Engineering Commons^™

Louver And Effusion Cooling Heat Transfer For A Double Wall Effusion Plate With Impingement Jet Array Coolant Supply, Sneha Reddy Vanga, Phillip M. Ligrani, Joseph Knox, Federico Liberatore, Rajeshriben Patel, Ying-Hsiang Ho

PRC-Affiliated Research

Louver slot cooling is employed, which consists of an aligned collection of film cooling holes, contained within a specially-designed device which concentrates, and directs the coolant from a slot, so that cooling air then advects as a layer downstream along the test surface. This louver-supplied coolant is then supplemented by coolant which emerges from different rows of downstream film cooling holes. Coolant for both cooling arrangements is supplied using an array of impingement jets. Experimental data are provided for a mainstream Reynolds number Rems range of 168,000–181,000. Full-coverage film cooling initial blowing ratio values are 2.5, 3.2, 4.4, and 5.2, …

The Drier Dryer, Daniel Anderson, Justin Lee, Thomas Morey, Josh Sunada

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

With our product, The Drier Dryer, we aim to increase the efficiency of clothing dryers. This report contains an indepth look at the design approach we are taking to create our product. Our design utilizes a thermoelectric cooler combined with heat sinks and heat pipes to efficiently cool air to its dew point temperature and then reheat the air prior to sending it into a clothes dryer intake. Cooling the air to dew point temperature allows moisture to be removed from the air consequently decreasing the relative humidity. Throughout our design process we obtained simulation results providing a theoretical temperature …

The Effect Of Lanthanides On Corn Growth, Savanna Vacek

Undergraduate Research Symposium Podium Presentations

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) offer a reliable source of reclaimed water for irrigation. Metal-based chemicals (i.e. coagulants) are frequently employed in wastewater treatment, and residual metal ions remain in the treated wastewater, which could result in application of these metal ions to agricultural fields and crops. This study focuses on an emerging coagulant containing lanthanum. The behavior of lanthanum reclaimed water (LaRW) towards corn growth is barely known. Thus, if we are to recycle LaRW to support corn growth, the effects of LaRW on corn growth need to be studied. Corn kernels were grown in varying lanthanum concentrations (0-5000 mg …

Automated Residential Energy Audits Using A Smart Wifi Thermostat-Enabled Data Mining Approach, Abdulrahman Alanezi, Kevin Hallinan, Kefan Huang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Smart WiFi thermostats, when they first reached the market, were touted as a means for achieving substantial heating and cooling energy cost savings. These savings did not materialize until additional features, such as geofencing, were added. Today, average savings from these thermostats of 10–12% in heating and 15% in cooling for a single-family residence have been reported. This research aims to demonstrate additional potential benefit of these thermostats, namely as a potential instrument for conducting virtual energy audits on residences. In this study, archived smart WiFi thermostat measured temperature data in the form of a power spectrum, corresponding historical weather …

Hydrothermal Synthesis And Structural Investigation Of A Crystalline Uranyl Borosilicate, Kristen A. Pace, Vladislav V. Klepov, Mark D. Smith, Travis Williams, Gregory Morrison, Jochen A. Lauterbach, Scott T. Misture, Hans Conrad Zur Loye

Faculty Publications

The relevance of multidimensional and porous crystalline materials to nuclear waste reme-diation and storage applications has motivated exploratory research focused on materials discovery of compounds, such as actinide mixed-oxoanion phases, which exhibit rich structural chemistry. The novel phase K1.8 Na1.2 [(UO2)BSi4 O12 ] has been synthesized using hydrothermal methods, rep-resenting the first example of a uranyl borosilicate. The three-dimensional structure crystallizes in the orthorhombic space group Cmce with lattice parameters a = 15.5471(19) Å, b = 14.3403(17) Å, c = 11.7315(15) Å, and V = 2615.5(6) Å3, and is composed of UO6 octahedra linked by [BSi4 O12 ]5− chains to …

Past The Tipping Point, But With Hope Of Return: How Creating A Geoengineering Compulsory Licensing Scheme Can Incentivize Innovation, Brooke Wilson

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note explores the patenting of geoengineering technologies and issues arising from the early stages of this high-risk, high-reward technology. This Note focuses on one possible solution to solving the issues surrounding the patenting of geoengineering technology: Creating a specialized compulsory licensing scheme.

Learning Discriminative And Efficient Attention For Person Re-Identification Using Agglomerative Clustering Frameworks, Kshitij Nikhal

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Recent advancements like multiple contextual analysis, attention mechanisms, distance-aware optimization, and multi-task guidance have been widely used for supervised person re-identification (ReID), but the implementation and effects of such methods in unsupervised person ReID frameworks are non-trivial and unclear, respectively. Moreover, with increasing size and complexity of image- and video-based ReID datasets, manual or semi-automated annotation procedures for supervised ReID are becoming labor intensive and cost prohibitive, which is undesirable especially considering the likelihood of annotation errors increase with scale/complexity of data collections. Therefore, this thesis proposes a new iterative clustering framework that incorporates (a) two attention architectures that learn …

High-Order Wave-Damage Interaction Coefficients (Wdic) Extracted Through Modal Decomposition, Hanfei Mei, Victor Giurgiutiu

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a new technique for the extraction of high-order wave-damage interaction coefficients (WDIC) through modal decomposition. The frequency and direction dependent complex-valued WDIC are used to model the scattering and mode conversion phenomena of guided wave interaction with damage. These coefficients are extracted from the harmonic analysis of local finite element model (FEM) mesh with non-reflective boundaries (NRB) and they are capable of describing the amplitude and phase of the scattered waves as a function of frequency and direction. To extract the WDIC of each wave mode, all the possible propagating wave modes are considered to be scattered …

Spring 2021, Joëlle Walls

The Investigator Research Magazine

Dear readers,

We are proud to present the spring issue of The Investigator and share with you the expansion of diverse research and scholarly activities occurring at Kennesaw State. Although this year was met with challenges, KSU’s research enterprise has thrived and grown.

In this issue, Pamela Whitten discussed the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Innovation Initiative, an internal funding program to spur new collaborations focused on KSU’s research themes. And alumni Carl Saint-Louis and Karen Armstrong, featured in our cover story, have returned as faculty to mentor the next generation.

This publication would not have been possible without the visual …

Six-Sigma Quality Management Of Additive Manufacturing, Hui Yang, Prahalad Rao, Timothy Simpson, Yan Lu, Paul Witherell, Abdalla R. Nassar, Edward Reutzel, Soundar Kumara

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Quality is a key determinant in deploying new processes, products, or services and influences the adoption of emerging manufacturing technologies. The advent of additive manufacturing (AM) as a manufacturing process has the potential to revolutionize a host of enterprise-related functions from production to the supply chain. The unprecedented level of design flexibility and expanded functionality offered by AM, coupled with greatly reduced lead times, can potentially pave the way for mass customization. However, widespread application of AM is currently hampered by technical challenges in process repeatability and quality management. The breakthrough effect of six sigma (6S) has been demonstrated in …

Determination Of The Feature Resolution Of Processed Image Data Via Statistical Analysis, Joseph S. Indeck, Jesus O. Mares Jr., James P. Vitarelli, Kavan Hazeli

PRC-Affiliated Research

A method is presented to determine the feature resolution of physically relevant metrics of data obtained from segmented image sets. The presented method determines the best-fit distribution curve of a dataset by analyzing a truncated portion of the data. An effective resolvable size for the metric of interest is established when including parts of the truncated dataset results in exceeding a specified error tolerance. As such, this method allows for the determination of the feature resolution regardless of the processing parameters or imaging instrumentation. Additionally, the number of missing objects that exist below the resolution of the instrumentation may be …

Program And Proceedings: Nebraska Academy Of Sciences 1880–2021, 141st Anniversary Year, One Hundred-Thirty-First Annual Meeting, April 23-24, 2021

Nebraska Academy of Sciences: Programs and Proceedings

Program

Aeronautics and Space Science

Anthropology

Applied Science and Technology

Biological and Medical Sciences

Collegiate Academy: Biology

Collegiate Academy: Chemistry and Physics

Earth Sciences

Environmental Sciences

General Chemistry

General Physics

Teaching of Science and Mathematics

Friend of Science Award: Paul Karr

Nanoanalytical Analysis Of Bisphosphonate-Driven Alterations Of Microcalcifications Using A 3d Hydrogel System And In Vivo Mouse Model, Jessica L. Ruiz, Joshua D. Hutcheson, Luis Cardoso, Amirala Bakhshian Nik, Alexandra Condado De Abreu, Tan Pham, Fabrizio Buffolo, Sara Busatto, Stefania Frederici, Andrea Ridolfi, Masanori Aikawa, Sergio Bertazzo, Paolo Bergese, Sheldon Weinbaum, Elena Aikawa

Publications and Research

Vascular calcification predicts atherosclerotic plaque rupture and cardiovascular events. Retrospective studies of women taking bisphosphonates (BiPs), a proposed therapy for vascular calcification, showed that BiPs paradoxically increased morbidity in patients with prior acute cardiovascular events but decreased mortality in event-free patients. Calcifying extracellular vesicles (EVs), released by cells within atherosclerotic plaques, aggregate and nucleate calcification. We hypothesized that BiPs block EV aggregation and modify existing mineral growth, potentially altering microcalcification morphology and the risk of plaque rupture. Three-dimensional (3D) collagen hydrogels incubated with calcifying EVs were used to mimic fibrous cap calcification in vitro, while an ApoE−/− mouse was used …

Isolation Enhancement For Mimo Patch Antennas Sharing A Common Thick Substrate: Using A Dielectric Block To Control Space-Wave Coupling To Cancel Surface-Wave Coupling, Min Li, Muhammad Yasir Jamal, Lijun Jiang, Kwan Lawrence Yeung

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article presents a novel and simple decoupling method to increase the isolation between two closely spaced patch antennas sharing a common thick substrate. The decoupling can be simply realized by adding a pure dielectric block (DB) above the coupled array. By means of DB to modify the space permittivity (propagation constant), the space-wave coupling can be controlled to cancel surface-wave coupling for isolation enhancement. Five benchmarks of combinations of two patch antennas with different positions or orientations are investigated to validate the decoupling concept and elaborate on the design procedure. The results show that the proposed method could provide …

Adsorption And Surface Diffusion Of Metals On Α-Al2O3 For Advanced Manufacturing Applications, Austin Biaggne, Gregory Noble, Lan Li

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The adsorption and diffusion of Mo and Nb adatoms on the α-Al₂O₃ (0001) surface were explored using density functional theory-based methods. Adsorption energies of Mo and Nb adatoms at minima sites on the surface were determined. Mo and Nb adatoms prefer to adsorb to the same locations on the surface, and larger adsorption energies calculated for Nb compared to Mo indicate that Nb adatom-surface interactions are stronger than Mo. Using minima adsorption sites as initial and final locations for surface diffusion, energy barriers for diffusion were calculated using the nudged elastic band method. Overall, Mo and …

Biopolymerized Slope/Subgrade Stabilization And Advanced Field Monitoring, Chung R. Song, Layla Bitar, Richard L. Wood, Yong-Rak Kim, Jongwan Eun, Binyam M. Bekele, Basil Abualshar

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

The slightly overconsolidated glacial tills and weathered shales in Midwestern states of the USA often show substantial strength degradation after construction. This strength reduction often causes time dependent slope failures along the roadside. This study investigated the possibility of applying biopolymer based soil modification techniques to mitigate the strength reduction phenomenon of these soils. For this research, several different biopolymers were evaluated through laboratory tests, two biopolymers were selected for extensive weathering tests, then a higher-performing biopolymer, Xanthan, was applied to a test slope in Verdigre, Nebraska with heavy instrumentation. The followings are the summary of the results.

The unweathered …

Piezo-Tribo Dual Effect Hybrid Nanogenerators For Health Monitoring, Sk Md Ali Zaker Shawon, Andrew Xu Sun, Valeria Suarez Vega, Brishty Deb Chowdhury, Phong Tran, Zaida D. Carballo, Jim Aica Tolentino, Jianzhi Li, Muhammad Sufian Rafaqut, Mohammed Jasim Uddin

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Over the years, nanogenerators for health monitoring have become more and more attractive as they provide a cost-effective and continuous way to successfully measure vital signs, physiological status, and environmental changes in/around a person. Using such sensors can positively affect the way healthcare workers diagnose and prevent life-threatening conditions. Recently, the dual piezo-tribological effect of hybrid nanogenerators (HBNGs) have become a subject of investigation, as they can provide a substantial amount of data, which is significant for healthcare. However, real-life exploitation of these HBNGs in health monitoring is still marginal. This review covers piezo-tribo dual-effect HBNGs that are used as …

An Automated Framework For Connected Speech Evaluation Of Neurodegenerative Disease: A Case Study In Parkinson's Disease, Sai Bharadwaj Appakaya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neurodegenerative diseases affect millions of people around the world. The progressive degeneration worsens the symptoms, heavily impacting the quality of life of the patients as well as the caregivers. Speech production is one of the physiological processes affected by neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Speech is the most basic form of communication, and the effect of neurodegeneration degrades speech production, thereby reducing social interaction and mental well-being. PD is the second most common neurodegenerative disease affecting speech production in 90% of the diagnosed individuals. Speech analysis methods for PD in clinical methods …

Preventing Needle Stick Injuries: A Quality Improvement Project, Adrianna Kerns, Emilea Pitts, Grace Richman, Katie Rawlings, Megan Riley, Mary Suzanne White

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

"Needlestick injuries (NSI) affect approximately 1,000 people per day across U.S. hospitals. Needlestick injuries cost an estimated $3,042 per victim annually, according to the report. The costs go toward laboratory fees for testing exposed employees, associated labor and counseling and post-exposure follow-ups." (Beckner's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control, 2020). It was noted at an urban teaching hospital that needlestick injuries are an issue. Researchers believe this number is an underestimate of the actual amount of needle stick injuries. The purpose is to increase the education of staff nurses on the topic of needle stick injuries. We thoroughly reviewed 56 studies …

Cultivating Gratitude And Learning: Virtual Agriculture Education For Elementary School Students, Heather Smith, Joy Gritton

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

In a time when the majority of young children know more about a computer than agriculture, this project brings agriculture to them in a unique way. This presentation introduces a program that aims to connect elementary students with the vast agriculture industry in the digital age using appropriate technology. The project consists of teaching children in Eastern Kentucky and beyond about agriculture and land use through the virtual dissemination of relevant stories, facts, and activities. In this way children can learn how agriculture is vital to their everyday life. Featured topics include horticulture crops, agronomic crops, livestock, and the history …

Modeling Of A Patient Positioning System For Use In Mri Machines, Daniel Garcia

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Since its commercial introduction in the early 1980s, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become an important medical diagnostic tool for radiologists. Researchers and manufacturers have refined the imaging hardware and expanded the intended uses for MRI devices over time. However, MRI manufacturers have not improved the design of the mechanisms and control schemes used to move the patient.Patient positioning systems are required to handle unknown weights up to 225 kilograms, accommodate friction disturbances, move long distances at high speed, move small distances in less than 1 second, and attain sub millimeter bidirectional precision. Little research is available on model …

A Behavioral Model For Simultaneous Event Execution In Sequential Discrete Event System Simulations, Brian David S. Dilinila

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The sequential execution of simultaneous events in a discrete event system simulation can cause unexpected behavior in a system. Current studies have provided approaches such as applying a priority order for simultaneous events. However, this is still a problem because executing simultaneous events in sequential order can still lead to two issues of simultaneous event conflicts: the case where simultaneous events cause changes to state variables required by other simultaneous events and the case where two or more simultaneous events cause changes to the same state variables. The objective of this thesis is to develop a behavioral model as a …

Gagrank: Software For Glycosaminoglycan Sequence Ranking Using A Bipartite Graph Model, John D. Hogan, Jiandong Wu, Joshua A. Klein, Cheng Lin, Luis Carvalho, Joseph Zaia

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Sulfated Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) Are Long, Linear Polysaccharide Chains that Are Typically Found as the Glycan Portion of Proteoglycans. These GAGs Are Characterized by Repeating Disaccharide Units with Variable Sulfation and Acetylation Patterns Along the Chain. GAG Length and Modification Patterns Have Profound Impacts on Growth Factor Signaling Mechanisms Central to Numerous Physiological Processes. Electron Activated Dissociation Tandem Mass Spectrometry is a Very Effective Technique for Assigning the Structures of GAG Saccharides; However, Manual Interpretation of the Resulting Complex Tandem Mass Spectra is a Difficult and Time-Consuming Process that Drives the Development of Computational Methods for Accurate and Efficient Sequencing. …

Attacking Logic Locked Circuits Using Reinforcement Learning, Allen Shelton, Jake Mellor

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Logic Locking is an emerging form of hardware obfuscation that is intended to be a solution to many of the trust issues associated with the modern globalized IC supply chain. By inserting extra key-gates into a circuit, the functionality of the circuit can be locked until the correct order of bits or “key” is applied to the key gates. To assess the strength of new logic locking techniques, we propose a new attack that uses deep reinforcement learning. This attack aims to test logic locking as well as evaluate reinforcement learning as a possible attack against logic locking. By using …

Powering Iot Sensors With Rf Energy Harvesting, Austin Rothschild, Kristi Nguyen

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

There is a need to power Internet of Things (IoT) applications that require frequent, expensive, and/or dangerous battery replacements. Radio-frequency energy harvesting (RFEH) is a possible alternative source of power for select IoT sensor applications. In comparison to other methods of energy harvesting, RFEH has the smallest incident power densities and therefore comes with many design challenges.

In this project we implement a novel RFEH system powered via a dedicated transmitter. A planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) and voltage doubler circuit form the designed rectenna (rectifier + antenna) and the system is implemented on a custom PCB to carry out RF-to-DC …

Security Improvements For The Automatic Identification System, Robert E. Litts

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is used aboard the vast majority of sea-going vessels in the world as a collision avoidance tool. Currently, the AIS operates without any security features, which make it vulnerable to exploits such as spoofing, hijacking, and replay attacks by malicious parties. This paper examines the work that has been done so far to improve AIS security, as well as the approaches taken on similar problems in the aircraft and vehicular mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) industries. The first major contribution of this paper is the implementation of a Software Defined Radio (SDR) AIS transmitter and receiver …

Ultra-High Performance Concrete (Uhpc) Deck-To-Girder Connection For Accelerated Bridge Construction, Mostafa Abo El-Khier

Department of Construction Engineering and Management: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Precast concrete deck systems have been successfully used for Accelerated Bridge Construction. In most systems, special deck-to-girder connections are designed to achieve structurally composite sections. These connections require tight production/erection tolerances that complicate deck and girder fabrication and compromise the economics of these systems. This study presents a new precast concrete deck-to-girder connection that takes advantage of the excellent mechanical, workability, and durability properties of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) to simplify precast concrete deck and girder fabrication and erection. Typical girder shear reinforcement is terminated below the soffit of deck panels to eliminate any conflicts with deck reinforcement and relax …

Effectiveness Of Noise Suppressing Sheet Material For Mitigation Of Automotive Radiated Emissions, Patrick Deroy, Marina Y. Koledintseva, Cyrous F. Rostamzadeh, Micajah Worden, Tamara Monti, Waldemar Schulz, Abhishek Ramanujan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Integrated circuit (IC) and printed circuit board (PCB) electromagnetic (EM) modeling methods are becoming essential during the development of automotive electronic control units. Academic and industrial efforts focus on radiated and conducted emissions caused by flaws in PCB design from EM compatibility (EMC)/electrostatic discharge (ESD) point of view, including improper placement, grounding, and shielding of ICs. In this article, the effectiveness of noise suppressing sheet material for the mitigation of radiated emission at global positioning system (GPS) and Global'naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema (GLONASS) bands according to U.S. automotive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) requirements is investigated. A few test scenarios that …

Maximum Coverage Facility Location Drone Routing Problem With Multiple Trip Stops, Marie Roza

Civil and Environmental Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Integer linear optimization can be used to formulate routing problems as models to find optimal solutions given a set of inputs and constraints. In this research, Chauhan et al.'s publication, "Maximum coverage capacitated facility location problem with range constrained drones," is expanded upon by modeling a facility location problem with two-to-one drone deliveries. The model analyzes a set of potential facilities that are available to meet the demands of a set of demand points. The drone delivery routes are modeled with the assumption that each opened facility is assigned one drone that can fulfill up to two demand points’ demands …

Professional Certification Exam: An Alternative Method For A Remote Additive Manufacturing Lab, Rustin Webster

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

A free professional certification exam was adopted in an introductory course on the study of polymers and composites after the course was transitioned to remote education due to the COVID-19 virus pandemic. The Certified SOLIDWORKS Associates – Additive Manufacturing (CSWA-AM) exam and the prerequisite 10-part online video learning path replaced traditional hands-on laboratory activities. Twenty-five engineering technology (ET) students attempted the exam and passed at a rate of 76% (n = 19). The perceived positive student acceptance to and the effectiveness of the remote lab activities to meet learning outcomes is encouraging the instructor to not only continue using the …