Engineering Commons^™

Estimation Of The Axial And Lateral Capacity Of Driven Piles From The Results Of Cone Penetration Test And Finite Element Analysis, Mohsen Amirmojahedi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Piles play an important role in transportation and bridges. They are used to resist axial and lateral loads transferred to them from structures, earth pressures, incline loads, vehicles, etc. In this study, the capacity of piles for axial and lateral loads is investigated.

The ultimate axial capacity of piles can be estimated using different approaches including static pile load tests, dynamic load tests, statnamic load tests, and static analysis based on laboratory tests (effective and total stress approaches) or in-situ tests (SPT, CPT, etc.). For each approach, different researchers have proposed different solutions for different soils and different piles. Mostly, …

Benchmark Temperature Microcontroller For Process Dynamics And Control, Junho Park, Ronald Abraham Martin, Jeffrey Kelly, John Hedengren

Faculty Publications

Standard benchmarks are important repositories to establish comparisons between competing model and control methods, especially when a new method is proposed. This paper presents details of an Arduino micro-controller temperature control lab as a benchmark for modeling and control methods. As opposed to simulation studies, a physical benchmark considers real process characteristics such as the requirement to meet a cycle time, discrete sampling intervals, communication overhead with the process, and model mismatch. An example case study of the benchmark is quantifying an optimization approach for a PID controller with 5.4% improved performance. A multivariate example shows the quantified performance improvement …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Pvp Based Catalysts For Selected Application In Catalysis, Hany A. Elazab, Mohamed N. Ayad, Mohamed M. Hammam, M. A. Radwan, M. A. Sadek

Chemical Engineering

This research aims to study the catalyst activity in specific reactions and the characteristics of the catalyst in order to optimize its performance. This research investigates PVP based catalysts and their properties and applications. PVP was prepared in combination with different metal oxides in order to be tested for different catalytic applications including dye removal. Methyl orange was used as a dye and different concentrations were tested against different metallic ions in order to optimize the catalyst for being used in dye removal applications. Spectrophotometer was used to calculate the concentration of the dye before and after catalyst exposure and …

A Framework To Detect Presentation Attacks, Laeticia Etienne

Master of Science in Information Technology Theses

Biometric-based authentication systems are becoming the preferred choice to replace password-based authentication systems. Among several variations of biometrics (e.g., face, eye, fingerprint), iris-based authentication is commonly used in every day applications. In iris-based authentication systems, iris images from legitimate users are captured and certain features are extracted to be used for matching during the authentication process. Literature works suggest that iris-based authentication systems can be subject to presentation attacks where an attacker obtains printed copy of the victim’s eye image and displays it in front of an authentication system to gain unauthorized access. Such attacks can be performed by displaying …

Development Of A Simplified Performance-Based Procedure For Assessment Of Liquefaction Triggering For The Cone Penetration Test, Jenny Lee Blonquist

Theses and Dissertations

Soil liquefaction can cause devastating damage and loss and is a serious concern in civil engineering practice. One method for evaluating liquefaction triggering potential is a risk-targeted probabilistic approach that has been shown to provide more consistent and accurate estimates of liquefaction risk than traditional methods. This approach is a “performance-based” procedure which is based off of the performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) framework developed by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center. Unfortunately, due to its complexity, performance-based liquefaction assessment is not often used in engineering practice. However, previous researchers have developed a simplified performance-based procedure which incorporates the accuracy …

Dynamics Of The Ionospheric Energetics (Dione) 2018, Ryan Davidson, Charles Swenson

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Cardiovascular Surgery Practice Remodel: Increasing Job Satisfaction And Reducing Turnover Rates Of Advanced Practice Providers, Christian Brooks

Doctor of Nursing Practice Scholarly Project

Cardiovascular Surgery Practice Remodel: Increasing Job Satisfaction and Reducing Turnover Rates of Advanced Practice Providers

Background: The CVS practice in a Midwestern state had a shift in morale and job satisfaction in their advanced practice providers (APPs). This shift lead to the high turnover rate of 35% in 2018. In an effort to bring a halt to the high turnover rate, and to continue the excellent patient care for which the hospital is known, hospital administration became involved and set up a committee to guide the development of a new CVS APP practice model. The goal was to develop …

Exploring The Mentoring Needs Of Early- And Mid-Career Urm Engineering Faculty: A Phenomenological Study, Sylvia Mendez, Jennifer A. Tygret, Valerie Martin Conley, Comas Haynes, Rosario Gerhardt

The Qualitative Report

While mentoring has been identified as a valuable resource in recruiting and retaining underrepresented minority (URM) faculty, little research has examined the difference in mentoring needs of early- and mid-career engineering URM faculty members. As these needs can change as they navigate academia and the tenure process, mentors can effectively provide guidance and support only when they have been identified. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to determine the mentoring needs and activities of early- and mid-career URM engineering faculty who participated in the IMPACT mentoring program and how their needs were met (Moustakas, 1994). The IMPACT program and …

Predictive Models For Pulmonary Artery Size In Fontan Patients, Akash Gupta, Chris Gillett, Patrick Gerard, Michael M.H. Cheung, Jonathan P. Mynard, Ethan Kung

Publications

We developed models of pulmonary artery (PA) size in Fontan patients as a function of age and body surface area (BSA) using linear regression and breakpoint analyses based on data from 43 Fontan patients divided into two groups: the extracardiac conduit (ECC) group (n = 24) and the non-ECC group (n = 19). Model predictions were compared against those of a non-Fontan control group (n = 18) and published literature. We observed strong positive correlations of the mean PA diameter with BSA (r = 0.9, p < 0.05) and age (r = 0.88, p < 0.05) in the ECC group. The absolute percentage differences between our BSA and age model predictions against published literature were less than 16% and 20%, respectively. Predicted PA size for Fontan patients was consistently smaller than the control group. These models may serve as useful references for clinicians and be utilized to construct 3D anatomic models that correspond to patient body size or age.

Faculty Promotions 2020, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

April 3, 2020 — The College of Engineering at Utah State University extends its congratulations to four newly- promoted faculty members.

Hysteresis Effects And Roughness Suppression Efficacy Of Polyethylenimine Additive In Cu Electrodeposition In Ethaline, Nora A. Shaheen, Ijjada Mahesh, Rohan Akolkar

Faculty Scholarship

Deep eutectic solvents (DES) are environmentally-friendly electrolytes that are gaining interest for electrodeposition and energy storage applications. In these applications, metal electrodeposits with smooth, nondendritic morphology are desired and thus effective strategies for suppressing roughness evolution are critically needed. A commonly employed and rather effective strategy for suppressing roughness evolution in metal electrodeposition is the use of electrolyte additives; however, the availability of such additives in DES electrolytes is limited and so is the understanding of the mechanisms through which additives suppress roughness amplification in DES media. In the present contribution, we demonstrate that polyethylenimine (PEI) is an effective electrolyte …

Keyless Anti-Jamming Communication Via Randomized Dsss, Ahmad Alagil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nowadays, wireless networking is ubiquitous. In wireless communication systems, multiple nodes exchange data during the transmission time. Due to the natural use of the communication channel, it is crucial to protect the physical layer to make wireless channels between nodes more reliable. Jamming attacks consider one of the most significant threats on wireless communication. Spread spectrum techniques have been widely used to mitigate the effects of the jammer. Traditional anti-jamming approaches like Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) and Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) require a sender and a receiver to share a secret key prior to their communication. If this …

Comprehensive Second-Order Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology (2nd-Asam) Applied To A Subcritical Experimental Reactor Physics Benchmark. Vi: Overall Impact Of 1st- And 2nd-Order Sensitivities On Response Uncertainties, Dan Gabriel Cacuci, Ruixian Fang, Jeffrey A. Favorite

Faculty Publications

: This work applies the Second-Order Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis Methodology (2nd-ASAM) to compute the 1st-order and unmixed 2nd-order sensitivities of a polyethylene-reflected plutonium (PERP) benchmark’s leakage response with respect to the benchmark’s imprecisely known isotopic number densities. The numerical results obtained for these sensitivities indicate that the 1st-order relative sensitivity to the isotopic number densities for the two fissionable isotopes have large values, which are comparable to, or larger than, the corresponding sensitivities for the total cross sections. Furthermore, several 2nd-order unmixed sensitivities for the isotopic number densities are significantly larger than the corresponding 1st-order ones. This work also presents …

Artificial Intelligence Towards The Wireless Channel Modeling Communications In 5g, Saud Mobark Aldossari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Channel prediction is a mathematical predicting of the natural propagation of the signal that helps the receiver to approximate the affected signal, which plays an important role in highly mobile or dynamic channels. The standard wireless communication channel modeling can be facilitated by either deterministic or stochastic channel methodologies. The deterministic approach is based on the electromagnetic theories and every single object in that environment has to be known in that propagation space and an example of this method is ray tracing. While the stochastic modeling method is based on measurements that involve statistical distributions of the channel parameters and …

Water Quality Improvement And Pollutant Removal By Two Regional Detention Facilities With Constructed Wetlands In South Texas, Javier Guerrero, Ahmed Mahmoud, Taufiqul Alam, Muhammed A. Chowdhury, Adeniyi Adetayo, Andrew Ernest, Kim D. Jones

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Stormwater runoff introduces several pollutants to the receiving water bodies that may cause degradation of the water quality. Stormwater management systems such as detention facilities and wetland can improve the water quality by removing various pollutants associated with the runoff. The objective of this research project is to determine the performance and efficiency of two major regional detention facilities (RDFs) with different designs and structures in reducing pollutants based on various storm events in McAllen, Texas. The two sites are the McAuliffe RDF and the Morris RDF; each site was incorporated with a constructed wetland with a different design and …

Resonant Metagratings For Spectral And Angular Control Of Light For Colored Rooftop Photovoltaics, Floris Uleman, Andrea Cordaro, Andrea Alù, Albert Polman

Advanced Science Research Center

We designed semitransparent metagrating supercells that enable control over the spectrum and directivity of incident light for applications in photovoltaics with tailored angular appearance. The building block of the supercells is a 100–120 nm wide and 175 nm tall silicon nanowire that shows a strong Mie resonance around λ = 650 nm. By arranging the resonant Mie scatterers into metagratings of increasing pitch (675–1300 nm), we created a Lambertian-like scattering distribution over an angular range of choice. The millimeter-sized metasurfaces were fabricated using electron beam lithography and reactive ion etching. The fabricated metasurface nearly fully suppresses specular reflection on resonance …

The Critical Role Of Humidity In Modeling Summer Electricity Demand Across The United States, Debora Maia-Silva, Rohini Kumar, Roshanak Nateghi

School of Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Cooling demand is projected to increase under climate change. However, most of the existing projections are based on rising air temperatures alone, ignoring that rising temperatures are associated with increased humidity; a lethal combination that could significantly increase morbidity and mortality rates during extreme heat events. We bridge this gap by identifying the key measures of heat stress, considering both air temperature and near-surface humidity, in characterizing the climate sensitivity of electricity demand at a national scale. Here we show that in many of the high energy consuming states, such as California and Texas, projections based on air temperature alone …

Study Of The Therapeutic Effects Of Synchronization-Modulation Of The Na/K Pump On Muscle Fatigue, Jason E. Mast

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has been shown that by applying a specially designed oscillating external electric field to a cell membrane that the membrane's sodium/potassium pumps can be synchronized to all work at the same rate. Then by slowly increasing the electric field's frequency the pumps' turnover rate can also be increased. By increasing the pumps' turnover rate, the sodium and potassium concentration gradients can be increased, this type of stimulation is called synchronization-modulation. There are three generations of the synchronization-modulation waveform each with different utilities. In particular, the third generation of synchronization-modulation has the ability to use the energy of the external …

Post-Overlay Flexible Pavement Performance Modeling And Its Application In Sustainable Asphalt Overlay Policy Making, Chunfu Xin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Highway pavement is a critical component of the highway transportation infrastructure. After the construction of a pavement system, pavement condition will deteriorate over time due to a combination effect of material aging, traffic loading, and environmental impact. To restore the pavement performance and to reduce its adverse effects on public users and environment, asphalt overlay activities are conducted frequently during the service life of a pavement. As a key component that bridges the overlay policies with future pavement performance, economic cost and environmental impact, the forecast accuracy of post-overlay pavement performance model is extremely important. However, most of previous studies …

Hybrid Electro-Plasmonic Stimulation Of Primary Neurons, Ratka Damnjanovic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Biomedical prosthetics utilizing electrical stimulation have limited, effective spatial resolution due to spread of electrical currents to surrounding tissue, causing nonselective stimulation. So, precise spatial resolution is not possible for traditional neural prosthetic devices, such as cochlear implants. More recently, alternative methods utilize optical stimulation, mainly infrared, sometimes paired with nanotechnology for stimulating action potentials, which has its own drawbacks, as it may heat surrounding tissue. Recently, we employed plasmonic stimulation methods utilizing gold nanoparticle-coated nanoelectrodes to convert visible light pulses into localized surface plasmon resonance transduction for stimulation of electrically excitable cells, which had limited success. Here, we report …

Rapid Cross-Section Imaging With Magnetic And Impedance Sensors For Grout Anomaly Detection In External Post-Tensioned Tendons, Hani Freij

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Post-tensioned (PT) bridges have had severe corrosion issues with tendons that fail suddenly without prior notice. The corrosion of external post-tensioned tendons has been associated with grout deficiencies/anomalies from inadequate grouting. Deficiencies include voids, regions of chalky low strength grout, and regions where excessive water content or even free water is present. In those zones mechanical bonding of strand to the grout is degraded and, of more concern, the strand steel risks corrosion failure reducing the expected lifespan of the structure. As tendons are critical structural components, it is important to detect those deficiencies during inspection preferably by a cross …

Aircraft Leading Edge Strakes On Conventional Naca Wings, Anthony Pirone

Discovery Day - Prescott

The prevention of stall on aircraft wings has been a great challenge over the history of airplanes. As the aircraft become more and more complex, it becomes harder to fit high lift devices and leading-edge devices onto high camber, supercritical airfoil aircraft wings. In the fighter jet class of aircraft the obstacle of stall is usually delayed by the implementation of leading-edge root extensions or strakes. Strakes create a tip vortice along the sharp leading edge that transitions over the surface of the wing preventing separation on both the upper and lower surface of the wing allowing the fighter jet …

Studies Of Oval Tube And Fin Heat Exchangers, Phillip Nielsen

Discovery Day - Prescott

Heating Ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) is a system which changes the temperature of the surroundings for the purposes of cooling or heating. This system requires energy to maintain a temperature difference from the outside temperature. This is important since minimized power is one of the requirements for the system to achieve a better efficiency. Optimizing the flow over the evaporator coils is one way to increase the cooling efficiency. This will reduce the power required to have a sustainable system. Optimizing the flow to increase the energy transfer between the fins and the incoming air could result in a greater …

Sae Aero West Heavy Lift Competition Team - Eaglenautics, Anthony Pirone, Evan Stuart, Jessica Millard, Nathaniel Scott

Discovery Day - Prescott

ERAU’s SAE Aero Design West Competition team encourages students of all majors who have an interest in the design of heavy-lift cargo and passenger aircraft to design, build, and fly a large RC aircraft to meet a new set of regulations each competition year. Since the team, Eaglenautics, was founded in 2017 it has successfully been to competition once in April 2019 in California. The team’s aircraft flew 4 out of 5 flight rounds, passed all technical inspections, and is now on display in ERAU’s Aero-Fab in the AXFAB. The 2020 competition requirements are unique in that the cargo’s weight-to-volume …

Tech Comm Eagle Eye-Tracking Control System, Gabiella Lail, Robert Shaw, Hunter Smatla, Matthew Gary

Discovery Day - Prescott

Mobile eye-tracking systems provide usability research support as well as access to a wide range of robotics and technical communication research opportunities. Optical tracking systems are often prohibitively expensive and do not provide the mobility or flexibility needed for a variety of research application possibilities. Our team proposes building a simple mobile eye-tracking system to be used in-house at ERAU for heat-mapping, robotics, control systems, and various technical communication applications in a structured research environment. The mobile eyetracking system will become part of a larger research and hands-on technical communication usability lab and research center. The research team intends to …

Academic Honesty, Professional Integrity, And Undergraduate Engineering Students: Exploring The Connections, S. Amy Skyles, Jeffrey W. Jennings

Dissertations

One benefit of inculcating professionalism into engineering degree program curricula is a measure of the extent to which future practitioners adopt an engineering code of ethics (Abaté, 2011; Davis, 2006). Studies have indicated more dishonesty among engineering students than other groups of undergraduate learners, but the effects of technology on dishonesty in the classroom was not addressed (Bowers, 1964; McCabe et al., 2012). An explanatory, sequential mixed methods study was designed to explain to what degree course pedagogical practices and attitudes of civil, architectural and environmental engineering students of various academic levels (freshman/sophomore and senior) relate to academic dishonesty. The …

Usu Biological Engineering Student Named Goldwater Scholar, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

April 1, 2020 — Utah State University student Andrew Kjar was named a 2020 Goldwater Scholar in a prestigious national competition that recognizes outstanding achievements in science and mathematics.

Mitigating Safety Concerns And Profit/Production Losses For Chemical Process Control Systems Under Cyberattacks Via Design/Control Methods, Helen Durand, Matthew Wegener

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

One of the challenges for chemical processes today, from a safety and profit standpoint, is the potential that cyberattacks could be performed on components of process control systems. Safety issues could be catastrophic; however, because the nonlinear systems definition of a cyberattack has similarities to a nonlinear systems definition of faults, many processes have already been instrumented to handle various problematic input conditions. Also challenging is the question of how to design a system that is resilient to attacks attempting to impact the production volumes or profits of a company. In this work, we explore a process/equipment design framework for …

Zeolite Monolith Compositions And Methods For The Catalytic Cracking Of Alkanes, Ali A. Rownaghi, Xin Li, Fateme Rezaei

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Porous zeolite monolith compositions for the catalytic cracking of alkanes. The compositions may be prepared layer by layer using a 3D printer such that the compositions comprise a plurality of micropores and a plurality of mesopores and may be characterized by macro-meso-microporosity.

Learning Set Representations For Lwir In-Scene Atmospheric Compensation, Nicholas M. Westing, Kevin C. Gross, Brett J. Borghetti, Jacob A. Martin, Joseph Meola

Faculty Publications

Atmospheric compensation of long-wave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral imagery is investigated in this article using set representations learned by a neural network. This approach relies on synthetic at-sensor radiance data derived from collected radiosondes and a diverse database of measured emissivity spectra sampled at a range of surface temperatures. The network loss function relies on LWIR radiative transfer equations to update model parameters. Atmospheric predictions are made on a set of diverse pixels extracted from the scene, without knowledge of blackbody pixels or pixel temperatures. The network architecture utilizes permutation-invariant layers to predict a set representation, similar to the work performed …