Engineering Commons^™

Joint Bidding Decision Of Wind Farms And Energy Storage Based On Newsvendor Model, Xinyue Sun, Jian Liu, Meng Ou, Yanyan Liu

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Currently, renewable energy generation has received more and more attention. This article focuses on wind energy generation, one of the renewable energy sources. Aiming at the intermittent and unpredictable wind power problems, according to the day ahead bidding mechanism in the power market, this paper introduces the energy storage system to maximize wind power merchants profit based on the newsvendor model. First, this paper focuses on the wind farms combined with storage system to put forward the optimal bidding decision of selling or buying electricity to the market one day in advance and the optimal bidding amount. Then, we analyze …

Study Of Synaptic Properties Of Honey Thin Film For Neuromorphic Systems, Brandon Sueoka, Kuan Yew Cheong, Feng Zhao

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Besides conventional electrical properties, materials for emerging artificial synaptic devices in brain-inspired neuromorphic systems need to have properties analogous to those of biological synapses, such as synaptic plasticity. In this work, we investigated, for the first time, the synaptic properties of a natural bio-organic material – honey. The honey film was sandwiched between Ag and ITO to form a structure resembling biological synapse. Neural facilitation, an essential synaptic plasticity, was demonstrated by honey thin film with a larger facilitation index, wider interval time range and higher dynamic filtering gain than other natural bio-organic materials. The results indicate that honey is …

Blast Analysis Of Steel-Plate Composite Slabs: Sdof And Fem Analyses, Joshua R. Harmon, Amit H. Varma

Bowen Laboratory Research Reports

Steel-plate composite (SC) members have emerged as competitive construction methods for tall buildings and nuclear power plants. Detailed design guidance has been created for these functions and design of these members is now covered in AISC 341-16 and ASIC N690-18. However, SC members are emerging for use in protective structures to withstand blast and impact loads. Although experimental tests of SC members for blast resistant design have been conducted, design of SC members for blast loads has not been addressed in existing design references for blast loadings (UFC 3-340-02). This report details a general design philosophy for blast loaded SC …

Representation Learning For Chemical Activity Predictions, Mohamed S. Ayed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Computational prediction of a phenotypic response upon the chemical perturbation on a biological system plays an important role in drug discovery and many other applications. Chemical fingerprints derived from chemical structures are a widely used feature to build machine learning models. However, the fingerprints ignore the biological context, thus, they suffer from several problems such as the activity cliff and curse of dimensionality. Fundamentally, the chemical modulation of biological activities is a multi-scale process. It is the genome-wide chemical-target interactions that modulate chemical phenotypic responses. Thus, the genome-scale chemical-target interaction profile will more directly correlate with in vitro and in …

Heterogeneous Biodiesel Catalyst From Steel Slag Resulting From An Electric Arc Furnace, Mai H. Roushdy

Chemical Engineering

Biodiesel is one of the most environmentally friendly and renewable fuels, as it is a non-polluting fuel and is made from living resources, such as vegetable oils. The steel industry generates a variety of solid wastes, including electric arc furnace slag (EAFS). The synthesis of biodiesel from waste sunflower cooking oil was examined in this study, utilizing EAFS as a catalyst, which mainly contains ferric and ferrous oxides, calcium oxide, and silica. To evaluate their impact on biodiesel production, four independent variables were chosen: temperature (50–70 ◦C), catalyst loading (1–5%), methanol-to-oil (M:O) molar ratio (5–20), and time (1–4 h). The …

Data On The Validation To Determine The Material Thermal Properties Estimation Via A One-Dimensional Transient Convection Model, Lauren B. Tomanek, Daniel S. Stutts

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

These data were acquired to estimate the parameters of a closed form solution of a one-dimensional transient convection heat diffusion PDE. The purpose was to demonstrate that the model could be used to determine the thermal conductivity. The system was tested for a wide range of thermal conductivity, 15-400 W/mK, in order to verify that the method was applicable for various materials. The data reported here refer to the study in the research articles, “Material Thermal Properties Estimation Via a One-Dimensional Transient Convection Model” and “Influence of porosity on the thermal, electrical, and mechanical performance of selective laser melted stainless …

Characteristics And Assessing Biological Risks Of Airborne Bacteria In Waste Sorting Plant, Abbas Norouzian Baghani, Somayeh Golbaz, Gholamreza Ebrahimzadeh, Marcelo I. Guzman, Mahdieh Delikhoon, Mehdi Jamshidi Rastani, Abdullah Barkhordari, Ramin Nabizadeh

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Examining the concentration and types of airborne bacteria in waste paper and cardboard sorting plants (WPCSP) is an urgent matter to inform policy makers about the health impacts on exposed workers. Herein, we collected 20 samples at 9 points of a WPCSP every 6 winter days, and found that the most abundant airborne bacteria were positively and negatively correlated to relative humidity and temperature, respectively. The most abundant airborne bacteria (in units of CFU m⁻³) were: Staphylococcus sp. (72.4) > Micrococcus sp. (52.2) > Bacillus sp. (30.3) > Enterococcus sp. (24.0) > Serratia marcescens (20.1) > E. coli (19.1) > Pseudomonas sp. (16.0) > Nocardia …

Water Quality Concentration Trends And Loads Identify Management Needs In The Lake Wister Watershed, Abbie L. Lasater, Brian Haggard

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Trend analyses of water quality seek to determine whether concentrations of constituents have increased or decreased over time, which can show the effectiveness of management practices or the need for pollutant reduction. The Poteau River watershed (PRW) is a transboundary watershed across Arkansas and Oklahoma and, in Arkansas, has been listed as a priority watershed within the Arkansas Nonpoint Source Pollution Plan since 1998. The Poteau River, Black Fork, and Fourche Maline within the PRW flow into Lake Wister, which is an important reservoir for recreation, fishing, and waterfowl hunting for residents and tourists around eastern Oklahoma. The purpose of …

Privacy In Blockchain Systems, Murat Osmanoğlu, Ali̇ Aydin Selçuk

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Privacy of blockchains has been a matter of discussion since the inception of Bitcoin. Various techniques with a varying degree of privacy protection and complexity have been proposed over the past decade. In this survey, we present a systematic analysis of these proposals in four categories: (i) identity, (ii) transaction, (iii) consensus, and (iv) smart contract privacy. Each of these categories have privacy requirements of its own, and various solutions have been proposed to meet these requirements. Almost every technique in the literature of privacy enhancing technologies have been applied to blockchains: mix networks, zero-knowledge proofs, blind signatures, ring signatures, …

Permissioned Blockchain Based Remote Electronic Examination, Öznur Kalkar, İsa Sertkaya

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Recent coronavirus pandemic transformed almost all aspects of daily life including educational institutions and learning environments. As a result, this transformation brought remote electronic examination (shortly e-exam) concepts back into consideration. In this study, we revisit secure and privacy preserving e-exam protocol proposals and propose an e-exam protocol that utilizes decentralized identity-based verifiable credentials for proof of authentication and public-permissioned blockchain for immutably storing records. In regard to the previously proposed e-exam schemes, our scheme offers both privacy enhancement and better efficiency. More concretely, the proposed solution satisfies test answer authentication, examiner authentication, anonymous marking, anonymous examiner, question secrecy, question …

Data Immutability And Event Management Via Blockchain In The Internet Of Things, Hakan Altaş, Gökhan Dalkiliç, Umut Can Çabuk

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The Internet of things (IoT) is the key enabler of the smart systems used in many areas, from agriculture to aviation, industrial automation to autonomous vehicles. Most IoT deployments employ cost-efficient lightweight devices with limited resources (e.g., bandwidth, energy, storage). Although an IoT network must be built in its simplest form, engineers include more sophisticated devices like gateways and servers to provide web-based services and benefit from cloud systems. So, although the nodes can be widely distributed geographically or topologically, the system becomes centralized, which causes bottlenecks and single-points-of-failure. Furthermore, providing data integrity, nonrepudiation, and event management becomes tricky. In …

Development Of Custom Wall-Less Cardiovascular Flow Phantoms With Tissue-Mimicking Gel, Megan Laughlin, Sam E. Stephens, Jamie A. Hestekin, Morten O. Jensen

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose

Flow phantoms are used in experimental settings to aid in the simulation of blood flow. Custom geometries are available, but current phantom materials present issues with degradability and/or mimicking the mechanical properties of human tissue. In this study, a method of fabricating custom wall-less flow phantoms from a tissue-mimicking gel using 3D printed inserts is developed.

Methods

A 3D blood vessel geometry example of a bifurcated artery model was 3D printed in polyvinyl alcohol, embedded in tissue-mimicking gel, and subsequently dissolved to create a phantom. Uniaxial compression testing was performed to determine the Young’s moduli of the five gel …

Characterization, Design, And Optimization Of Dual-Purpose Wind Turbines And Frost Protection Fans, Ethan Narad

Master's Theses

This thesis report outlines the creation of a MATLAB tool to design reversible machines that can function as both wind turbines and as agricultural frost protection fans. Frost protection fans are used to prevent crop loss during radiative freeze events during which a temperature inversion is present. Such a dual-purpose machine fundamentally has the constraint that it must use symmetric airfoils, so a suite of tools for automatically designing an optimized wind turbine blade with symmetric airfoils using the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) theory approach is presented. The BEM code is then re-derived and adapted for use with a frost …

Integration Of Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy For Multichannel Cell Culture Measurement, Conard Chan

Master's Theses

ELECTROCHEMICAL IMPEDANCE SPECTROSCOPY (EIS) has been widely used to study the electrical properties of biological material due to its non-invasive nature and experimental reliability. However, most of the precision impedance analyzers used in EIS only provide single- or two-channel measurements which are inadequate for larger-scale multiplexed measurements, such as those found in modern microfluidic cell culture experiments. The Biomedical Microsystems Laboratory has developed a 16-channel cell culture platform with integrated electrode arrays for monitoring cell growth and electrical properties (i.e., the so-called “electrical phenotype”). In this paper, a system consisting of a 16-channel solid-state analog multiplexer (MUX)paired with a low-cost, …

Surface Modified Hybrid Znsno3 Nanocubes For Enhanced Piezoelectric Power Generation And Wireless Sensory Application, Sk Md Ali Zaker Shawon, Zaida D. Carballo, Valeria Suarez Vega, Chen Lin, Muhammad Sufian Rafaqut, Andrew Xu Sun, James Li, Mohammed J. Uddin

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Chemistry)

Piezoelectric Nanogenerators (PENGs), which can convert ambient mechanical stimuli into electrical energy, are held in high regard due to their cost-effectiveness, energy harvesting applications, and potential as self-powered sensors. We report an aluminum-doped zinc stannate (ZnSnO3) PENG that can achieve high electrical outputs with respect to the external force. In order to enrich the piezoelectric mechanics, a low-temperature solution method was adopted in our work to synthesize ZnSnO3 nanocubes with an average side length of only 30 – 55 nm. Furthermore, ZnSnO3 was doped with 1 wt% to 5 wt% of aluminum nanoparticles. We report that 2 wt% of aluminum …

Development Of Zinc Oxide/Hydroxyapatite/Poly(D,L-Lactic Acid) Fibrous Scaffold For Tissue Engineering Applications, Victoria Padilla-Gainza, Heriberto Rodríguez-Tobías, Graciela Morales, Antonio Ledezma-Pérez, Carmen Alvarado-Canché, Raúl Loera-Valencia, Cristóbal Rodríguez, Robert Gilkerson, Carlos Trevino De Leo, Karen Lozano

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Scaffolds based on polymeric fibers represent an engaging biomedical device due to their particular morphology and similarity with extracellular matrices. The biggest challenge to use fibrous materials in the biomedical field is related to their favorable platform for the adhesion of pathogenic microorganisms. Therefore, their optimum performance not only depends on their bioactive potential but also on their antimicrobial properties. The aim of this work was the design of antimicrobial (zinc oxide, ZnO) and bioactive (hydroxyapatite, Hap) fibrous materials using poly(D, L-lactic acid) (PDLLA) as the polymer fiber substrate. Fiber based composite scaffolds were developed using the Forcespinning® technique. For …

A Synergic Quantum Particle Swarm Optimisation For Constrained Combinatorial Test Generation, Xu Guo, Xiaoyu Song, Jian-Tao Zhou

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Combinatorial testing (CT) can efficiently detect failures caused by interactions of parameters of software under test. The CT study has undergone a transition from traditional CT to constrained CT, which is crucial for real-world systems testing. Under this scenario, constrained covering array generation (CCAG), a vital combinatorial optimisation issue targeted with constructing a test suite of minimal size while properly addressing constraints, remains challenging in CT. To the authors’ best knowledge, this paper presents a synergic method first based on quantum particle swarm optimisation (QPSO) for the CCAG problems. Three auxiliary strategies, including contraction-expansion coefficient adaptive change strategy, differential evolution …

Novel Fabrication Of Silver-Coated Copper Nanowires With Organic Compound Solution, Suhyun Lee, Chien Wern, Sung Yi

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Copper nanowires and Cu-Ag nanowires have various potential applications, such as transparent conductive film, flexible electronics, and conductive filler. In this study, we developed a new green fabrication method for silver-coated copper nanowires using methylsulfonylmethane (DMSO2), which is an environmentally friendly chemical at the food-grade level, to replace toxic chemicals, including ammonia, in the silver coating process. Copper nanowires were synthesized under various reaction temperatures and concentrations of hydrazine (N2H4), ethylenediamine (EDA), sodium hydroxide (NaOH), and copper precursor. The reaction temperature higher than 70 C caused the oxidation of copper products and evaporation of the sample solution. The optimal conditions …

Neural Control Of Stopping And Stabilizing The Arm, Shanie A. L. Jayasinghe, Robert A. Scheidt, Robert L. Sainburg

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Stopping is a crucial yet under-studied action for planning and producing meaningful and efficient movements. In this review, we discuss classical human psychophysics studies as well as those using engineered systems that aim to develop models of motor control of the upper limb. We present evidence for a hybrid model of motor control, which has an evolutionary advantage due to division of labor between cerebral hemispheres. Stopping is a fundamental aspect of movement that deserves more attention in research than it currently receives. Such research may provide a basis for understanding arm stabilization deficits that can occur following central nervous …

The Utilization Of Algae And Seaweed Biomass For Bioremediation Of Heavy Metal-Contaminated Wastewater, Hussein Znad, Md Rabiul Awual, Sri Martini

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The presence of heavy metals in water bodies is linked to the increasing number of industries and populations. This has serious consequences for the quality of human health and the environment. In accordance with this issue, water and wastewater treatment technologies including ion exchange, chemical extraction, and hydrolysis should be conducted as a first water purification stage. However, the sequestration of these toxic substances tends to be expensive, especially for large scale treatment methods that require tedious control and have limited efficiency. Therefore, adsorption methods using adsorbents derived from biomass represent a promising alternative due to their great efficiency and …

Low-Cost Solar Collectors To Pre-Heat Ventilation Air In Broiler Houses, Yi Liang, Michael Janorschke, Chad E. Hayes

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The objective of the study was to evaluate the effect of a low-cost solar collector to pre-heat ventilation air in commercial broiler buildings on supplemental heating demand and air quality during the cold season. Six black fabric-based solar collectors of 36 m(2) each were installed on the south-facing rooftop of a broiler house. The solar collectors provided fresh warm air into the house during the ON cycle of minimum ventilation and during the OFF cycle of minimum ventilation when the temperature under the collectors met certain criteria. The daily cumulative duration of solar collectors in operation averaged 125 and 133 …

Forming A Decentralized Research Network: Ds4h, Eni̇s Karaarslan, Meli̇h Bi̇ri̇m, Hüseyi̇n Emre Ari

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

There is a trend toward decentralized systems, but these systems are developed without conducting enough software tests. Also, the performance, scalability, and sustainability of the decentralized systems are not taken into account. One of the reasons is the time-consuming testing process. The other is the hardware requirements and the complexity of the software installations of the testing environment. Developer communities need stable and secure research networks to test and develop prototypes before releasing the working versions. Cloud-based blockchain test networks are available, but it allows using a specific framework. Also, users are required to learn how to use each framework. …

Blocksim-Net: A Network-Based Blockchain Simulator, Prashanthi Ramachandran, Nandini Agrawal, Osman Bi̇çer, Alpteki̇n Küpçü

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Since its proposal by Eyal and Sirer (CACM '13), selfish mining attacks on proof-of-work blockchains have been studied extensively. The main body of this research aims at both studying the extent of its impact and defending against it. Yet, before any practical defense is deployed in a real world blockchain system, it needs to be tested for security and dependability. However, real blockchain systems are too complex to conduct any test on or benchmark the developed protocols. Instead, some simulation environments have been proposed recently, such as BlockSim (Maher et al., SIGMETRICS Perform. Eval. Rev. '19), which is a modular …

Block Size Optimization For Pow Consensus Algorithm Based Blockchainapplications By Using Whale Optimization Algorithm, Betül Aygün, Hi̇lal Arslan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Blockchain-based applications come up with cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, introducing a distributed ledger technologies for peer-to-peer networks and essentially records the transactions in blocks containing hash value of the previous blocks. Block generation constitutes the basis of this technology, and the optimization of such systems is among the most crucial concerns. Determining either the block size or the number of transactions in the block brings out a remarkable problem that has been solved by the miners in recent years. First, higher block size results in higher transaction time, on the other hand, smaller block size has many disadvantages such as security, …

Tri-Op Redactable Blockchains With Block Modification, Removal, And Insertion, Mohammad Sadeq Dousti, Alpteki̇n Küpçü

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In distributed computations and cryptography, it is desirable to record events on a public ledger, such that later alterations are computationally infeasible. An implementation of this idea is called blockchain, which is a distributed protocol that allows the creation of an immutable ledger. While such an idea is very appealing, the ledger may be contaminated with incorrect, illegal, or even dangerous data, and everyone running the blockchain protocol has no option but to store and propagate the unwanted data. The ledger is bloated over time, and it is not possible to remove redundant information. Finally, missing data cannot be inserted …

Performance Analysis Of Lightweight Internet Of Things Devices On Blockchainnetworks, Cem Kösemen, Gökhan Dalkiliç, Şafak Öksüzer

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Potential integration or cooperation of the Internet of things (IoT) systems and the blockchain technology is nowadays attracting remarkable interest from the researchers. These inter-operating systems often have to rely on lowcost, low-power, and robust IoT devices that can communicate with the blockchain network through smart contracts. In this work, we designed and ran a benchmark study for ESP32-based lightweight IoT devices interacting within the Quorum blockchain. A software library was built for ESP32 devices to enable elliptic-curve digital signing, Keccak-256 hashing, decoding, encoding, and secure private key generation capabilities, which all are the basic functional requirements for running a …

Assessment Of Protection Offered By The Nrf2 Pathway Against Hyperoxia-Induced Acute Lung Injury In Nrf2 Knockout Rats, Said H. Audi, Elizabeth R. Jacobs, Taheri Pardis, Swetha Ganesh, Anne V. Clough

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (Nrf2) is a redox-sensitive transcription factor that responds to oxidative stress by activating expressions of key antioxidant and cytoprotective enzymes via the Nrf2-antioxidant response element (ARE) signaling pathway. Our objective was to characterize hyperoxia-induced acute lung injury (HALI) in Nrf2 knock-out (KO) rats to elucidate the role of this pathway in HALI. Adult Nrf2 wildtype (WT), and KO rats were exposed to room air (normoxia) or >95% O₂ (hyperoxia) for 48 h, after which selected injury and functional endpoints were measured in vivo and ex vivo. Results demonstrate that the Nrf2-ARE signaling pathway …

Modeling Data And Reactor Data Associated With The Design, Modeling, And Testing Of The Pressurized Oxy-Coal (Poc) Reactor, Bradley R. Adams, Andrew R. Fry, Dale R. Tree

ScholarsArchive Data

Data files in the zipped folders below contain research and development information related to the design, modeling, construction and testing of a pressurized, dry feed, oxy-coal reactor at Brigham Young University between 2016 and 2021. The reactor is a once-through system that includes a pressurized dry-coal feed system, a slagging combustion reactor, a spray quench and tube and shell heat exchanger for gas cooling, a cyclone particle collector, and gas depressurization and dilution system. The system is operated with an OPTO22 control system and includes instrumentation to measure gas and wall temperature profiles, radiative heat flux profiles (indicative of flame …

Essai Sur Le Terrain Du Mini Pipe Strain Meter Du Jniosh Comme Système D’Alerte De Sécurité Lors Des Travaux En Tranchée, André Lan, Bertrand Galy, Satoshi Tamate, Tomohito Hori, Nabutaka Hiraoka

Rapports de recherche scientifique

Les travaux en tranchée exposent les travailleurs à de nombreux risques. Le risque d'effondrement est le plus important et le plus fréquent lors de tels travaux, mais il est malheureusement très souvent sous-estimé, car même un effondrement mineur ou partiel de moins de 1 m3 de sol peut mortellement blesser un travailleur. L'analyse de 59 rapports de la Commission des normes, de l'équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) concernant des accidents graves et mortels survenus lors de travaux d'excavation et en tranchée réalisés entre juin 1973 et mai 2015 montre qu'il y a eu 51 …

Field Test Of The Jniosh Mini Pipe Strain Meter As A Safety Alert System During Trench Work, André Lan, Bertrand Galy, Satoshi Tamate, Tomohito Hori, Nabutaka Hiraoka

Rapports de recherche scientifique

Les travaux en tranchée exposent les travailleurs à de nombreux risques. Le risque d'effondrement est le plus important et le plus fréquent lors de tels travaux, mais il est malheureusement très souvent sous-estimé, car même un effondrement mineur ou partiel de moins de 1 m3 de sol peut mortellement blesser un travailleur. L'analyse de 59 rapports de la Commission des normes, de l'équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) concernant des accidents graves et mortels survenus lors de travaux d'excavation et en tranchée réalisés entre juin 1973 et mai 2015 montre qu'il y a eu 51 …