Engineering Commons^™

Biochar Amended Bioretention Systems For Nutrient And Fecal Indicator Bacteria Removal From Urban And Agricultural Runoffs, Md Yeasir Arif Rahman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Excessive nitrogen and fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) in stormwater runoff from urban areas or dairy farm operations impair water bodies resulting algal blooms, gastrointestinal illness, and economic losses. Recent advancements in stormwater management, including low impact development (LID) techniques, have provided engineers with a variety of tools to use in place of traditional catch basins and retention ponds. One promising LID technology for runoff management is bioretention, which consists of a shallow depression containing engineered porous media and vegetation. Prior studies have shown that modified bioretention systems that include an internal water storage zone (IWSZ) to promote denitrification can improve …

Traveling Wave Solutions For Two Species Competitive Chemotaxis Systems, T. B. Issa, R. B. Salako, W. Shen

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

In this paper, we consider two species chemotaxis systems with Lotka–Volterra competition reaction terms. Under appropriate conditions on the parameters in such a system, we establish the existence of traveling wave solutions of the system connecting two spatially homogeneous equilibrium solutions with wave speed greater than some critical number c∗. We also show the non-existence of such traveling waves with speed less than some critical number c∗0 , which is independent of the chemotaxis. Moreover, under suitable hypotheses on the coefficients of the reaction terms, we obtain explicit range for the chemotaxis sensitivity coefficients ensuring c∗ = c∗0 , which …

Application Of Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry To Monitor Surface Deformations Of The Trans-European Transport Network (Ten-T) – A Case Study Of The Motorways Crossing Areas Of Mining Operations In The Upper Silesian Coal Basin, Poland, Adam Smoliński, Mariusz Stawinoga, Tomasz Pindel

Journal of Sustainable Mining

Underground hard coal mining causes surface deformations. When the mining operations are conducted beneath linear objects, such as motorways, there is a risk of deformations of the axis of the road and its horizontal and vertical alignment (additional bends and vertical curvatures, longitudinal inclinations, deformations of crosssections). In the areas subjected to mining operations, mining plants conduct geodetic monitoring. Due to their labour intensity and costs, geodetic measurements are usually made only a few times a year. The article discusses the possibility of applying Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to monitor the subsidence of the vertical alignment of motorways caused …

Design-Based Research: Students Seeking Co-Op In Refined Educational Model, Dennis Rogalsky, Ron Ulseth

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

This research paper continues a longitudinal implementation of a design-based research (DBR) study/implementation for a new co-op centric educational model. This is a benchmarking study by the university program.

The new model is an adaptation of two recently recognized (by a 2018 MIT report) emerging world-leading engineering educational models, Charles Sturt University (Australia) and Iron Range Engineering (Minnesota). Adapted from Charles Sturt is the co-op model whereby students spend an initial on-campus period and then combine co-op work placements and on-line learning all the way to degree completion. Adapted from Iron Range are the curricular strategies that empower a graduate …

Stream Sediment Monitoring In Morehead Kentucky, Kristopher Krolikowski, Jen O'Keefe

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Sediment loads in stream systems play a big role in how overall runoff behaves. Streams naturally transport sediment at various ratios depending on precipitation. When vegetation is removed in upstream environments, sediment loads on streams increase. Sudden increases of sediments in streams can cause many issues, such as flooding or stream re-direction. In Morehead, KY, large-scale logging operations on the ridge above Knapp Avenue and on the ridge above the north end of Allen Avenue have caused increased sediment load in a small stream called Oxley Branch. This stream flows south parallel to Knapp Avenue and along the eastern property …

A Meta-Level Approach For Multilingual Taint Analysis, Damian Lyons, Dino Becaj

Faculty Publications

It is increasingly common for software developers to leverage the features and ease-of-use of different languages in building software systems. Nonetheless, interaction between different languages has proven to be a source of software engineering concerns. Existing static analysis tools handle the software engineering concerns of monolingual software but there is little general work for multilingual systems despite the increasing visibility of these systems. While recent work in this area has greatly extended the scope of multilingual static analysis systems, the focus has still been on a primary, host language interacting with subsidiary, guest language functions. In this paper we propose …

A Half Yearly Newsletter Of Dept . Of Mechatronics V4 S1 [July 2021], Chandrashekhar Bhat Dr

Faculty work

No abstract provided.

Department Of Chemical Engineering, Newsletters Volume 1 July 2021, Balakrishna K. Prabhu Dr

Faculty work

No abstract provided.

A Half- Yearly E-Newsletter Of The Department Of Computer Science And Engineering, Manipal Institute Of Technology - Jul 2021, Ashalatha Nayak Dr.

Faculty work

No abstract provided.

Development Of Attachments For The Quanser Qube, Diane Peters, Aaron Joseph Michael Jones

Mechanical Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

The Quanser Qube is an integrated servomotor lab hardware platform [1], shown in Figure 1. This platform includes not only the direct-drive brushed DC motor, but also two encoders as well as the data acquisition system. One encoder is used to measure the rotation of the DC motor’s shaft itself. It is supplied with two standard items, an inertia disk and an inverted pendulum. The inertia disk is a small aluminum part, which mounts to the equipment using magnets. The inverted pendulum also mounts to the equipment with magnets, with an encoder that plugs into the equipment to provide an …

Student Perceptions Of Connections Between An Introductory Dynamic Systems Class And Co-Op Work Experience, Diane Peters

Mechanical Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

This work focuses on connections that students see between co-op work assignments and a specific class in their mechanical engineering curriculum, typically taken in the second half of their junior year or the first half of their senior year. Students in the course wrote an essay, as a required assignment, in which they reflected on the links between their co-op work and the course, and were asked for permission to use those essays in the professor’s research on this topic. Analysis of the essays shows that students typically did see connections; in many cases, these were connected to the course …

3d-Printing Habitable Structures On Mars, Addison Johnson, John Pugsley, Andrew Scherer

Faculty-Mentored Undergraduate Scholarship

This project developed technology to 3D-print habitable structures on Mars from in-situ materials, as part of the push to create a self-sustaining colony on Mars. The team designed a next generation sulfur concrete printhead capable of extruding with greater efficiency and better quality than the previous design.

Wall Detection Via Imu Data Classification In Autonomous Quadcopters, Jason Hughes, Damian Lyons

Faculty Publications

Abstract—An autonomous drone flying near obstacles needs to be able to detect and avoid the obstacles or it will collide with them. In prior work, drones can detect and avoid walls using data from camera, ultrasonic or laser sensors mounted either on the drone or in the environment. It is not always possible to instrument the environment, and sensors added to the drone consume payload and power - both of which are constrained for drones. This paper studies how data mining classification techniques can be used to predict where an obstacle is in relation to the drone based only on …

Large-Scale Solar Pv And Battery Energy Storage Model Study On A Proposed Benchmark Transmission System, Gerald W. Bankes Ii, Oluwaseun M. Akeyo, Dan M. Ionel

Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky Presentations

Problem Formulation

• The move toward renewable energy sources has led to an increase in the penetration of inverter-based resources onto the transmission system
• Most literature discusses two types of models of IBRs, time-average models, which do not capture high-frequency switching effects, and detailed switching models, which are computationally expensive
• The IEEE 12-Bus test system was modified in PSCADTM/EMTDCTM to include a 100 MW PV facility and 100 MW battery energy storage system (BESS) connected at bus 2
• The PV facility and BESS are modelled using a proposed dynamic inverter-based resource module
• A demonstration of the module was performed using two …

Geometric Analysis Leads To Adversarial Teaching Of Cybersecurity, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

As time goes, our civilization becomes more and more dependent on computers and therefore, more and more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Because of this threat, it is very important to make sure that computer science students -- tomorrow's computer professionals -- are sufficiently skilled in cybersecurity. In this paper, we analyze the need for teaching cybersecurity from the geometric viewpoint. We show that the corresponding geometric analysis leads to adversarial teaching -- an empirically effective but not-well-theoretically-understood approach, when the class is divided into sparring mini-teams that try their best to attack each other and defend from each other. Thus, our …

Review Of Expansive And Collapsible Soil Volume Change Models Within A Unified Elastoplastic Framework, Sandra L. Houston, Xiong Zhang

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Numerous laboratory tests on unsaturated soils revealed complex volume-change response to reduction of soil suction, resulting in early development of state surface approaches that incorporate soil expansion or collapse due to wetting under load. Nonetheless, expansive and collapsible soils are often viewed separately in research and practice, resulting in development of numerous constitutive models specific to the direction of volume change resulting from suction decrease. In addition, several elastoplastic models, developed primarily for collapse or expansion, are modified by add-on, such as multiple yield curves/ surfaces, to accommodate a broader range of soil response. Current tendency to think of unsaturated …

Amazon Robotic Service (Ars), Patil Girija, John Mareena, Jin Fenny, Kandula Swapna, Ketsaraporn Kaewkhiaolueang

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Warehouse robots are the most effective replacement to minimize the pressure and availability of manual labor. The warehouse robots are mainly used for heavy lifting, picking up packages, transporting, and other tasks in the facility. The growing market of Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and machine learning in the warehouse industry is forecasted to grow in the robots market in the near future. In order to build the final product i.e technology roadmap our team did market research, analysed competitors for the company, identified target customers, analyzed market, product and pricing strategy and at the end came up with the …

Centralized And Decentralized Optimal Control Of Variable Speed Heat Pumps, Ryan S. Montrose, John F. Gardner, Aykut C. Satici

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Utility service providers are often challenged with the synchronization of thermostatically controlled loads. Load synchronization, as a result of naturally occurring and demand-response events, has the potential to damage power distribution equipment. Because thermostatically controlled loads constitute most of the power consumed by the grid at any given time, the proper control of such devices can lead to significant energy savings and improved grid stability. The contribution of this paper is the development of an optimal control algorithm for commonly used variable speed heat pumps. By means of selective peer-to-peer communication, our control architecture allows for the regulation of home …

Development Of Mipi Camera Interface Prototype Adapter Board, Haruka Kido, Alessandro Geist, Cody Brewer

Electrical Engineering Student Publications

This project is the development of the prototype FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array)-Compatible MIPI CSI-2 (Camera Serial Interface) D-PHY adapter board. The FPGA used on the SpaceCube processor card does not have I/O that natively supports the D-PHY standard, and thus requires additional external components to adapt the interface to the FPGAs I/O. The goal of this project is to develop a prototype board with this external circuitry. The project tasks include 1) preliminary research and analysis of the adapter circuit requirements involving waveform comparisons, 2) signal processing chain tests for voltage measurements, 3) calculations from I/O channel system simulations …

How To Resolve Channel Travel Time Errors In The Tr-55 Worksheet Using Arc Hydro Tools, Hec-Geohms And Hec-Hms, Philip A. Adalikwu, Suzette R. Burckhard

Civil and Environmental Engineering Reports and Manuals

This tutorial is an illustration of a stepwise procedure for resolving errors in calculated channel travel times that occur when processing watershed parameters in HEC-GeoHMS. Channel travel time errors occur when a GIS-defined channel slope value during preprocessing of the Digital Elevation Data (DEM) is zero or negative (Adalikwu, 2021). The tutorial is intended to assist a relatively experienced ArcMap user resolve channel travel time errors that are documented in the TR55 Worksheet. Particularly, this tutorial is useful if the Muskingum method is selected by the watershed modeler as the river routing method. The K parameter value in the Muskingum …

Achieving Domestic Internationalization And Global Competence Through On-Campus Activities And Globally Responsive Education, Sanjay Tewari, Peng Zhang, Yuan Zhuang

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on students and educators are well known. However, there is a paucity of literature available on its impact on educational institutions in the context of their abilities to develop global competence in the middle of an ongoing pandemic. The virtual communication and remote delivery of educational content have been a popular trend for many universities to adapt to the pandemic challenges and re-think their internationalization strategies.

The limited travel opportunities because of the pandemic have highlighted a big need for the domestic internationalization mechanism at educational institutions. In this paper, the authors discuss how …

Towards Smallholder Food And Water Security: Climate Variability In The Context Of Multiple Livelihood Hazards In Nicaragua, Christopher M. Bacon, William A. Sundstrom, Iris Stewart-Frey, Edwin P. Maurer, Lisa C. Kelley

Environmental Studies and Sciences

Climate variability and change affect both food and water security, as do other hazards, such as shifting food prices, plant pathogens, and political economic changes. Although household food and water insecurity affect billions, most studies analyze them separately. This article develops a relational approach to explaining household access to food and water in a multi-hazard context. We identify pathways linking hazards to livelihood vulnerability and assess the relative importance of climate-related hazards. Analyzing longitudinal data collected from two surveys of the same 311 smallholder households in northern Nicaragua, conducted in 2014 and again in 2017, we find that peak seasons …

An Investigation On Formability And Crystallographic Texture In Novel Magnesium Alloys, Pnina Ari-Gur, Andreas Quojo Quainoo, Shubram Subramanyam, Ashkan Razania, Sven Vogel, Wei Gao

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Magnesium alloys offer many advantages. They offer very low density and good strength. They also offer good damping properties. One of the industries where reducing component weight is the automotive industry. That makes the magnesium alloys good candidates for these applications. Reduced weight of an automobile means also lower fuel consumption. The hexagonal closed packed structure of magnesium, lends itself to strong mechanical anisotropy. In the current work, neutron diffraction was used to study the crystallographic texture developed in novel magnesium alloys during cold rolling operations. The texture was compared with that developed in the commercial AZ-31 magnesium alloy. Tests …

Numerical Investigation Of The Thermo-Hydraulic Performance Of Water-Based Nanofluids In A Dimpled Channel Flow Using Al₂O₃, Cuo, And Hybrid Al₂O₃-Cuo As Nanoparticles, Farid Ahmed, Md Atrehar Abir, Muhtasim Fuad, Farhana Akter, Palash K. Bhowmik, Syed B. Alam, Dinesh Kumar

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this study, the authors study the impact of spherical dimple surfaces and nanofluid coolants on heat transfer and pressure drop. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the thermal performance of nanofluids with respect to different Reynolds numbers (Re) and nanoparticle compositions in dimpled channel flow. Water-based nanofluids with Al₂O₃, CuO, and Al₂O₃-CuO nanoparticles are considered for this investigation with 1%, 2%, and 4% volume fraction for each nanofluid. The simulations are conducted at low Reynolds numbers varying from 500 to 1250, assuming constant and uniform heat flux. The …

The Environmental Benefits Of Implementing Green Roofs On City Skyscrapers, Jack Rich

Civil Engineering Student Work

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Planning Networks, Norman Tasfi, Miriam A M Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

We introduce Dynamic Planning Networks (DPN), a novel architecture for deep reinforcement learning, that combines model-based and model-free aspects for online planning. Our architecture learns to dynamically construct plans using a learned state-transition model by selecting and traversing between simulated states and actions to maximize information before acting. DPN learns to efficiently form plans by expanding a single action conditional state transition at a time instead of exhaustively evaluating each action, reducing the number of state-transitions used during planning. We observe emergent planning patterns in our agent, including classical search methods such as breadth-first and depth-first search. DPN shows improved …

Rapid Microscopic Fractional Anisotropy Imaging Via An Optimized Linear Regression Formulation., N J J Arezza, D H Y Tse, C A Baron

Medical Biophysics Publications

Water diffusion anisotropy in the human brain is affected by disease, trauma, and development. Microscopic fractional anisotropy (μFA) is a diffusion MRI (dMRI) metric that can quantify water diffusion anisotropy independent of neuron fiber orientation dispersion. However, there are several different techniques to estimate μFA and few have demonstrated full brain imaging capabilities within clinically viable scan times and resolutions. Here, we present an optimized spherical tensor encoding (STE) technique to acquire μFA directly from the 2nd order cumulant expansion of the powder averaged dMRI signal obtained from direct linear regression (i.e. diffusion kurtosis) which requires fewer powder-averaged signals than …

Material Detection With Thermal Imaging And Computer Vision: Potentials And Limitations, Jared Poe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of my masters thesis research is to develop an affordable and mobile infraredbased environmental sensoring system for the control of a servo motor based on material identification. While this sensing could be oriented towards different applications, my thesis is particularly interested in material detection due to the wide range of possible applications in mechanical engineering. Material detection using a thermal mobile camera could be used in manufacturing, recycling or autonomous robotics. For my research, the application that will be focused on is using this material detection to control a servo motor by identifying and sending control inputs based …

Frequency Effect On Peak Pressure Coefficients Using The Narrowband Synthesis Random Flow Generator (Nsrfg) Method, Zayuris Del Carmen Atencio Mojica

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state in 1940 due to high wind forces gave structural engineers notice of the importance of understanding the behavior of wind forces on infrastructure. Wind forces play an important role in the design of buildings and other structures. ASCE 7-16 is the manual used for the design of these buildings and other structures throughout the country. These design criteria have been approved based on research projects involving experimental procedures. For the design of wind loads, ASCE 7-16 uses criteria based on wind tunnel (WT) tests. However, since the development of computing …

Computational Frameworks For Multi-Robot Cooperative 3d Printing And Planning, Laxmi Prasad Poudel

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes a novel cooperative 3D printing (C3DP) approach for multi-robot additive manufacturing (AM) and presents scheduling and planning strategies that enable multi-robot cooperation in the manufacturing environment. C3DP is the first step towards achieving the overarching goal of swarm manufacturing (SM). SM is a paradigm for distributed manufacturing that envisions networks of micro-factories, each of which employs thousands of mobile robots that can manufacture different products on demand. SM breaks down the complicated supply chain used to deliver a product from a large production facility from one part of the world to another. Instead, it establishes a network …