Engineering Commons^™

Mobile Application For Shipping Goods For Individuals And Truckers In India, Sendurr Selvaraj

Theses and Dissertations

India is a vast country with majority of its cities and towns connected through roads. Road transportation contributes to 86% share of the freight transport of the country with trucking companies dominating the entire space. With growing economy and demands raising, the quality of service of the trucking company remains poor. The major reasons are unorganized practice and lack of transparency. Moreover, limited access for customers to reach out to truckers to transport their goods.

This thesis aims to create a platform for customers and truckers to realize their needs with a help of a mobile application. Customers can search …

Cable Health Monitoring System Built Into Power Converter Using Time Domain Reflectometry, Hossein Baninajar

Theses and Dissertations

Aging cables are a critical reliability concern for many electrical systems. Cables run over long distances, are often exposed to harsh environments and are intended to work for several decades. Cable faults can be a serious problem because cables are usually hard to repair or replace. Condition based maintenance is a popular approach that provides high reliability and low maintenance cost at the same time. This is a non-destructive method that collects information about the health condition of the cable under test without causing any potential damage.

Nowadays, in several applications power cables are connected to power converters and it …

Co2 Capture From Flue Gas By A Psa Process Using A Novel Structured Adsorbent, Nima Mohammadi

Theses and Dissertations

First adsorption equilibrium isotherms for N2, O2, Ar and CO2 on zeolite 13X were measured at three temperatures (25, 50, 75 °C) and pressures up to 110 kPa with a volumetric method and validated by also measuring the same isotherms with a gravimetric system.

Then a comprehensive 2-D mathematical model was developed to study the fundamentals of adsorption processes in parallel channel structured adsorbents. The results clearly indicated that under studied circumstances the plug flow condition can be assumed and therefore the system is not subject to premature breakthrough.

The pressure drop of corrugated structured adsorbents with narrow triangular channels …

Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Treatment Of Natural Biomaterials For Tissue Engineering Applications, Dominic M. Casali

Theses and Dissertations

The number of people requiring an organ transplant in the United States has increased considerably over the past 25 years, but the number of organ donations has stagnated; over 8,000 people now die annually while awaiting a transplant or become too sick to receive one. Tissue engineering (TE), the design and production of artificial tissues and organs in vitro, has been proposed to alleviate this problem. Though synthetic polymers offer tunable mechanical and biochemical properties, natural biomaterials have recently garnered attention in TE for their high degree of biocompatibility and ability to direct cell proliferation and constructive tissue remodeling. Yet …

Rational Synthesis Of Catalysts For Biomass Conversion, Qiuli Liu

Theses and Dissertations

With climate change due to global warming, the production of hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals from renewable biomass resource has become more pressing in recent decades. The biggest challenge in biomass conversion is to develop active, selective and stable catalysts for particular applications. The objective of this research is to optimize catalytic performance for hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) and hydrogenation reactions by enhancing the stability of the support, tuning metal particle size, and controlling surface composition.

The high content of water in bio-oil and the aqueous environment of the upgrading process requires a hydrothermally stable catalyst. The hydrothermal stability has been effectively improved …

Fault Protection In Dc Microgrids Based On Autonomous Operation Of All Components, Qiu Deng

Theses and Dissertations

DC power distribution systems (or so called DC microgrids) are of wide interest for various power applications due to their advantages over traditional AC power distribution systems with respect to power density and power distribution efficiency. On the other hand, short-circuit faults present formidable hazards in these systems. It is difficult to extinguish these arc faults via conventional circuit breakers due to the lack of natural zero-crossing of DC current. Also the DC breakers are usually more bulky and costly. Today, fault protection in these systems – to the extent that it exists – relies on over-current time-out limits in …

Structural, Interfacial, And Electrochemical Properties Of Pr2nio4+Δ – Based Electrodes For Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Emir Dogdibegovic

Theses and Dissertations

Currently, the electrochemical performance and performance durability of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are limited by cathode materials. The high polarization resistance and phase instability of the cathode are two major challenges to hinder the commercialization of SOFC systems. Two families of oxides are presently known as potential cathode materials for SOFCs: (1) the perovskite family of oxides with a general formula of ABO₃, and (2) the Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) family of oxides (e.g. nickelates) with a general formula of A₂BO₄. The electron-hole conduction in these materials occurs simultaneously with oxygen ion conduction based on …

Far-Field Optical Microscopy Based On Stimulated Emission Depletion, Yunxia Wang

Theses and Dissertations

Conventional lens-based (far-field) fluorescence microscopy is a widely used imaging technique with spatial resolution up to 150–350 nm. However, this technology cannot discern very small structural features, because the spatial resolution is limited by diffraction to about half of the wavelength of light (λ/2，λ is the wavelength of light). Hence, most of the developments in microscopy aim at improving resolution. In the past decades, stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy has been developed to bypass the diffraction limit for the application in biological imaging with resolution approaching the nanoscale. The basic principle of STED microscopy is to employ a doughnut-shape laser …

Intermodal Network Design And Expansion For Freight Transportation, Fateme Fotuhiardakani

Theses and Dissertations

Over the last 50 years, international trade has grown considerably, and this growth has strained the global supply chains and their underlying support infrastructures. Consequently, shippers and receivers have to look for more efficient ways to transport their goods. In recent years, intermodal transport is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative to shippers, and this trend is likely to continue as governmental agencies are considering policies to induce a freight modal shift from road to intermodal to alleviate highway congestion and emissions. Intermodal freight transport involves using more than one mode, and thus, it is a more complex transport process. The …

An Application Of Dempster-Shafer Fusion Theory To Lithium-Ion Battery Prognostics And Health Management, John Weddington

Theses and Dissertations

Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) is the discipline involving diagnostics and prognostics of components or systems, with the primary objective of increasing the overall reliability and safety of these components or systems. PHM systems convert raw sensor data into features, and utilize state observers to estimate the current damage state online. Popular state observers are the traditional Kalman filter, along with its non-linear extensions, and the particle filter. Each technique has differing advantages. This thesis investigates the fusion of results from different techniques in order to achieve a more trustworthy probability of detection (PoD) during diagnosis and a more reliable …

Product Qualification And Performance Assessment Of Hsrm Prestressed Concrete Railroad Ties Through Laboratory Testing, Ali Haider Abdulqader

Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the performance assessment of prestressed concrete railroad ties made of a newly developed High Strength Reduce Modulus (HSRM) concrete. The HSRM material has been developed by researchers at the University of South Carolina laboratories. The HSRM material was originally considered as a high-performance concrete for highway bridge girders, but it was rejected because it shows very low modulus of elasticity. A current project at USC proposed to use this HSRM material in prestressed concrete railroad ties. The experimental tests during the material development phase of the project showed that the HSRM-HPC has a reduced Modulus of …

Mechanical Characterization Of Parts Produced By Ceramic On‐Demand Extrusion Process, Amir Ghazanfari, Wenbin Li, Ming Leu, Gregory Hilmas

Faculty Publications, Mechanical Engineering

Ceramic On‐Demand Extrusion (CODE) is an additive manufacturing process recently developed to produce dense three‐dimensional ceramic components. In this paper, the properties of parts produced using this freeform extrusion fabrication process are described. High solids loading (~60 vol%) alumina paste was prepared to fabricate parts and standard test methods were employed to examine their properties including the density, strength, Young's modulus, Weibull modulus, toughness, and hardness. Microstructural evaluation was also performed to measure the grain size and critical flaw size. The results indicate that the properties of parts surpass most other ceramic additive manufacturing processes and match conventional fabrication techniques.

A Safety Management Model For Far 141 Approved Flight Schools, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Thomas Q. Carney

Publications

The Safety Management Annex (Annex 19), which became applicable in November 2013, consolidates safety management provisions previously contained in six other International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Annexes, and will serve as a resource for overarching state safety management responsibilities. Through Annex 19, ICAO has required that its member states develop and implement safety management systems (SMS) to improve safety. This mandate includes an approved training organization that is exposed to aviation safety risks. In 2015, the FAA published AC 120-92B to provide guidance material for certificate holders operating under FAR 121, to implement and maintain an SMS. This AC may …

A New Job Shop Heuristic Algorithm For Machine Scheduling Problems, Maryam Ehsaei, Duc T. Nguyen

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The purpose of this research is to present a straightforward and relatively efficient method for solving scheduling problems. A new heuristic algorithm, with the objective of minimizing the makespan, is developed and presented in this paper for job shop scheduling problems (JSP). This method determines jobs’ orders for each machine. The assessment is based on the combination of dispatching rules e.g. the "Shortest Processing Time" of each operation, the "Earliest Due Date" of each job, the "Least Tardiness" of the operations in each sequence and the "First come First Serve" idea. Also, unlike most of the heuristic algorithms, due date …

Estimating Freeway Traffic Volume Using Shockwaves And Probe Vehicle Trajectory Data, Khairul Anuar, Mecit Cetin

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Probe vehicle data are increasingly becoming the primary source of traffic data. In current practice, traffic volumes and speeds are collected from inductive loop or similar devices. As probe vehicle data become more widespread, it is imperative that methods are developed so that traffic state estimators like speed, density and flow can be derived from probe vehicle data as well. In this paper, a methodology to estimate traffic flow on a freeway based on probe vehicle trajectory data combined with traffic shockwave theory is proposed. In essence, probe vehicle trajectory can indicate the free-flowing and congested regimes. By using LWR …

Evaluation Of Red Rrfb Implementation At Freeway Off-Ramps And Its Effectiveness On Alleviating Wrong-Way Driving, Seckin Ozkul, Pei-Sung Lin

CUTR Faculty Journal Publications

Wrong-way crashes are a major cause for safety concern along freeways and limited access facilities. This study investigated three different aspects of the use of Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacons (RRFBs): 1) different settings of red RRFBs and their perceived effectiveness on reducing wrong-way driving based on a public opinion survey, 2) the effect of active red RRFBs on the behavior of drivers traveling on adjacent roadways via a before-and-after study, and 3) the effectiveness of red RRFBs on alleviating wrong-way driving on freeway off-ramps by analyzing the percentage of vehicles turning back after observing the red RRFB activation. Based on …

Improvement Assessment Of Bus Serviceability By Proposing Route Revision, Shahrzad Ainkeshavarzi, Hamed Soleimani

CUTR Faculty Journal Publications

Public transit is an essential part of a city’s transportation. An efficient transit system makes a city more sustainable by reducing the number of single occupancy vehicles leading to a reduction in emissions, energy consumption and less congestion on streets. Public serviceability is an important indicator to indicate how good a transit route is determined; however, it could change during the years since population density is variable. This study is intended to do a comparison between serviceability of a bus line in Memphis, Tennessee for one zip code area to point out the necessity of considering route revising in short-term …

Exploring Factors Contributing To Lane Changes During Left Turns On Quadruple Left-Turn Lanes At Signalized Intersections, Fulu Wei, Zhenyu Wang, Jian Lu

CUTR Faculty Journal Publications

Quadruple left-turn lanes are employed gradually at some major intersections in Jilin, China. At these intersections, frequent lane changes during left turns of vehicles can lead to vastly disordered traffic operations. In this study, the factors contributing to lane changes during left turn behaviors at quadruple left-turn lane intersections were interpreted based on a field survey. In total, data on 192 green intervals and 550 individual lane-change behaviors were collected in Changchun, Jilin Province. A lane-changing rate model was established to predict the rate of lane changes during left turns. In addition, an interval selection model was built to estimate …

How Bicycling Sharing System Usage Is Affected By Land Use And Urban Form: Analysis From System And User Perspectives, Ahmadreza Faghih-Imani, Naveen Eluru, Rajesh Paleti

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

There is a rapid growth of bicycle-sharing systems (BSS) around the world. Cities are supporting these systems as a more sustainable transport mode for short trips. Given the relatively recent adoption of BSS, there is substantial interest in understanding how these systems impact urban transportation. In this paper, we examine the functioning of the hugely successful New York City CitiBike system. We focus on the interaction of BSS with land-use and built environment attributes and the influence of weather condition and temporal characteristics on BSS usage. Towards this end, CitiBike system is analyzed along two dimensions: (1) at the system …

Detection Theory For Accurate And Non-Invasive Skin Cancer Diagnosis Using Dynamic Thermal Imaging, Sebastian E. Godoy, Majeed M. Hayat, David A. Ramirez, Stephen A. Myers, R. Steven Padilla, Sanjay Krishna

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States with over 3.5M annual cases. Presently, visual inspection by a dermatologist has good sensitivity (> 90%) but poor specificity (< 10%), especially for melanoma, which leads to a high number of unnecessary biopsies. Here we use dynamic thermal imaging (DTI) to demonstrate a rapid, accurate and non-invasive imaging system for detection of skin cancer. In DTI, the lesion is cooled down and the thermal recovery is recorded using infrared imaging. The thermal recovery curves of the suspected lesions are then utilized in the context of continuous-time detection theory in order to define an optimal statistical decision rule such that the sensitivity of the algorithm is guaranteed to be at a maximum for every prescribed false-alarm probability. The proposed methodology was tested in a pilot study including 140 human subjects demonstrating a sensitivity in excess of 99% for a prescribed specificity in excess of 99% for detection of skin cancer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest reported accuracy for any non-invasive skin cancer diagnosis method.

Design Of Experiment Analysis Of An Electronics Package Lid Using Finite Element Analysis, Nupur Bajad

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

A design of experiment analysis is reported on data from warpage simulations using finite element analysis of a lidded electronics package. Warpage in a lid of an optical electronics package can detrimentally affect the reliability of the package as well as its optical performance. The present study focuses on the variety of materials and designs of lids relevant to recent technologies in electronics packaging. The finite element analysis (FEA) formulation in this study accurately predicts deformation and warpage in the elastic region with optimal computational time achieved through a choice of boundary conditions and mesh sensitivity studies.

The results from …

Understanding The Intrinsic Electrochemistry Of Ni-Rich Layered Cathodes, Shawn W. Sallis

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The demand for energy is continually increasing overtime and the key to meeting future demand in a sustainable way is with energy storage. Li-ion batteries employing layered transition metal oxide cathodes are one of the most technologically important energy storage technologies. However, current Li-ion batteries are unable to access their full theoretical capacity and suffer from performance limiting degradation over time partially originating from the cathode and partially from the interface with the electrolyte. Understanding the fundamental limitations of layered transition metal oxide cathodes requires a complete understanding of the surface and bulk of the materials in their most delithiated …

Experimental And Numerical Investigation Of Pressure Drop In Silicon Carbide Fuel Rod For Application In Pressurized Water Reactors, Ahmed Musafi Abir

Theses and Dissertations

Spacer grids are used in pressurized water reactors (PWRs) fuel assemblies which enhances heat transfer from fuel rods. However, there remain regions of low turbulence in between the spacer grids which contributes to lower heat transfer. To enhance turbulence in these regions surface roughness is applied on the fuel rod walls. Meyer et al [1] used empirical correlations to predict heat transfer and friction factor for artificially roughened fuel rod bundles at high performance light water reactors (LWRs). At present, several types of materials are being used for fuel rod cladding including zircaloy, uranium oxide, etc. But researchers are actively …

Three Segment Adaptive Power Electronic Compensator For Non-Periodic Currents, Amin Ghaderi

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, a new technique is proposed for the compensation of nonperiodic load current. The method provides control references for three co-located devices, each corresponding to one moving calculation window and one decomposed part of the compensated current. They are slow compensator with high power rating, large calculation window, and low switching frequency; fast compensator with lower power rating, shorter calculation window, and higher switching frequency; and the reactive compensator which is an ordinary static VAR compensator (SVC). To improve the flexibility of the technique, a fuzzy based adaptive window is proposed for the slow compensator to find the …

Investigating The Feedstock Properties And Process Conditions Influencing The Characteristics Of Products Generated From The Hydrothermal Carbonization Of Organic Feedstocks, Liang Li

Theses and Dissertations

Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is a novel environmentally beneficial thermal conversion process for the transformation of organic feedstocks to value-added products. However, little is known about the role of feedstock properties and/or process conditions during carbonization. This study was conducted to determine the parameters most influential during the HTC of organic feedstocks. Experiments and statistical analyses were conducted to: (1) determine the effect of specific feedstocks, feedstock interactions, and process conditions on carbonization product characteristics; (2) understand how initial liquid characteristics influence product characteristics and evaluate the significance of these initial liquid characteristics in predicting product characteristics; and (3) develop statistical …

Study Of Mos2 And Graphene-Based Heterojunctions For Electronic And Sensing Applications, Ifat Jahangir

Theses and Dissertations

Since the discovery of graphene, there has been an increase in two-dimensional (2D) materials research for their scalability down to atomic dimensions. Among the analogs of graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are attractive due to their exceptional electronic and optoelectronic properties. MoS2, a TMD, has several advantages over graphene and the industry workhorse Si, and has been reported to demonstrate excellent transistor performances. The key obstacle in the commercialization of MoS2 technology is low carrier mobility over large areas for top-down devices. Although there were several early reports on synthesis of atomically thin MoS2 with moderate mobility, transferring large area …

Improving Peptide Identification By Considering Ordered Amino Acid Usage, Ahmed Al-Qurri

Theses and Dissertations

Proteomics has made major progress in recent years after the sequencing of the genomes of a substantial number of organisms. A typical method for identifying peptides uses a database of peptides identified using tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). The profile of accurate mass and elution time (AMT) for peptides that need to be identified will be compared with this database. Restricting the search to those peptides detectable by MS will reduce processing time and more importantly increase accuracy. In addition, there are significant impacts for clinical studies. Proteotypic peptides are those peptides in a protein sequence that are most likely to …

Ultrathin Graphene Oxide Membranes For Water Purification: Fundamentals & Potential Applications, Weiwei Xu

Theses and Dissertations

To develop ultrathin GO membranes with both high permeation rate and excellent selectivity, it is essential to understand the interlayer nanostructure and its influence on water purification performance. We purposely deposited GO at a fast rate and at a rate ~12 times slower to control the interlayer nanostructure of the resulting membranes. The d-spacing difference between proposed thermodynamically favored interlayer structure which formed at slow deposition rate and another relative randomly packed interlayer structure formed at fast deposition rate were corroborated by XRD, organic vapor deposition, and AFM. Molecular dynamics simulations further confirmed that, in type I structure, functionalized patches …

Improving Facial Action Unit Recognition Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shizhong Han

Theses and Dissertations

Recognizing facial action units (AUs) from spontaneous facial expression is a challenging problem, because of subtle facial appearance changes, free head movements, occlusions, and limited AU-coded training data. Most recently, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown promise on facial AU recognition. However, CNNs are often overfitted and do not generalize well to unseen subject due to limited AU-coded training images. In order to improve the performance of facial AU recognition, we developed two novel CNN frameworks, by substituting the traditional decision layer and convolutional layer with the incremental boosting layer and adaptive convolutional layer respectively, to recognize the AUs from …

Non-Destructive Evaluation Of Composites: Predictive Ultrasonic Guided-Waves Modeling, Non-Destructive Material Characterization, And The Application To Aerospace Structures, Darun Barazanchy

Theses and Dissertations

To predict guided wave dispersion curves, it is common to use different solution approaches depending on the material type (isotropic or anisotropic) of the medium in which the wave propagates. The two different solution methods are defined in different domains, frequency-phase velocity domain for isotropic materials and wavenumber-phase velocity domain for anisotropic materials. This may lead to difficulties and unsatisfying results when predicting the dispersion curves for hybrid laminates which contain both isotropic and anisotropic materials. Therefore, a unified formulation defined in the wavenumber-phase velocity domain to accomodate both isotropic and anisotropic materials, as well as hybrid combinations, is desired. …