Engineering Commons^™

Design And Development Of Artificial Spinal Ligaments For Paediatric Synthetic Spine, Nor Amalina Muhayudin, Khairul Salleh Basaruddin, Fiona Mcevoy, Anthony Tansey

Articles

A synthetic spine is a model fabricated from artificial materials consisting of the vertebrae, intervertebral discs and ligaments for spinal testing. The synthetic spine overcomes many difficulties associated with biological specimens such as handling, biohazard concerns, high costs, and limited availability of specimens, quality and large inter-specimen variability. This paper presents the design and development of spinal ligaments to mimic the stiffness of the paediatric ligaments for use in the synthetic spine. Spinal ligaments are uniaxial structures in the spine that carry tensile loads along the direction of the fibres. Early in the research, silicone materials were used to cover …

Evaluation Of Skin-Mounted Sensor For Head Impact Measurement, Stephen Tiernan, Gary Byrne, David Michael O’Sullivan

Articles

Background: The requirement to measure the number and severity of head impacts in sports has led to the development of wearable sensors.

Aim: The objective of this study was to determine the reliability and accuracy of a wearable head impact sensor: xPatch, X2Biosystems Inc.

Methods: The skin mounted sensor, xPatch, was fixed onto a Hybrid III headform, and dropped using an impact test rig. Four hundred impacts were performed, ranging from 20 to 200g linear acceleration, and impact velocities of 1.2m/s to 3.9m/s. During each impact, the peak linear acceleration, angular velocity and angular acceleration, were recorded and compared to …

Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers In Diamond For Nanoscale Magnetic Resonance Imaging Applications, Alberto Boretti, Lorenzo Rosa, Jonathan Blackledge, Stefania Castelletto

Articles

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center is a point defect in diamond with unique properties for use in ultra-sensitive, high-resolution magnetometry. One of the most interesting and challenging applications is nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging (nano-MRI). While many review papers have covered other NV centers in diamond applications, there is no survey targeting the specific development of nano-MRI devices based on NV centers in diamond. Several different nano-MRI methods based on NV centers have been proposed with the goal of improving the spatial and temporal resolution, but without any coordinated effort. After summarizing the main NV magnetic imaging methods, this review presents a …

Compressive And Rheological Deformation Analysis Of Large Area Pellet-Fed Material Extrusion 3d Printed Parts In Relation To In Situ Thermal Imaging, Eduardo Meraz Trejo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In large area pellet extrusion additive manufacturing, the temperature of the substrate just prior to the deposition of a new subsequent layer has an effect on the overall structure of the part. Warping and cracking occur if the substrate temperature is below a specific threshold, but also deformation and deposition adhesion failure occur if the substrate temperature is above a certain threshold just prior to deposition of a new layer. Currently, Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine users mitigate this problem by trial and error, which is costly and may result in decreased mechanical properties, monetary losses and time inefficiencies. …

Assessment Of Point Of Use (Pou) Systems For Reducing Health Risks Associated With Drinking Water Along The U.S.-Mexico Colonias In The Paso Del Norte Region, Varinia Viridiana Felix Parra

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the Paso del Norte Region along the U.S. Mexico Border, there are more than 5,000 families living in impoverished communities known as colonias that lack access to basic infrastructure services such as a public water system. These depend on hauling trucks that deliver water into their storage tanks. Water storage practices by colonia residents on both sides of the border pose an enormous risk for waterborne disease outbreaks and heavy metal contamination because the water quality can decrease rapidly due to volatilization of the residual chlorine, intrusion of rainfall and air-laden dust. Since connection to centralized water treatment and …

Cradle To Grave Lifecycle Process Analysis For Transuranic Waste Management Los Alamos National Laboratory, Cesar Enrique Dominguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Amid World War II, in the late 1930s, nuclear fission was discovered. This revolution gave way to the development of nuclear technologies, including the world's first atomic bomb; these advancements in nuclear research left behind radioactive waste. Radioactive waste is known as the byproduct of nuclear reactors, fuel processing plants, hospitals, nuclear research facilities, as well as the result from the decommissioning and dismantling of radiation-exposed buildings and materials. This byproduct may be dangerous to workers, the public, and the environment and must, therefore, be handled with utmost safety. Given this, radioactive waste must be processed, stored, and disposed of …

Development And Environmental Testing Of A Single-Axis Printer Inside A 1u Cubesat For On-Orbit Servicing Repairs In Low Earth Orbit, Perla Rocio Perez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As additive manufacturing is becoming an established technology in space, new emerging strategies improve the efficiency of the printing processes. Orbital Factory 2 (OF-2) is a small satellite-or CubeSat-developed at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) which launched to space on November 2019. In January 2020, it will be released in low earth orbit (LEO). OF-2 is a 1U (10x10x10cm) CubeSat that carries a one-axis printer experiment as its primary payload. This printer was developed and tested in-house. The experiment focuses on printing electrically conductive ink on a printing circuit board that verifies the conductivity on the trace …

Thermal/Mechanical Analysis And Development Of A 2000 Lbf Liquid Oxygen/Liquid Methane Rocket Engine, Marissa Garcia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Center for Space Exploration and Technology Research (cSETR) is developing three rocket engines: a 5 lbf reaction control engine, a 500 lbf engine, and a 2000 lbf engine. All these engines utilize a liquid oxygen and liquid methane propellant combination. The reason methane was selected for the fuel is because methane is easy to store, is self-pressurizing, and readily available. There is also the possibility of creating methane on planets such as Mars through an electrolysis process on the ice water found on Mars.

The 2000 lbf engine, or the CROME-X, is a modular, steady-state pintle injector engine. It …

Economic Appraisal Of Hybrid Solar-Biomass Thermophotovoltaic Power Generation, C. M. Iftekhar Hussain Cmih, Aidan Duffy, Brian Norton

Conference Papers

The techno-economic parameters that influence the commercial deployment of hybrid thermophotovoltaic (TPV) solar power generation are determined using annual system simulations. It has been found that a TPV cell price of E5/cm2 or less together with a TPV operating temperature under 800°C is required for a hybrid solar–biomass TPV power plant to be economically competitive with the state-of-the-art hybrid solar–biomass Rankine cycle power plants.

Assessment Of Physicochemical Characteristics, Thermal Stability And Release Profile Of Ascorbic Acid Microcapsules Obtained By Complex Coacervation, Michele Cristina Rodrigues Da Cruz, João Luiz Andreotti Dagostin, Camila Augusto Perussello, Maria Lúcia Masson

Articles

The aim of this study was to determine the physicochemical characteristics, thermal stability and release profile of ascorbic acid (AA) microcapsules obtained by complex coacervation. Gelatin and gum arabic were used as wall materials in concentrations of 2.5, 5.0 and 7.5 g% (w/v). The coacervate microcapsules were freeze-dried and assessed for physicochemical characteristics, thermal behavior and stability during 60 days of storage. The release profile was evaluated at different pH values (1.1, 2.2, 5.4, 7.4, 9.6 and 12). The encapsulation efficiency ranged from 27.3 to 93.8%. The microcapsules of AA presented good characteristics for application in food matrices, such as …

Harnessing Smart Technology For Private Well Risk Assessment And Communication, Tanner Hoffman, Paul Hynds, Corinne Schuster-Wallace, Sarah Dickson-Anderson, Anna Majury

Articles

Unregulated, privately owned water supplies, including groundwater wells, are relied upon extensively, particularly in rural and remote regions. While adequate stewardship behaviors (water testing, treatment, and maintenance) have been shown to decrease the incidence and frequency of faecal indicator organism (FIO) presence and, by extension, the risk of pathogenic ingress, contaminated private water supplies continue to constitute a significant public health risk. Recognizing that innovative approaches are needed to bolster well stewardship, this paper identifies and assesses 35 tools (smartphone and web-based applications) to better understand components, functionality, strengths, and weaknesses. Applications for both data collection and risk communication were …

Rapid Fabrication Of Silver Nanoparticle/Polydopamine Functionalized Polyester Fibers, Yanfen Zhou, Liang Jiang, Ya Guo, Zhenhua Sun, Zhiqing Jiang, Shaojuan Chen, Jianwei Ma, Stephen Jerrams

Articles

In this paper, silver nanoparticles functionalized poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fibers with antimicrobial activity, electrical conductivity and good coating stability are reported. Firstly, silver plated PET fibers were fabricated by rapid polydopamine (PDA) modification followed by electroless plating. Secondly, the surface morphologies and compositions of PDA modified and silver coated PET fibers were characterized by employing scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction and energy dispersive spectrometry. Finally, the antimicrobial properties and electrical conductivity of the silver plated PET fibers were investigated. The results showed that the silver coated PET fibers exhibited excellent antimicrobial activity to both Escherichia coli and …

Study On Spinnability Of Pp/Pu Blends And Preparation Of Pp/Pu Bi-Component Melt Blown Nonwovens, Yanfen Zhou, Liang Jiang, Huiying Jia, Xiaolu Xing, Zhenhua Sun, Shaojuan Chen, Jianwei Ma, Stephen Jerrams

Articles

Melt blown polymer blends offers a good way to combine two polymers in the same fiber generating nonwovens with new and novel properties. In this study, polypropylene (PP) and polyurethane (PU) were blended to prepare PP/PU bicomponent melt blown nonwovens. The spinnability of PP/PU composites was investigated and PP/PU bi-component nonwovens with compositions of 95/5, 90/10, 80/20 and 70/30 were prepared by using the melt blowing technique. The melt blown fibers exhibited a ‘sea-island’ structure with PP as the continuous phase and PU as the dispersed phase. When the content of PU in the blend was above 40 %, PP/PU …

Guest Editorial Special Issue On Using Enquiry-And-Design-Based Learning To Spur Epistemological And Identity Development Of Engineering Students, Shannon Chance, Bill Williams, Tom Goldfinch, Robin S. Adams, Lorraine N. Fleming

Articles

This Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Education focuses on using enquiry-based design projects to spur engineering students’ development, so as to increase understanding and application of the relevant theories, foster higher rates of student development and achieve this in healthy and productive ways.

Report On The Future Role Of Engineers In Society And The Skills And Competences Engineering Will Require, Brad Tabas, Una Beagon, Klara Kövesi

Reports

This literature review outlines the current state of the art knowledge in relation to the influence of diversity, attractiveness of the engineering profession and the skills and competencies required of engineers to achieve the SDGs. We aim to answer the overall research question: How do engineering educators develop new learning and teaching approaches (methods) that will attract a diverse group of students (and mature learners) whilst achieving the SDGs in 2030? The main objective of the A-STEP 2030 project is to create an attractive and fascinating learning environment to encourage young people with diverse backgrounds to engage in engineering studies …

Engineering Skills Requirements For Sustainable Development And Achieving The Sdgs - Outcomes Of Focus Groups Held In Ireland, France, Denmark And Finland As Part Of A-Step 2030 Project Activity 1: Task 2, Una Beagon, Brian Bowe

Reports

No abstract provided.

Prisoners Of The Capitalist Machine: Captivity And The Corporate Engineer, Eddie Conlon

Books/Book chapters

This chapter will focus on how engineering practice is conditioned by an economic system which promotes production for profit and economic growth as an end in itself. As such it will focus on the notion of the captivity of engineering which emanates from features of the economic system. By drawing on Critical Realism and a Marxist literature, and by focusing on the issues of safety and sustainability (in particular the issue of climate change), it will examine the extent to which disasters and workplace accidents result from the economic imperative for profitable production and how efforts by engineers to address …

Pathological Speech Classification Using A Convolutional Neural Network, Nam H. Trinh, Darragh O'Brien

Session 2: Deep Learning for Computer Vision

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have enabled significant improvements across a number of applications in computer vision such as object detection, face recognition and image classification. An audio signal can be visually represented as a spectrogram that captures the time-varying frequency content of the signal. This paper describes how a CNN can be applied to the spectrogram of an audio signal to distinguish pathological from healthy speech. We propose a CNN structure and implement it using Keras to test the approach. A classification accuracy of over 95% is obtained in experiments on two public pathological speech datasets.

Pv-Based Off-Board Electric Vehicle Battery Charger Using Bidc, Ankita Paul, Krithiga Subramanian, Sujitha N

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In recent years, the use of renewable energy sources is increasing drastically in several sectors, which leads to its role in the automobile industry to charge electric vehicle (EV) batteries. In this paper, a photovoltaic (PV) array-fed off-board battery charging system using a bidirectional interleaved DC-DC converter (BIDC) is proposed for light-weight EVs. This off-board charging system is capable of operating in dual mode, thereby supplying power to the EV battery from the PV array in standstill conditions and driving the DC load by the EV battery during running conditions. This dual mode operation is accomplished by the use of …

A Control Scheme For Maximizing The Delivered Power To The Load In A Standalonewind Energy Conversion System, Saeed Heshmatian, Davood A. Khaburi, Mahyar Khosravi, Ahad Kazemi

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, a control scheme is proposed for maximum power point tracking (MPPT) in a variable speed standalone wind energy conversion system (WECS) with permanent magnet synchronous generator. A MPPT algorithm is designed trying to eliminate the main deficiency of the conventional perturbation and observation (P&O) method, which is the challenge of choosing a proper step size and the unwanted trade-off between accuracy and speed. The designed algorithm properly addresses this drawback and significantly improves the MPPT performance. Another important issue is to ensure fast and accurate tracking of the optimal reference point obtained from the MPPT algorithm and …

Community Detection In Complex Networks Using A New Agglomerative Approach, Majid Arasteh, Somayeh Alizadeh

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Complex networks are used for the representation of complex systems such as social networks. Graph analysis comprises various tools such as community detection algorithms to uncover hidden data. Community detection aims to detect similar subgroups of networks that have tight interconnections with each other while, there is a sparse connection among different subgroups. In this paper, a greedy and agglomerative approach is proposed to detect communities. The proposed method is fast and often detects high-quality communities. The suggested method has several steps. In the first step, each node is assigned to a separated community. In the second step, a vertex …

Speech Emotion Recognition Using Semi-Nmf Feature Optimization, Surekha Reddy Bandela, T Kishore Kumar

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In recent times, much research is progressing forward in the field of speech emotion recognition (SER). Many SER systems have been developed by combining different speech features to improve their performances. As a result, the complexity of the classifier increases to train this huge feature set. Additionally, some of the features could be irrelevant in emotion detection and this leads to a decrease in the emotion recognition accuracy. To overcome this drawback, feature optimization can be performed on the feature sets to obtain the most desirable emotional feature set before classifying the features. In this paper, semi-nonnegative matrix factorization (semi-NMF) …

Scale-Invariant Mfccs For Speech/Speaker Recognition, Zekeri̇ya Tüfekci̇, Gökay Di̇şken

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The feature extraction process is a fundamental part of speech processing. Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) are the most commonly used feature types in the speech/speaker recognition literature. However, the MFCC framework may face numerical issues or dynamic range problems, which decreases their performance. A practical solution to these problems is adding a constant to filter-bank magnitudes before log compression, thus violating the scale-invariant property. In this work, a magnitude normalization and a multiplication constant are introduced to make the MFCCs scale-invariant and to avoid dynamic range expansion of nonspeech frames. Speaker verification experiments are conducted to show the effectiveness …

A Novel Randomized Recurrent Artificial Neural Network Approach: Recurrent Random Vector Functional Link Network, Ömer Faruk Ertuğrul

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The random vector functional link (RVFL) has successfully been employed in many applications since 1989. RVFL has a single hidden layer feedforward structure that also has direct links between the input layer and the output layer. Although nonlinearity, high generalization capacity, and fast training ability can be provided in RVFL, it can be found from the literature that higher nonlinearity can be obtained by adding recurrent feedback to an artificial neural network. In this paper, the recurrent type of RVFL (R-RVFL), which has both outer feedbacks and also inner feedbacks, is proposed. In order to evaluate and validate the proposed …

A Fine-Grain And Scalable Set-Based Cache Partitioning Through Thread Classification, İsa Ahmet Güney, Gürhan Küçük

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

As contemporary processors utilize more and more cores, cache partitioning algorithms tend to preserve cache associativity with a finer-grain of control to achieve higher throughput and fairness goals. In this study, we propose a scalable set-based cache partitioning mechanism, which welds an allocation policy and an enforcement scheme together. We also propose a set-based classifier to better allocate partitions to more deserving threads, a fast set redirection logic to map accesses to dedicated cache sets, and a double access mechanism to overcome the performance penalty due to a repartitioning phase. We compare our work to the best line-grain cache partitioning …

An Optimized Harmonic Elimination Method Based On Synchronized Microcontroller Architecture, Vivek Gopinath, Meenu Nair, Jayanta Biswas, Mukti Barai

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper proposes an optimized synchronous PWM method for harmonic elimination in a quasi square wave inverter. The synchronized PWM method enables online harmonic computation and PWM pulse generation in a multitasking digital controller to eliminate lower order harmonics. The multitasking digital controller reduces the look-up table requirement and helps in realizing efficient implementation to eliminate dominant harmonics. This method offers a simple scalable solution for combined fifth and seventh harmonic elimination using two low-cost eight-bit PIC microcontrollers (PIC18F4550, PIC18F452). Experimental results are demonstrated for a single-phase three-level inverter. The proposed method achieves 90$\% $ reduction of fifth and seventh …

A Twelve-Wavelength Thulium-Doped Fibre Laser Based On A Microfibre Coil Resonator Incorporating Black Phosphorus, Shi Li, Yu Yin, Elfed Lewis, Gerald Farrell, Pengfei Wang

Articles

A novel multi-wavelength continuous Thulium-doped fibre laser incorporating a microfibre coil resonator based on black phosphorus (MCR-BP) material has been successfully fabricated and demonstrated. A twelve-wavelength spectrum with 0.54 nm channel spacing has been achieved by simply adjusting the pump source power. A single peak extinction ratio of more than 40 dB was observed. The superior performance of the MCR-BP described in this article compared to conventional MCR based fibre lasers can be attributed the inclusion of the Black Phosphorous Material. The enhanced lasing is primarily due to the twin properties of the MCR-BP device combining a comb-like filter effect …

Mode Transition In Conventional Step-Index Optical Fibers, Xiaokang Lian, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Wei Han, Fangfang Wei, Yuliya Semenova

Conference Papers

The discrete self-imaging effect reveals the distinct properties of cladding modes with core modes in step-index optical fibers, as was shown in our previous work [1], where only the linearly polarized LP0n modes were studied. In this paper, the dispersion diagram of the first 17 vector modes (TE0n, TM0n, HEmn and EHmn) and the related first 9 LPmn modes are calculated by both the full-vector finite element method and the graphical method with a three-layer step-index optical fiber model. The cladding modes distributions and the transitions between the core and cladding modes are analyzed. The results of this work are …

The Autodrive Challenge: Autonomous Vehicles Education And Training Issues, Diane Peters, Jennifer Bastiaan, Juan R. Pimentel, Mehrdad Zadeh

Mechanical Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

Automotive companies are focusing significant research and development efforts on autonomous vehicles. As they do so, they recognize the need for a large, well-trained workforce that is equipped to conduct these research and development projects, particularly in light of the projected shortages of STEM professionals in the United States. Some of these companies have found various ways to engage with professional societies and with universities to encourage the development of this workforce, and to promote themselves to STEM students while they are still in school. One such effort is the SAE / GM AutoDrive ChallengeTM, a new collegiate competition organized …

How Faculty Advisers And Counselors View Their Role In The Swe Organization, Diane Peters, Alexa Rihana Abdallah

Mechanical Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

Faculty advisors and counselors play an important role in establishing and sustaining a successful Society of Women Engineers (SWE) student section. Currently, most SWE collegiate sections have both faculty advisors and counselors. A faculty advisor, who is required for student organizations in most universities, serves as the liaison between the SWE section and the university and is responsible for knowing the university’s policies. A faculty advisor helps the student section access university resources and ensures the section is meeting all university requirements. A counselor is required by SWE for a collegiate section to remain in “good standing” and serves as …