands. As a result, digital images can be easily manipulated on a personal computer or even a cellphone for many purposes nowadays, so that the authenticity of digital images becomes an important issue. In this dissertation research, four machine learning based forensic methods are presented to detect one of the popular image editing techniques, called ‘seam carving’.

To reveal seam carving applied to uncompressed images from the perspective of energy distribution …

Design And Optimization Of An Explosive Storage Policy In Internet Fulfillment Warehouses, Sevilay Onal

Dissertations

This research investigates the warehousing operations of internet retailers. The primary physical process in internet retail is fulfillment, which typically involves a large internet fulfillment warehouse (IFW) that has been built and designed exclusively for online sales and an accompanying parcel delivery network. Based on observational studies of IFW operations at a leading internet retailer, the investigations find that traditional warehousing methods are being replaced by new methods which better leverage information technology and efficiently serve the new internet retail driven supply chain economy. Traditional methods assume a warehouse moves bulk volumes to retail points where the bulks get broken …

2017 Asc Bidding Competition – Heavy Civil, Shandy Holm, Kenneth Hunter, Kendra Jackson, Carlos Martinez, Jacob Nistler, Katherine Schuler

Proceedings of the Annual Montana Tech Electrical and General Engineering Symposium

We represent the 2017 Montana Tech Heavy Civil Team. Our senior design project consisted of competing in the Region 6 ASC (Associated Schools of Construction) Heavy Civil Bidding Competition in Sparks, Nevada. The competition required a full year of preparation. The fall semester was composed of planning, practicing, and gathering resources. The spring semester involved traveling to Sparks, Nevada, and performing in the competition. Preparing for the competition involved practice bids, where the team studied various aspects of heavy civil construction. Time was devoted to developing presentation skills, and different team bonding exercises encouraged unit cohesion. Finally, our preparation culminated …

Engineering At San Jose State University, Spring 2017, San Jose State University, Charles W. Davidson College Of Engineering

Engineering at San Jose State University

No abstract provided.

Making Random - Cryptography And The Generation Of Random Sequences, Samuel Barton

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

The algorithm utilizes the behavior of modern operating systems to generate random bits by putting the process to sleep for 10 microseconds, and then comparing the actual number of microseconds slept to the expected amount. The reason why this works for generating \random" bits is that modern operating systems do not wake processes exactly when they request. This is due to process scheduling. The algorithm uses the randomness in actual sleep time to generate each bit.

The bits are not truly random, as if a person were able to force the algorithm to always execute, then we would not have …

A Poet In Space: Identity Construction Through Hybridity, Jonathan Pessant

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

William Carlos Williams wrote: A poem is a small Machine made of words. Poetry and the STEM fields are no different when each discipline attempts to find meaning in the world, when each creates something beautiful through experimentation. STEM has the scientific method, with inductive and deductive reasoning, and the laws of nature while English has rhetorical style and grammatical structure. With a little imagination, hybridity between these two seemingly different discourses can produce new perspectives within each, and for each. These new perspectives could lead to new questions which would not have been imagined separately. This hybridity may be …

Excel Programming For A Visual Degree Progress Report, Brady Therrien

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

The University of Southern Maine is like many colleges in the fact that its engineering program has a lot of extensive requirements that a student must achieve before receiving a degree. These include but are not limited to the core and department curriculums, GPA, and Residency Requirements. Most of these are easily accessible to the student on MaineStreet to track progress like the example degree progress report in Figure 2. This progress report shows all of the information by what requirement each class satisfies so it can be really time consuming to scroll through them all, for example, to see …

Instructional Learning Aids For Gear Train Analysis In Machine Dynamics, William M. Bartholomew

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

In this project, a few instructional aids to teach gear train analysis to students are designed and manufactured. The system will progressively be more complex in order to help students understand the concepts first, and then the applications which are based on those concepts. The project involves theoretical, simulation and manufacturing (3D printing or CNC) components.

Hand Cranked Generator For Mobile Devices, Kyle Brown, Monique Butoto, Stephen Cain, Steven Corio, Brock Stevenson

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

It’s estimated that over 90% of American adults own cell phones while over 70% of the United States land area belongs to rural counties. It is a challenge to charge mobile devices in these remote and rural areas given the lack of access to power sources. This lack of power in remote destinations limits the general use of mobile devices for outdoor enthusiasts, as well as a survival means for all who need access to a portable power generation device, especially in emergency situations. There are other portable generators currently available on the market, but our project wanted to take …

Engineering News, Spring 2017, School Of Engineering

Engineering News

No abstract provided.

Evolution And Innerworking Of A Car Differential, Aaron Weiss, Caleb Loiselle

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

Create interactive demonstration pieces that display basic concepts of a car differential using visual aids as in the educational video ‘Around the Corner (1937): How differential Steering Works’.

Fabricate a custom stand for an open ended car differential. The final design of the car differential will be run by an on/off switch and a motor.

Contacts, Timothy Leonard, Abby Lisjak, Adam Foster

Sustainability and Connectivity

This a contact sheet of every group that the mentoring group has reached out to. There are no emails or phone numbers provided. If you would like those, please contact Kevin Hallinan.

Laser Microphone, Michael Mckee

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

The laser microphone is a multifaceted project. The main objective of this project is the design and construction of a laser microphone. This device is able to detect sound via variations in light waves. Production of this device being one obvious outcome of the project, observation and experimentation comprise the primary focus of the venture. Experiments reveal exactly how well this device is able to function and if it is able to be used in specific engineering applications. To function appropriately, this device should handle the translation from soundwaves to light waves with little to no alteration. Full signal analysis …

Design Verification Of Mems Resonators With Fem Simulator, Joshua Wiswell

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

The purpose of this project was to use COMSOL, an advanced FEM (finite element modeling) software, to analyze a Coupled Thermal Resonator. This Coupled Thermal Resonator was previously constructed in L-Edit, but when analyzed in COMSOL, it produced undesirable results. This project focused on improving the design and model of the Resonator to improve simulation results and evaluating the actual response of the MEMS device to determine if simulated results were accurate for the actual device. Many different factors may have contributed to producing the double peak seen in the simulation, including the weak coupling between the two resonators. These …

Quality Control Of Quilted Products With A Computer Vision Approach, Richard M. Bigega

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

This ongoing research examines the consistency of fill distribution in down and synthetic quilted comforters manufactured by Cuddledown in Yarmouth. Automated visual inspection uses a digital camera that captures an image of down distribution in a production cell. The captured image is then fed into a computer for processing. The project’s primary goal is to determine the feasibility of augmenting and/or replacing the existing manual quality control process with a computer vision system.

Engine Analysis, Thomas Gaier

The University Honors Program

Engines were invented two hundred years ago but early dynamometers did not benefit from the technological advances until the last hundred years. A John Deere Model E hit-and-miss engine has a nominal power of3hp. The purpose of this project was to analyze this engine, including verifying power.

Outcomes of the analysis of this engine include brake horsepower and thermal efficiency. The first step was to put the engine under a load. This was done with a water pump system. Pressure, water flow, and rotation were measured from tests using the system.This type of system is analogous to a water brake …

Transportation Engineering: Traffic Control Simulator, Sarah V. Hernandez, Karla Diaz-Corro, Taslima Akter, Magdalena Asborno, Fu Durandal

Civil Engineering Teaching and Learning

The purpose of these lesson plans is to introduce students to traffic signalization basics. Students will be lead through a series of mini-lectures on traffic control and signalization including a discussion on the limitations and benefits of traffic signalization. The lesson plans compliment a computer simulation “game” in which students act as manual operators for a single up to four by four gridded intersection. Students attempt to control the progression of signals to understand the relationship between signal timing and user delay. Through experimentation with the simulation, students generate a presentation discussing the benefits and drawbacks of signal timing and …