Engineering Commons^™

A Survey On Subsurface Signal Propagation, Usman Raza, Abdul Salam

Faculty Publications

Wireless Underground Communication (WUC) is an emerging field that is being developed continuously. It provides secure mechanism of deploying nodes underground which shields them from any outside temperament or harsh weather conditions. This paper works towards introducing WUC and give a detail overview of WUC. It discusses system architecture of WUC along with the anatomy of the underground sensor motes deployed in WUC systems. It also compares Over-the-Air and Underground and highlights the major differences between the both type of channels. Since, UG communication is an evolving field, this paper also presents the evolution of the field along with the …

A Note From The Editor, Daphne Fauber

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

This piece is a letter from Daphne Fauber, the editor of this issue of Ideas. In the letter, the editor introduces the work of Dr. Paschalis Gkoupidenis as well as the moment in time in which his Visiting Scholars talk occurs.

Introduction To Neuromorphic Computing, Sadid R. Khan

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

Neuromorphic computing is an emerging field that has the potential to drastically influence every human’s life within the next decades. Neuromorphic computing explores the computing process of the brain and attempts to replicate it onto modern electronics. It offers improvements on current computer architecture, the von Neumann architecture, and will lead to more efficient computing, easier development of machine learning, and further integration of electronics and biology.

In The Pursuit Of Assistance: A Team's Desire To Not Let A Congenital Amputation Get In A Young Boy's Way, Carl Russell Iii, Gavin Loucks, Kirsten Wozniak

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

EPICS is a service-learning design program run through Purdue University. It strives to teach students design skills through providing for individuals, communities, and organizations in the surrounding area while mirroring engineering industry standards. BME (Biomedical Engineering) is a team within EPICS that strives to serve community partners through biomedical applications. William Sevick is an elementary school student with a congenital arm amputation. William and his family have been working with the BME team for the past three years designing assistive devices with the purpose of improving his actions in daily life such as eating, playing games, and riding his bike.

Epics Urban Farming: Bringing Sustainable Fresh Food To Gary, Indiana, Elijah Klein

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

EPICS Urban Farming is a team of seventeen undergraduate students designing and implementing an aquaponics and food distribution system in Gary, Indiana. With the area being a food desert, most people turn to corner stores for food that is easily accessible and cheap but unhealthy. From this diet, there are quite a few widespread health concerns that the population of Gary, Indiana, faces daily. For example, obesity, diabetes, and heart conditions are some of the most common diseases that plague the community. Urban Farming is working to aid in combating these issues with the partnership of Pastor Marty Henderson, who …

Global Air Quality Trekkers: Nandi Clean Kitchen Study, Samantha Dykhuis, Stephanie Schiavo, Avalin Senefeld

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Indoor air pollution is a widespread environmental health challenge sub-Saharan Africa and is the leading cause of premature death in many sub-Saharan African countries. This pollution is primarily caused by the burning of biomass fuels inside an enclosed kitchen in order to provide heat for cooking. Global Air Quality Trekkers is an undergraduate engineering team within the EPICS department at Purdue that began in fall 2016. Our objective is to create a kitchen design that utilizes natural ventilation to mitigate the amount of air pollutants present in these kitchens, specifically in the Nandi community of Western Kenya. This year, our …

Students Becoming Supervisors: Student Transformation During A Cross-National, Collaborative Community Engineering Project, Alessandra Napoli, Kevin Nyaga, Dhinesh Radhakrishnan, Jennifer J. Deboer

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The Tumaini Innovation Center in Eldoret, Kenya, is an alternative primary and vocational school for former "street youth." The DeBoer Lab at Purdue has partnered with Tumaini for the last five years to develop and support integrated engineering activities for the students, which apply their learning to solve problems in their own communities. A Purdue Service Learning Grant project started in November 2018 resulted in the construction of a community gym at Tumaini. A low-cost custom made gym was designed by a team of doctoral and undergraduate students at Purdue in collaboration with Tumaini. In addition to the design and …

Emergence And Compassion: A Reflection On Interpersonal Priorities Strategies Within Collaborative Settings, Chanel Beebe

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The nature of work with and for humans and communities requires intentional relationship building that can be rife with complexities, foibles, discomfort, and learning. As scholars, researchers, practitioners, educators, and students, we carry a multitude of identities and dispositions that make collaborative work and change-making a messy and potentially emotional journey. Thus, many groups that find themselves on this journey often struggle to develop harmonious or impactful lasting relationships and often create toxic or harmful working environments for those who are the most marginalized or have the least power. The goal of this work is to provide a reflection on …

Retrospective Analysis Of Participatory Decision-Making In A Park's Construction In Lafayette, Indiana, Joshua Randall

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The Creative Park project has been an ongoing collaboration between Purdue Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), Faith Community Development Corporation, and the residents of Lincoln Neighborhood in Lafayette, Indiana. It was initiated by Faith in 2017 as an open-ended attempt to increase local children’s interactions with creative and complex thinking as well as decreasing time spent indoors at the Hartford Hub. Through several iterations of designs, an interdisciplinary team with one consistent member has developed a plan to build a treehouse-themed park to be constructed in spring 2020. Throughout this time two major themes have arisen: that the collaboration …

The Hartford Hub’S Creative Park: A Reflection On Epics And The Importance Of Community, Nasser Alsinan

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

In this project, the team aspires to build a Creative Park next to the Hartford Hub, a neighborhood community center that serves the people of the Lincoln Neighborhood in Lafayette. In this reflective essay, the author discusses the impact of this EPICS project on both the community and on himself, as the NS team seeks to establish both a staple for the Hartford Hub and a birthplace for the children’s memories through the creation of the Creative Park.

Resource Discovery In A Changing Content World, Allen Jones, Cynthia R. Schwarz, Hannah Mckelvey, Rachelle Mclain, Christine Stohn

Charleston Library Conference

Discovery services have evolved to include not just books and articles, but databases, website content, research guides, digital and audiovisual collections, and unique local collections that are all important for their users to be able to find. Search and ranking remain at the core of discovery, but advanced tools such as recommendation, virtual browse, ‘look inside‘, and the use of artificial intelligence are also becoming more prevalent. This group of panelists discussed how content in their discovery systems can change based on the context of the user, using as examples Primo and Blacklight, and how content is populated, discovered and …

Modeling Of The Electrical Characteristics Of An Organic Field Effect Transistor In Presence Of The Bending Effects, Yi Yang, Robert Nawrocki, Richard Voyles, Haiyan H. Zhang

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

An analytical model incorporating the density of trap states for a bendable organic field effect transistor (OFET) is presented in this paper. The aim of this work is to propose a novel modeling framework to quantitatively characterize the bending effects on the electrical properties of an OFET in the linear and saturation regimes. In this model, the exponentially distributed shallow trap states are introduced into the Poisson equation to describe the carrier transports in the channel. The carrier mobility takes into account the low field mobility enhancement under gradual channel approximation and high field degradation. As a result, the generalized …

Modeling Land And Hold Short Operations: Balancing Safety And Arrival Rate, Kenneth A. Ward, Heather Owen-Perry

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

Many airports conduct simultaneous operations on intersecting runways to increase the rate of takeoffs and landings. This requires landing aircraft to hold short of the intersecting runway, which incurs a safety risk of runway incursions in the process. A Monte Carlo simulation was conducted to analyze the traffic load at maximum operational capacity at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in order to analyze the fleet types and the rate of those landing aircraft unable to stop short of the intersecting runway. The researchers used the actual and four alternative compositions of the subject airline’s aircraft arrivals, interspersed among other airport traffic, to …

2020 Online Symposium On Education In Entertainment And Engineering, Fusion Studio For Entertainment And Engineering

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

No abstract provided.

2019 Symposium On Education In Entertainment And Engineering, Mary K. Pillotte, Rich Dionne

Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

No abstract provided.

Elementary Teachers’ Mental Images Of Engineers At Work, Rebekah Hammack, Juliana Utley, Toni Ivey, Karen High

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

The purpose of the current study was to determine the impacts of a multiple-day engineering-focused professional development program on elementary teachers’ perceptions of the work of engineers and their use of mathematics and science. Data were collected in the form of drawings of engineers prior to and immediately after the professional development program as well as an open-ended exit survey at the end of the program. Participants’ drawings were scored in the following areas: use of mathematics, use of science, and work of an engineer. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed that the only significant change between measures was in ‘‘work of …

The Importance Of Collaborative Design For Narrowing The Gender Gap In Engineering: An Analysis Of Engineering Identity Development In Elementary Students, Mandy Mclean, Jasmine M. Nation, Alexis Spina, Tyler Susko, Danielle Harlow, Julie Bianchini

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

Research suggests that, to narrow the gender gap in engineering, we should focus on helping young girls identify with engineering both because gendered attitudes emerge around kindergarten and because identity is more predictive than performance on persistence in the field. This qualitative study sought to understand the impact of collaborative engineering design on the development of engineering identities in elementary-school students and compared the findings across gender. We focused on three tiers of collaboration embedded into the engineering design process: peer groups, role models, and shared goals. More specifically, the elementary students worked in small teams and partnered with undergraduate …

Data Is Personal: We Should Treat It As Such, Kaleb Dunn

Student Papers in Public Policy

The rise of the internet as a fact of daily life is the defining element of the modern age. Widespread use of the internet has fundamentally altered entire industries, and much of American life has migrated online. Dating is augmented by online dating; shopping by online shopping; television by internet streaming.

The digitization of American life has brought with it considerable benefits, including great convenience and innumerable efficiencies, but it has not come without a cost. Although there are many business models used by internet companies, many of the now-largest companies in the world have converged on one entity upon …

A Statistical Impulse Response Model Based On Empirical Characterization Of Wireless Underground Channel, Abdul Salam, Mehmet C. Vuran, Suat Irmak

Faculty Publications

Wireless underground sensor networks (WUSNs) are becoming ubiquitous in many areas. The design of robust systems requires extensive understanding of the underground (UG) channel characteristics. In this paper, an UG channel impulse response is modeled and validated via extensive experiments in indoor and field testbed settings. The three distinct types of soils are selected with sand and clay contents ranging from $13\%$ to $86\%$ and $3\%$ to $32\%$, respectively. The impacts of changes in soil texture and soil moisture are investigated with more than $1,200$ measurements in a novel UG testbed that allows flexibility in soil moisture control. Moreover, the …

Developing Unmanned Aerial Systems Skills Through A Creative Project, Jesse Giampaolo, James Jeffery Hines

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Applying Clustering To Optimize Markovian Models In Human-Machine Interactions, Griffon Mcmahon

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Quantifying Changes In Muscle Force In The Presence Of Fatigue, Emily Bywater

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

Characterization Of Neuronal Differentiation And Activity In Human-Induced Pluripotent Neural Stem Cells, Allison Biddinger

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

No abstract provided.

High Wind Alerts: A System Created With Observations From The X-Band Teaching And Research Radar, Lauren Warner

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Following the August 13, 2011, Indiana State Fair stage collapse tragedy, caused by a wind gust from an approaching thunderstorm, Purdue University enforced a wind speed restriction of 30 mph (13 m s-1) for tents at outdoor events. During these events, volunteers stand outside with handheld anemometers, measuring and reporting when the wind speeds exceed this limit. In this study, we report testing of a new system to automate high-wind alerts based on observations from a Doppler radar, the X-band Teaching and Research Radar (XTRRA), near Purdue’s campus. XTRRA scans over campus at low elevations approximately every 5 minutes. Using …

Human Factors Analysis And Classification System (Hfacs): As Applied To Asiana Airlines Flight 214, Alex Small

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

The Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) is a safety tool that aids in the identification and analysis of organizational factors that contribute to aircraft accidents. By using the HFACS model, safety investigators can better understand the existing conditions that contribute to accidents, which then allows for the development and implementation of safety programs to prevent these conditions. In this study, the HFACS framework was utilized to identify the human factors that contributed to the Asiana Airlines flight 214 accident that occurred on July 6, 2013. The results of this study indicate that inadequate pilot training, lack of upper-level …

Comparison Of Machine Learning Models: Gesture Recognition Using A Multimodal Wrist Orthosis For Tetraplegics, Charlie Martin

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Many tetraplegics must wear wrist braces to support paralyzed wrists and hands. However, current wrist orthoses have limited functionality to assist a person’s ability to perform typical activities of daily living other than a small pocket to hold utensils. To enhance the functionality of wrist orthoses, gesture recognition technology can be applied to control mechatronic tools attached to a novel fabricated wrist brace. Gesture recognition is a growing technology for providing touchless human-computer interaction that can be particularly useful for tetraplegics with limited upper-extremity mobility. In this study, three gesture recognition models were compared—two dynamic time-warping models and a hidden …

Navigating In Numerous Video Data: User Interface Design For An On-Camera Video Analytics Engine, Sabriya Maryam Alam

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

Video analytics powered by artificial intelligence shows high promise in making our society smarter. Harnessing large amounts of video data, however, requires the development of processing systems demonstrating high performance and high efficiency. To this end, this work has contributed to a video analytics system powered by artificial intelligence for object detection and recognition. Rather than streaming all the video frames to the cloud, the system analyzes images on-camera and only returns those of interest to the cloud. This edge analytics research-grade software is available, but it lacks a simple web interface for general use by scientists, engineers, and other …

Decision Agriculture, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

In this chapter, the latest developments in the field of decision agriculture are discussed. The practice of management zones in digital agriculture is described for efficient and smart faming. Accordingly, the methodology for delineating management zones is presented. Modeling of decision support systems is explained along with discussion of the issues and challenges in this area. Moreover, the precision agriculture technology is also considered. Moreover, the chapter surveys the state of the decision agriculture technologies in the countries such as Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Sweden. Finally, different field factors such as GPS accuracy and …

Electromagnetic Characteristics Of The Soil, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

The electromagnetic characteristics of the soil are discussed in this chapter. The characteristics of porous bedrock, soil medium, and impacts of rain attenuations are also presented. The models of dielectric soil properties are studied with a rigorous focus on the constitutive parameters of subsurface soil medium. Moreover, the permittivity and wavenumber in soil are explained. In addition, the frequency-dependent dielectric properties such as dispersion in soil, absorption characteristic, and penetration depth versus frequency are reviewed. Furthermore, the effective permittivity of soil–water mixture for through-the soil-propagation mechanism is analyzed thoroughly.

Underground Phased Arrays And Beamforming Applications, Abdul Salam, Usman Raza

Faculty Publications

This chapter presents a framework for adaptive beamforming in underground communication. The wireless propagation is thoroughly analyzed to develop a model using the soil moisture as an input parameter to provide feedback mechanism while enhancing the system performance. The working of array element in the soil is analyzed. Moreover, the effect of soil texture and soil moisture on the resonant frequency and return loss is studied in detail. The wave refraction from the soil–air interface highly degrades the performance of the system. Furthermore, to beam steering is done to achieve high gain for lateral component improving the UG communication. The …