Engineering Commons^™

Impaired Metabolic Flexibility In A Mouse Model Of Leigh Syndrome, Richard Sterling Mccain Jr

Theses and Dissertations

Metabolic dysfunction burdens tissues with high energy demands, particularly the brain. Leigh syndrome is a mitochondrial encephalopathy stemming from genetic defects in the electron transport chain. Leigh syndrome patients develop lactic acidosis, ataxia, bilateral necrotizing lesions in the brainstem and basal ganglia, lesion microgliosis, and eventually death due to respiratory failure. The NADH dehydrogenase [ubiquinone] iron-sulfur protein 4 (NDUFS4) knockout mouse is an established model of Leigh syndrome due to impaired assembly of mitochondrial Complex I that develops motoric deficits and necrotizing lesions in the brainstem vestibular nuclei and olfactory bulb. In addition to the Complex I-derived bioenergetics defect, altered …

The Immune Modulatory Role Of Endocannabinoid Anandamide To Suppress Inflammation Through Regulation Of Microrna And Microbiome, Muthanna Ali Sultan

Theses and Dissertations

Cannabinoids are group of compounds that exerts their anti-inflammatory action through activation of CB1 and CB2 receptors and other minor receptors. In the current study, we investigated the effect of Anandamide (AEA) on Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) induced by exposure to Staphylococcus Enterotoxin B (SEB) intranasally. We found that C57BL/6 mice treated with AEA showed improvement in the clinical functions of the lungs, accompanied by a decrease in the infiltration of inflammatory cells in the lung tissue, and a decrease in the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Furthermore, AEA regulated the miRNA profile of the mononuclear cells in the lungs …

Inter-Relationships Between Water Depletion And Temperature Differential In Row Crop Canopies In A Sub-Humid Climate, Jasreman Singh, Yufeng Ge, Derek M. Heeren, Elizabeth Walter-Shea, Christopher M.U. Neale, Suat Irmak, Wayne Woldt, Geng Bai, Sandeep Bhatti, Mitchell S. Maguire

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Irrigation has a great impact on global food security as it contributes to the majority of the world’s agricultural food supply. It is essential to judiciously utilize water resources through efficient irrigation management since the majority of U.S. groundwater aquifers are rapidly depleting. Thus, quantification of the relationships between water depletion and environmental factors is important for understanding crop response to varying levels of water stresses that depletion can cause. The objectives of this research were to: 1) investigate the relationship between root zone water depletion (D_rw) and canopy temperature differential (ΔT) at different ranges of D_{rw …}

On The Need To Determine Accurately The Impact Of Higher-Order Sensitivities On Model Sensitivity Analysis, Uncertainty Quantification And Best-Estimate Predictions, Dan Gabriel Cacuci

Faculty Publications

This work aims at underscoring the need for the accurate quantification of the sensitivities (i.e., functional derivatives) of the results (a.k.a. “responses”) produced by large-scale computational models with respect to the models’ parameters, which are seldom known perfectly in practice. The large impact that can arise from sensitivities of order higher than first has been highlighted by the results of a third-order sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of an OECD/NEA reactor physics benchmark, which will be briefly reviewed in this work to underscore that neglecting the higherorder sensitivities causes substantial errors in predicting the expectation and variance of model responses. The …

Assessing The Feasibility Of A Belt Based Continuously Varied Transmission For Bicycles, Ethan Wicko

Holster Scholar Projects

The objective of this project is to establish the feasibility of a new drivetrain that decreases maintenance and decreases rider effort compared to current widely used derailleur-based drivetrains by utilizing a belt based continuously varied transmission. With further development, this technology will make cycling more accessible by reducing the mechanical knowledge required to maintain a functional bike and facilitate bicycle riding by increasing durability and providing infinite gear ratios within that range, potentially increasing the health and quality of life for many.

Me-Em Enewsbrief, September 2021, Department Of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering eNewsBrief

No abstract provided.

Neutralization Of Fuel Tankering Emissions For Environmental Sustainability, Marcos Café, Diogo Coutinho, Daniel Martinelli, Alex Shigihara, Fabricio Sulzbacher

Student Works

The strategy adopted had verified the impacts of Fuel Tankering by the total value assessment in the Brazilian aviation industry in 2019, recommending practical actions to compensate and neutralize damages caused on the environment.

The importance of sustainability has significantly increased over the past years.

The aviation industry has represented an important pillar helping society to meet their present needs, without compromising the environment and future generations.

The present research had as main objective to verify if the Brazilian aviation industry can neutralize the carbon emissions from Fuel Tankering, a practice of refueling more than necessary to gain financial leverage …

Exploring Traffic Safety Problems And Challenges Of Older Roads’ Users In Louisiana: Causes And Countermeasures, Hany Hassan Ph.D, Saba Doulabi

Publications

It is well established that older pedestrians and drivers with 65 years and above are among the most vulnerable road users. As the number and proportion of older road users (as drivers and pedestrians) grows in many countries, as well as their share in pedestrians’ and drivers’ crashes and injuries, it behooves transportation researchers to further investigate the safety and mobility challenges of older road users. This study aims mainly to provide a comprehensive investigation of older pedestrians’ and drivers’ safety challenges. To this end, a three-fold research approach is designed to thoroughly examine older road users’ safety challenges as …

Calculating Pile Downdrag: Experimental And Numerical Investigations, Hai Lin, Shengli Chen, Hussein Alqrinawi

Publications

Piles can be exposed to significant settlement (i.e., downdrag) and compressive force (i.e., dragload) if embedded in consolidating ground. Downdrag has been included in the design of piles, but there is uncertainty about how downdrag and dragload are efficiently considered in the pile design due to the differences in the existing design methods (e.g., AASHTO and FHWA). Although several field monitoring programs were successfully conducted on pile downdrag, fully instrumented pile model tests are still needed to investigate the responses at the soil-pile interface to improve the design of pile downdrag. This research focused on investigating the downdrag and skin …

Developing Notification And Enforcement Systems To Communicate And Administer Bridge Load Postings, Hany Hassan, Hisham Abdu Kunnah

Publications

State and local law enforcement agencies in the US strive to enforce weight restrictions on trucks and heavy vehicles travelling on public roads as a matter of public safety and as a way of safeguarding vital transportation infrastructure. This research aimed to identify plausible notification systems that can effectively communicate bridge load postings to dispatchers and drivers, investigate and suggest possible approaches to communicate potential detour routes, and identify corresponding enforcement methods required to successfully administer bridge load postings. This report discusses the current practices of bridge load posting notification and enforcement systems. Also, it presents an overview of the …

An Innovative Thermo-Energy Harvesting Module For Asphalt Roadway Pavement, Seyed Amid Tahami, Samer Dessouky

Publications

The importance of green technologies for generating renewable energy and sustainable development is widely accepted. Road surfaces are exposed to solar radiation that generates thermal gradients and heat flow in the pavement layers. The heat stored can be harvested providing an untapped source of renewable energy. This report presents the design, construction, and assessment of an improved thermoelectric energy prototype for harvesting heat energy from roadway pavements. To accomplish this, various prototype designs were simulated using Finite Element (FE) analysis, followed by design construction and laboratory testing of the most promising prototypes to evaluate their power harvesting capabilities. The main …

Urban Transportation Infrastructure And Cyclist And Pedestrian Safety, Hatim Sharif, Samer Dessouky

Publications

The goal of this project was to perform a comprehensive evaluation of crash causes and risk factors to identify the root causes of crashes involving bicyclists and pedestrians in San Antonio, TX. The research included the development of a database of bicycle and pedestrian crash reports in the target area, calculation of crash counts and rates, identifying road segments and intersections with highly concentrated bicycle and pedestrian crashes, and the development of effective safety countermeasures. Several variables and factors were analyzed, including driver characteristics such as age and gender, road-related factors, and environmental factors such as weather conditions and time …

Coupling Novel Soil Moisture-Suction Sensors And Uav Photogrammetry Technology To The Performance Of Highway Embankments, Navid Jafari, Anand Puppala, Xinbao Yu, Surya Sarat Chandra Congress

Publications

The movement of water plays a critical role in the mechanical performance and service life of transportation infrastructure, especially for pavement subgrades and highway embankments consisting of high-plasticity, expansive soils that saturate and ultimately lead to infrastructure distress. Shallow slides along highway embankments are ubiquitous across Region 6 because long-term wetting and drying cycles considerably weaken these compacted soils. In the aftermath of heavy rains, pore-water pressures increase to a critical threshold such that a failure occurs. The implications of embankment failures range from repeated maintenance repairs to long-term road closures. A comprehensive approach to model highway embankments comprising of …

Rapid Repair Of Cracks On The Embankment Slopes Using Bio-Cement, Hai Lin, Guantao Cheng

Publications

This research explored the feasibility of using Microbially Induced Carbonate Precipitation (MICP) to improve fine-grained soil mechanical properties, seal the soil cracks, and assess the improvement of MICP on slope stability. The conducted research tasks include (1) direct shear tests to investigate the mechanical behavior and biogeochemical reactions of low-plasticity silt treated by MICP, (2) cyclic wetting-drying tests to assess the feasibility of using MICP to seal and waterproof the soil cracks, and (3) SLOPE/W modeling of a slope treated by MICP. Direct shear tests were used to evaluate the shear responses of the low-plasticity silt under different overburden pressures …

Deep Learning Approach For Screening Autism Spectrum Disorder In Children With Facial Images And Analysis Of Ethnoracial Factors In Model Development And Application, Angelina Lu, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication, and behavioral challenges. Early intervention for children with ASD can help to improve their intellectual ability and reduces autistic symptoms. Multiple clinical researches have suggested that facial phenotypic differences exist between ASD children and typically developing (TD) children. In this research, we propose a practical ASD screening solution using facial images through applying VGG16 transfer learning-based deep learning to a unique ASD dataset of clinically diagnosed children that we collected. Our model produced a 95% classification accuracy and 0.95 F1-score. The only other reported study using …

Conductive Polymer Spark Gap Igniters, Miranda P. Mcconnell, Allison K. Murray, Bryan W. Boudouris, I. Emre Gunduz, Steven F. Son, George T.-C. Chiu, Jeffrey F. Rhoads

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Electrodes fabricated from electronically active polymers offer some benefits over those fabricated with common metals, including an appreciable resistance to corrosion and lower density. These benefits, and potentially others, manifest the advantages of using conductive polymers in lieu of metals for the mass production of ignition systems. In this work, spark gap igniters were fabricated using a potentially low-cost, roll-to-roll compatible process utilizing the doped conductive polymer polyaniline as the electrode material. Subsequently, nanothermite was printed on the spark gap igniters between the organic leads and ignited using a high voltage source to demonstrate the effectiveness of the device. All …

Assessment Of Conventional And Air-Jet Wheel Deflectors For Drag Reduction Of The Drivaer Model, Sandra K. S. Boetcher, Kaloki L. Nabutola

Publications

Aerodynamic drag is a large resistance force to vehicle motion, particularly at highway speeds. Conventional wheel deflectors were designed to reduce the wheel drag and, consequently, the overall vehicle drag; however, they may actually be detrimental to vehicle aerodynamics in modern designs. In the present study, computational fluid dynamics simulations were conducted on the notchback DrivAer model—a simplified, yet realistic, open-source vehicle model that incorporates features of a modern passenger vehicle. Conventional and air-jet wheel deflectors upstream of the front wheels were introduced to assess the effect of underbody-flow deflection on the vehicle drag. Conventional wheel-deflector designs with varying heights …

Viability And Application Of Mounting Personal Pid Voc Sensors To Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Cheri Marcham

Publications

Small Unmanned Aerial Systems in Emergency Response

Current sUAS Uses

• Search and rescue
• Thermal imaging
• Evaluating structural stability
• Spread of wildfires
• Storm damage

Development-Induced Displacement In Kiryandongo District: A Case Study Of The Karuma Hydroelectric Power Plant, Remington Fritz

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper assesses the effects of the development induced displacement due to the Karuma Hydroelectric Power Plant on the Awoo village and surrounding areas in Karuma Town. Recently, Uganda has pursued several large-scale development projects that have repeatedly displaced people. Despite having strong displacement and resettlement framework, there is a continued pattern of failing to implement such framework, threatening the livelihood and well-being of those displaced.

Interview with key informants from several government agencies, such as the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development the National Environmental Management Authority and Ugandan Generation Electricity Company Ltd have illustrated the political framework and …

Numerical Study Of Fully Coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction Of Stented Ureter By Varying The Stent Side-Holes, Erick Martinez, Ben Xu, Jianzhi Li, Yingchen Yang

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Ureteral stents are a measure used for many medical issues involving urology, such as kidney stones or kidney transplants. The purpose of applying stents is to help relieve the urine flow while the ureter is either blocked or trying to close itself, which creates blockages. These ureteral stents, while necessary, cause pain and discomfort to patients due to them being a solid that moves around inside the patients’ body. The ureter normally moves urine to the bladder through peristaltic forces. Due to the ureter being a hyperelastic material, these peristaltic forces cause the ureter to deform easily, making it necessary …

Centrifugal Spinning And Characterization Of Co3o4 Coated Carbon Fibers, J. Ayala, D. Ramirez, Elizabeth M. Fletes, Helia Magali Morales, Jason Parsons, Mataz Alcoutlabi

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Centrifugally spun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) microfibers surface-coated with Co3O4 nanoparticles (NPs) were prepared as precursors to produce coated Co3O4 carbon-composite fibers. The Co3O4/C composite fibers were obtained through a staged heating process during which the Co3O4PAN precursor fibers were stabilized over four hours at 200 °C, and subsequently the stabilized fibers were carbonized for six hours at 600 °C. The synthesis process presented in this work provides an effective strategy for the fabrication of surface coated-fiber materials, including composite fibers with good structure and morphology. The characterization of the Co3O4/C composite fibers was performed using SEM, EDS, XPS, XRD …

Integration Of Process Planning Into The Automated Fiber Placement Design For Manufacturing Cycle, Alex Brasington

Theses and Dissertations

Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) is a composite manufacturing technique utilizing a robotic or gantry-based system and an attached fiber placement head to lay a prescribed number of strips of composite material, additively forming large composite structures. This technique has enabled increased throughput with increased accuracy and reliability when compared with prior composite manufacturing methods. However, even with the current state-of-the-art AFP process which employs advanced computer simulations and complex robotic operations, the data from various levels of the manufacturing lifecycle is isolated. This results in an incoherent system between the initial design phase and final part completion with limited ability …

Development Of A Converging-Channel Drop Tower For Sphere Symmetric Isolated Single Droplet Combustion, Nicholas Alexander Demaio

Theses and Dissertations

The dawn of a new Space Age is upon us; Microgravity combustion of hydrocarbon fuels is a popular method of research and characterization. This allows for a one-dimensional analysis by suppressing the buoyancy forces produced by gravity and the large temperature differential between the flame boundary and the surrounding air. The current testing methods are expensive and require extensive preparation on the researchers behalf. There is a need to investigate an alternative method that is inexpensive, repeatable, and comparable to the other approaches that coincides with the literature.

A low-cost converging-channel drop tower was designed and fabricated for sphero-symmetric single …

Combined Effects Of Welding Residual Stress And Thermal Expansion In Cwr, Brennan Gedney

Theses and Dissertations

Continuously welded rail with flash-butt welded joints has become standard practice for railway construction around the world. Through the process of welding, a residual stress field develops in the joint which typically remains in the rail through its service life. Consequently, the total stress is altered locally in the presence of operation induced stresses. One such stress develops due to thermal expansion of the rail during the daily and seasonal solar radiation heating cycle. This paper seeks to ascertain the combined effects of welding residual stress with thermal expansion through computer simulations. This is aimed at two objectives: determining whether …

Evaluation Of A Trigonometric Grey Model For Estimating And Predicting Pavement Condition, Amara Kouyate

Theses and Dissertations

States, counties, and municipalities rely on pavement performance curves to forecast future pavement conditions in their jurisdictions. Accurate prediction is essential for budget planning and the identification of candidates for rehabilitation. This study investigates the use of a grey model (GM) to estimate and predict pavement conditions. An advantage of the GMs is that they do not require a large sample size for model estimation. This aspect is important since smaller towns and municipalities often cannot afford to collect pavement condition data frequently due to cost. There are other situations where sample size may be limited, such as using project-level …

An Investigation Of The Ignition Propensities Of Fuels Perturbed By Nitrogen Monoxide, Ackmer Robinson Iii

Theses and Dissertations

Quantitative structure property relationship (QSPR) regression models were developed based on the chemical functional group distribution of toluene reference fuels (TRF, mixtures of n-heptane, iso-octane, and toluene) for RON, MON, and DCN. The QSPR regression models were developed using DCN measurements from this study as well as RON/MON data available in literature. The correlations between RON/MON and DCN were analyzed. The ignition propensity of TRFs perturbed by NO addition was also investigated in this study. The interactions between the chemical functional groups and NO were investigated using an ignition quality tester (IQT). It was found that the increase in the …

Mathematical Model For Sei Growth Under Open-Circuit Conditions, Wei Shang

Theses and Dissertations

An irreversible capacity loss will take place in lithium ions batteries due to the solid electrolyte interface (SEI) creating, which consumes the active lithium and reduces solvent. SEI is either good since it can prevent further electrolyte decomposition or bad for lessening batteries' lifetime. Mathematical modeling of SEI formation is done within a porous electrode to model an empirical battery in the x-direction.A solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) growth model is developed in a mixed-mode which contains solvent diffusion through the SEI layer and its corresponding kinetics of solvent reduction at the electrode surface. The governing equations are numerically solved by …

Operating Strategies And Disturbance Characterization For Dc Microgrids, Miles Leonard-Albert

Theses and Dissertations

The present state of the electrical grid is unable to meet the demands of transmission. Digital twin technology provides a promising solution to this problem by allowing for analysis and control of distributed energy resources. This thesis presents initial work towards development of a digital twin for a DC power system. Two versions of the DC power system are created and evaluated against randomly generated load profiles. System performance is evaluated on the basis of the quantity of the load that is unserviced by the generation and energy storage. Energy storage operating strategies that modify the model to prioritize different …

Nonlinear Intelligent Model Predictive Control Of Mobile Robots, Benjamin Albia

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a framework for an artificial neural network (ANN) model-based nonlinear model predictive control of mobile ground robots. A computer vision analysis module was first developed to extract quantitative position information from onboard camera feed with respect to a prescribed path. Various strategies were developed to construct nonlinear physical plant models for model predictive control (MPC), including the physics-based model (PBM), the ANN trained on PBM-generated data, the ANN trained on test-captured data, and the ANN initially trained on PBM-generated data and then retrained with captured data. All the models predict physical states and positions of the robot …

Rip Curl: Community Activism For The Coast (The Ux Phase, Rip Curl And Sustainability, The Ui Phase), John Delacruz

Assignment Prompts

ADV 132 enables students to explore the craft and process of user experience and user interface design. They develop their skills within the context of a specific brief. The aim is to offer students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a particular problem and come up with creative solutions that will come to life on digital media platforms.