Engineering Commons^™

Information Technology News, Georgia Southern University

Information Technology: News & Publications (2012-2023)

• IT Candidate Needed for Brodie International Internship

Using Complex Orthogonal Decomposition To Extract Dispersion Relationships For Mass Chain, Nicholas A. Valente, Rickey A. Caldwell

Across the Bridge: The Merrimack Undergraduate Research Journal

Complex orthogonal decomposition (COD) was used to determine the extracted dispersion relationship of a traveling wave in a mass chain. When COD extracts a wavenumber it will produce M values for each wavenumber, γi, and N values for each frequency, ωi; where M is the number of masses and N is the number of time samples. In this work, least squares and a simple mean of the M-γi’s and N-ωi’s extracted values were used to determine each γi and ωi, respectively. An analytical dispersion relationship for the mass-chain is derived in addition to an approximate dispersion relationship. The approximate derivation …

Development Of A Foot Interface To Control Supernumerary Robotics Limbs, Emma Morris

Rose-Hulman Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships

Supernumerary robotic limbs (SRLs) can be used to provide a person with extra arms to help with difficult tasks. For example, a task that normally requires three hands to complete could be accomplished by just one person with an SRL. One way to control an SRL and still leave both hands available is to use the foot. This paper describes two parts of developing this foot interface: characterizing the range of forces that the foot can apply, and prototyping systems for different control methods. First, a small sample of data was collected to learn how much force the foot can …

Fluid Transport In Porous Media For Engineering Applications, Eric M. Benner

Chemical and Biological Engineering ETDs

This doctoral dissertation presents three topics in modeling fluid transport through porous media used in engineering applications. The results provide insights into the design of fuel cell components, catalyst and drug delivery particles, and aluminum- based materials. Analytical and computational methods are utilized for the modeling of the systems of interest. Theoretical analysis of capillary-driven transport in porous media show that both geometric and evaporation effects significantly change the time dependent behavior of liquid imbibition and give a steady state flux into the medium. The evaporation–capillary number is significant in determining the time-dependent behavior of capillary flows in porous media. …

A Constrained Box Algorithm For Imbalanced Data In Remote Sensing Images, Wajira Abeysinghe

Master of Science in Computer Science Theses

Imbalanced data is a common problem in machine learning where the number of observations that belong to one class is significantly lower than other classes. Due to the skewed distribution among the classes, most classification algorithms fail to classify minority instances effectively. The class imbalance problem can be found in many domains such as credit card fraud detection and rare diseases diagnosis.

Imbalanced data is a prominent issue also in remote sensing images (RSI) which are used to obtain information of earth resources and the surrounding environment. RSI are collected by special cameras that capture information from a specific wavelength …

Measurement And Prediction Of Discharge Coefficients In Highly Compressible Pulsating Flows To Improve Egr Flow Estimation And Modeling Of Engine Flows, Indranil Brahma

Faculty Journal Articles

An assumption of constant discharge coefficient (Cd) is often made when modeling highly compressible pulsating engine flows through valves or other restrictions. Similarly, orifices and flow-nozzles used for real-time EGR flow estimation are often calibrated at a few steady-state points with one single constant Cd that minimizes the error over the selected points. This quasi-steady assumption is based on asymptotically constant Cd observed at high Reynolds number for steady (non-pulsating) flow. It has been shown in this work that this assumption is not accurate for pulsating flow, particularly at large amplitudes and low flow rates. …

Mechanical Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

Mechanical Engineering: News & Publications (2013-2023)

• Dr. Mingzhi Xu Awarded at American Foundry Society's CastExpo 2019

Self-Driving Cars: Evaluation Of Deep Learning Techniques For Object Detection In Different Driving Conditions, Ramesh Simhambhatla, Kevin Okiah, Shravan Kuchkula, Robert Slater

SMU Data Science Review

Deep Learning has revolutionized Computer Vision, and it is the core technology behind capabilities of a self-driving car. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are at the heart of this deep learning revolution for improving the task of object detection. A number of successful object detection systems have been proposed in recent years that are based on CNNs. In this paper, an empirical evaluation of three recent meta-architectures: SSD (Single Shot multi-box Detector), R-CNN (Region-based CNN) and R-FCN (Region-based Fully Convolutional Networks) was conducted to measure how fast and accurate they are in identifying objects on the road, such as vehicles, pedestrians, …

Controlled Synthesis Of Pt-Sn/Al2o3 Catalysts And Their Application In The Hydrodeoxygenation Of Bio-Based Succinic Acid, Patrick Michael Howe

Theses - ALL

As environmental and economic forces push for movement away from traditional petroleum-sourced chemical and fuel production, it becomes essential for technologies in renewable carbon resources to be developed. In particular, the production of chemical commodities from renewable lignocellulosic biomass provides a unique path away from the use of petrol. Considering the high density of functional groups present in biomass feedstocks, new technologies must be developed to selectively target the removal of functional groups through the application of supported metal catalysts. The ability to target specific functional group removal would allow for biomass feedstocks to produce higher yields of desired commodities …

Dynamics Of Water, Carbon, And Nitrogen In Forest And Alpine Tundra Ecosystems In The Pacific Northwest And The Rocky Mountains Of The U.S. Under Future Climate Change, Zheng Dong

Dissertations - ALL

Projection of ecosystem functions and biogeochemical cycling of elements under future climate change requires a quantitative understanding of both ecosystem processes and site-specific climate change scenarios. Biogeochemical and ecological studies over the last decades have provided the intellectual basis for these projections, especially at the small watershed scale. Recent developments in biophysical sciences and computationally based meteorology coupled with advanced downscaling techniques have made it possible to project future climate change scenarios at the small watershed scale. Using a biogeochemical model, PnET-BGC, which has been extensively applied to the forest ecosystems in the northeastern United States, the interactive effects of …

Identification And Analysis Of Behavioral Phenotypes In Autism Spectrum Disorder Via Unsupervised Machine Learning, Elizabeth Stevens, Dennis R. Dixon, Marlena N. Novack, Doreen Granpeesheh, Tristram Smith, Erik Linstead

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Background and objective: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous disorder. Research has explored potential ASD subgroups with preliminary evidence supporting the existence of behaviorally and genetically distinct subgroups; however, research has yet to leverage machine learning to identify phenotypes on a scale large enough to robustly examine treatment response across such subgroups. The purpose of the present study was to apply Gaussian Mixture Models and Hierarchical Clustering to identify behavioral phenotypes of ASD and examine treatment response across the learned phenotypes.

Materials and methods: The present study included a sample of children with ASD (N = 2400), …

Analyzing And Assuring Missions And Systems By Storm: Introducing And Analyzing Systems-Theoretic And Technical Operational Risk Management (Storm), Lori Denise Pickering

Theses - ALL

The complexity of today’s large, multi-component systems and missions presents a growing risk of failure because of emergent system-level properties. Furthermore, the interconnectivity of systems to other systems creates additional security problems. Yes- terday’s safety and security risk analysis methodologies are no longer effective. To manage this complexity, what is needed is a holistic, thorough, systematic, system-level, and for- mally verified approach to risk analysis to ensure stakeholder-required needs are met, asset losses are mitigated, and the system or mission operates with its intended function- ality. Furthermore, these system and mission risks need to be thoroughly documented to increase the …

Semantic Image Segmentation Via A Dense Parallel Network, Jiyang Wang

Theses - ALL

Image segmentation has been an important area of study in computer vision. Image segmentation is a challenging task, since it involves pixel-wise annotation, i.e. labeling each pixel according to the class to which it belongs. In image classification task, the goal is to predict to which class an entire image belongs. Thus, there is more focus on the abstract features extracted by Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), with less emphasis on the spatial information. In image segmentation task, on the other hand, the abstract information and spatial information are needed at the same time. One class of work in image segmentation …

Cellular Modification And Artificial Cell Construction, Jimin Guo

Chemical and Biological Engineering ETDs

With all its complexities and different biofunctionalities, a cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all living organisms with the exception of viruses. In this dissertation, I demonstrated gain of function strategies of modifying mammalian cells using silicification and modular nanoparticle (NP) exoskeletons. In addition, I used a modular design concept to build a multifunctional artificial RBC system which can mimic the unique characteristics (e.g. shape, flexibility, the ability to carry oxygen, and long circulation times) of the native RBCs. Together, these cell modification or artificial cell construction strategies are expected to generate new mammalian cell-like structures with …

Anonymous And Efficient Message Authentication Scheme For Smart Grid, Libing Wu, Jing Wang, Sherali Zeadally, Debiao He

Information Science Faculty Publications

Smart grid has emerged as the next-generation electricity grid with power flow optimization and high power quality. Smart grid technologies have attracted the attention of industry and academia in the last few years. However, the tradeoff between security and efficiency remains a challenge in the practical deployment of the smart grid. Most recently, Li et al. proposed a lightweight message authentication scheme with user anonymity and claimed that their scheme is provably secure. But we found that their scheme fails to achieve mutual authentication and mitigate some typical attacks (e.g., impersonation attack, denial of service attack) in the smart grid …

Synthesis Of Polymer Structures For Increasing Energy Conversion In Solar Cells, Fu-Hao Chen

Dissertations - ALL

Solar cells are the mainstream of renewable energy, since solar energy is abundant and accessible to most places on Earth. However, it has drawbacks, such as low energy conversion commonly less than 20 %, the power supply is intermittent and not stable. In industry, the energy conversion efficiency versus cost is the first priority to promote. Thus, implementing low cost but effective technique is attractive to industry. Based on geometric and wave optics, two simple-integrated and scalable techniques to improve the energy conversion of solar cells are developed. The first method is to make a v-groove structure on the encapsulant, …

Use Of Computational Electromagnetics To Enhance The Accuracy And Efficiency Of Antenna Pattern Measurements, Heng Chen

Dissertations - ALL

The objective of this dissertation is to illustrate that computational electromagnetics can be used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of antenna pattern measurements.

This can be accomplished in many different ways, such as moving a single probe over the measurement plane to generate accurate planar near field to far field transformation methodology over the classical Fourier based modal expansion methods. Also, one can use an array of probes instead of moving a single probe over the measurement plane to eliminate the inaccuracy of a mechanical movement of the probe antenna over a large planar surface and make the measurement …

Wireless Electrostimulation To Eradicate Bacterial Biofilms, Hao Wang

Dissertations - ALL

Bacterial biofilms can form on medical implants and cause serious device-associated infections that are incurable by conventional antibiotics because of high-level tolerance to antimicrobials. Common strategies for controlling device-associated infections, such as coating with antimicrobials and modification of surface properties, can reduce or delay biofilm formation, but the inhibitory effect can be overcome by bacteria over time, and eradicating mature biofilms remains challenging. Direct currents (DCs) have been shown to have bactericidal effects and synergy with conventional antibiotics in concurrent treatment has been demonstrated for killing biofilm cells. However, these systems require a direct connection between electrodes and a power …

Composite Right-Left Handed Stripline Structures For Antenna Array Feed Networks, Michael Douglas Enders

Dissertations - ALL

In this dissertation composite right/left-handed striplines are proposed as viable key structures in antenna array applications, enabling reduction of the overall feed network sizes as well as allowing integration opportunities and possible reduction of radiating beam pattern distortions.

A via-less composite right/left-handed stripline unit cell is introduced as an option to attain right/left-handed performance in stripline with a via-less fabrication process that is not sensitive to drill positioning errors and is amenable to academic settings. An analysis of the passbands of this structure based on the distributed transmission line circuit theory is provided as well as a description of the …

Processing And Properties Of New Anisotropic And Mechanically Active Polymeric Composites, Matthew M. Ali

Dissertations - ALL

Electrospinning is a versatile and inexpensive method to fabricate micron-sized polymer fibers, and it has been employed in this work to develop highly anisotropic fibrous composites. Previous work has detailed the properties of using electrospinning to fabricate fibrous anisotropic composites that was achieved by embedding stiff fibers in an elastomeric matrix. The goal of this work is to achieve anisotropic composites through creating a layering of rigid and elastic fibers in a laminate structure using primarily electrospinning in the fabrication. The composite produced has a unique deformation pattern when strained perpendicularly. The rigid fibers experienced no entanglement with each other …

Computational Modeling Of Bacterial Outer Membranes And Development Of High-Throughput Screening Platform For Antibiotics, Huilin Ma

Dissertations - ALL

Antibiotic resistance is a major health challenge because it limits the treatment options for common infectious diseases and will cause 10 million deaths each year after 2050. There is an urgent need to reduce the misuse of antibiotics and seek new classes of antibiotics that induce less or no resistance. Despite the push for new therapeutics, there has been a precipitous decline in the number of newly approved antibacterial drugs due to a limited understanding of how bacteria adapt to the chemical stress stimuli. The development of antimicrobial resistance is especially true for Gram-negative bacteria that develop resistance to antibiotics …

Integrating Trustzone Protection With Communication Paths For Mobile Operating System, Kailiang Ying

Dissertations - ALL

Nowadays, users perform various essential activities through their smartphones, including mobile payment and financial transaction. Therefore, users’ sensitive data processed by smartphones will be at risk if underlying mobile OSes are compromised. A technology called Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) has been introduced to protect sensitive data in the event of compromised OS and hypervisor.

This dissertation points out the limitations of the current design model of mobile TEE, which has a low adoption rate among application developers and has a large size of Trusted Computing Base (TCB). It proposes a new design model for mobile TEE to increase the TEE …

Residual Flexural Strength Of Corroded Aashto Type Ii Pretensioned Concrete Girder-Deck System, Bo Yan

Dissertations - ALL

Precast-prestressed concrete (PC) girders are among the most cost-effective type of girders used on highway bridges. Unfortunately, in corrosive environments, corrosion of strands may result in cracking or spalling of concrete, cross-section loss of strands and degradation of material properties, which in turn reduces the load-carrying capacity of PC bridges.

This research presents an in-depth analysis of residual flexural strength of corroded AASHTO Type II pretensioned PC girders with a cast-in-place (CIP) concrete deck. The investigation involved development of a detailed Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model of the pretensioned girder-deck system subjected to corrosion. The FEA model developed for this …

Peppy: A Tool To Generate Bacterial Peptidoglycan Scaffolds For Coarse-Grained Simulations, Xichen Xu

Theses - ALL

Peptidoglycan (PG), also known as murein, is an essential component in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. However, even if the chemical structure has been well-known for long, the great tertiary structure remains not clear due to its variability and complicated cross-link mechanism. And it inevitably raises the huge challenge for computational simulations. Against the background, here we present a method for building a solvated peptidoglycan system at coarse-grained level as required. The method is named PEPpy, which represents a Peptidoglycan python code. It reads in the user’s parameters in sequence and automatically generates a topological file and a structure file …

Dynamic Change Of Cardiomyocytes On Shape Memory Polymer, Shiyang Sun

Theses - ALL

In the previous work, it has been proven that substrate topography can influent the cell behaviors, including morphology and functions. Many research teams showed that wrinkled surfaces have been able to improve the alignment and orientation of different biological cell types. Cardiomyocytes are also influenced by the surface topography with better alignment along the winkles, comparing to the flat surface. However, there is little evidence to demonstrate how cardiomyocytes would respond to the wrinkle formation and achieve the cellular alignment change during the transition from flat surface to topographic surface. In this thesis, we have created a dynamic substrate based …

Doing A Lot With A Little: A Diagnostic Analysis Of Swmm To Simulate Hydrologic Behavior Within Lid Systems, Lucie Lynn Worthen

Theses - ALL

Low Impact Development (LID) aims to mitigate the hydrological impacts of urbanization by promoting evapotranspiration, storing and slowing the flow of water in formerly impervious areas. Green roofs, a form of LID often utilized in highly urbanized watersheds, are widely simulated using the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM). However, methods to improve diagnostic analysis of SWMM have lagged compared to other environmental disciplines. In this study, I utilize frugal diagnostic analyses to investigate potential sources of non-linearity, uncertainty, and equifinality within SWMM applied to a particular case study, the OnCenter green roof in Syracuse, New York. My findings highlight the …

Modern Methods In Machine Learning As Applied To The Study Of A Complex Supersonic Jet Flow, Andrew Steven Tenney

Dissertations - ALL

The desire for aircraft to fly higher, farther, and faster has led to the use of more complex nozzle geometries over the last several decades. These nozzles often take advantage of multiple high-velocity streams issuing from non-axisymmetric exit areas and can be optimized for airframe integration and stealth performance. The associated turbulent jet physics and the aeroacoustic phenomena have been studied thoroughly over the past 80 years; however, the complex non-linear interactions between multiple merging canonical flows are not well understood. In this study, we seek to gain a better understanding of the flow physics in the near-field of a …

High-Torque-Density Low-Cost Magnetic Gear Utilizing Hybrid Magnets And Advanced Materials, Ali Hussain Al-Qarni, Fan Wu, Ayman M. El-Refaie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Two major challenges of existing high-performance magnetic gears are: (i) High content of rare-earth permanent magnets which results in high cost as well as price fluctuation; (ii) Conflict between mechanical and electromagnetic performances, especially in the design of highspeed rotor. A magnetic gear using a blend of magnet types, i.e NdFeB, or Dy-free NdFeB and ferrites, is proposed in this paper. The goal is to bring down the cost while retaining comparable torque-transducing performance to a baseline magnetic gear only using rare-earth NdFeB magnets. A variety of topologies based on different combinations of magnet types and geometric shapes have been …

Validation Of The State Based Peridynamic Lattice Model, Anima Bista

Civil Engineering ETDs

This thesis presents a study performed to validate the State-based Peridynamic Lattice Model (SPLM) using results obtained from laboratory experiments. The SPLM is capable of modeling cracking of solids using particle lattices. We use a plane stress, elastic-plastic damage SPLM model for the simulations. The SPLM model is appropriate for computational simulations of cementitious materials as it automatically allows cracks to develop. In this study, the lattices are rotated through different angles and the variations of the cracking patterns are studied. In the laboratory, we performed nine Brazilian split cylinder tests, three anchor pullout/direct tensile tests, and eight compression tests …

Quantification Of Sediment Yields From Semi-Arid Watersheds Using Unmanned Aerial Systems And Photogrammetry Techniques, Jared L. Romero

Civil Engineering ETDs

Sediment has long been considered an environmental pollutant, causing physical and ecological impairments linked to the detachment and transport of sediments from the land surface to downstream communities. Additionally, aging flood control and water storage detention facilities have suffered the effects of sediment accumulation, spurring new research in the field of soil erosion and sediment yield estimation. Recent advances in technology have stimulated the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and photogrammetric techniques for near-surface data collection and monitoring, with such techniques being used previously to achieve centimeter-level accuracy reconstruction of the land surface. This study seeks to apply UAS …