Engineering Commons^™

An Analysis Of The Benefits In Estimating At Different Pipe Union Labor Rates, A.J. Chamorro

Construction Management

This paper is an analysis of the costs and benefits of estimating at different union labor rates, based on the location of the project and which jurisdiction the project falls in. The basis of the research is a case study of a Bay Area mechanical contractor (Contractor X) which previously estimated at a single labor rate, and recently developed variable estimating. Through that case study, best practices are developed for union pipe trade estimating. The results of the case study show that estimating protocol should be determined on a project by project basis, and company resources and manpower have to …

Aei Student Design Competition: Texas Tech Sports Performance Facility, Jacob G. Kockrow

Construction Management

The AEI Student Competition is an annual event that pushes students in the disciplines of engineering and construction management to collaborate and demonstrate creative solutions to the challenges presented. This year, the competition is focused on the new Texas Tech Sports Performance Sports Facility located in Lubbock, Texas, where they tore down the existing building and are in the process of completing the new facility. Instead of recreating the plans given, we designed a brand new building to meet the project requirements, which included a $48 million budget and a 34-month construction duration. As the Construction Manager for the project, …

Roman Catholic Elementary Photovoltaic Project, Joe Gugale

Construction Management

The use of photovoltaic panels in construction is rapidly growing all around the world. This paper summarizes the findings of a student-based project in Belize that was installed December 2016. The San Pedro Roman Catholic Primary School is the largest school on the island of Ambergris Caye, Belize with over 700 students in 22 classrooms ranging from Kindergarten to 8th grade. Although the school has power supplied from the local electrical utility, power outages occur frequently and the cost of electricity is considerable.

The project had several issues related to preparing the design, acquiring the materials and equipment, and developing …

Implementing Occupancy Sensor Lighting Controls In Cal Poly Cic Lab Classrooms, Mitchell Packard

Construction Management

Occupancy sensors are lighting control devices that automatically turn lights on when they detect motion, and off when motion is not detected for an allotted time period. These sensors can be applied virtually anywhere, indoor or outdoor, and can provide substantial energy savings. One application that does not utilize occupancy sensors often enough is classrooms. Cal Poly currently utilizes an outdated toggle switch system that students do not maintain properly, wasting a large quantity of energy. This paper will examine the maintaining of the current lighting control system in Cal Poly’s Construction Innovation Center (CIC) lab classrooms; the operating cost …

Implementing A Working Bim Model Halfway Through A Public Cm Multi-Prime Project: A Case Study, Jim Roth

Construction Management

The development of a BIM (building information model) model is a standard practice in today’s construction world. While the process of model adoption nearly has a written formula, implementing a BIM model in the midst of a project is a rare occurrence. This paper will examine the implementation of a working BIM model halfway through a public multiple prime contractor project managed by a construction manager (CM) in California. The project cost is roughly $20 million and of moderate complexity. This paper will outline the factors leading up to the ultimate decision of creating a working model, the process of …

Investigation Into Feasibility Of Off-Grid Small Dwelling In Slo County, Sam Labberton

Construction Management

The trend towards green, sustainable living has grown more and more in the housing industry each year since before the turn of the century; solar in the last decade alone has grown by 60% (http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data). Living on a grid that runs on unclean sources of energy already has led us into an environmental disaster some call irreversible. This paper takes a detailed look into the feasibility of a small, off-grid, dwelling that utilizes modern technology in order to live more modestly. In conjunction with great advancements in solar technology along with energy storage such as deep cycle lead-acid batteries, on-site …

Tidal Energy And How It Pertains To The Construction Industry, Armin Latifi

Construction Management

Renewable Energy is on the forefront of many global discussions. The concern of numerous scientific findings on the impact humanity has had on the environment has grown in recent years. Since alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind, have already made substantial progress, I have decided to focus my attention on tidal energy specifically. This topic will serve as the main focus of this essay. Within this essay, I will examine how tidal energy pertains to the construction industry through four distinguished chapters: (1) What kind of tidal technology exist and what does the construction aspect of these tidal …

Case Study: Laborer Safety Training For Small To Mid-Sized General Contractors, Shawn Kuehter

Construction Management

The purpose of this study is to determine a relationship between safety spending and the resulting safety records for small to mid sized construction companies, particularly general contractors, and build on existing safety practices. It will shed light on why safety spending in construction is a very important aspect to include in any company’s budget. A case study of Quiring General, LLC, a small to mid sized general contractor based out of Fresno, CA will be the core of this paper as it includes examples of injuries of laborers and their impact they have. The impact focused on in this …

Photovoltaic System Installation In Belize, Austin J. Stewart

Construction Management

California Polytechnic State University’s National Electrical Contractors Association Student Chapter (NECA) was selected by the ELECTRI Council to take part in its Student Passport Initiative program, through which participants engage in meaningful service-learning experiences in developing communities. The team was tasked with the design and construction of a photovoltaic system for San Pedro Roman Catholic Primary School in San Pedro, Belize, with the purpose of enabling the school to achieve carbon neutrality with respect to utility grid power consumption. The team of five students collaborated primarily with two professors, two alumni, and an accomplished electrical contractor from Belize to perform …

Value Of Prefabrication Of Fire Sprinkler Components In The Fire Sprinkler Industry, Matt Fisher

Construction Management

Every day the construction industry is looking for new ways to improve time efficiency and project profitability. Companies in the past have tried value engineering and schedule crashing to save time and money. As the industry continues to grow and innovate, new concepts are being applied. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is one of these ideas that has made a large impact in the construction industry. BIM is a digital 3D modeling system that allows the user to create a complete rendering of a construction project complete with mechanical, electrical, and plumbing integrated into the model. With this model a prospective …

Application Of Argon Plasma Technology To Hydrophobic And Hydrophilic Microdroplet Generation In Pdms Microfluidic Devices, Brennan P. Graham

Master's Theses

Abstract Application of Argon Plasma Technology to Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Microdroplet Generation in PDMS Microfluidic Devices Brennan Graham Microfluidics has gained popularity over the last decade due to the ability to replace many large, expensive laboratory processes with small handheld chips with a higher throughput due to the small channel dimensions [1]. Droplet microfluidics is the field of fluid manipulation that takes advantage of two immiscible fluids to create droplets from the geometry of the microchannels. This project includes the design of a microfluidic device that applies the results of an argon plasma surface treatment to polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to successfully …

Bs News March/April

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

2017 (Spring) Ensi Informer Magazine, Morehead State University. Engineering Sciences Department

ENSI Informer Magazine Archive

The ENSI Informer Magazine published in the spring of 2017.

A Security Evaluation Methodology For Container Images, Brendan Michael Abbott

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research is to create a methodology that evaluates the security posture of container images and helps improve container security. This was done by first searching for any guidelines or standards that focus on container images and security. After finding none, I decided to create an evaluative methodology. The methodology is composed of actions that users should take to evaluate the security of a container image. The methodology was created through in-depth research on container images and the build instructions used to create them and is referred to as the Security Evaluation Methodology for Container Images. The …

Android Mobile Application For Hospital Executives, Vihitha Nalagatla

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Hospitals are the largest and most complex organizations where health care is provided. Safe and effective patient care services in hospitals depend on the efficient decisions made by hospital executives. The main task of hospital executives is to ensure the hospital can provide high quality patient care and services. “Android Mobile Application For Hospital Executives” is an Android application used for displaying hospital performance metrics on a daily basis. This application allows hospital executives to review and monitor hospital operational data with ease of access and in a portable manner. Thus, reducing the effort of the hospital executives to perform …

Automatic Generation Of Web Applications And Management System, Yu Zhou

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

One of the major difficulties in web application design is the tediousness of constructing new web pages from scratch. For traditional web application projects, the web application designers usually design and implement web application projects step by step, in detail. My project is called “automatic generation of web applications and management system.” This web application generator can generate the generic and customized web applications based on software engineering theories. The flow driven methodology will be used to drive the project by Business Process Model Notation (BPMN). Modules of the project are: database, web server, HTML page, functionality, financial analysis model, …

Helical Gear Design For Bending Fatigue, Edward E. Osakue, Lucky Anetor

Faculty Publications

A bending stress capacity model explicit in the representation of helical gear design parameters is developed. The model accounts for the bending stresses from both tangential and axial loads on the gear tooth as well as the direct shear stresses from these loads. A shear stress concentration factor is incorporated to account for the geometric influence of the fillet at the root of the gear. The model clearly reveals the direct influence of the base helix angle on the bending stress and normal module size estimates. Several design examples of bending stress estimates from different references are computed using the …

Predictive Modeling Of A Buoyancy-Operated Cooling Tower Under Saturated Conditions - I: Adjoint Sensitivity Model, Dan Gabriel Cacuci, Federico Di Rocco

Faculty Publications

A cooling tower discharges waste heat produced by an industrial plant to the external environment. The amount of thermal energy discharged into the environment can be determined by measurements of quantities representing the external conditions, such as outlet air temperature, outlet water temperature, and outlet air relative humidity, in conjunction with computational models that simulate numerically the cooling tower's behavior. Variations in the model's parameters (e.g., material properties, model correlations, boundary conditions) cause variations in the model's response. The functional derivatives of the model response with respect to the model parameters (called "sensitivities") are needed to quantify such response variations …

Benzene Formation In Electronic Cigarettes, James F. Pankow, Kilsun Kim, Kevin J. Mcwhirter, Wentai Luo, Jorge O. Escobedo, Robert M. Strongin, Anna K. Duell, David H. Peyton

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

The heating of the fluids used in electronic cigarettes (“e-cigarettes”) used to create “vaping” aerosols is capable of causing a wide range of degradation reaction products. We investigated formation of benzene (an important human carcinogen) from e-cigarette fluids containing propylene glycol (PG), glycerol (GL), benzoic acid, the flavor chemical benzaldehyde, and nicotine.

Mass Exchange Dynamics Of Surface And Subsurface Oil In Shallow-Water Transport, Saeed Moghimi, Jorge Ramirez, Juan M. Restrepo, Shankar Venkataramani

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

We formulate a model for the mass exchange between oil at and below the sea surface. This is a particularly important aspect of modeling oil spills. Surface and subsurface oil have different chemical and transport characteristics and lumping them together would compromise the accuracy of the resulting model. Without observational or computational constraints, it is thus not possible to quantitatively predict oil spills based upon partial field observations of surface and/or sub-surface oil. The primary challenge in capturing the mass exchange is that the principal mechanisms are on the microscale. This is a serious barrier to developing practical models for …

Using Satellite Observations To Characterize The Response Of Estuarine Turbidity Maxima To External Forcing, Austin S. Hudson, Stefan A. Talke, David A. Jay

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study explores the spatial and temporal character of turbidity maxima in the Columbia River Estuary (CRE) using satellite observations. Surface reflectance data measured by the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) were calibrated against in situ measurements of surface turbidity (R2 = 0.85 for 205 measurements). More than 1500 satellite images from 2000 to 2015 were then conditionally sampled to explore the physical processes that drive the spatial distribution of the turbidity field. We find satellite measurements are able to describe seasonal, spring–neap, and spatial features of the estuarine turbidity maxima (ETM) that are not easily observable by other means. System-wide …

Common Support Equipment And Its Impact On Aircraft Availability, Jason M. Leighton

Theses and Dissertations

The ability of military aircraft maintenance personnel to prepare aircraft for flight depends not only on the technical ability and availability of replacement parts, but also on access to serviceable support equipment. While the general relationship between support equipment failures and aircraft availability is understood, the struggle to quantify that relationship makes targeted support equipment replacement or quantity authorization increases difficult. Tight budgets and aging equipment further complicate the task of keeping serviceable support equipment assets in the hands of maintainers. We identify key pieces of support equipment which may affect aircraft availability and other metrics and investigate the associated …

A Review Of The Potential Therapeutic Application Of Vagus Nerve Stimulation During Childbirth, Tanya Enderli

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research is to show that transcutaneous Vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) should be investigated as a possible modality for increasing endogenous release of oxytocin during childbirth. There have been many great advances made in the practice of modern obstetrics in the last century. The 1900s saw the discovery, isolation, and subsequent widespread use of the hormone oxytocin as an agent to prevent postpartum hemorrhage and to initiate or quicken labor during childbirth. There are significant risks to the fetus when synthetic oxytocin is used. While the medical administration of oxytocin during labor was being popularized, there was …

Collaboration Trumps Homophily In Urban Mobile Crowdsourcing, Thivya Kandappu, Archan Misra, Randy Tandriansyah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper establishes the power of dynamic collaborative task completion among workers for urban mobile crowdsourcing. Collaboration is defined via the notion of peer referrals, whereby a worker who has accepted a location-specific task, but is unlikely to visit that location, offloads the task to a willing friend. Such a collaborative framework might be particularly useful for task bundles, especially for bundles that have higher geographic dispersion. The challenge, however, comes from the high similarity observed in the spatiotemporal pattern of task completion among friends. Using extensive real-world crowd-sourcing studies conducted over 7 weeks and 1000+ workers on a campus-based …

Ui X-Ray: Interactive Mobile Ui Testing Based On Computer Vision, Chun-Fu Richard Chen, Marco Pistoia, Conglei Shi, Paolo Girolami, Joseph W. Ligman, Yong Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

User Interface/eXperience (UI/UX) significantly affects the lifetime of any software program, particularly mobile apps. A bad UX can undermine the success of a mobile app even if that app enables sophisticated capabilities. A good UX, however, needs to be supported of a highly functional and user friendly UI design. In spite of the importance of building mobile apps based on solid UI designs, UI discrepancies- inconsistencies between UI design and implementation-Are among the most numerous and expensive defects encountered during testing. This paper presents UI X-RAY, an interactive UI testing system that integrates computer-vision methods to facilitate the correction of …

Fire And Life Safety Evaluation Of Christopher Cohan Center, Mishuk Datta

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

A prescriptive and performance-based fire and life safety evaluation for Christopher Cohan Center is performed. The results and findings of the evaluations are conveyed in this report. Christopher Cohan Center was built in accordance with California Building Code (1992 Edition) and California Fire Code (1992 Edition). The current version (2015) of International Building Code is consulted for prescriptive evaluation. The protection requirements set forth in IBC are intended to limit the threat from stage fires to an audience, to reduce the likelihood of a large fire in the stage area and to reduce the possibility of irrational mass response. These …

Fire And Life Safety Evaluation Of The Christopher Cohan Center, Joakim Midtun Larsen

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This project is an academic exercise, as part of the MS Fire Protection Engineering program of California Polytechnic State University. The project is a culminating report with regards to life safety analysis of the Christopher Cohan Center of Cal Poly, which builds on the fundamental and applied courses of the program. The analysis is twofold, where the first part is a Prescriptive Analysis of the building and its features, followed by a Performance Based Life Safety Analysis. Both parts are performed in accordance with NFPA 101 Life Safety Code 2015 edition, Codes/Standards references within NFPA 101, and supplemented by methods …

Fire And Safety Analysis Robert E. Kennedy Library, Marius Bjelde Andersen

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

The Robert E. Kennedy Library is located on Cal Poly Campus. The Library is a five-story building with different occupancies which consists of library areas, offices, mechanical equipment and storage areas. The building has a total area of 178 702 ft². The original code of construction for the Library was the 1976 Uniform Building code (UBC). However, the fire and life safety analysis of the building in this report is performed using: Egress: NFPA 101 LSC 2015, Water based suppression: NFPA 13, Structural fire protection: 2015 IBC, Fire detection, alarm and communication systems: NFPA 72, Performance based design: NFPA 101 …

Building- Fire Protection Analysis Report, Chris Schwendiman

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

The building in XXX was constructed in XXX. It was designed using the International Building Code (IBC). This fire protection analysis report will be reviewing the building based on the 2015 edition of the IBC including several performance based fire scenarios involving the smoke exhaust system.

The passive system section highlights the physical construction of the building. The building is a business occupancy with three separate stories including a penthouse which is included in the third story. The building has adequate fire ratings for a Type II-B construction except for heavy timber columns within the commons of the building. It …

Fire And Life Safety Analysis- Warren J. Baker Center For Science And Mathematics, Chad Rudolph Graves

Fire Protection Engineering: Culminating Experience Project Reports

This report covers the fire protection features of the Warren J. Baker Center for Science and Mathematics located on Cal Poly Campus San Luis Obispo California. The prescriptive analysis of the building will focus on the structural fire protection, egress, fire suppression, fire alarm and detection systems to determine if the meet current codes and standards. The performance based analysis will discuss certain methods and design fire scenarios that can be present within the building and the buildings ability to protect occupants until they can exit safely.

The purpose of this report is to determine if the selected building is …