Engineering Commons^™

Introducing Cornerstone Courses Into Electrical And Computer Engineering Curriculum, Branimir Pejcinovic

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Almost all engineering programs have some form of final, culminating design experience, which is typically taught as a senior year capstone design course. Due to ABET requirements these are team and project based. Many programs will also have projects interspersed among required and elective courses, but these tend to be overrepresented in freshman year. We have recently introduced a set of courses during sophomore year that mimic our approach to capstone courses and provide authentic engineering design experience. These so-called cornerstone courses provide scaffolding by introducing all of the components of teamwork and design process but in a less formal …

Non-Conventional Mechanism Of Ferroelectric Fatigue Via Cation Migration, Anton Ievlev, Santosh Kc, Rama Vasudevan, Yunseok Kim, Xiaoli Lu, Marin Alexe, Valentino Cooper, Sergei Kalinin, Olga Ovchinnikova

Faculty Publications

The unique properties of ferroelectric materials enable a plethora of applications, which are hindered by the phenomenon known as ferroelectric fatigue that leads to the degradation of ferroelectric properties with polarization cycling. Multiple microscopic models explaining fatigue have been suggested; however, the chemical origins remain poorly understood. Here, we utilize multimodal chemical imaging that combines atomic force microscopy with time-of-flight secondary mass spectrometry to explore the chemical phenomena associated with fatigue in PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 (PZT) thin films. Investigations reveal that the degradation of ferroelectric properties is correlated with a local chemical change and migration of electrode ions into the PZT structure. …

Iii-V Nbn Focal Plane Arrays: Radiometric Characteristics As A Function Of Detector Cutoff Wavelength, Victor Darie Pepel

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Summarized here are the measured radiometric characteristics of three Infrared III-V InAsSb/AlAsSb/InAsSb-based nBn focal plane arrays (FPAs) in the SWIR to MWIR range with cutoff wavelengths of 2.85 µm, 3.3 µm and 4.2 µm at the nominal operating temperature of 150 K. Herein referred to by their respective cutoff wavelengths, the nBn detectors are characterized across the temperature range of 130 K to 180 K. The optical response and noise characteristics are examined as a function of cutoff wavelength, and a comparison of dark current density is made to HgTeCd photodiodes using the Rule ‘07 heuristic.

The 2.85 µm, 3.3 …

Control Of Rigid Robots With Large Uncertainties Using The Function Approximation Technique, Donald Ebeigbe

ETD Archive

This dissertation focuses on the control of rigid robots that cannot easily be modeled due to complexity and large uncertainties. The function approximation technique (FAT), which represents uncertainties as finite linear combinations of orthonormal basis functions, provides an alternate form of robot control - in situations where the dynamic equation cannot easily be modeled - with no dependency on the use of model information or training data. This dissertation has four aims - using the FAT - to improve controller efficiency and robustness in scenarios where reliable mathematical models cannot easily be derived or are otherwise unavailable. The first aim …

17-08 Transportation Access And Individuals With Disabilities' Community Integration, Keith M. Christensen, Ziqi Song

Transportation Research Center Reports

This study examined the relationship between transit service patterns and the spatial organization of individuals with disabilities’ activities of daily living residing within Utah’s Wasatch Front region to provide recommendations to improve the design, planning, and management of the Utah Transit Authority’s public transportation system. The study objectives included an accessibility Index of Transit Provision to represent fixed-route bus and light-rail service capacity, and an Index of Transit Need representing the spatial organization of individuals with disabilities’ activities of daily living and indicators of transportation disadvantage.

The findings suggest that 58.7% of individuals with disabilities living within the Wasatch Front …

Tour De France Pelotons Governed By Sight, Not Aerodynamics | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

The 2019 Tour de France has just begun. As 190 riders speed through the streets of France, spectators will marvel at the tightly-packed formation of cyclists known as the peloton. Fans will argue that a peloton creates an aerodynamic advantage, allowing riders to conserve energy throughout the grueling three-week race.

Large-Scale Der Aggregations Of Electric Water Heaters And Battery Inverter Systems, Kevin Marnell

Dissertations and Theses

Distributed energy resources like residential electric water heaters and residential battery inverter systems offer a small amount of change to the grid individually. When aggregated however, these assets can cause major effects to the electric grid. Aggregating these resources allows them to take on generator-like functions with the ability to increment power and decrement power.

The Western Energy Imbalance Market is an energy market offering 15 minute and 5 minute markets for energy transactions between balancing areas. Generation assets make increment and decrement bids. Traditionally the only entrants to this market have been large scale generators and large scale assets …

How Vision Governs The Collective Behaviour Of Dense Cycling Pelotons, J. Belden, Mohammad M. Mansoor, A. Hellum, S. R. Rahman, A. Meyer, C. Pease, J. Pacheco, S. Koziol, Tadd T. Truscott

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

In densely packed groups demonstrating collective behaviour, such as bird flocks, fish schools or packs of bicycle racers (cycling pelotons), information propagates over a network, with individuals sensing and reacting to stimuli over relatively short space and time scales. What remains elusive is a robust, mechanistic understanding of how sensory system properties affect interactions, information propagation and emergent behaviour. Here, we show through direct observation how the spatio-temporal limits of the human visual sensory system govern local interactions and set the network structure in large, dense collections of cyclists. We found that cyclists align in patterns within a ± 30° …

Low Loading Gold Vapor Deposited Electrode For High Sensitivity As (Iii) Detection, Tybur Casuse

Civil Engineering ETDs

The objective of this thesis is to develop a method for detection of arsenite, As (III), using a thin film of gold (Au) vapor deposited onto carbon paper as an electrode. Currently, availability of drinking water arsenic (As) concentration information for rural communities is diminished due to high cost per sample analysis and limited access to analytical laboratories which can accurately determine concentrations near the 10 maximum contaminant level (MCL) set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The use of a minimal amount of gold aids in decreasing the cost of an electrode. …

Microwave Assisted Sol-Gel Synthesis Of Silica-Spider Silk Composites, Abul Bashar Mohammad Giasuddin, David W. Britt

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

This study introduces a simple and environmentally friendly method to synthesize silica-protein nanocomposite materials using microwave energy to solubilize hydrophobic protein in an aqueous solution of pre-hydrolyzed organo- or fluoro-silane. Sol-gel functionality can be enhanced through biomacromolecule incorporation to tune mechanical properties, surface energy, and biocompatibility. Here, synthetic spider silk protein and organo- and fluoro-silane precursors were dissolved and mixed in weakly acidic aqueous solution using microwave technology. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Atomic force microscopy (AFM) images revealed the formation of spherical nanoparticles with sizes ranging from 100 to 500 nm depending, in part, on silane fluoro- or organo-side …

Tauopathies, Novel Optogenetic Tools, And The Future Of Artificial Intelligence In Medicine, Jessica Lee Binder

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

To this day, there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias (ADRD). With the daunting rise at an exponential rate of ADRD burden and related deaths, the necessity to find a new line of attack is vital. Pathological accumulation of microtubule associated protein tau in neurons is a major neuropathological hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related tauopathies. Attempts have been made to promote clearance of pathological tau (p-Tau) from neurons via autophagy. Transcription factor EB (TFEB) has shown to clear p-Tau from neurons via autophagy. However, sustained TFEB activation and autophagy can create burden on cellular …

Information Technology News, Georgia Southern University

Information Technology: News & Publications (2012-2023)

• WIT student in the news

A Novel Privacy Disclosure Risk Measure And Optimizing Privacy Preserving Data Publishing Techniques, Marmar Orooji

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A tremendous amount of individual-level data is generated each day, with a wide variety of uses. This data often contains sensitive information about individuals, which can be disclosed by “adversaries”. Even when direct identifiers such as social security numbers are masked, an adversary may be able to recognize an individual's identity for a data record by looking at the values of quasi-identifiers (QID), known as identity disclosure, or can uncover sensitive attributes (SA) about an individual through attribute disclosure. In data privacy field, multiple disclosure risk measures have been proposed. These share two drawbacks: they do not consider identity and …

Latent Class Model With Application To Speaker Diarization, Liang He, Xianhong Chen, Can Xu, Yi Liu, Jia Liu, Michael T. Johnson

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we apply a latent class model (LCM) to the task of speaker diarization. LCM is similar to Patrick Kenny’s variational Bayes (VB) method in that it uses soft information and avoids premature hard decisions in its iterations. In contrast to the VB method, which is based on a generative model, LCM provides a framework allowing both generative and discriminative models. The discriminative property is realized through the use of i-vector (Ivec), probabilistic linear discriminative analysis (PLDA), and a support vector machine (SVM) in this work. Systems denoted as LCM-Ivec-PLDA, LCM-Ivec-SVM, and LCM-Ivec-Hybrid are introduced. In addition, three …

Usu Partners With Egyptian Universities For Water Resources Training | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

Faculty at Utah State University are developing the latest educational tools to train the next generation of engineers in Egypt and the Middle East.

Beneficial Reuse Of Industrial Co2 Emissions Using A Microalgae Photobioreactor: Waste Heat Utilization Assessment, Daniel T. Mohler, Michael H. Wilson, Zhen Fan, John G. Groppo, Mark Crocker

Center for Applied Energy Research Faculty and Staff Publications

Microalgae are a potential means of recycling CO₂ from industrial point sources. With this in mind, a novel photobioreactor (PBR) was designed and deployed at a coal-fired power plant. To ascertain the feasibility of using waste heat from the power plant to heat algae cultures during cold periods, two heat transfer models were constructed to quantify PBR cooling times. The first, which was based on tabulated data, material properties and the physical orientation of the PBR tubes, yielded a range of heat transfer coefficients of 19–64 W m⁻² K⁻¹ for the PBR at wind speeds of 1–10 …

Characterization Of Single- And Multi-Phase Shock-Accelerated Flows, Patrick John Wayne

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

Experiments conducted in the Shock Tube Facility at the University of New Mexico are focused on characterization of shock-accelerated flows. Single-phase (gaseous) initial conditions consist of a heavy gas column of sulfur hexafluoride seeded with approximately 11% acetone gas by mass. Visualization of the image plane for gaseous initial conditions is accomplished via planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) with a high-powered Nd:YAG ultraviolet laser and an Apogee Alta U-42 monochrome CCD camera, with a quantum efficiency > 90%. Multi-phase (gas-solid) initial conditions consist of glass micro-beads deposited on small 1-cm diameter discs of specific surface chemistry, mounted flush with the bottom wall …

Mathematics And Programming Exercises For Educational Robot Navigation, Ronald I. Greenberg

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper points students towards ideas they can use towards developing a convenient library for robot navigation, with examples based on Botball primitives, and points educators towards mathematics and programming exercises they can suggest to students, especially advanced high school students.

Pseudo-Spectral Method To Control Three-Degree-Of-Freedom Wave Energy Converters, Ossama Abdelkhalik, Giorgio Bacelli, Shangyan Zou, Rush D. Robinett Iii, David G. Wilson, Ryan G. Coe

Michigan Tech Patents

The invention provides optimal control of a three-degree-of-freedom wave energy converter using a pseudo-spectral control method. The three modes are the heave, pitch and surge. A dynamic model is characterized by a coupling between the pitch and surge modes, while the heave is decoupled. The heave, however, excites the pitch motion through nonlinear parametric excitation in the pitch mode. The invention can use a Fourier series as basis functions to approximate the states and the control. For the parametric excited case, a sequential quadratic programming approach can be implemented to numerically solve for the optimal control. The numerical results show …

Assessment Of Project Risks In Fast-Track Construction Projects, Claudia Garrido Martins

Civil Engineering ETDs

Fast-tracking has been extensively used to respond to demands for reduced construction project delivery times. Unique risks arising from the overlapping of activities can threaten the project. A framework is proposed to assess project risks in fast-track construction projects to better understand the intersection of fast-track, risks, and construction. The research used a commercial construction renovation project as a case study, semi-structured interviews, simulation and optimization methods to identify risks of overlapping activities, classify the risks, evaluate the impact of risks and risk mitigation actions, and optimal combinations to minimize the risk impact and mitigation costs. This study resulted in …

Electro-Optic Modulator, Microwave Photonic Link Including An Electro-Optic Modulator, And Method Of Communicating A Signal With An Electro-Optic Modulator, Christopher T. Middlebrook, Arash Hosseinzadeh

Michigan Tech Patents

An electro-optic modulator coupled to an optical source providing an optical power and a radio frequency source providing a radio frequency power. The electro-optic modulator includes a waveguide to receive the optical power, a first ring resonator modulator, and a second ring resonator modulator. The first ring resonator modulator and the second ring resonator modulator receives the radio frequency power, and are coupled to the waveguide for modulating the optical power with the radio frequency power. The first ring resonator modulator and the second ring resonator modulator, with the waveguide, substantially suppress third order intermodulation distortion of a combined power. …

Microfluidic Gasketless Interconnect Sealed By Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Xiaoxiao Zhao

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lab-on-a-chip technologies are widely applied in the field of life sciences and potentially in clinical diagnostics. There is a high demand for standardized, efficient interconnects between components in modular microfluidic systems. Chip-to-chip contactless, microfluidic interconnects, that allow fluid flow between chips, were designed and evaluated. The interconnects are 'gasketless' without the need for O-ring’s or fillers. Specifically, two microfluidic chips are assembled face-to-face and the fluidic ports on each chip were accurately aligned to allow the passage of fluids, through liquid bridges spanning the gap. Formation of the liquid bridges was governed by superhydrophobic films coating the surface around the …

A Systematic Review Of Studies On Educational Robotics, Saira Anwar, Nicholas Alexander Bascou, Muhsin Menekse, Asefeh Kardgar

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

There has been a steady increase in the number of studies investigating educational robotics and its impact on academic and social skills of young learners. Educational robots are used both in and out of school environments to enhance K–12 students’ interest, engagement, and academic achievement in various fields of STEM education. Some prior studies show evidence for the general benefits of educational robotics as being effective in providing impactful learning experiences. However, there appears to be a need to determine the specific benefits which have been achieved through robotics implementation in K–12 formal and informal learning settings. In this study, …

Factors Influencing Revenue Collection For Preventative Maintenance Of Community Water Systems: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Liesbet Olaerts, Jeffrey P. Walters, Karl G. Linden, Amy Javernick-Will, Adam Harvey

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

This study analyzed combinations of conditions that influence regular payments for water service in resource-limited communities. To do so, the study investigated 16 communities participating in a new preventive maintenance program in the Kamuli District of Uganda under a public–private partnership framework. First, this study identified conditions posited as important for collective payment compliance from a literature review. Then, drawing from data included in a water source report and by conducting semi-structured interviews with households and water user committees (WUC), we identified communities that were compliant with, or suspended from, preventative maintenance service payments. Through qualitative analyses of these data …

Usu Professor To Receive Nation’S Highest Science And Engineering Award | College Of Engineering, Utah State University

College of Engineering News

The White House last week announced that Utah State University Assistant Professor Idalis Villanueva will receive the highest honor awarded by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers.

Large Scale Electronic Health Record Data And Echocardiography Video Analysis For Mortality Risk Prediction, Alvaro Emilio Ulloa Cerna

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Electronic health records contain the clinical history of patients. The enormous potential for discovery in such a rich dataset is hampered by their complexity. We hypothesize that machine learning models trained on EHR data can predict future clinical events significantly better than current models. We analyze an EHR database of 594,862 Echocardiography studies from 272,280 unique patients with both unsupervised and supervised machine learning techniques.

In the unsupervised approach, we first develop a simulation framework to evaluate a family of different clustering pipelines. We apply the optimized approach to 41,645 patients with heart failure without providing any survival information to …

Adhesion Of Two-Dimensional Titanium Carbides (Mxenes) And Graphene To Silicon, Yanxiao Li, Shuohan Huang, Congjie Wei, Chenglin Wu, Vadym Mochalin

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Two-dimensional transition metal carbides (MXenes) have attracted a great interest of the research community as a relatively recently discovered large class of materials with unique electronic and optical properties. Understanding of adhesion between MXenes and various substrates is critically important for MXene device fabrication and performance. We report results of direct atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements of adhesion of two MXenes (Ti₃C₂T_x and Ti₂CT_x) with a SiO₂ coated Si spherical tip. The Maugis-Dugdale theory was applied to convert the AFM measured adhesion force to adhesion energy, while taking into account …

The Dependence Of Breakdown Field Upon Breakdown Delay Time In Adiabatically Compressed Ferroelectric Ceramics, Sergey I. Shkuratov, Jason Baird, Vladimir G. Antipov, Jay B. Chase

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The ability of ferroelectric materials to generate high voltage under mechanical stress is widely used in transducer applications. The high strain-rate adiabatic compression of poled ferroelectrics results in their complete depolarization, the release of surface charges, and the generation of up to hundreds of kilovolts of electric potential that is an order of magnitude higher than in the low-strain piezoelectric mode. Electric breakdown within adiabatically compressed ferroelectric specimens is one of the factors that affect the generation of a high voltage by ferroelectric materials under extreme stress. We report herein the results of experimental investigations of the generation of high …

Do Grant Funding And Pro-Environmental Spillovers Influence Household Hazardous Waste Collection?, Kustini Lim-Wavde, Robert J Kauffman, Tin Seong Kam, Gregory S. Dawsond

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Agency and state grant funding should be disseminated in ways so it will result in better management of household hazardous waste (HHW) and environmental sustainability. Since location seems to matter in HHW collection activities, it is important to consider pro-environmental spatial spillovers that occur, based on agency actions and waste collection behavior taking place in other locations. These may influence HHW-related practices in close-by regions. Using a county-level spatio-temporal dataset that consists of economic, demographic, and HHW data in California from 2004 to 2015, we evaluate the impact of HHW grants on HHW collection activities while considering pro-environmental spillovers. We …

Active Layer Groundwater Flow: The Interrelated Effects Of Stratigraphy, Thaw, And Topography, Michael T. O'Connor, M. Bayani Cardenas, Bethany T. Neilson, Kindra D. Nicholaides, George W. Kling

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The external drivers and internal controls of groundwater flow in the thawed “active layer” above permafrost are poorly constrained because they are dynamic and spatially variable. Understanding these controls is critical because groundwater can supply solutes such as dissolved organic matter to surface water bodies. We calculated steady‐state three‐dimensional suprapermafrost groundwater flow through the active layer using measurements of aquifer geometry, saturated thickness, and hydraulic properties collected from two major landscape types over time within a first‐order Arctic watershed. The depth position and thickness of the saturated zone is the dominant control of groundwater flow variability between sites and during …