Engineering Commons^™

Behavior Of Fillet Welds In Skewed Joints, Mohamed Salah Gallow

All ETDs from UAB

Fillet weld connections are very common in steel structures because they are easier and cheaper than other types of welded connections, such as groove welds. Several studies were performed on fillet weld of right dihedral angle, such as T-joints weld, to specify its capacity and failure mechanisms under different load directions. Nevertheless, the fillet weld strength analysis is based solely on the shear strength of the weld. Additionally, many of the current details commonly used for T-Joints were based on the requirements for groove welds. Fillet weld design concepts for skewed T-joints in the AWS D1.1 and AISC specifications are …

Design Of A Truck-Mounted Attenuator With Tube Folding Technology, Santosh Gautam

All ETDs from UAB

DESIGN OF A TRUCK-MOUNTED ATTENUATOR WITH TUBE FOLDING TECHNOLOGY SANTOSH GAUTAM MECHANICAL ENGINEERING ABSTRACT Highway safety features have been continuously developed and employed over the years to protect vehicle occupants, pedestrians and work zone personnel from injuries in roadside accidents. The new truck-mounted attenuator designed and evaluated in this study aims to dissipate impacting energy of the errant vehicle in a controlled manner using a tube folding mechanism. Finite element modeling using LS-DYNA is used to study the performance of the designed truck-mounted attenuator. It is required to safely bring passenger vehicles travelling at a speed of 62 mph to …

Low-Cost Wastewater Treatment Using Agricultural Waste Materials, Seyma Demirci

All ETDs from UAB

Wastewater generated from human activities is one of the biggest problems polluting in the world. Currently, in order to reduce pollution and to limit the effects on the environment, researchers are investigating new methods and innovative materials for use in wastewater treatment. A goal of environmental engineers is to lower the coagulant cost and to improve the characteristics of the produced purification. This presented work investigates the role of agricultural materials (woodchips, banana fibers, and straw) to use in the treatment of municipal wastewater and to study their physicochemical characteristics (pH, COD, BOD, TSS, Conductivity, Turbidity, and Fecal Coliforms) of …

Drive-By Bridge Monitoring And Damage Detection, Chengjun Tan

All ETDs from UAB

Bridges are key components of the transportation network, and their safety is essential to maintain effective and safe operation of the transportation facilities. To maintain the structural integrity of the bridges, it is essential to estimate the extent and location of the structural damage through periodic monitoring. Therefore, there is considerable interest in bridge damage detection and considerable progress has been made in recent years. The traditional bridge health monitoring requires many sensors installed on the bridge to collect vibration data for damage assessment, which is expensive, time-consuming, and even dangerous in-site. Compared with traditional ways, the concept of indirect …

A Low-Cost Planar Inkjet-Printed Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistor For Sensor And Circuit Applications, Md Toriqul Islam

All ETDs from UAB

The semiconductor-based transistor is an essential building block of electronic components, computing applications, and sensors. However, the fabrication of this primary electronic element is complex and costly, especially when considering flexible electronics for bio-sensing applications. This thesis work proposes a new circuit manufacturing technique to print planar inkjet-printed carbon nanotube field effect transistor (CNTFET), sensor and circuits on paper and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film substrate to reduce the complexity of the system and to lower the cost of conventional fabrication schemes. Single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are being used as semiconductor ink for an inkjet-printer to facilitate and fabricate two …

Rapid Melting Of Aluminum Alloys By Induction Melting, Carlos Alfonso Larrazabal Colina

All ETDs from UAB

RAPID MELTING OF ALUMINUM ALLOYS BY INDUCTION MELTING CARLOS ALFONSO LARRAZABAL COLINA MATERIAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING ABSTRACT Die-casting and high-pressure die-casting are manufacturing processes meant to produce high volumes of parts. However, the die-casting industry suffers when the market is low or when short quantities of a part are needed, because this process may not be as flexible in small quantities. In such situations, one piece of the operation that is inflexible is running excess melting and holding furnace capacity. Rapid induction melting systems are proposed here as an alternative to big furnaces to provide amounts of molten metal in …

Design, Develop And Manufacture A Low-Cost 32-Channel Biosignal Amplifier And D/A Converter Device For Multi- Electrode Neural Recording, Yen-Tze Liu

All ETDs from UAB

In the current market, there are many multichannel neural recording devices are available. However, they are either very expensive or physically big so that it cannot be used too close to the specimen because of the space limitations due to experimental setting such as Faraday cage, microscope, and other stimuli apparatus. In addition to that, the large electronic devices in the cell recording area are susceptible to create electrical noise, especially if they are not battery operated. This thesis work will try to deliver solutions following three main problems. The first problem we address is the device cost per recording …

Identification Of Bottleneck Locations From Analysis Of National Performance Management Research Data Set (Npmrds) Records, Xinyun Pan

All ETDs from UAB

The traveling public is enduring traffic congestion on a regular basis which is a serious problem for the society. Congestion has negative impacts on transportation users’ convenience and satisfaction, results in lost productivity, increases stress and health related issues, has negative environmental impacts, increases fuel consumption, negatively affects travel reliability and increases travel time and delays. Traffic bottlenecks are often associated with traffic congestion. They represent a localized disruption of traffic flow due to a specific physical condition (such as insufficient roadway capacity or poor geometric design) or due to a temporary situation that restricts traffic flow such as a …

The Real-Time Extractiion Of Neural Spikes For Brain-Machine Interface Application Using Deep Learning Algorithm, Patel Sahaj Anilbhai

All ETDs from UAB

The detection of neural spikes in real-time and accurately has become the center of interest for the researchers in the field of brain-machine/computer interface (BMI/BCI). The primary challenge in the Brain-Machine interface is to translate raw neuronal response signals into the control of electrical actuators. Only accurate and rapid classification of neural response can help efficiently and conveniently to disable peoples, particularly those suffering from spinal cord injury, stocks, etc., Recording from neurons and analyzing them with many different methods are not new. However, the primary challenge here is the real-time recording and classifying the spikes with higher accuracy. In …

Enhanced Proangiogenic Activity Of Endothelial Cells In Response To Polyglutamate Domain-Modified Qk Peptides Delivered On Bone Grafting Materials, Nicholas Weldon Pensa

All ETDs from UAB

Over 2 million bone grafting procedures are performed annually. To meet the high demand for these surgeries, commercial grafting materials sourced from allograft, xenograft, and synthetic calcium phosphate have become widely popular clinically. One limitation of these grafts, however, is their lack of growth factors that drive angiogenesis during bone tissue regeneration. Insufficient revascularization of the injured bone tissue leads to poor fracture healing. However, reincorporating angiogenic factors on grafting materials has proven challenging due to limited surface interactions between the protein and mineral graft surface. To address this challenge, we have synthesized a polyglutamate domain to the VEGF mimetic …

The Effect Of Right Ventricular Insertion Cooling On Wavebreak Initiation Following Defibrillation Shocks, Han Yu

All ETDs from UAB

Although strong defibrillation shocks can save patients from life-threating tachyarrhythmias, the function of the heart may be compromised. We found in an earlier study that the right ventricular insertion (RVI) is responsible for most of the initial propagation failure (wavebreak) that drives the transition from ventricular tachycardia (VT) to ventricular fibrillation (VF). To determine whether suppression of wavebreak at the RVI region can decrease VF re-occurrence after defibrillation, thereby decreasing the defibrillation shock strength threshold (DFT), a cooling method was developed to impede waves from propagating between the right ventricle (RV) and the left ventricle (LV) through the RVI. The …

A Deep Learning Framework For Medical Image Segmentation, Zheng Zhang

All ETDs from UAB

Deep Learning (DL) has rapidly become a methodology of choice for analyzing medical images and increasingly attracts researcher’s attention in the medical research community. The brain is one of the most important organs in the human body. Within the context of human brain disease, research and care, accurately detecting, evaluating and segmenting human brain abnormalities play an important role in brain disease diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment planning. A significant challenge in developing good brain abnormalities segmentation methods is the high variation of brain abnormalities such as differences in shape, size, location, appearance, and regularity. Deep Learning approach ad-dresses this challenge …

Wireless Smart Bandage For Real-Time Monitoring And Healing Of Chronic Wounds, Ting Zhang

All ETDs from UAB

Chronic wound recovery time is long and easy to recur, which brings a high burden on the patient's physical and psychological aspects. The increase in the cost of per capita medical services and the increase in the number of people in demand for medical services have led to an increasing requirement for real-time monitoring and healing in patient's health outside of the hospital. For this purpose, the smart bandage is being developed to monitor the real-time situation of the wound. With the development of wireless sensor networks, the increasing number of sensing units has placed a great burden on the …

Recycling Of Secondary Composite Materials, Kristin Nicole Hardin

All ETDs from UAB

Over the past two decades, composites have shown their ability to help shape and define sustainability through many of their inherent characteristics, such as having high strength-to-weight ratio with long life cycles. However, composites in general are not widely recycled. Current production scrap, reject parts and end of life components are disposed of in landfills, which is costly and damaging to the environment. Driven largely by public perception and technology, the composites industry is starting to put efforts into research and design of composite recycling. Two of the biggest hurdles to widespread composite recycling is the lack of knowledge for …

Connection Strengthening Scheme For Coastal Bridges Under Hurricane Induced Surge And Wave Load Using C-Iepm, Li He

All ETDs from UAB

Considerable damage to the highway bridge system in the Gulf Coast area was observed during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, of which the primary failure mode, caused primarily by the storm-induced loading, is believed to be the superstructure-substructure connection failure which caused further unseating and drifting of the decks. A new Carbon-fiber Interfacial Epoxy-Polyurea Matrix (C-IEPM) composite is investigated as a potential retrofit option for vulnerable girder-to-cap connection-details in coastal highway bridges. Six scaled concrete girders were tested using a modified simulated storm surge and slamming wave force function, derived using regional maps for a 100-year return-period Hurricane Katrina. Two girders, …

Modeling And Optimization Of Advanced Hybrid Ground Source Heat Pump Systems, Gaoyang Hou

All ETDs from UAB

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems contribute significantly to building energy efficiency. Most conventional HVAC systems, such as electrical resistance heater or air to air heat pumps, require high energy consumption while generating a large amount of carbon emission. Therefore, the HVAC system of a building has become the core part of the building design process to improve energy efficiency. Ground source heat pumps (GSHP) offering a relatively high coefficient of performance (COP) and low carbon emission have become a widely-accepted choice. By adding assistive components or alternative heat exchangers, the overall performance can be boosted to a new …

Optimizing Toc Removal For Dbp Reduction In Drinking Water While Overcoming Source Water Variations, April Nabors

All ETDs from UAB

Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering University of Alabama at Birmingham ABSTRACT This dissertation used a holistic approach to research ways to optimize disinfection by-product (DBP) reduction during each sector of the conventional drinking water treatment process, regardless of the source water type or quality, in an overall effort to meet the USEPA Stage 2 Disinfection/Disinfection By-Products Rule (D/DBPR). DBPs are formed from the reaction between naturally occurring total organic carbon (TOC) in the water and disinfectants used during the treatment process. For this dissertation, effective treatment was measured by the amount of TOC that was removed through the …

A Deep Learning Approach For Identifying Key Biomarkers In Medical Imaging Applications, David Odaibo

All ETDs from UAB

Although Deep Leaning has achieved great success in many domains in recent years, research into its applicability and effectiveness in medical applications has been limited for various reasons. Some of these barriers are related to the historic impression that neural networks are black boxes, especially when applied to medical diagnosis and offer no in terpretation into prediction. In this dissertation, I demonstrated that deep learning can be an effective utility in medical diagnosis and biomarker detection. In particular, I have developed deep learning models that can identify biomarkers in brain hemorrhage, brain tumor, pneumonia, diabetic retinopathy and Parkinsons disease, with …

Smart Tennis Ball, Eric Mielke

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Smart Tennis Ball system allows users to track the location of a lost ball. It incorporates ultra-wideband technology and an accurate trilateration algorithm in order to precisely track the location of a tennis or golf ball.

The UWB signals intersect in a triangular fashion and pinpoint the location of the ball using trilateration. The system then calculates the position of the ball and then sends this location to the user’s cell phone. This allows for less frustration for the user who needs to find their lost ball.

3d Mapping With Raspberry Pi, Matt Blake

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) allows a robot to map its environment while also keeping track of the robot’s own location within the map. ORB-SLAM2 is a type of SLAM which only uses a video stream as input, but it does not have automatic support for the common low-cost Raspberry Pi Camera. This project involved creating a version of the ORB-SLAM2 ROS module that can use the Raspberry Pi Camera as its main input source, as well as integrating April Tag fiducial detection into the module to allow for future improvements to the mapping and positioning process.

Aggi-E-Bike, Rees Hatch, Mahmoud Monsour, Garrett Witmer, Oscar Silva, Layan Nimri

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Aggi-E-Bike reinvents the electric drive for an bicycle to achieve higher power density while still being cost-effective. The challenge to push converters to be smaller comes with the trying to remove heat generated by the non-ideal circuit components. The interdisciplinary Aggi-E-Bike team has worked side by side to tackle this challenge. The team will also be representing USU at IEEE's 2019 International Future Energy Challenge (IFEC) final competition in late July in Madison, Wisconsin. The competition requirements and judging criteria have heavily influenced the design decisions made for the project; requirements such as no forced air cooling and a fixed …

Backyard Splash Pad, James Humble, Braydan Allen

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Motivation

• We wanted to obtain experience using OpenCV to do image processing
• Splash Pads at parks are crowded
• With kids it is not always easy to get out the door
• Having a Splash Pad in your backyard allows you to customize it

Features

• Routine that will randomly turn on and off the nozzles
• Phone app that can control the nozzles and light color
• Reaction to objects when they are over a nozzle

Brain Wars: A Mental Game Of Tug Of War, Michael Chesnut, Tony Rawlings

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Brain Wars: A mental game of tug of war.

Carburetor Automator, Taylor Zinke, Xuecong Fan

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The goal of this project is to improve the air-to-fuel ratio (AFR) delivered in carbureted engines. The AFR affects the power, gas consumption, emissions, and lifetime of an engine. Carburetors use two adjustable flaps and a fixed-diameter, narrow tube to deliver air and fuel to the engine.

Cnc Pancake Printer, Johnathan Powell

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The objective of this project is to allow anyone to quickly, easily, and reliably create pancake art, with a variety of applications, from entertainment to advertising.

Any image can be used, and while the process is simple and easy to run, the printer and algorithms are also easy to expand, modify, and upgrade.

Cycling Hud, Justin Allred

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Problem: Cyclists are constantly looking for data to track performance during their ride. These performance metrics are generally displayed on a bike computer mounted on the handlebars. The cyclist must take his or her eyes off the road to view the data.

Hypothesis: If this data could be displayed in front of the cyclist’s eyes, the safety of the ride could be increased, and data viewing would become more convenient to the cyclist. A solution to this problem is a heads-up-display (HUD) which can provide the cyclist information right in front of his or her eyes.

Objective: Create a HUD …

Depth Finder Unlimited, Mason Shumway

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The purpose of this project was to design a depth finder that can be used from land.

Electric Go-Kart, Josh Larkin, Ian Colbert, Morgan Durocher

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Benefits of Electric Vehicles

• More Efficient
• Zero CO₂ Emissions
• Less Maintenance
• Cheaper to operate

Fixed Site Srcurity Using Fiducials And Blob Tracking, Noah Mecham, Garrett Ruskauff, Reebal Nimri, Grant Stensland

Electrical and Computer Engineering

The goal of this project was to implement a security system using autonomous robots for any given area using Robotic Operating System (ROS).

The project incorporates the use of fiducials known as April Tags and Blob tracking to patrol an area and search for a predetermined intruder.

The security system was specifically made to work in GPS denied locations, so it is ideal for homes and businesses.

Flex Sensor System, Eric Alsop, Derek Withers, Riley Densley

Electrical and Computer Engineering

In this project we refined and implemented a flex sensor that was recently invented here in Utah. This sensor uses light to measure how much something is bending. This method of sensing has many advantages over current carbon-based sensors including linear output, ability to make two sensors with identical output (nearly impossible with carbon-based sensors), reduced hysteresis, improved accuracy, and reduced power consumption. Perhaps most importantly, these sensors can be made from a wide variety of materials.