Engineering Commons^™

Development Of An Equation To Correlate Brite Tank Temperature And Pressure To Beverage Carbonation Concentration, Devyn Meyer

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Carbo Rock-It™ is an invention created to carbonate beverages at craft breweries. One of the Carbo Rock-It’s main features is that it does not add a significant volume of undissolved gas bubbles to the brite tank in which the beverage is carbonated. This may allow temperature and pressure readings from the brite tank to be used to determine the concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide in the beverage continuously in real time. This eliminates the need for manual samplings, which could save breweries time and allow for more controlled, accurate carbonation. The goal of this project was to develop an …

Lightweight Distributed Computing Framework For Orchestrating High Performance Computing And Big Data, Muhammed Numan İnce, Meli̇h Günay, Joseph Ledet

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In recent years, the need for the ability to work remotely and subsequently the need for the availability of remote computer-based systems has increased substantially. This trend has seen a dramatic increase with the onset of the 2020 pandemic. Often local data is produced, stored, and processed in the cloud to remedy this flood of computation and storage needs. Historically, HPC (high performance computing) and the concept of big data have been utilized for the storage and processing of large data. However, both HPC and Hadoop can be utilized as solutions for analytical work, though the differences between these may …

Eco: A Sustainability Education Chatbot, Joey Gruber

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

There is a lack of access to information about sustainability from what the climate crisis is to how to recycle properly. For both sustainability-informed and uninformed individuals, learning new information about sustainability and reducing their waste in a way that compliments their lifestyle is time-consuming, requires strategic skills, and can cost them money. ECO is an audio and text-based chatbot that teaches users to be more environmentally conscious through waste reduction.

Cal Poly Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge 2022, Sangmin Sung, Eddy Rodriguez, Travis Welch, Jeremy Baechler, Kevin Pauls

Mechanical Engineering

In this report, the Featherweight Cycles design team puts forth the scope and overview of their design project, discusses background research and competitor analysis, and presents the project’s final design and manufacturing plans. The overall goal of this project is to fabricate and compete in the Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, hosted by the National Fluid Power Association. To better define the design process, the team researched previous year’s designs from Cal Poly, as well as winning designs from the last two years to form a baseline of knowledge about competing schools’ designs. After researching multiple design paths, Featherweight Cycles chose …

Analyzing The Surface Chemistry Of Ni-Fe Hydroxide Alloy Nanoparticles As Catalysts For The Oxygen Evolution Reaction By X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy Analysis, Lauren B. Shepard

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Water electrolysis has been proposed as a renewable source of hydrogen, a possible replacement to harmful fossil fuels. This process can be broken down into two half reactions, the hydrogen evolution reaction and the oxygen evolution reaction. Because the oxygen evolution reaction has slow kinetics and a high overpotential to overcome, a catalyst is needed to speed up the kinetics and ensure faster and more efficient production of molecular hydrogen. The use of Ni-Fe hydroxide alloy nanoparticles as a catalyst has been shown to significantly improve the efficiency of the reaction by decreasing the overpotential, making the process more energy …

An Investigation Of Water Obstructions And Related Weather Conditions For Nebraska Roadways, Mark R. Anderson, Logan R. Bundy

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Roadway resilience across the 10,000 miles of road and 3,500 bridges in Nebraska is critical to the economic success of productionand logistics. In a state where historical flooding scenarios, such as the one in March 2019 that caused $150 million in damage,could potentially be increasing, it has become essential to understand the spatial and temporal distribution of high-frequency waterobstruction areas on roadways. Therefore, in order to further investigate these areas, the main objectives of this research were toperform statistical and spatial analyses to quantify the relationship between water obstructions and their associated meteorologicalconditions, and identify the potential linkages between water …

Estimating System And Traveler Costs Due To Lane Closures During Construction And Maintenance Operations, Ernest Tufuor, Li Zhao, Mm Haque, Laurence Rilett Ph.D., John Anderson, Eric Thompson

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Lane closures are used to facilitate activities related to road construction and maintenance or operations. However, there are economic costs associated with lane closures and these may accrue to both the traveling public as well as to traffic agencies. The Nebraska Governor’s office has identified maximizing the effectiveness of lane closures as a priority for the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT). The goal of this project is to assist NDOT in effectively managing the operations of work zones to maximize the effectiveness of lane closures under Nebraska conditions. This report summarizes the findings of the current state of the practice …

Estimating System And Traveler Costs Due To Lane Closures During Construction And Maintenance Operations, Ernest Tufuor, Lianlin Zhao, Mm Shakiul Haque, Laurence Rilett, John Anderson, Eric Thompson

Nebraska Department of Transportation: Research Reports

Lane closures are used to facilitate activities related to road construction and maintenance or operations. However, there are economic costs associated with lane closures and these may accrue to both the traveling public as well as to traffic agencies. The Nebraska Governor’s office has identified maximizing the effectiveness of lane closures as a priority for the Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT). The goal of this project is to assist NDOT in effectively managing the operations of work zones to maximize the effectiveness of lane closures under Nebraska conditions. This report summarizes the findings of the current state of the practice …

Porous Silicon Photonics For Label-Free Interferometric Biosensing And Flat Optics, Tahmid Hassan Talukdar

All Dissertations

This dissertation uses porous silicon as a material platform to explore novel optical effects in three domains: (i) It studies dispersion engineering in integrated waveguides to achieve high performance group index sensing. With proper design parameters, the sensor waveguides can theoretically achieve 6 times larger group index shift compared to the actual bulk effective refractive index shift. We demonstrate the guided mode confinement factor to be a key parameter in design and implementation of these waveguides. (ii) It explores multicolor laser illumination to experimentally demonstrate perceptually enhanced colorimetric sensing, overcoming the limitations faced by many contemporary colorimetric sensors. Our technique …

Layered Epoxide-Amine/Boron Nitride/Graphene Nanocomposites For Enhanced Multifunctional Shielding, Alyssa J. Necaise

Honors Theses

The development of high-power electromagnetic wave sources in the modern era has the ability to interfere with aircraft electronics and cause localized heating – necessitating advanced materials for electromagnetic interference (EMI) and thermal shielding. Multifunctional nanoparticles dispersed within polymer matrices can combat these issues; however, the best way to combine thermally and electrically conductive species to maximize electromagnetic interference shielding and thermal shielding is undetermined. Multifunctional layered epoxide/amine nanocomposites were prepared from tetra and octafunctional epoxide monomers (TGDDM and SU-8), 4,4-DDS tetrafunctional amine curative, and 1 wt.% hexagonal boron nitride nanoplatelets and/or 1 wt.% graphene nanoplatelets to form monolayer and …

Development Of Upconverting Films Containing Singlet Sink, Blake Mckay

Honors Theses

Upconversion is the conversion of light from a longer wavelength to a shorter wavelength. This technique has a wide range of applications in solar technology, bioimaging, drug delivery, and many other fields.¹ In this study, a three-part upconverting system was developed including a component termed singlet sink in order to increase upconversion efficiency. The components of this system included Palladium (II) Octaethylporphrin (PdOEP), pyrenebutanol, and 9-phenyl-10-(p-tolylethynyl)-anthracene (PTEA). A procedure was developed in order to create and process films containing these three materials dispersed in a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) matrix. Upconversion was analyzed in both solution and the …

Privacy-Preserving Blockchain-Based Registration Scheme For Av Parking System, Alexander Haastrup

Honors Theses

Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are a prime example of how innovation and automation are at the forefront of growing technology trends. The concern of parking systems is becoming apparent as research into ways to increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of AV continues. To ward against various internet attackers and secure users' sensitive information, an efficient AV parking system must have powerful user privacy and cyber security capabilities. In my work, I present a blockchain-based privacy registration system for AV parking systems that meets the following criteria. The proposed scheme incorporates k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) - an efficient and lightweight algorithm - for …

Self-Efficacy Development In Elementary-Aged Learners Through Dance As An Algorithmic Thinking Tool, Niva Shrestha

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of a transdisciplinary approach in teaching computational thinking through dance to elementary-aged learners, with primary attention to females. With limited literature available on how pre-adolescents begin to construct conceptions of computer science and other engineering domains, including potential career pathways, the incentive of this project was to leverage a day camp for about 20 rising 3rd - 5th-grade learners to assess their identity development in computer science. Modules that teach computational thinking through dance paired with Unruly splats (block-based programmable electronic gadgets) were implemented. By conducting pre-and post-surveys and a …

Investigating The Effect Of Polymer Hydrogels On The Antimicrobial Properties Of Activated Carbon Through The Utilization Of Bacterial, Viral, And Parasitic Microorganisms, Zoe Gunter

Honors Theses

Activated carbon (AC) has long been utilized in biomedical applications due to its innate antimicrobial characteristics. However, little is understood about the mechanism of action that allows AC to prohibit the propagation of different pathogen species. To further ascertain these characteristics and how they affect the propagation of pathogens, procedures were designed with bacterial, viral, and parasitic agents which were utilized in conjunction with varying concentrations of polymer hydrogels to examine the antimicrobial efficacy of AC. The studies performed for this thesis were conducted employing coconut-based AC and Noveon^® AA-1 Polycarbophil USP or Carbopol^® 974P NF hydrogels which, …

Symbolic Ns-3 For Efficient Exhaustive Testing, Jianfei Shao

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Exhaustive testing is an important type of simulation, where a user exhaustively simulates a protocol for all possible cases with respect to some uncertain factors, such as all possible packet delays or packet headers. It is useful for completely evaluating the protocol performance, finding the worst-case performance, and detecting possible design or implementation bugs of a protocol. It is, however, time consuming to use the brute force method with current NS-3, a widely used network simulator, for exhaustive testing. In this paper, we present our work on Sym-NS-3 for more efficient exhaustive testing, which leverages a powerful program analysis technique …

Pedestrian Evacuation: Vulnerable Group Member Influence On The Group Leaders’ Decision-Making And The Impact On Evacuation Time, Terra Lynne Elzie

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

As pedestrian evacuations of buildings, outdoor venues, and special events occur, dynamic interactions between pedestrians and vehicles during egress are possible. To model pedestrian and vehicle evacuations, simulation models have evolved to incorporate more realistic crowd characteristics and behaviors to provide improved results. Past studies using modeling and simulation, specifically agent-based modeling, have explored pedestrian behaviors such as decision-making, navigation within a virtual environment, group formations, intra-group interactions, inter-group dynamics, crowd behaviors such as queuing and herding, and pedestrianvehicle interactions. These studies have led to relevant insights helpful to improving the accuracy of evacuation times for normal and emergency egress …

Electromagnetic Modeling Of A Wind Tunnel Magnetic Suspension And Balance System, Desiree Driver

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Wind tunnels are used to study forces and moments acting on an aerodynamic body. While most results involve some interference from the mechanical supports used to hold the model, a Magnetic Suspension and Balance System (MSBS) is void of these interferences and presents an ideal test scenario. To further investigate the feasibility of dynamic stability testing at supersonic speeds using a MSBS, a preliminary design idea is currently being developed using an existing MSBS in a subsonic wind tunnel. This review focuses on the development of a mathematical model to more accurately portray the capabilities of the 6 inch Massachusetts …

Machine Learning Classification Of Digitally Modulated Signals, James A. Latshaw

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Automatic classification of digitally modulated signals is a challenging problem that has traditionally been approached using signal processing tools such as log-likelihood algorithms for signal classification or cyclostationary signal analysis. These approaches are computationally intensive and cumbersome in general, and in recent years alternative approaches that use machine learning have been presented in the literature for automatic classification of digitally modulated signals. This thesis studies deep learning approaches for classifying digitally modulated signals that use deep artificial neural networks in conjunction with the canonical representation of digitally modulated signals in terms of in-phase and quadrature components. Specifically, capsule networks are …

Foundations Of Plasmas For Medical Applications, T. Von Woedtke, Mounir Laroussi, M. Gherardi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Plasma medicine refers to the application of nonequilibrium plasmas at approximately body temperature, for therapeutic purposes. Nonequilibrium plasmas are weakly ionized gases which contain charged and neutral species and electric fields, and emit radiation, particularly in the visible and ultraviolet range. Medically-relevant cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAP) sources and devices are usually dielectric barrier discharges and nonequilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma jets. Plasma diagnostic methods and modelling approaches are used to characterize the densities and fluxes of active plasma species and their interaction with surrounding matter. In addition to the direct application of plasma onto living tissue, the treatment of liquids …

Strain-Based Design Of Steel-Polymer-Steel Composite Pipes, Vul Thang

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Many offshore single-wall pipelines and structural failures have occurred in the past. As a result, lives were lost, and billions of dollars were spent. In addition, natural disasters such as earthquake fault zones can cause a large volume of soil movement. This can easily damage single-wall pipelines or piles of fixed offshore platforms in the earthquake fault zone.

Currently, the single-wall pipelines are used for the offshore and onshore oil and gas industry. This research investigated the use of double-wall composite pipe steel-polymer-steel (SPS) in place of single-wall pipe to prevent such failures. The double-wall composite pipe has a larger …

State Estimation—Beyond Gaussian Filtering, Haozhan Meng

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers the state estimation problems with symmetric Gaussian/asymmetric skew-Gaussian assumption under linear/nonlinear systems. It consists of three parts. The first part proposes a new recursive finite-dimensional exact density filter based on the linear skew-Gaussian system. The second part adopts a skew-symmetric representation (SSR) of distribution for nonlinear skew-Gaussian estimation. The third part gives an optimized Gauss-Hermite quadrature (GHQ) rule for numerical integration with respect to Gaussian integrals and applies it to nonlinear Gaussian filters.

We first develop a linear system model driven by skew-Gaussian processes and present the exact filter for the posterior density with fixed dimensional recursive …

Data-Driven Framework For Understanding & Modeling Ride-Sourcing Transportation Systems, Bishoy Kelleny

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Ride-sourcing transportation services offered by transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft are disrupting the transportation landscape. The growing demand on these services, along with their potential short and long-term impacts on the environment, society, and infrastructure emphasize the need to further understand the ride-sourcing system. There were no sufficient data to fully understand the system and integrate it within regional multimodal transportation frameworks. This can be attributed to commercial and competition reasons, given the technology-enabled and innovative nature of the system. Recently, in 2019, the City of Chicago the released an extensive and complete ride-sourcing trip-level data for …

Cfd Simulation Of Varying Fuel Jet Placement Of Mach 2 Flow (Poster), Sara Broad

Honors Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Ultrafiltration Membranes Functionalized With Copper Oxide And Zwitterions For Fouling Resistance, Cannon Hackett, Mojtaba Abolhassani, Lauren Greenlee, Audie K. Thompson

Chemical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Polymeric membrane fouling is a long-standing challenge for water filtration. Metal/metal oxide nanoparticle functionalization of the membrane surface can impart anti-fouling properties through the reactivity of the metal species and the generation of radical species. Copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) are effective at reducing organic fouling when used in conjunction with hydrogen peroxide, but leaching of copper ions from the membrane has been observed, which can hinder the longevity of the CuO NP activity at the membrane surface. Zwitterions can reduce organic fouling and stabilize NP attachment, suggesting a potential opportunity to combine the two functionalizations. Here, we coated polyethersulfone …

Modern Optimal Controllers For Hybrid Active Power Filter To Minimize Harmonic Distortion, Feras Alasali, Khaled Nusair, Husam Foudeh, William Holderbaum, Arangarajan Vinayagam, Asma Aziz

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Nowadays, AC distributed power networks are facing many challenges in guaranteeing and improving the required level of power quality indices in power networks with increasing nonlinear, time-variable and unbalanced loads. Power networks can benefit from avoiding and minimizing different AC problems, such as frequency fluctuation and Total Harmonic Distortions (THDs), by using power filters, such as Hybrid Active Power Filters (HAPFs). Therefore, attention towards responsible power quality indices, such as Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), Power Factor (P.F) and Harmonic Pollution (HP) has increased. THD and HP are important indices to show the level of power quality at the network. In …

The Impact Of Reliability In Conceptual Design - An Integrated Trade-Off Analysis, Tevari James Barker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research presented in this paper focuses on developing models to estimate the systemreliability of Unmanned Ground Vehicles using knowledge and data from similar systems. Traditional reliability approaches often require detailed knowledge of a system and are used in later design stages as well as development, operational test and evaluation, and operations. The critical role of reliability and its impact on acquisition program performance, cost, and schedule motivate the need for improved system reliability models in the early design stages. Reliability is often a stand-alone requirement and not fully included in performance and life cycle cost models. This research seeks to …

Multistage Modeling Of Fatigue Of Ti-6al-4v Fabricated By Different Additive Manufacturing Techniques, Lionardo Lado, Saeed Ataollahi, Mohammad J. Mahtabi

Honors Theses

Thanks to its high strength-to-weight ratio and corrosion resistance, Ti-6Al-4V has gained a lot of attention in additive manufacturing (AM) of complex parts with aerospace and medical applications. The realistic loading condition in these applications is mostly cyclic. However, the main challenge with AM of this alloy - and in general AM of metallic parts - is fatigue resistance and durability of the part, which has been reported to be much lower than the conventional materials. In this study, fatigue life performance of three additive manufacturing methods was compared using the Multistage Fatigue model (MSF). MSF model predicts the fatigue …

The Development Of Tigra: A Zero Latency Interface For Accelerator Communication In Risc-V Processors, Wesley Brad Green

All Dissertations

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) give developers the ability to design application specific hardware by means of software, providing a method of accelerating algorithms with higher power efficiency when compared to CPU or GPU accelerated applications. FPGA accelerated applications tend to follow either a loosely coupled or tightly coupled design. Loosely coupled designs often use OpenCL to utilize the FPGA as an accelerator much like a GPU, which provides a simplifed design flow with the trade-off of increased overhead and latency due to bus communication. Tightly coupled designs modify an existing CPU to introduce instruction set extensions to provide a …

Synthesis Of Monodisperse Nanoscintillators At High Temperatures For Biomedical Relevant Applications, Eric Zhang

All Dissertations

Luminescent sub-100 nm particulates continuously generate immense research interest in the biomedical field for imaging, theranostics, and optogenetics. Conventionally, upconversion nanoparticles or UV activated semiconductors are studied, however these materials are limited by biological barriers such as the skin which reduces the penetration depth of these excitation sources, tissue's auto- fluorescence, and toxicity. One approach to overcome these challenges is to use nanoscintillators (sub-100 nm materials that can generate visible light using high energy excitation sources such as x-rays) which can generate light locally to the human body. Numerous scintillators have been reported since the discovery of x-rays from the …

The Water We Were Swimming In: Transgender And Gender Nonconforming Students' Lived Experiences In Engineering., Natalie Saroff Oliner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Few studies address the lived experiences of transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) students in engineering. Grounded in critical trans politics (Spade, 2015), this dissertation contributes to the literature on TGNC students in engineering by examining their experiences negotiating their identities while navigating interrelated systems of oppression in a field dominated by White, heterosexual, cisgender men. Using a critical constructivism framework, I conducted a narrative inquiry to explore the lived experiences of five TGNC students in engineering programs. Participants experienced TGNC oppression at their universities, built LGBTQ+ and TGNC communities, and described more welcoming climates in non-engineering contexts compared to engineering. …