Engineering Commons^™

Department Of Biological Systems Engineering Newsletter, Spring 2017

BSE Department Magazine

No abstract provided.

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 58 Number 1, Spring 2017, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

24 - BIG WIN FOR A TINY HOUSE Turning heads and changing the housing game. By Matt Morgan.

28 - $100 MILLION GIFT TO BUILD John A. ’60 and Susan Sobrato make the largest gift in SCU history. Now see the Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation that will take shape—and redefine the University. Illustration by Tavis Coburn.

36 - CUT & PASTE CONSERVATION We can alter wild species to save them. So should we? By Emma Marris. Illustrations by Jason Holley.

44 - INFO OFFICER IN CHIEF From his office overlooking the White House, Tony Scott J.D. ’92 set …

Water, Sanitation And Hygiene In Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement, Katelyn Bergl

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

No abstract provided.

Investigating Geothermally-Sourced H2s Pollution In The Reykjavík Area: A Case Study Of Early March 2017., Shawnee Traylor

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As geothermal energy becomes more widely implemented globally, it is critical to have an accurate assessment of the costs and benefits this technology may pose in order to plan, prevent, and mitigate pollution. Meteorological data sets from the Icelandic Met Office were analyzed in conjunction with hydrogen sulfide (H2S) levels in the Reykjavík area as a case study in the meteorological conditions leading to elevated H2S levels (>50 μg m-3) on March 1-3, 2017. Primary variables of interest were wind speed and direction, temperature, atmospheric stability, and humidity. Climate change is predicted to weaken the Gulf Stream, influencing all …

Distillation-Resolved Evolution Of Key Combustion Properties, Francis Haas, Jay A. Lefkowitz

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering Departmental Research

Many studies demonstrate successful emulation of pre-vaporized real fuel combustion through use of fuel surrogates. These surrogates may be described by a multiplicity of non-unique multicomponent formulations, each with pre-vaporized combustion behaviors that are essentially equivalent to the target real fuel and each other. However, many combustion applications employ fuel sprays, leaving some question as to the validity of pre-vaporized assumptions for these conditions. In the present work, a batch distillation model for ideal liquids is developed to predict the evolution of surrogate fuel combustion properties such as autoignition propensity (represented by an effective RON or DCN), hydrogen-carbon-oxygen atomic ratios, …

An Expedited, Regiospecific Para-Bromination Of Activated Aryls, Kathryn E. Dudley

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Electrophilic Aromatic Substitution (EAS) is one of the most frequently used aryl substitution methods. Aside from the fact that most EAS reactions require an acid and an oxidizer to proceed, the reactions involving activated aryls typically produce a mixture of ortho- and para- products as well as an ortho-/para- disubstituted product. Regiospecificity in aromatic substitution is key in the production of many compounds in a variety of disciplines. Since EAS is one of the most often used substitution methods, it is extremely important to develop an efficient method for regiospecific substitutions. Previous research developed a method of ortho-substitution by using …

Comparing Critical Chain Project Managemenet With Critical Path Method: A Case Study, Behzad Montazeri

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Scheduling is a major task in project management. The current scheduling technique, Critical Path Method (CPM), has been widely applied for several decades, but a large number of projects fail to be completed on time and schedule delays occur in many projects. This raises question about the validity of the current project scheduling system. Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM), derived from Theory of Constraints, is a relatively new alternative approach toward scheduling projects. This study compared CCPM and CPM to determine which scheduling method delivers a shorter project duration and has a better usage of resources. A scheduling software called …

Quality Of Water In Relation To Diarrheal Disease Incidence In Obunga, Tianna Herman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Kenyan cities are experiencing a serious dilemma in dealing with the large influx of people from rural parts of the country to the cities. Most people come to the city in pursuit of better opportunities and jobs. Rapid urban growth with little planning and preparation by the national and county governments has led to the development of informal settlements. These informal settlements are characterized by poor environmental conditions that predispose their residents for poor health conditions. Because of their illegal status, most residents of informal settlements in Kenya do not receive government services such as water, drainage, sewerage, and rubbish …

Solid Waste Management In The Developing World: The Role Of Local Government In Kisumu, Kenya, Rachel Schlueter

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As the world becomes more urbanized, more waste is being produced. According to United Nations projections in 2014, 66% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050 with the majority of growth occurring in African cities. Managing urban waste in lower-middle income countries, such as Kenya, poses a particular challenge as income levels rise, municipal capacities are stretched, and foreign loans complicate accountability. This project sought to assess the practical role of local government when managing solid waste in the context of long-term development strategies. The objectives of this study are to first establish the current role …

Synthesis, Characterization, And Properties Of Graphene-Based Hybrids With Cobalt Oxides For Electrochemical Energy Storage And Electrocatalytic Glucose Sensing, Sara C. Botero Carrizosa

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A library of graphene-based hybrid materials was synthesized as novel hybrid electrochemical electrodes for electrochemical energy conversion and storage devices and electrocatalytical sensing namely enzymeless glucose sensing. The materials used were supercapacitive graphene-family nanomaterials (multilayer graphene-MLG; graphene oxide-GO, chemically reduced GO-rGO and electrochemical reduced GOErGO) and pseudocapacitive nanostructured transition metal oxides including cobalt oxide polymorphs (CoO and Co3O4) and cobalt nanoparticles (CoNP). These were combined through physisorption, electrodeposition, and hydrothermal syntheses approaches. This project was carried out to enhance electrochemical performance and to develop electrocatalytic platforms by tailoring structural properties and desired interfaces. Particularly, electrodeposition and hydrothermal synthesis facilitate chemically-bridged …

Environmentally Friendly Synthesis Of Transition Metalorganic Hybrid Nanocomposites, Aubrey N. Penn

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research on metal nanoparticles (MNPs) synthesis and their applications for optoelectronic devices has been a recent interest in the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology Photovoltaics are one of such systems in which MNPs have shown to be quite useful, due to unique physical, optical, magnetic, and electronic properties, including the metal nanoparticles synthesized in this research.

Owing to the challenges with the most common physical and chemical methods of preparing MNPs, including the use of high temperatures, toxic reducing agents, and environmentally hazardous organic solvents, there is a critical need for a benign synthesis procedure for MNPs. In this work, …

Wall Panel Optimization For Refugee Shelters In Germany: An Ahp Study, Zhu Jiadong

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The German government is experiencing difficulties housing and assimilating Syrian refugees in its borders. Erecting temporary shelters on location is one way to deal with the current crises. This thesis attempts to use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the optimum combination of materials and construction methods to be used in the shelter’s walls in order to improve the living conditions of the refugees and to ensure that the cost is acceptable to the German government. This thesis compares six existing wall panel products from China, which have the lowest cost on the worldwide market. The R-value, strength, price, weight, …

Rate-Limited Mass Transfer Of Trichloroethene, Deza R. Irving

Civil and Environmental Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Trichloroethene (TCE) is a volatile and toxic contaminant commonly found in the subsurface. To help reduce the effects of this contaminant, it is important to understand the transport and fate behavior of TCE through the subsurface. As groundwater fills the void spaces of a porous media contaminated with pure-phase TCE, the TCE will dissolve into the water, contaminating the groundwater. It was expected that this dissolution would follow a first-order mass transfer process, suggesting that the rate of dissolution of TCE is dependent on the mass of TCE present in solution. The purpose of this study was to characterize the …

5‐Minute Power Ouptut Data For A 1.72kwp Pv System With Weather Variables, Lacour Ayompe, Aidan Duffy, Kevin O'Farrell

Other resources

This dataset contains 5-minute power (AC and DC) power output date from a 1.72kWp PV system located in Dublin in 2009-10 together with input weather variables and system parameters. Details below.

Geographical site: FOCAS Institute building roof top, Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Situation: Latitude 53.4degN Longitude -6degE

Time zone GMT

Installation date: 4th April 2008

PV array orientation: Tilt 53deg Azimuth 0deg

Near shadings: No shadings

Building height: Approximately 12 m

PV array capacity: 1.72 kWp

Collection period: 4^th April 2009 – 3^rd April 2010

The data acquisition system consisted of a Sunny …

Porous Concrete Design, Jonathan Ang, Erik Lihndal

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

Porous concrete is a special kind of concrete that has high porosity. The only difference between porous concrete and normal concrete is that a porous concrete mix does not consist of sand or other small particles. The lack of sand and small particles creates voids in the concrete. The voids that area created are the reason why water is able to pass through a porous concrete mix. Porous concrete is used for low traffic areas such as parking lots and pavements. The main purpose of porous concrete is to reduce or even eliminate storm water runoff which has a number …

Vrishabhavathi Valley Wastewater Treatment Plant System Upgrade, Vijay Chellaram, Christian Miller

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

Sixteen activated sludge tanks, eight secondary clarifiers, and four return pump stations were designed for the Vrishabhavathi Wastewater Treatment plant in Bangalore India. The design included tank dimensions, mechanical equipment associated with each component, pipe sizes for the piping system, and a cost estimate with a construction schedule. The activate sludge tanks were designed to be made of reinforced concrete with a mechanical air diffuser system installed for oxidation purposes. The secondary clarifiers were designed using reinforced concrete and a mechanical sweeping mechanism to scrape up the sludge as it settles to the bottom of the tank. Return pump stations …

Room Acoustics: Measurement And Correction With A Portable Digital Signal Processor, Azad Jalali

Thinking Matters Symposium Archive

The frequency response of a listening space is often of great interest to anyone pursuing an accurate and undistorted listening experience. Here we successfully implement sine- sweep deconvolution on a hardware platform to demonstrate an easy, digitized way to measure and guide improvements to the audio dynamics of a room.

Inspire E-News 4 2017, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

College of Engineering and Applied Sciences News

• Concrete canoe team hopes it has a “Blueprint” for success
• Steel bridge team builds momentum before competition
• Engineering student named University Innovation Fellow by Stanford
• Saeed receives $418,000 grant from National Institutes of Health
• Top engineering seniors honored as 2017 Presidential Scholars

Sustainable Recharge Of Flint Lake, Melene Agakanian, Cathy Cantoni

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

At the retreat center in San Juan Bautista, run by the Franciscan brothers, there is a dry pond that at one time was full of water. Over time, however, the pond has lost water due to the effects of the California drought. In order to bring back the aesthetics of the St. Francis Retreat Center and restore the habitat, this project allows for the design of a pump and piping system that will bring water from a well and recharge the pond, working in tandem with another senior design group for the water purification of the well. The proposed solution …

Tracking Characteristics Of Tracer Particles For Piv Measurements In Supersonic Flows, Fang Chen, Hong Liu, Zifeng Yang, Hui Hu

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

The tracking characteristics of tracer particles for particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements in supersonic flows were investigated. The experimental tests were conducted at Mach number 4 in Multi-Mach Wind Tunnel (MMWT) of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The motion of tracer particles carried by the supersonic flow across shockwaves was theoretically modelled, and then their aerodynamic characteristics with compressibility and rarefaction effects were evaluated. According to the proposed selection criterion of tracer particles, the PIV measured results clearly identified that the shockwave amplitude is in good agreement with theory and Schlieren visualizations. For the tracer particles in nanoscales, their effective aerodynamic …

Improvement Of Fluorescence-Based Microfluidic Dna Analyzers, Collin Tranter

Doctoral Dissertations

A tremendous effort continues in the development of micro-total-analysis-systems; in support of this, many chemical passivation methods have been developed to enhance the biocompatibility of such microfluidic systems. However, the suitability of these passivation techniques to many fluorescence-based assays still remains inconsistent. This part of this work is focused on the performance of a third generation intercalating DNA dye when used within microfluidic devices treated with a select variety of passivating coatings. The results of these tests indicate that passivation coatings which are intended to shed DNA based on electrostatic repulsion will in fact imbibe the fluorescent DNA intercalating dye …

Modelling Methane Production Kinetics Of Complex Poultry Slaughterhouse Wastes Using Sigmoidal Growth Functions, Niamh Power, Aidan Ware

Publications

The kinetic evaluation of the methane potential from poultry slaughterhouse waste streams was performed using modified sigmoidal bacterial growth curve equations (Richards, logistic, Gompertz) in order to investigate their suitability to describe the degradation patterns associated with complex substrates, primarily composed of fats. The methane potential and degradation patterns under mesophilic conditions were assessed using Biochemical Methane Potential (BMP) assays. A nonlinear least-square regression analysis was performed to fit the sigmoidal functions to the cumulative methane production curves with respect to time generated from the BMP assays. In the cases modelled the Gompertz and logistic, three parameter models, sufficiently …

Cwr 4812 Water Resources Design, Sarina Ergas

Service-Learning Syllabi

No abstract provided.

High Performance Computing Simulations To Identify Process Parameter Designs For Profitable Titanium Machining, Mathew Kuttolamadom, Joshua Jones, Laine Mears, James Von Oehsen, Thomas Kurfess, John Ziegert

Publications

The objective of this paper was to conduct a study of the multi-level multi-variable design space in titanium machining through high performance computing (HPC) simulations that was otherwise too vast to be explored by physical experiments alone. For tool wear-based performance metrics, this resulted in a validated set of machining parameters for achieving profitable material removal rates (MRR) (optimized cost of processing and tooling) across multiple operational configurations, alloys, tool geometries, and process conditions. The approach was to include all machining-related variables and their distributions available within the software as inputs to finite-element models (FEM) of the machining process. The …

Numerical Simulations Of Intrusive Gravity Currents Interacting With A Bottom-Mounted Obstacle In A Continuously Stratified Ambient, Jian Zhou, Subhas K. Venayagamoorthy

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this study, the flow dynamics of intrusive gravity currents past a bottom-mounted obstacle were investigated using highly resolved numerical simulations. The propagation dynamics of a classic intrusive gravity current was first simulated in order to validate the numerical model with previous laboratory experiments. A bottom-mounted obstacle with a varying non-dimensional height of D~ = D/ H, where D is the obstacle height and H is the total flow depth, was then added to the problem in order to study the downstream flow pattern of the intrusive gravity current. For short obstacles, the intrusion re-established itself downstream without much distortion. …

Property Sensitivity Study For Oil Recovery In The Bakken, Daniel Beach

Graduate Theses & Non-Theses

The upstream (exploration and production) end of the petroleum industry has experienced tremendous success over the past fifteen years by employing innovative ways to drill and stimulate new wells thereby greatly increasing production. Based upon these successes, there has been a shift to unconventional wells, where the cost for drilling and completing wells can be much more expensive. Most unconventional wells target tight rock formations having low permeability and porosity. As a result, these reservoirs require enhanced stimulation to improve recovery operations to establish profitable oil or gas production. These wells are drilled horizontally to maximize contact area in the …

Repair And Regeneration Of Chondral Defects: An In Vitro Study Demonstrating Feasibility And Mechanism Under Low Intensity Ultrasound, Neety Sahu, Anuradha Subramanian

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Holistic repair of damaged cartilage remains an unsolved biomedical problem. Current methods that employ microfracture (MF) or autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACT) or tissue engineered strategies yield inferior repaired cartilage (Fig. 1). Lack of chondroinductive factors at the site of injury, in vivo, has been identified as a factor that limits repair. Clinically amenable strategies that can improve repair are desired. A novel clinically translatable repair strategy based on low-intensity-ultrasound (US) is proposed (Fig.2). Differently from all approaches that use US, our approach employs US at the cell resonant frequency where bioeffects are maximized. We have shown that US impacts the …

Find Your Center, Nihad E. Daidzic

Aviation Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Evaluation Of Transportation Structures With Ipod-Based Data Acquisition, Charles Riley

TREC Final Reports

This grant supported coursework and laboratory development and expanded research capacity, promoting (a) innovative learning activities that expose students to cutting-edge methods of bridge structural health and behavior monitoring and (b) research by our growing group of graduate students using developing technologies (specifically, shake tables and iPods with on-board accelerometers). As transportation infrastructure reaches and exceeds its design life, engineering efforts are turning to evaluation, rehabilitation and repair. Accurately assessing structures to determine their future performance and remaining life is becoming a primary job function for many civil engineers.

As part of this project, graduate students worked with the PI …

A Novel Approach To Complex Human Activity Recognition, Md Osman Gani

Dissertations (1934 -)

Human activity recognition is a technology that offers automatic recognition of what a person is doing with respect to body motion and function. The main goal is to recognize a person's activity using different technologies such as cameras, motion sensors, location sensors, and time. Human activity recognition is important in many areas such as pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, health care, health outcomes, rehabilitation engineering, occupational science, and social sciences. There are numerous ubiquitous and pervasive computing systems where users' activities play an important role. The human activity carries a lot of information about the context and helps systems …