Engineering Commons^™

Online Traffic Signal Control Through Sample-Based Constrained Optimization, Srishti Dhamija, Alolika Gon, Pradeep Varakantham, William Yeoh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traffic congestion reduces productivity of individuals by increasing time spent in traffic and also increases pollution. To reduce traffic congestion by better handling dynamic traffic patterns, recent work has focused on online traffic signal control. Typically, the objective in traffic signal control is to minimize expected delay over all vehicles given the uncertainty associated with the vehicle turn movements at intersections. In order to ensure responsiveness in decision making, a typical approach is to compute a schedule that minimizes the delay for the expected scenario of vehicle movements instead of minimizing expected delay over the feasible vehicle movement scenarios. Such …

Humans-As-A-Sensor For Buildings — Intensive Longitudinal Indoor Comfort Models, Prageeth Jayathissa, Matias Quintana, Mahmoud Abdelrahman, Clayton Miller

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Evaluating and optimising human comfort within the built environment is challenging due to the large number of physiological, psychological and environmental variables that affect occupant comfort preference. Human perception could be helpful to capture these disparate phenomena and interpreting their impact; the challenge is collecting spatially and temporally diverse subjective feedback in a scalable way. This paper presents a methodology to collect intensive longitudinal subjective feedback of comfort-based preference using micro ecological momentary assessments on a smartwatch platform. An experiment with 30 occupants over two weeks produced 4378 field-based surveys for thermal, noise, and acoustic preference. The occupants and the …

The Building Data Genome Project 2, Energy Meter Data From The Ashrae Great Energy Predictor Iii Competition, Clayton Miller, Anjukan Kathirgamanathan, Bianca Picchetti, Pandarasamy Arjunan, Young June Park, Zoltan Nagy, Paul Raftery, W. Brodie Hobson, Zixiao Shi, Forrest Meggers

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This paper describes an open data set of 3,053 energy meters from 1,636 non-residential buildings with a range of two full years (2016 and 2017) at an hourly frequency (17,544 measurements per meter resulting in approximately 53.6 million measurements). These meters were collected from 19 sites across North America and Europe, with one or more meters per building measuring whole building electrical, heating and cooling water, steam, and solar energy as well as water and irrigation meters. Part of these data was used in the Great Energy Predictor III (GEPIII) competition hosted by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and …

Finite Element Analysis Investigation Of Hybrid Thin-Ply Composites For Improved Performance Of Aerospace Structures, Alana M. Zahn

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Commercial and private aircraft have a need for strong yet light materials in order to have the most ideal performance possible. This study looks at the use of thin-ply composite materials to improve the performance of aircraft structures by means of weight savings and/or strength increase when compared to laminates that are composed of exclusively standard-ply materials. In order to perform an investigation based solely on finite element analysis, validation efforts were performed using test data from open hole tension, open hole compression, notched tension, and notched compression specimens. Once the models were validated sufficiently, the same modeling practices were …

Anomalous Growth Of Al8Mo3 Phase During Interdiffusion And Reaction Between Al And Mo, Abhishek Mehta, Le Zhou, Dennis D. Keiser Jr., Yongho Sohn

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Optimal Parameter Values For Accurate And Repeatable Nanoindentation Of Human Trabecular Bone, Stephen Matthew Kmak

Master's Theses

Nanoindentation techniques have not been standardized for use on bone tissues, making comparison of bone material properties obtained via nanoindentation across studies difficult and unreliable. This study determined a set of optimal parameter values for thermal drift correction time, dwell time, and loading rate that can be used to obtain accurate and repeatable material properties from human femoral trabecular bone through experimentation and statistical analysis. All testing was conducted using a single nanoindenter on a single trabeculae, with the assumption that material properties within the individual trabeculae were internally consistent. Parameters not of interest during this study, such as ambient …

Non-Conventional Vehicles As A Way Towards Carbon Neutrality In Iceland, Julia Sokolowska

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Paris Agreement’s chief objective is to protect the Earth and its inhabitants from a point of no return, when the effects of climate change will be so intense that they will shift the equilibrium of ecosystems. The distinctiveness of this international environmental treaty is that it does not impose climate change mitigation measures, but rather allows nation states to create their own set of measures, the NDCs, to reach the global warming of ‘well below 2oC’ by the end of the century. Thus, Iceland has submitted its own NDC, the Climate Action Plan 2018-2030, which has an ambitious goal of …

Methods For Dynamic Stabilization, Performance Improvement, And Load Power Sharing In Dc Power Distribution Systems, Hessamaldin Abdollahi

Theses and Dissertations

Modern DC power distribution systems (DC-PDS) offer high efficiency and flexibility which make them ideal for mission-critical applications such as on-board power systems of All-Electric ships, electric vehicles, More-Electric-Aircrafts, and DC Microgrids. Despite these attractive features, there are still challenges that need to be addressed. The two most important challenges are system stability and load power sharing. The stability and performance are of concern because DC-PDS are typically formed by the interconnection of several feedback-controlled power converters. The resulting interactions can lead to destabilizing dynamics. Likewise, in a DC-PDS there are several source converters that are operating in parallel to …

Computational Modeling Of Radiation Damage In A Multi-Phase Ceramic Waste Form Using Moose, Zeyu Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Ceramic waste forms have been proposed to replace the traditional glassy waste forms for long term stabilization of radionuclides. These waste forms are constantly exposed to self-irradiation emitted from the constituent radionuclides causing their material properties to change accordingly. It has been known that the radiation damage in waste forms is dominated by alpha particles emitted from transuranic (TRU) radionuclides. Since alpha particles usually have a range of 10~20 μm in such waste forms, some fraction of any non-transuranic containing phases (for a multiphase waste form) will be undamaged (or less damaged) if containing large enough grain sizes. Modeling and …

30 Ghz Path Loss Modeling And Performance Evaluation For Noncoherent M-Ary Frequency Shift Keying In The 30 Ghz Band, Mohanad Razak Mohsen

Theses and Dissertations

A candidate millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band and modulation scheme that could fit to many present and future applications has been presented in this work. As is being explored by industry, we also suggest the 30 GHz band as a candidate carrier frequency and non-coherent frequency shift keying (NC-FSK) as a potential modulation scheme for future communication applications. The primary applications are aimed at 5th generation (5G) cellular type systems. Propagation measurements were conducted for outdoor and indoor environments using directional horn antennas for both co-polarized and cross-polarized antenna configurations to model the path loss for our candidate band. The measurements …

Use Of Geospatial Technique To Estimate Traffic Volume On South Carolina Roads, Ryan Andrew Devine

Theses and Dissertations

Data from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) indicates that there is an increase in the number of vehicles on already congested roadways. For a department of transportation (DOT) to keep up with this increased demand, it is necessary for them to continuously collect and monitor traffic volume on the roads they maintain. One of the most important parameters that DOTs collect and use for traffic engineering and transportation planning studies is annual average daily traffic (AADT). The DOTs are also required to collect and report AADTs to the Federal Highway Administration annually as part of the Highway Performance Monitoring System …

Hydrogenation Of Dimethyl Oxalate To Ethylene Glycol Over Silica Supported Copper Catalysts, Xinbin Yu

Theses and Dissertations

Ethylene glycol is a bulk chemical and hydrogenation of dimethyl oxalate (DMO) on Cu/SiO2 catalysts is the final reaction step in a growing industrial syngas to ethylene glycol (StEG) process. Efforts to improve the performance of the catalysts are still ongoing and the detailed catalytic mechanism remains controversial.

In the present work, a series of 10 wt% Cu/SiO₂ is prepared.by urea hydrolysis method and indium species is introduced by incipient wetness impregnation. Reaction studies show that 0.25 wt%-0.5 wt% of indium species can dramatically enhance the performance of 10 wt% Cu/SiO₂ catalyst. Various characterizations reveal that indium species …

Evaluating The Stabilization Of Gypseous And Gypsiferous Sands Using Different Chemical Additives To Mitigate Gypsum Dissolution, Mohammed Kamil Faris

Theses and Dissertations

Gypsum, which is dihydrate calcium sulfate, (CaSO4.2H2O), is widely available in different sizes, from the size of a rock to the size of a few micrometers as a mineral, in different types of soils. It is primarily found mainly in arid and semi-arid areas around the world at different depths. Soils with gypsum and even gypsum rocks are very hard in their dry state. However, these soils and rock will experience remarkable dissolution upon wetting.

The dissolution phenomenon, which takes place in soils that contain gypsum, creates different geotechnical problems within the soil’s profile, along with foundation issues for structures …

Exploration And Evaluation Of Novel Cathode Materials For Intermediate-To-Low Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Chunyang Yang

Theses and Dissertations

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have attracted considerable attentions due to its high conversion efficiency, fuel flexibility, and clean nature. However, the high cost and poor long-term stability induced by the high operating temperature (> 800 °C) of the conventional SOFCs hinder the further application. Therefore, lowering operating temperature to intermediate temperature range (IT, 650-800 °C) or even low temperature range (LT, 400-650 °C) is of practical importance for realizing SOFCs’ full commercial potential. Nevertheless, due to the large activation energy associated with oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), cathode polarization resistance becomes the dominate loss limiting SOFCs performance as operating temperature …

Autonomous Drone-Based Sensor Package Deployment To The Underside Of Structures, Sabrina Rose Carroll

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this project is to design, develop and experimentally test an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS, commonly known as a drone) for the deployment of sensor packages to the underside of structures. This work begins with an in-depth review of existing automation techniques for various drone applications focusing on applications requiring interaction with the environment. Further reviewed is the impact of structures above the UAS during flight on the behavior of the aircraft.

Considering these topics, the development of a custom drone is presented to address the difficulties of delivering a package to the underside of a structure. Starting …

Lamb Wave Nondestructive Evaluation And Imaging On Plate-Like Structures, Zhaoyun Ma

Theses and Dissertations

Structure components are designed with a certain service life and damage may occur, or they may come with manufacture defects. Such damage and defects may lead to structural failure if not detected in time. To ensure the structural safety and prevent catastrophic failure, effective inspection is critical for in-time maintenance. Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM) have been widely applied for damage inspection and evaluation in various industries due to their noninvasive nature. Lamb wave based NDE/SHM has become the most popular ultrasonic methods that has been proved effective in different engineering applications that can be used to …

Mathematical Modeling Of Lithium-Sulfur Batteries, Niloofar Kamyab

Theses and Dissertations

Energy storage market transformed by utilization of lithium-ion batteries, will demand high and affordable deliverable energy in the near future which it would be impossible for the current employed technologies to meet those needs Among new generation of lithium batteries, high theoretical energy density, good low-temperature performance, and abundance of inexpensive nontoxic raw material, make the lithium-sulfur batteries (LiS) a promising candidate to outperform the current lithium-ion batteries and transform the technology of the future. However, the problems and challenges that LiS batteries are currently facing with, which stem from the inherent complex mechanism of these cells, are hindering their …

Acoustic And Ultrasonic Beam Focusing Through Aberrative And Attenuative Layers, Hossain Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

Ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation (NDE) is a well-established technique to assess material properties and material state in noninvasive way. However, conventional NDE technologies are limited by the thick top coatings over the structure and, therefore, require time consuming removal and replacement of the coatings to perform the inspection. In biological application, although ultrasonic NDE is a safer method in compared to other radioactive non-invasive techniques, aberration of acoustic beams is more common as it encounters multiple tissue layers of complex geometry with nonhomogeneous properties. These limit the use of ultrasonic NDE in engineering and biological applications. To alleviate this problem, recently …

Development Of A Cfd Model For The Drying Of Aluminum-Clad Spent Nuclear Fuel, Nathaniel Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) currently manages approxi- mately 2500 metric tons of heavy metal (MTHM) of spent nuclear fuel (SNF), pri- marily from naval sources and domestic research reactors, and has agreements in place to accept 10,000 MTHM of aluminum-clad SNF from foreign reactors by 2029. However, due to the closure and the Yucca Mountain site and difficulties in the vitrification process, the majority of this fuel is expected to be placed in intermediate dry storage.

Before being placed in interim storage, all assemblies must be subjected to a drying process, either by forced gas recirculation (FGR) …

Camera Placement Meeting Restrictions Of Computer Vision, Sara Aghajanzadeh, Roopasree Naidu, Shuo-Han Chen, Caleb Tung, Abhinav Goel, Yung-Hsiang Lu, George K. Thiruvathukal

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the blooming era of smart edge devices, surveillance cam- eras have been deployed in many locations. Surveillance cam- eras are most useful when they are spaced out to maximize coverage of an area. However, deciding where to place cam- eras is an NP-hard problem and researchers have proposed heuristic solutions. Existing work does not consider a signifi- cant restriction of computer vision: in order to track a moving object, the object must occupy enough pixels. The number of pixels depends on many factors (how far away is the object? What is the camera resolution? What is the focal length?). …

Engineered Cementitious Composites (Ecc) For Applications In Texas, Philip Park, Robert Jones, Lucas Castillo, Marie Vallangca, Franher Cantu

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) are a special type of high-performance fiber-reinforced cementitious composites that is characterized by high-ductility (3–5% strain) and moderate tensile strength (4–6 MPa) with 1.5–2% fiber content by volume. Under tensile deformation, ECC shows strain-hardening behavior and closely spaced microcracks after the first cracking. ECC possesses excellent shear capacity, improved damage tolerance, ability to control crack width, and synergistic interaction with reinforcing bars. ECC has been proposed as a novel alternative for infrastructure materials but to date has not seen wide application in Texas or the rest of the United States. The objective of this project is …

The Influence Of Marking Methods On Mobility, Survivorship, And Field Recovery Of Halyomorpha Halys (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) Adults And Nymphs, Danielle M. Kirkpatrick, Kevin B. Rice, Aya Ibrahim, Shelby J. Fleischer, John F. Tooker, Amy Tabb, Henry Medeiros, William R. Morrison Iii, Tracy C. Leskey

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Halyomorpha halys (Stål), the brown marmorated stink bug, is an invasive and highly polyphagous insect that has caused serious economic injury to specialty and row crops in the United States and Europe. Here, we evaluated the effects of marking adult and nymphal H. halys with four different colors of fluorescent powder (Blaze Orange, Corona Pink, Horizon Blue, and Signal Green) on mobility and survivorship in laboratory bioassays. Adults and nymphs were marked using liquified fluorescent powder solutions and allowed to dry prior to bioassay. The presence of the marking solution had no significant effects on adult or nymphal mobility, adult …

Cleanpage: Fast And Clean Document And Whiteboard Capture, Jane Courtney

Articles

The move from paper to online is not only necessary for remote working, it is also significantly more sustainable. This trend has seen a rising need for the high-quality digitization of content from pages and whiteboards to sharable online material. However, capturing this information is not always easy nor are the results always satisfactory. Available scanning apps vary in their usability and do not always produce clean results, retaining surface imperfections from the page or whiteboard in their output images. CleanPage, a novel smartphone-based document and whiteboard scanning system, is presented. CleanPage requires one button-tap to capture, identify, crop, and …

The Professional Constructor, Full Issue, Volume 45, Number 02

The Professional Constructor

No abstract provided.

Peer-Inspired Student Performance Prediction In Interactive Online Question Pools With Graph Neural Network, Haotian Li, Huan Wei, Yong Wang, Yangqiu Song, Huamin. Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Student performance prediction is critical to online education. It can benefit many downstream tasks on online learning platforms, such as estimating dropout rates, facilitating strategic intervention, and enabling adaptive online learning. Interactive online question pools provide students with interesting interactive questions to practice their knowledge in online education. However, little research has been done on student performance prediction in interactive online question pools. Existing work on student performance prediction targets at online learning platforms with predefined course curriculum and accurate knowledge labels like MOOC platforms, but they are not able to fully model knowledge evolution of students in interactive online …

United States Department Of Defense (Dod) Real Property Repair, Alterations, Maintenance, And Construction Project Contract Data: 2009–2020, Tyler Stout, Adam Teston, Brent T. Langhals, Justin D. Delorit, Carlton Hendrix, Steven J. Schuldt

Faculty Publications

Nearly one-half of all construction projects exceed planned costs and schedule, globally [1]. Owners and construction managers can analyze historical project performance data to inform cost and schedule overrun risk-reduction strategies. Though, the majority of open-source project datasets are limited by the number of projects, data dimensionality, and location. A significant global customer of the construction industry, the Department of Defense (DoD) maintains a vast database of historical project data that can be used to determine the sources and magnitude of construction schedule and cost overruns for many continental and international locations. The selection of data provided by the authors …

Experimental Investigation Of The Effect Of Vitagnus Plant Extract On Enhanced Oil Recovery Process Using Interfacial Tension (Ift) Reduction And Wettability Alteration Mechanisms, Seyed Ramin Mousavi Dashtaki, Jagar A. Ali, Abbas Khaksar Manshad, Iman Nowrouzi, Amir H. Mohammadi, Alireza Keshavarz

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020, The Author(s). Surfactant flooding is a chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR) process wherein anionic, cationic, non-ionic, and amphoteric surfactants are injected into oil reservoirs to produce more hydrocarbon. These chemical and industrial agents might cause some economic and environmental challenges. Recently, injection of natural surfactants, as new environmentally friendly EOR agents, for improving oil recovery has been proposed by researchers. In this study, the extract of Vitagnus, a natural surfactant, was used to minimize the interfacial tension (IFT) and alter the rock wettability towards the strong water-wet system, thereby improving the oil recovery from the carbonate rock The …

Multimodal Representation Learning And Set Attention For Lwir In-Scene Atmospheric Compensation, Nicholas M. Westing, Kevin C. Gross, Brett J. Borghetti, Christine M. Schubert Kabban, Jacob Martin, Joseph Meola

Faculty Publications

A multimodal generative modeling approach combined with permutation-invariant set attention is investigated in this paper to support long-wave infrared (LWIR) in-scene atmospheric compensation. The generative model can produce realistic atmospheric state vectors (T;H₂O;O₃) and their corresponding transmittance, upwelling radiance, and downwelling radiance (TUD) vectors by sampling a low-dimensional space. Variational loss, LWIR radiative transfer loss and atmospheric state loss constrain the low-dimensional space, resulting in lower reconstruction error compared to standard mean-squared error approaches. A permutation-invariant network predicts the generative model low-dimensional components from in-scene data, allowing for simultaneous estimates of the atmospheric state and TUD …

Modeling Airflows And Voc Source Strengths For An Occupied School, Brett Stinson

University Honors Theses

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a group of air pollutants that can adversely impact human health, engage in chemistry indoors, and meaningfully degrade indoor and outdoor urban air quality. While extensive research with regard to VOC emission rates from indoor sources has been conducted, it was not until recently that this work began to focus on characterizing emissions from humans and human activity in depth. As buildings are constructed to be increasingly airtight, and the materials utilized are chosen to reduce VOC emissions, it follows that human contributions are poised to become increasingly important indoor sources of VOCs. Utilizing data …

The Seasonal Effects Of Photovoltaic Cells On Sedum Eco Roof Substrate Moisture, Brook M. Thompson

University Honors Theses

This paper investigates a combined PV eco roof system and analyzes the soil moisture levels in front of the panels and directly underneath the PV Cells on an experimental ecoroof platform in Portland, Oregon. The purpose of the study was to examine how PV Cells create differences in the moisture level of the soil on the ecoroof. Four moisture sensors were set in different quadrants in four experimental testbeds, and the moisture level data was recorded from October 18^th, 2018 to September 10^th, 2019. The study found that in with heavy rainfall, the front of the …