Engineering Commons^™

Portable Roadway High Water Detection System For Driver Safety And Infrastructure Assessment, Hatim Sharif, Samer Dessouky

Data

Corresponding data set for Tran-SET Project No. 18SATSA05. Abstract of the final report is stated below for reference:

"The state of Texas, local governments, and community groups are adopting several initiatives to address this problem. The main goal of this project is to develop an approach to enhance prediction and detection of roadway flooding and help efforts to prevent driving into flood roadways. The motivation of this work was initiated by the alarming number of vehicle related flood fatalities in Texas, mostly at low-water crossings. Texas leads the nation in the number of flood fatalities and about 77% of flood …

Elimination Of Empirical, Ineffective And Expensive Pg Plus Tests To Characterize Modified Binders, Zahid Hossain, Ashraf Elsayed, Mm Tariq Morshed, Mohammad Hassan

Data

Corresponding data set for Tran-SET Project No. 18BASU02. Abstract of the final report is stated below for reference:

"For characterizing the polymer modified binders, different state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) use different time consuming and empirical Performance Grade (PG) Plus test methods. Furthermore, the PG Plus tests are silent when asphalt binders are modified with chemicals such as polyphosphoric acid (PPA). But, the effects of the elastomeric or plastomeric polymer are not accurately identified through these conventional tests such as Elastic Recovery (ER) and tenacity. Thus, the main research goal of this study is to recommend alternative test method(s), which …

Probing Surface Characteristics Of Rare Earth Minerals Using Contact Angle Measurements, Atomic Force Microscopy, And Inverse Gas Chromatography, Mostafa Khodakarami, Lana Z. Alagha, Daniel J. Burnett

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Rare earth minerals (REMs) such as bastnaesite, monazite, and xenotime are of considerable significance since they are the main commercial sources for rare earth elements (REEs) with cutting-edge applications. Fundamental understanding of surface properties of REMs is essential to identify the reactions taking place at different interfaces to develop more robust technologies for the recovery of REEs. The goal of this study is to provide a comprehensive investigation on the surface energy characteristics of bastnaesite and xenotime, as the primary sources of light and heavy rare earth elements, respectively. Crystal's orientation of REMs was identified using surface X-ray diffraction analysis, …

An Optimized Encoding Algorithm For Systematic Polar Codes, Xiumin Wang, Zhihong Zhang, Jun Li, Yu Wang, Haiyan Cao, Zhengquan Li, Liang Shan

Publications and Research

Many different encoding algorithms for systematic polar codes (SPC) have been introduced since SPC was proposed in 2011. However, the number of the computing units of exclusive OR (XOR) has not been optimized yet. According to an iterative property of the generator matrix and particular lower triangular structure of the matrix, we propose an optimized encoding algorithm (OEA) of SPC that can reduce the number of XOR computing units compared with existing non-recursive algorithms. We also prove that this property of the generator matrix could extend to different code lengths and rates of the polar codes. Through the matrix segmentation …

Numerical Simulation Of Diffuse Ultrasonic Waves In Concrete, Hossein Ariannejad

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Concrete can be subject to various type of damages. Some damages such as Alkali Silica Reaction (ASR) tend to start from the inside, where there is no easy way to identify or evaluate them in the early stage. The study of ultrasonic waves scatterings in non destructive testing (NDT) methods play a major role in identifying such damages. In an ultrasonic test, high frequency ultrasonic waves are used to interrogate the internal structure of concrete material, where the coarse aggregates and microcracks cause multiple scattering of ultrasonic waves. Experimental studies have demonstrated that diffuse ultrasonic waves scattered by boundaries, coarse …

On The Measurement Of Energy Dissipation Of Adhered Cells With The Quartz Microbalance With Dissipation Monitoring, Amir Monemian Esfahani, Weiwei Zhao, Jennifer Y. Chen, Changjin Huang, Ning Xi, Jun Xi, Ruiguo Yang

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

We previously reported the finding of a linear correlation between the change of energy dissipation (ΔD) of adhered cells measured with the quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) and the level of focal adhesions of the cells. To account for this correlation, we have developed a theoretical framework for assessing the ΔD-response of adhered cells. We rationalized that the mechanical energy of an oscillating QCM-D sensor coupled with a cell monolayer is dissipated through three main processes: the interfacial friction through the dynamic restructuring (formation and rupture) of cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) bonds, the interfacial viscous damping by the liquid …

Bird Hazard Mitigation Training For Part 141 General Aviation Pilots: An Experimental Study, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Richard O. Fanjoy Phd, Thomas Q. Carney

Publications

From 1990 through 2018 ==> 209,950 wildlife strikes in the U.S.,

Approximately 95% of those incidents involved birds;

Seventy aircraft destroyed as a result of wildlife strikes!

13 bird strikes 32 ==> fatalities;

• 244 wildlife strikes ==> 319 people injured!
• 224 bird strikes ==>299 people injured!

General aviation community;

• 97% of the strikes occurred below 3,500 feet AGL;
• There were 22,775 wildlife strikes ==> 26% caused damage to the aircraft!

Wildlife Hazard Management: An Analysis Of Wildlife Strikes Data From The Five Busiest Airports In Brasil: 2011-2018, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Julius Keller, Carlos F. G. Schonhardt

Publications

Brasil ==> the largest country in Latin America - 8.514.876 Km²;

Booming aviation industry;

• From 2008 through 2017 ==>7.1% per year;
• 104 million passengers in 2018;
• International destinations – 21.8 million (~20%);
• U.S. - 4.4 million passengers;
• Argentina – 3.8 million passengers;
• Portugal & Chile – 1.7 million passengers;
• Brazilian Airlines – 38.3%.

Domestic Passengers 200 million in 2030; International Passengers 55 million in 2030.

Application Of Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (Efit) To Three-Dimensional Wave Propagation And Scattering In Arbitrary Geometries, Sean M. Raley

Master's Theses

Over several decades, railroad Ultrasonic Testing (UT) industry techniques have primarily been developed through simple analytical modelling and experimental approaches. However, with present-day computational capabilities, we can use numerical techniques like the Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT) to fine-tune systems for complex applications before the fabrication process begins. EFIT is well-established as a useful method in numerical analysis of ultrasonic wave propagation with distinct advantages over the Finite Difference Time Domain method. Several software packages exist that use EFIT as the primary method for simulating the behavior of ultrasonic waves over time in 2 or 3 dimensions, but none of …

An Ann-Based System For Lateral Misalignment And Vertical Clearance Estimation Of An Electric Vehicle During Dynamic Wireless Charging, Sanat Kumar Saha

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Due to decaying fossil fuel reserves, oil price fluctuation and detrimental effects on climate the use of fossil fuel has, people are getting more interested in other alternative energy sources. In the past couple of decades, the Electric Vehicles have emerged as a robust environment-friendly alternative to conventional gasoline-driven vehicles. Although EVs have a problem with the limited energy storage, Stationary and Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) systems for the charging of EVs can be an effective solution. However, in a WPT system, energy efficiency and energy transfer capability are significantly affected by the level of Lateral Misalignment. The real-time …

Cascaded Fabry-Pérot Interferometers With Vernier Effect For Gas Pressure Measurement, Hongfeng Lin, Yanyan Xu, Farhan Mumtaz, Yutang Dai, Ai Zhou

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A sensitivity enhanced gas pressure sensor with Vernier effect is proposed in this paper. The sensor is a cascade configuration which includes two Fabry-Pérot interferometers (FPIs) with different free spectrum range (FSR). Each Fabry-Pérot interferometer is fabricated by inserting a piece of hollow core fiber (HCF) in between two sections of single mode fiber (SMF). Femtosecond laser is applied for drilling an opening on the HCF of sensing FPI to make the air hole interact with outside environment, while the air hole of the reference FPI is kept closed. Gas pressure response is measured by monitoring the wavelength shift of …

Backstepping Control And Transformation Of Multi-Input Multi-Output Affine Nonlinear Systems Into A Strict Feedback Form, Khalid Salim D. Alharbi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents an improved method for controlling multi-input multi-output affine nonlinear systems. A method based on Lie derivatives of the system's outputs is proposed to transform the system into an equivalent strict feedback form. This enables using backstepping control approaches based on Lyapunov stability and integrator backstepping theory to be applied. The geometrical coordinate transformation of multi-input multi-output affine nonlinear systems into strict feedback form has not been detailed in previous publications. In this research, a new approach is presented that extends the transformation process of single-input single-output nonlinear. A general algorithm of the transformation process is formulated. The …

Generalizing Multiple Access Wiretap And Wiretap Ii Channel Models: Achievable Rates And Cost Of Strong Secrecy, Mohamed Nafea, Aylin Yener

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, new two-user multiple access wiretap channel models are studied. First, the multiple access wiretap channel II with a discrete memoryless main channel under different wiretapping scenarios is introduced. The wiretapper, as in the classical wiretap channel II model, chooses a fixed-size subset of the channel uses, in which it obtains noise-free observations of one of the codewords: a deterministic function, e.g., superposition, of the two codewords or each of the two codewords. A fourth wiretapping scenario is considered, in which the wiretapper, in each position it chooses, decides to observe either one of the codewords or both …

Simulated Annealing For The Multi-Vehicle Cyclic Inventory Routing Problem, Aldy Gunawan, Vincent F. Yu, Audrey Tedja Widjaja, Pieter Vansteenwegen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper studies the Multi-Vehicle Cyclic Inventory Routing Problem (MV-CIRP) as the extension of the Single-Vehicle CIRP (SV-CIRP). The objective is to minimize both distribution and inventory costs at the customers and to maximize the collected rewards simultaneously. The problem is treated as a single objective optimization problem. A subset of customers is selected for each vehicle including the quantity to be delivered to each customer. For each vehicle, a cyclic distribution plan is developed. We construct a mathematical programming model and propose a simulated annealing (SA) metaheuristic for solving both SV-CIRP and MV-CIRP. For SV-CIRP, experimental results on benchmark …

Low-Rank Sparse Subspace For Spectral Clustering, Xiaofeng Zhu, Shichao Zhang, Yonggang Li, Jilian Zhang, Lifeng Yang, Yue Fang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The current two-step clustering methods separately learn the similarity matrix and conduct k means clustering. Moreover, the similarity matrix is learnt from the original data, which usually contain noise. As a consequence, these clustering methods cannot achieve good clustering results. To address these issues, this paper proposes a new graph clustering methods (namely Low-rank Sparse Subspace clustering (LSS)) to simultaneously learn the similarity matrix and conduct the clustering from the low-dimensional feature space of the original data. Specifically, the proposed LSS integrates the learning of similarity matrix of the original feature space, the learning of similarity matrix of the low-dimensional …

Correlation-Sensitive Next-Basket Recommendation, Duc Trong Le, Hady Wirawan Lauw, Yuan Fang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Items adopted by a user over time are indicative ofthe underlying preferences. We are concerned withlearning such preferences from observed sequencesof adoptions for recommendation. As multipleitems are commonly adopted concurrently, e.g., abasket of grocery items or a sitting of media consumption, we deal with a sequence of baskets asinput, and seek to recommend the next basket. Intuitively, a basket tends to contain groups of relateditems that support particular needs. Instead of recommending items independently for the next basket, we hypothesize that incorporating informationon pairwise correlations among items would help toarrive at more coherent basket recommendations.Towards this objective, we develop a …

Shoal: Large-Scale Hierarchical Taxonomy Via Graph-Based Query Coalition In E-Commerce, Zhao Li, Xia Chen, Xuming Pan, Pengcheng Zou, Yuchen Li, Guoxian Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

E-commerce taxonomy plays an essential role in online retail business. Existing taxonomy of e-commerce platformsorganizes items into an ontology structure. However, theontology-driven approach is subject to costly manual maintenance and often does not capture user’s search intention,particularly when user searches by her personalized needsrather than a universal definition of the items. Observingthat search queries can effectively express user’s intention,we present a novel large-Scale Hierarchical taxOnomy viagrAph based query coaLition (SHOAL) to bridge the gapbetween item taxonomy and user search intention. SHOALorganizes hundreds of millions of items into a hierarchicaltopic structure. Each topic that consists of a cluster of itemsdenotes a …

Improving Law Enforcement Daily Deployment Through Machine Learning-Informed Optimization Under Uncertainty, Jonathan David Chase, Duc Thien Nguyen, Haiyang Sun, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Urban law enforcement agencies are under great pressure to respond to emergency incidents effectively while operating within restricted budgets. Minutes saved on emergency response times can save lives and catch criminals, and a responsive police force can deter crime and bring peace of mind to citizens. To efficiently minimize the response times of a law enforcement agency operating in a dense urban environment with limited manpower, we consider in this paper the problem of optimizing the spatial and temporal deployment of law enforcement agents to predefined patrol regions in a real-world scenario informed by machine learning. To this end, we …

Decision Making For Improving Maritime Traffic Safety Using Constraint Programming, Saumya Bhatnagar, Akshat Kumar, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Maritime navigational safety is of utmost importance to prevent vessel collisions in heavily trafficked ports, and avoid environmental costs. In case of a likely near miss among vessels, port traffic controllers provide assistance for safely navigating the waters, often at very short lead times. A better strategy is to avoid such situations from even happening. To achieve this, we a) formalize the decision model for traffic hotspot mitigation including realistic maritime navigational features and constraints through consultations with domain experts; and b) develop a constraint programming based scheduling approach to mitigate hotspots. We model the problem as a variant of …

Data-Driven Surgical Duration Prediction Model For Surgery Scheduling: A Case-Study For A Practice-Feasible Model In A Public Hospital, Kar Way Tan, Francis Ngoc Hoang Long Nguyen, Boon Yew Ang, Jerald Gan, Sean Shao Wei Lam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hospitals have been trying to improve the utilization of operating rooms as it affects patient satisfaction, surgery throughput, revenues and costs. Surgical prediction model which uses post-surgery data often requires high-dimensional data and contains key predictors such as surgical team factors which may not be available during the surgical listing process. Our study considers a two-step data-mining model which provides a practical, feasible and parsimonious surgical duration prediction. Our model first leverages on domain knowledge to provide estimate of the first surgeon rank (a key predicting attribute) which is unavailable during the listing process, then uses this predicted attribute and …

Syntroph Diversity And Abundance In Anaerobic Digestion Revealed Through A Comparative Core Microbiome Approach, Masanori Fujimoto, Daniel Elliott Carey, Daniel Zitomer, Patrick J. Mcnamara

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Anaerobic digestion is an important biotechnology treatment process for conversion of waste to energy. In this study, a comparative core microbiome approach, i.e., determining taxa that are shared in functioning digesters but not shared in non-functioning digesters, was used to determine microbial taxa that could play key roles for effective anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic digester functions were impaired by adding the broad-spectrum antimicrobial triclosan (TCS) or triclocarban (TCC) at different concentrations, and the core microbiomes in both functioning and non-functioning anaerobic digesters were compared. Digesters treated with high (2500 mg/kg) or medium (450 mg/kg) TCS and high (850 mg/kg) …

Performance Study Of Link Slab Continuity In Prestressed Concrete Bridges, Marco Tulio Canales Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Link slabs in bridges can be a cost-effective solution to increase the service life of bridge structures. The partial continuity condition in link slab bridges, however can be challenging to quantify. In this work link slab performance is studied by means of a parametric study, a long-term Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) System, and a detailed finite-element model.

The parametric study was conducted using mathematical and a two-dimensional (2D) finite element model. The study considers bridge design factors such as number of spans, span length, span length ratio, girder separation, and temperature settings, in conjunction with the corresponding girder and support …

Development Of A Methodology For Characterizing Reaction Kinetics, Rheology, And In-Situ Compaction Of Polyimide Prepregs During Cure, James Raymond Magato, Donald A. Klosterman

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

PMR-type polyimide prepregs are challenging to fabricate into high quality composites due to volatiles that are generated and must be removed in situ during processing. The current work was conducted to develop accurate, reliable, and practical characterization techniques of the prepreg rheology, volatile generation, and subsequent volatile removal from the prepreg during composite fabrication. Thermal analysis was used to characterize volatile generation, reaction rates, and rheology. A novel approach was used to measure the thickness of the prepreg in situ during vacuum bag/oven processing using a high-temperature LVDT. Experimental results are presented for the commercially available RM-1100 polyimide/carbon prepreg system, …

An Explainable Recommender System Based On Semantically-Aware Matrix Factorization., Mohammed Sanad Alshammari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collaborative Filtering techniques provide the ability to handle big and sparse data to predict the ratings for unseen items with high accuracy. Matrix factorization is an accurate collaborative filtering method used to predict user preferences. However, it is a black box system that recommends items to users without being able to explain why. This is due to the type of information these systems use to build models. Although rich in information, user ratings do not adequately satisfy the need for explanation in certain domains. White box systems, in contrast, can, by nature, easily generate explanations. However, their predictions are less …

Formally Designing And Implementing Cyber Security Mechanisms In Industrial Control Networks., Mehdi Sabraoui

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation describes progress in the state-of-the-art for developing and deploying formally verified cyber security devices in industrial control networks. It begins by detailing the unique struggles that are faced in industrial control networks and why concepts and technologies developed for securing traditional networks might not be appropriate. It uses these unique struggles and examples of contemporary cyber-attacks targeting control systems to argue that progress in securing control systems is best met with formal verification of systems, their specifications, and their security properties. This dissertation then presents a development process and identifies two technologies, TLA+ and seL4, that can be …

Adaptive Physical Human-Robot Interaction (Phri) With A Robotic Nursing Assistant., Sumit Kumar Das

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, more and more robots are being investigated for future applications in health-care. For instance, in nursing assistance, seamless Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is very important for sharing workspaces and workloads between medical staff, patients, and robots. In this thesis we introduce a novel robot - the Adaptive Robot Nursing Assistant (ARNA) and its underlying components. ARNA has been designed specifically to assist nurses with day-to-day tasks such as walking patients, pick-and-place item retrieval, and routine patient health monitoring. An adaptive HRI in nursing applications creates a positive user experience, increase nurse productivity and task completion rates, as reported by experimentation …

Design And Predicting Performance Of Carbon Nanotube Reinforced Cementitious Materials : Mechanical Properties And Dispersion Characteristics., Mahyar Ramezani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recently, Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) are drawing considerable attention of researchers for reinforcing cementitious materials due to their excellent mechanical properties and high aspect ratio (length-to-diameter ratio). However, CNTs might not disperse well within the cement matrix, resulting in little improvement or even degradation of concrete properties. The uncertainty in producing the consistent results in different studies might be attributed to multiple interactions between the experimental variables affecting the nanotube dispersion and the final properties of CNT-cement nanocomposites. Therefore, this research mainly focused on proposing equations that can reliably capture these interactions in order to correlate CNT dispersion with the mechanical …

Optical Direct Detection Of Thermal Vibrations Of Ultralow Stiffness Micro-Nano Structures., Sri Sukanta Chowdhury

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A direct detection optical vibrometer is constructed around an 850 nm laser and a quadrant photodetector (QPD). The limit of detection is 0.2 fW which corresponds to a minimum amplitude of 0.1 Å. The vibrometer is used to measure the thermal vibration spectra of low stiffness micromechanical structures have nanometer features. One structure measured is a cantilevered 30 μm diameter glass fiber. Vibration amplitudes as low as 1.1 Å are measured. The thermal vibration spectra show fundamental resonances at 80-250 Hz and a signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 23-55 dB. Young’s modulus of glass in the cantilevers, estimated from …

Hardware Implementation Of Boost Power Factor Correction Converter., Shruti Motilal Deore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, there has been an increasing demand of unity power factor in electrical power sector. Due to the nonlinear nature of load equipment, switching devices, source voltage and current are out of phase with each other. Many power converters topologies are used for the power factor correction. The boost converter with controller is most common for power factor correction circuits. The controller objective is to maintain the output voltage regulation and input current tracking with source voltage. The voltage ripple present due to the ac component of the current tracking objective, hence instead of ignoring that ripple, it is used …

All Season Heat Pipe System., Adrienne Marie Parsons

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Our energy choices impact the earth’s natural systems and climate. As this becomes increasingly important, the need for decreasing our energy usage is essential. Conventional passive solar systems can significantly reduce the heating load. Similarly, passive ambient energy systems, such as ventilation and sky radiation, can reduce cooling loads. However, the integration of passive heating and cooling systems in the same building and the benefits of actively controlling these otherwise passive systems to maximize annual energy savings has largely been unexplored. This study first evaluates the building cooling capacity of sky radiation, which was previously identified to have the greatest …