Engineering Commons^™

After 40 Years Of Regional And Coordinated Ship Safety Inspections: Destination Reached Or New Point Of Departure?, Armando Graziano, Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs, Aykut I. Olçer

Journal Publications

Port State Control (PSC) is the major global strategy for fighting substandard shipping since the signature of The Hague Memorandum in 1978. In the last years, the increased volume of trade, the enlarged number of main international conventions and the highlighted differences among the various Regimes have posed new challenges to the modern system of PSC, which may need to find its new course.

This paper examines the point of view of key maritime stakeholders with regard to the EU PSC regime. Elite interviews (n = 14) were conducted with subject matter experts ranging from policy makers, to industry and …

Intelligent Tutoring System Effects On The Learning Process, Ali Talib Qasim Al-Aqbi

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The traditional education systems that have been used for several centuries have evolved very slowly and might be ineffective for addressing diverse learning styles and levels of preparation. This system is characterized by many students interacting with a single teacher, who is unable to address the individual needs of every student. Therefore, some students can become frustrated and fail to reach their educational potential. An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS), which is a computer application used to provide students with one-to-one supplemental tutoring tailored to the student's learning style and pace, is of interest to educators for improving student learning. To …

Effects Of The Kinematic Model On Forward-Model Based Spotlight Sar Ecm, David T. Pyles

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Spotlight synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides a high-resolution remote image formation capability for airborne platforms. SAR image formation processes exploit the amplitude, time, and frequency shifts that occur in the transmitted waveform due to electromagnetic propagation and scattering. These shifts are predictable through the SAR forward model which is dependent on the waveform parameters and emitter flight path. The approach to develop an electronic countermeasure (ECM) system that is founded on the SAR forward model implies that the ECM system should alter the radar's waveform in a manner that produces the same amplitude, time, and frequency shifts that a real …

Friction Stir Welding Between Similar And Dissimilar Materials, Khaled Yousif Ali

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the friction stir welding (FSW) between similar and dissimilar alloys. FSW is a solid state joining process that welds the work-pieces through a combination of heat generated by friction and mechanical stirring of the metals in the region of the joint. Being a solid state process, FSW can be used to weld alloys with significantly different melting points. This provides a significant benefit over traditional fusion welding process in a variety of applications in automotive, biomedical, aerospace, nuclear and petroleum industries. Two materials - an aluminum alloy (6061-T6, m.p. 582 - 652°C) and a steel (SAE …

Collaboratively Detecting Http-Based Distributed Denial Of Service Attack Using Software Defined Network, Ademola A. Ikusan

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Over the years, there have been a lot of attacks on the web servers of critical companies and organization. As much as these organizations tighten their security, it always tends not to be enough to stop all the attacks towards their servers. These attack vectors are so difficult to stop because of the technicalities behind the attack. Furthermore, there are different classes of distributed denial of service(DDoS) attacks such as the high rates (SYN Flood attacks, ARP Flood attacks, etc), low-rate(HTTP-GET, HTTP-POST). Although there are different ways to stop high rate DDoS attacks by traffic sampling and detecting malformed packets …

Finding Street Gang Member Profiles On Twitter, Lakshika Balasuriya

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The crime and violence street gangs introduce into neighborhoods is a growing epidemic in cities around the world. Today, over 1.4 million people, belonging to more than 33,000 gangs, are active in the United States, of which 88% identify themselves as being members of a street gang. With the recent popularity of social media, street gang members have established online presences coinciding with their physical occupation of neighborhoods. Recent studies report that approximately 45% of gang members participate in online offending activities such as threatening, harassing individuals, posting violent videos or attacking someone on the street for something they said …

Making A Case To Integrate Safety Management And Physical Assets Management, Farman A. Moayed

Department of Built Environment

No abstract provided.

Method And Apparatus For Removal Of Phosphate From Wastewater Streams, Steven Skeels, Arjun Subedi, Fred Williams

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Church and Dwight uses a phosphate-containing soap in their latex condom manufacturing process in Chesterfield County, VA. The wastewater streams from this process contain a concentration of phosphate that is over the county limit, costing $100,000/yr for non-optimized disposal. C&D has a need for an in-house method of phosphate removal which does not interfere with current manufacturing or wastewater treatment processes. The focus of the project was precipitation methodology as it is the most economically feasible option for these high concentrations of phosphate; more advanced technologies were considered for a potential final polishing step to remove any residual phosphate. The …

Improved Mixing System For Aquatic Mesocosm Facility, Kyle Boyce, Ben Chalfant, Ron Fitch

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The VCU Environmental Science Department had in its possession 24 500 gal tanks they had implemented to study the plankton and bacteria activity of the James River. Water was pumped up from the James River a quarter mile to the tanks and studied over week long periods to analyze the growth and survival of plankton and bacteria as it exists in the river. Over time it was found that the bacteria in the mesocosms would growth at an increased rate as sediments and inorganic matter fell out of suspensions. For this reason, it was necessary to develop an agitator that …

Smart Exoskeleton Hand With Soft Electronics, Andrew Choi, Han Ha, Gabrielle Jones, Gregory Zobel

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Many people in the modern world suffer from a loss of hand and finger strength due to diseases in the muscle or nervous system such as ALS, Muscular Atrophy, and more. This problem has become more widespread with the surge of technology over the last 5-10 years. Therefore, we have created a smart exoskeleton hand with soft electronics that will allow people with less than average hand strength to perform daily activities.

The exoskeleton device utilizes small, lightweight linear actuators to provide additional strength to the user’s fingers and the hand itself will be 3D-printed with ABS and PLA plastics …

Transformer Support-Base:Design & Analysis, Tamrat Abebe, Hiba Aldar, Charles Wold

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Engineering design is vitally important and is the backbone of any industrial organization. The innovative approach to engineering design requires extensive calculations, estimations, workability and economic considerations to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction. Our project, for the ABB Group, was to design a structural frame-base for their transformers, and develop a set of design-standards to accommodate a range of transformer sizes. A transformer is used to step-up or step-down the voltage as needed to satisfy the electrical power needs of a facility. Industrial size transformers are an extremely heavy, sensitive and precise electrical devices that require a reliable …

Thermal Insulation Coating For Pipe Applications, Ismail Alaithan, Alhawraa Husain, Wejdan Reda, Katiana Slaton

Capstone Design Expo Posters

NNSB tasked the Capstone team with testing the anti-condensation abilities of the Thermal Insulation Coating (TIC) Aerolon®, an aerogel-based insulation manufactured by Tnemec, using Federal test specifications for Coating Compound, Paint Antisweat. The main goal was to observe the anti-condensation abilities of the insulation and to initiate an analysis and comparison of the spray-applied aerogel insulation versus the hand-applied thick foam insulation that is currently used on ship pipes and ventilation. The plan includes creating a computer simulation of the thermal properties of the insulated cylinders as well as a physical experimental setup.

The Capstone team built an acrylic test …

Measurement Of Impact Forces On Teeth And Jaw When Wearing Sports Mouth Guards, Alghamdi Abdullah, Alnaser Mobarak, Quiroz Ingrid, Serrate Ciro Alcoba, Veizaga Rodrigo

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The objective of this project is to accurately measure the forces the teeth and jaw experience when subjected to impact. For this purpose piezoelectric technology (PVDF), which converts voltage to force and vice versa can be used to measure forces applied to teeth. A PVDF cable is calibrated and used for measuring force along with a control measuring device (PCB Piezotronics). The method involves wrapping the PVDF cable around a 3D home-printed, customized denture. The cable was chosen due to the fact that it allows for adequate fit between mouth guard and denture. Two masses, a baseball and 2 lbs …

S.H.I.E.L.D Relays (Shadow-Masked Hack-Proof Ion Etched Latch Deterrence Relays), Anh Dinh, Adrienne Ilustre, Thomas Nuckols, Sean Payne

Capstone Design Expo Posters

We are presenting micro-scale logic devices using single cantilever relays fabricated in-plane from single crystal Silicon. These logic devices are designed to protect electrical systems that require a high level of security by being completely hack proof by not having the ability or need to be connected to any outside internet connection. Because these devices are fabricated from silicon, they are extremely reliable, durable and adaptable. Silicon’s high Young’s Modulus allows the cantilevers to function for an extremely long time, compared to other materials such as metal that will start to fatigue over time, producing a longer life span of …

Conference Registration System, Pooja Krishnan

Capstone Design Expo Posters

The main purpose of our project was the creation of a persistent conference registration management system. The Computational Complexity Foundation (CCF) is an organization aiming to foster research and education in computational complexity theory. The main activity of the organization is its annual conference, the Computational Complexity Conference (CCC). Dr. Sevag Gharibian, member of the Board of Governors for the CCF and assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Engineering Computer Science Department, wished for our team to design a user-friendly fully-integrated conference registration system for the CCC. Dr. Gharibian wanted our product to have the following functionalities: creation/management …

Chloracam, Aayushi Agarwal, Nathaniel Brigle, Ramya Nandigam, Zachary Siou

Capstone Design Expo Posters

Currently, dialysis water is tested for chloramines by obtaining a sample of the water and using a colorimetric test strip to estimate the chloramine concentration. The objective of this project is to design and prototype a device that can automatically read and record the chloramine test results. The deliverables of our project are a proof of concept that shows the ability of the device to automatically read and record chloramine test results, and a working prototype of this design. The most important design requirements were that the device must automatically read the test strips and quantify the chloramine concentration based …

Vtol Hybrids: Tiltrotors Are Gaining Acceptance, Nihad E. Daidzic

Aviation Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Exercise - Calculate Reservoir Performance Metrics - University Of Colorado Boulder, Joseph Kasprzyk

All ECSTATIC Materials

No abstract provided.

A Learning Style Comparison Between Synchronous Online And Face-To-Face Engineering Graphics Instruction, Wade H. Goodridge, Oenardi Lawanto, Harry B. Santoso

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The implementation of a successful engineering program to a synchronous online curriculum is subject to many impacting factors. One such factor, that has not seen much investigation, concerns learning styles. Student learning styles may have a dramatic influence on the success of a synchronous online deliverable engineering graphics curriculum. The immediate objective of this research was to look at the effectiveness of teaching Engineering Graphics with a synchronous online delivery method and to compare it to a more traditional face-to-face delivery method. Using Kolb’s learning style inventory, student learning styles in both educational settings were investigated and analyzed to discover …

Model Preparation And User Interface Aspects For Microsoft Hololens Medical Tutorial Applications, Andrew J. Mcnutt

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Augmented Reality (AR) is the combination of computer vision and graphics to allow a device to derive context about the environment and to display relevant information to the user. The Microsoft Hololens is the latest wearable AR device that includes a series of infrared sensors to perform hand tracking and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, a wave guide optics system to project holograms, and an independent untethered operating system. This thesis will explore the hardware and software capabilities of the device, prepare 3D graphical models, and understand the user interface. Specifically, in our research the target application is a tutorial on …

Rapidly Solving Physics-Based Models For Uncertainty Propagation In Nondestructive Evaluation, Matthew Ryan Cherry

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Recent research in extending nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods toward damage and materials characterization has led to an emphasis on the development of physics-based forward models in NDE. Furthermore, a desire to quantify levels of uncertainty in NDE inspections, particularly in Air Force applications, has driven the need for quick solving surrogate models for the traditional forward models, which have largely focused on accurately capturing many aspects of the problem with little emphasis on computational effort. In the past 5 years, many different techniques for creating lower-fidelity, quickly solving models to be used in place of the expensive high fidelity simulations …

Decision Support For Literal And Non-Literal Imaging Sensors, Holly K. Zelnio

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The key contribution of this research was to characterize decision support system (DSS) performance as a function of sensor types ranging from a very literal electrooptical (EO) sensor to a very non-literal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensor. The specific DSS used in this research was developed based on the Applied Cognitive Task Analysis (ACTA), human performance modeling process, and a comprehensive literature search. The subject and DSS combined performance was characterized by objective interpretation accuracy and decision time and, in addition, the subject's trust, confidence, heuristics, and possible cognitive biases were elicited and analyzed. The measures of accuracy, time, and …

Impact Of Wastewater Strength And Photocatalyst Loading On Decolourization Of Acid Orange 7 By Co-Doped Tio2, Erick Butler, Oliver Mulamba, Yung Tse Hung, Ching Cheng Chen, Yen Pei Fu

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

© 2017, Chemical Publishing Co. All rights reserved. Heterogeneous photocatalysis has proved to be a successful method for the degradation of water pollutants. In this work, the photocatalytic decolourization of acid orange 7 was performed by cobalt-doped titanium dioxide (Co-doped TiO2). The Co-doped TiO2 was synthesized and characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy diffraction spectroscopy, UV-visible reflective dispersion spectroscopy and adsorption of nitrogen gas. The acid orange 7 was prepared as a synthetic textile wastewater at three initial concentrations (24, 34 and 44 mg/L) with three photocatalyst loadings (0.025 g, 0.050, 0.1 g/100 mL acid orange 7). Results …

Detection Of Trends In The 7-Day Sustained Low-Flow Time Series Of Irish Rivers, Ahmed Nasr, Michael Bruen

Articles

A combination of statistical hypothesis testing methods (Mann-Whitney, Mann-Kendall and Spearman’s rho) and visual exploratory analysis were used to investigate trends in Irish 7-day sustained low-flow (7SLF) series possibly driven by changes in summer rainfall patterns. River flow data from 33 gauging stations covering most major Irish rivers were analysed, after excluding catchments where low flows are influenced by significant human interventions. A statistically significant increasing trend in the 7SLF series was identified by all three tests at eight gauging stations; in contrast, a statistically significant decreasing trend was identified by all three tests at four stations. The stations with …

Mid-Infrared Self-Similar Compression Of Picosecond Pulse In An Inversely Tapered Silicon Ridge Waveguide, Jin-Hui Yuan, Jian Chen, Feng Li, Chao Mei, Zhe Kang, Xianting Zhang, Yin Xu, Binbin Yan, Xinzhu Sang, Qiang Wu, Xian Zhou, Kangping Zhong, Kuiru Wang, Chongxiu Yu, Gerald Farrell

Articles

On chip high quality and high degree pulse compression is desirable in the realization of integrated ultrashort pulse sources, which are important for nonlinear photonics and spectroscopy. In this paper, we design a simple inversely tapered silicon ridge waveguide with exponentially decreasing dispersion profile along the propagation direction, and numerically investigate self-similar pulse compression of the fundamental soliton within the mid-infrared spectral region. When higher-order dispersion (HOD), higher-order nonlinearity (HON), losses (α), and variation of the Kerr nonlinear coefficient γ(z) are considered in the extended nonlinear Schrödinger equation, a 1 ps input pulse at the wavelength of 2490 nm is …

The Effect Of The Local Field And Dipole-Dipole Interactions On The Absorption Spectra Of Noble Metals And The Plasmon Resonance Of Their Nanoparticles, I.I. Shaganov, T.S. Perova, Kevin Berwick

Articles

An analysis of the effect of free and bound electrons on the optical properties of noble metals and their nanoparticles is performed, based on the Drude-Lorentz model. It is shown that the shifts in the absorption bands of plasmons localized in spherical nanoparticles with respect to the zero frequency of free electrons in a bulk metal can be estimated using the theory of resonant dipole-dipole interactions. The calculation includes account for differences between the effective and average electromagnetic fields. It is established that the difference in oscillator strength for free electrons in the bulk metal, obtained using the Drude-Lorentz model, …

2017 Nebraska Water Monitoring Programs Report, Marty Link, Ryan Chapman

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is charged with monitoring, assessing, and to the extent possible, managing the state’s water resources. The purpose of this work is to protect and maintain high quality water and encourage or execute activities to improve poor water quality. Monitoring is done on nearly 17,000 miles of flowing rivers and streams, more than 134,000 acres of surface water in lakes and reservoirs, as well as the vast storage of groundwater in Nebraska’s aquifers.

Establishing A-Priori Performance Guarantees For Robot Missions That Include Localization Software, Damian Lyons, Ron Arkin, Shu Jiang, Matt O'Brien, Feng Tang, Peng Tang

Faculty Publications

One approach to determining whether an automated system is performing correctly is to monitor its performance, signaling when the performance is not acceptable; another approach is to automatically analyze the possible behaviors of the system a-priori and determine performance guarantees. Thea authors have applied this second approach to automatically derive performance guarantees for behaviorbased, multi-robot critical mission software using an innovative approach to formal verification for robotic software. Localization and mapping algorithms can allow a robot to navigate well in an unknown environment. However, whether such algorithms enhance any specific robot mission is currently a matter for empirical validation. Several …

Gams Handout 1, Ethan Yang

All ECSTATIC Materials

No abstract provided.

Bismuth-Doped Glass Microsphere Lasers, Zaijn Fang, Sile Nic Chormaic, Shanyu Wang, Xin Wang, Jibo Yu, Yuxuan Jiang, Jianrong Qiu, Pengfei Wang

Articles

In this work, a hybrid structure consisting of a multicomponent germanate glass microsphere containing bismuth as a gain medium is proposed and presented. The bismuth-doped germanate glass microspheres were fabricated from a glass fiber tip with no precipitation of the bismuth metal. Coupling with a fiber taper, the bismuth-doped microsphere single-mode laser was observed to lase at around 1305.8 nm using 808 nm excitation. The low threshold of absorbed pump power at 215 μWmakes this microlaser appealing for various applications, including tunable lasers for a range of purposes in telecommunication, biomedical, and optical information processing.