Engineering Commons^™

Probabilistic Models For Order-Picking Operations With Multiple In-The-Aisle Pick Positions, Jingming Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The development of probability density functions (pdfs) for travel time of a narrow aisle lift truck (NALT) and an automated storage and retrieval (AS/R) machine is the focus of the dissertation. The multiple in-the-aisle pick positions (MIAPP) order picking system can be modeled as an M/G/1 queueing problem in which storage and retrieval requests are the customers and the vehicle (NALT or AS/R machine) is the server. Service time is the sum of travel time and the deterministic time to pick up and deposit a pallet (TPD).

Our first contribution is the development of travel time pdfs for retrieval operations …

Binder Jetting: A Review Of Process, Materials, And Methods, Mohsen Ziaee, Nathan B. Crane

Faculty Publications

Binder Jet printing is an additive manufacturing technique that dispenses liquid binding agent on powder. Layers are formed repeatedly to build up a physical article. Binder jetting (BJ) can be adapted to almost any powder with high production rates. The BJ process utilizes a broad range of technologies including printing methods, powder deposition, dynamic binder/powder interaction, and post-processing methods. A wide variety of materials have been demonstrated including polymers, metals, and ceramics, but a common challenge is developing printing and post-processing methods that maximize part performance. This article presents a broad review of technologies and approaches that have been applied …

Simulated Tremor Propagation In The Upper Limb: From Muscle Activity To Joint Displacement, Thomas Corie, Steven Knight Charles

Faculty Publications

Although tremor is the most common movement disorder, there are few non-invasive treatment options. Creating effective tremor suppression devices requires a knowledge of where tremor originates mechanically (which muscles) and how it propagates through the limb (to which degrees of freedom, DOF).

To simulate tremor propagation, we created a simple model of the upper limb, with tremorogenic activity in the 15 major superficial muscles as inputs and tremulous joint displacement in the 7 major DOF as outputs. The model approximated the muscle excitation-contraction dynamics, musculoskeletal geometry, and mechanical impedance of the limb.

From our simulations, we determined fundamental principles for …

Evaluation Of Data Collection Operations For Real-Time Influenza Surveillance During An Emergency, Yuwen Gu

Dissertations

It is unclear how data collection operations for surveillance alter the disease portrayal that influenza reported trends attempt to provide during an emergency. This study developed a model that simulates the collection and testing of influenza specimens after an outbreak is declared in Michigan. It performed simulation based optimization to understand which operational factors affect the biases between the growth rates of original and observed influenza incidence trends, and to quantify the predictive power of the influenza incidence trends at different points of data collection. The results show that emergency driven high risk perception increases the reporting, which leads to …

Takeoff And Performance Tradeoffs Of Retrofit Distributed Electric Propulsion For Urban Transport, Kevin Moore, Andrew Ning

Faculty Publications

While vertical takeoff and landing aircraft have shown promise for urban air transport, distributed electric propulsion on existing aircraft may offer immediately implementable alternatives. Distributed electric propulsion could potentially decrease takeoff distances enough to enable thousands of potential inter-city runways. This conceptual study explores the effects of a retrofit of open-bladed electric propulsion units. To model and explore the design space we use blade element momentum method, vortex lattice method, linear-beam finite element analysis, classical laminate theory, composite failure, empirically-based blade noise modeling, motor and motor-controller mass models, and gradient-based optimization. With liftoff time of seconds and the safe total …

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 …

Digital Marketing In The Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning Age, Z. Ruan, Keng Siau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We are living in a period of profound change driven by digitization, information and communication technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotics (Gupta, Keen, Shah, and Verdier, 2017; Wang and Siau, 2019). Traditional marketing is shifting to digital marketing enabled by AI and machine learning. Customer consumption behavior has changed from traditional in-store shopping to online shopping (Thiraviyam, 2018). The large volume of transaction and demographic data enables business analytics, AI, and machine learning to analyze and predict customer behavior to improve customer satisfaction and enhance sales (Siau and Wang, 2018). For example, predictive analytics uses different algorithms to predict …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Implementation And Analysis Of The Iso/Iec/Ieee P21451-1 Draft Standard For A Smart Transducer Interface Common Network Services And Its Applications In The Internet Of Things, Russell Henry Albert Trafford

Theses and Dissertations

The Internet of Things (IoT) has rapidly become the paradigm for the creation and improvement of new and old Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), but how much longer can this development of IoT devices, networks, and services be sustained? The past decade has seen incredible growth in internet connected devices, with current estimates placing the number of such devices at about 20 billion in 2017, not including personal computers, smart phones, and tablets. This has created a massive market for these devices, with each company making their own applications, protocols, and services. Since these markets are competitive, there originally was no …

Process/Equipment Design Implications For Control System Cybersecurity, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

An emerging challenge for process safety is process control system cybersecurity. An attacker could gain control of the process actuators through the control system or communication policies within control loops and potentially drive the process state to unsafe conditions. Cybersecurity has traditionally been handled as an information technology (IT) problem in the process industries. In the literature for cybersecurity specifically of control systems, there has been work aimed at developing control designs that seek to fight cyberattacks by either giving the system appropriate response mechanisms once attacks are detected or seeking to make the attacks difficult to perform. In this …

Experimental Investigation Of Whitmore Section And Block Shear Failures In Steel Gusset Plates Using Digital Image Correlation, Prajwal Pokhrel

Civil Engineering Theses

Gusset plates are necessary for transferring loads from one structural member to another. During load transfer gussets can undergo shear, net section rupture and gross section yielding. Gusset design is a complex process and there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the stress and strain distribution in gusset plates. Current design practices which use Whitmore method, may not be sufficient to accurately predict the capacity of a gusset plate. An experimental study was conducted at The University of Texas at Tyler to understand the failure mechanism of gusset plates under uniaxial tensile loading. Variables considered for the experiment are …

Analysis And Tests For A Hybrid Model Created From Classical Taguchi And Goal Post Manufacturing Loss Models, Prajwal Bhandari

Electrical Engineering Theses

We present an analysis of the previously proposed “modified quadratic” loss function. This loss model integrates elements from both Classical Taguchi and Goal Post manufacturing loss models. Specifically, the analyzed hybrid model follows the Taguchi loss quadratic dependence between the upper and lower manufacturing specification limits. On the other hand, outside of these limits, the loss rule is in agreement with the Goal Post Model. Supported by the results of analysis contained herein the Taguchi-Hybrid model does not overestimate the loss as is inherent to the classical Taguchi model. Also, the proposed Taguchi Hybrid model does not ignore deviations from …

Detection And Remodeling Of Toxic Amyloid Aggregates By Novel Conjugated Polyelectrolytes, Adeline Marianne Fanni

Biomedical Engineering ETDs

The abnormal misfolding and aggregation of intrinsically disordered proteins into ordered fibrillar amyloid aggregates is recognized as a common pathological event in neurodegenerative disorders (ND) such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The key role of fibrillar and pre-fibrillar aggregates in ND makes them ideal biomarkers to better understand disease progression but also for early disease detection and therapeutic intervention. The work described herein was conducted to gain a better understanding of amyloid interaction to lipid membrane and its role in peptide toxicity. This research was also focused on evaluating the fluorescent probe, oligomeric p-phenylene ethynylene (OPE), as an amyloid …

Function, Meaning, And Message Of The Natural Environtment In The Story Of Keong Mas, Adinda Bunga Utami, Nanny Sri Lestari

International Review of Humanities Studies

This research discusses the meaning and function of the natural environment in one folk tale that is well known in the Javanese community. This folktale is known in all circles of society, despite having social differences. An interesting problem in this folklore is the placement of functions and environmental meanings as the main elements of stories or tales. The focus of this research is to raise the function and meaning of the natural environment contained in one story of Keong Mas. This study aims to explain carefully the function and meaning of the natural environment which is the background of …

Development Of A Hybrid Residential Hvac System: An Experimental Study Of A Variable Refrigerant Flow System With Ducted And Ductless Elements, Andrew C. Hernandez Iii

Mechanical Engineering Theses

The introduction of variable refrigerant flow (VRF) expands the range of development potential for HVAC systems. The hybridization of traditional HVAC ducted systems and ductless VRF integrates both the advantages and disadvantages of each system type. Existing research does not focus on hybridization but on individual component evaluation that covers quantitatively expansive evaporator or multiple compressor configurations. The Trane Residential Heating and Cooling Research Lab at the University of Texas at Tyler was used as the research facility to experiment and validate a hybrid ducted-ductless HVAC system where a ducted attic air handler unit and three ductless evaporator units were …

Modified Substrate Specificity Of A Methyltransferase Domain By Protein Insertion Into An Adenylation Domain Of The Bassianolide Synthetase, Fuchao Xu, Russell Butler, Kyle M. May, Megi Rexhepaj, Dayu Yu, Jiachen Zi, Yi Chen, Yonghong Liang, Jia Zeng, Joan Hevel, Jixun Zhan

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Presentations

Background: Creating designer molecules using a combination of select domains from polyketide synthases and/or nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) continues to be a synthetic goal. However, an incomplete understanding of how protein-protein interactions and dynamics affect each of the domain functions stands as a major obstacle in the field. Of particular interest is understanding the basis for a class of methyltransferase domains (MT) that are found embedded within the adenylation domain (A) of fungal NRPS systems instead of in an end-to-end architecture.

Results: The MT domain from bassianolide synthetase (BSLS) was removed and the truncated enzyme BSLS-ΔMT was recombinantly expressed. The …

Stability Analysis On Nonequilibrium Supersonic Boundary Layer Flow With Velocity-Slip Boundary Conditions, Xin He, Chunpei Cai

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

This paper presents our recent work on investigating velocity slip boundary conditions’ effects on supersonic flat plate boundary layer flow stability. The velocity-slip boundary conditions are adopted and the flow properties are obtained by solving boundary layer equations. Stability analysis of two such boundary layer flows is performed by using the Linear stability theory. A global method is first utilized to obtain approximate discrete mode values. A local method is then utilized to refine these mode values. All the modes in these two scenarios have been tracked upstream-wisely towards the leading edge and also downstream-wisely. The mode values for the …

A Machine Learning Based Framework For Load Forecasting And Optimal Operation Of Power Systems With Distributed Generation, Tairen Chen

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

The fast development and wide utilization of distributed generations (DGs), such as Photovoltaic panels and wind turbines, provide environmentally friendly renewable energy. However, inappropriate operation, sizing, and placement of DGs could increase the power losses and reduce the stability of the power network. Load forecasting is critical to the electrical utilities to schedule power generation and distribution. In this dissertation, a framework is proposed for load forecasting and optimal operation of power system with DGs in the distribution feeder-level.

In the first part, a nonparametric method, the Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART), is introduced for day-ahead peak load forecasting. The …

Current And Future Deposition Of Nitrogen And Sulfur In Louisiana, Jessica Nguyen

LSU Master's Theses

Nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) are essential nutrients, however excess quantities can stress ecosystems. Atmospheric nitrogen and sulfur deposition lead to changes in water and soil chemistry, consequently resulting in ensuing detriment to multiple ecosystems such as acidification of water bodies. This affects a multitude of plants and animals such as trees, insects, and fish. Louisiana has copious natural water resources. Therefore, it is essential to safeguard its valuable resources from excess atmospheric N and S deposition. However, knowledge of N and S deposition and its unfavorable effects in the Southeast U.S., particularly Louisiana, is limited.

In this research, a …

Distributed Energy Storage System, Jonghyun Park, Mohammed Abdulkhabeer Al-Yasiri

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An energy storage system reaction cell configured for distribution throughout a transport system. The length of the reaction cell is substantially greater than its width and is looped throughout the transport system in a serpentine configuration. A membrane within the reaction cell has a length substantially equal to the length of the reaction cell such that surface area of the membrane is maximized relative to volume of the reaction cell to increase electrical power provided to an electrical load of the transport system.

Hybrid Fusion Protein For Inhibition Of Multiple Proteases For Chronic Wound Healing, Graham L. Strauss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many diseases display a multitude of relevant factors that contribute to the persistence of the disease and difficulty treating it. The multifactorial characteristics of some diseases lead to the requirement of combination of treatments in order to restore health. The latter may necessitate the mixing of treatments, medications, and therapeutics to first halt the disease, then assist the human body in returning itself to a state of normality. For example, chronic wounds exhibit this multifactor characteristic in which there exist many factors that lead to the body’s inability to properly heal in a timely manner. This presents a further threat …

Ultraefficient Thermophotovoltaic Power Conversion By Band-Edge Spectral Filtering, Z. Omair, G. Scranton, L. M. Pazos-Outón, T. P. Xiao, M. A. Steiner, Vidya Ganapati, P. F. Peterson, J. Holzrichter, H. Atwater, E. Yablonovitch

Engineering Faculty Works

Thermophotovoltaic power conversion utilizes thermal radiation from a local heat source to generate electricity in a photovoltaic cell. It was shown in recent years that the addition of a highly reflective rear mirror to a solar cell maximizes the extraction of luminescence. This, in turn, boosts the voltage, enabling the creation of record-breaking solar efficiency. Now we report that the rear mirror can be used to create thermophotovoltaic systems with unprecedented high thermophotovoltaic efficiency. This mirror reflects low-energy infrared photons back into the heat source, recovering their energy. Therefore, the rear mirror serves a dual function; boosting the voltage and …

Human-Cognition-In-The-Loop: A Framework To Include Decision Process In Closed Loop Control, Mehdi Firouznia

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis proposes a framework to include human cognitive process in making decision into control loop. Our approach in solving this problem is to add a complementary control which includes a model of human decision to the controller, capable of predicting human command accuracy in the near future. The outcome of decision unit can either be presented to the operator as a directive or may adjust the issued command toward better results. In order to construct human decision model, we combined tree approaches of bio-physical connectionist, mathematical abstraction and behavioral cognitive models in the adaptive gain theory framework. We first …

Braze For Ceramic And Ceramic Matrix Composite Components, Sean E. Landwehr, Scott Nelson, Jeremy Lee Watts, Greg Hilmas, William Fahrenholtz, Derek Scott King

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In some examples, a technique may include positioning a first part comprising a ceramic or ceramic matrix composite and a second part comprising a ceramic or a CMC adjacent to each other to define a joint region at the interface of the first part and the second part. In some examples, the joint region may be heated using at least one of a laser or a plasma arc source to heat the joint region to an elevated temperature. The first and second parts may be pressed together and cooled to join the first and second parts at the joint region. …

Preparation Of Chitosan-Polyethylene Oxide-Colocasia Esculenta Flour Nanofibers Using Electrospinning Method, Riesca Ayu Kusuma Wardhani, Lia Asri, Muhamad Nasir, Bambang Sunendar Purwasasmita

Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science and Technology (JMEST)

Nanofibers have been prepared from the mixture of chitosan, polyethylene oxide (PEO) and Colocasia esculenta flour (CE flour) by using the electrospinning method. Two different nanofibers were formulated, containing chitosan-PEO and chitosan-PEO-CE flour. The higher concentration of PEO (3%chitosan-6%PEO) (w/v) resulted in more uniform chitosan-PEO electrospun nanofibers without beads. Chitosan-PEO-CE flour was prepared by addition of colloidal CE flour into the solution containing 3%chitosan-6%PEO with variation of the CE flour concentration of 5, 15 and 25% (w/v). Scanning Electron Microscopy demonstrated that the average diameter of chitosan-PEO nanofibers was 128±41 nm, whereas the diameter of chitosan-PEO-CE flour nanofibers was 159±45 …