Engineering Commons^™

What Is Engineering And Who Are Engineers? Student Reflections From A Sustainability-Focused Energy Course, Marissa H. Forbes, Susan M. Lord, Gordon D. Hoople, Diana A. Chen, Joel Alejandro Mejia

School of Engineering: Faculty Scholarship

In the spring of 2021, the University of San Diego’s Department of Integrated Engineering taught the course, “Integrated Approach to Energy”, the second offering of a new required course, to nine second-year engineering students. The sociotechnical course covered modern energy concepts, with an emphasis on renewable energies and sustainability, and it exposed the students to other ways of being, knowing, and doing that deviated from the dominant masculine Western White colonial discourse. Following the course completion, we interviewed five students by using a semistructured protocol to explore how they perceived of and communicated about engineers and engineering. We sought to …

Radically Efficient Cannabis Cultivation Facility Design, Jason Carpio, Jack Firestone, Clara Han, Griffin Lehman, Grace Qu, Ivy Yan

ENGS 89/90 Reports

As the legalization of cannabis continues to spread across the US, the electrical energy demand (kWh) from indoor cannabis cultivation is increasing at an alarming rate. Cannabis cultivators, including our sponsor, have rushed to retrofit facilities, quickly acquiring crucial grow room equipment, and harvesting products to meet product demand. Recently, new Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) type regulations by state cannabis regulators have aimed to address indoor cultivation practices and their electricity loads on local electric grids. Additionally, efficient equipment and expensive utility bills have motivated cultivators to lower their electrical energy consumption.

Our project goal is to increase the electrical …

Examining The Effects Of Synthetic Dye Yellow No. 5 (Tartrazine) Exposure On Mouse Neuro2a Neurons In Vitro, Jenna L. Farnum

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Yellow Dye No. 5, also known as tartrazine (TRZ), is widely used[1] and has an accepted daily intake (ADI) of 0-7.5 mg/kg of body weight per day^[2]. Consuming TRZ dosages greater than the ADI can lead to reduced levels of antioxidant enzymes in the brain, chromosomal alterations, or neuronal dendritic changes, [3, 4] which can result in oxidative stress, impaired neuronal functioning and potential mutagenic effects. Within the ADI, there have been observed reductions of the copper zinc superoxide dismutase-1 (SOD1) enzyme levels.[5]We hypothesize that TRZ interacts pre-translationally inside the cell, resulting in the reduction of SOD1 mRNA. …

Mesenchymal Stromal Cell And Chondrocyte Mobility In 3d Bioprinted Hydrogel Constructs, Alesia Lokshina

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a progressive cartilage degeneration disease with a complex pathologic mechanism. Although OA has devastating effects on patient quality of life and places a significant burden on the healthcare system, no disease-modifying drugs have been found, and surgical treatment options are often unsustainable. 3D bioprinting is a novel field within tissue engineering that focuses on developing biocompatible constructs that can be implanted to replace an organ or tissue. Such constructs have a great potential to become treatments for OA. Understanding cell mobility within hydrogels could play a vital role in advancing the development of biocompatible constructs. However, due …

Analysis Of Nozzle Expansion Characteristics In Supersonic Retro-Propulsion, Gonzalo Montoya

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Supersonic retro-propulsion (SRP) is defined as rocket propulsion used to decelerate aerospace vehicles at supersonic speed. SRP is often used as a method of high-speed deceleration on space vehicles. The main method of propulsion used in the application of SRP is rocket propulsion. Rocket engine thrust and performance changes with altitude and expansion ratio. Changing altitudes across the trajectory of a rocket affect how the exhaust plume shock waves expand. Being able to identify how different expansion ratios affect the exhaust plume flow fields would provide useful data on how SRP performance can be predicted. This research projects aims at …

Thermoforming Of Thin-Ply Composite Structures Via In-Situ Heating, Bojan Bijelic

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis investigates thermoforming of thin-ply thermoplastic composites via in-situ heating for in-space manufacturing applications. The proposed composite concept is based on combining conductive carbon nanotube (CNT) films and high-temperature thermoplastic matrix. The CNT film is made of randomly aligned carbon nanotubes, which possesses outstanding electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. When combined with polymer matrix, it becomes a multifunctional composite structure. The thermoplastic chosen is polyether ether ketone (PEEK), which is a semicrystalline high-performance thermoplastic that has exceptional physical and mechanical properties at high temperatures. The composite structure studied is consists of a layer of CNT film sandwiched between two …

Agile Research - Getting Beyond The Buzzword, Trupti Narayan Rane

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

"Oh yeah, we're an Agile shop, we gave up Waterfall years ago." - product owners, managers, or could be anyone else. You will seldom have a conversation with a product or software development team member without the agile buzzword thrown at you at the drop of a hat. It would not be an oversell to say that Agile software development has been adopted at a large scale across several big and small organizations. Clearly, Agile is an ideology that is working, which made me explore more on its applicability in research. As someone who has been in the Information Technology …

Blockchain-Based Digital Trust Mechanism: A Use Case Of Cloud Manufacturing Of Lds Syringes For Covid-19 Vaccination, Trupti Rane, Jingwei Huang

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Trust is essential in the digital world. It is a critical task to build digital trust for the ongoing digital engineering transformation. Aiming at developing a blockchain-based digital trust mechanism for Cloud Manufacturing or Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS), in this paper, we use the manufacturing of low dead space (LDS) medical syringes through Cloud Manufacturing as a motivating scenario to develop a basic framework. To meet the need of optimally saving COVID-19 vaccine doses to save more lives, the medical device manufacturing community needs to make a swift move to meet the surged need for LDS syringes. Cloud Manufacturing is a form …

Adapting The Human Factors Analysis And Classification System For Commercial Fishing Vessel Accidents, Peter Zohorsky, Holly Handley, Ronald Boring (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The commercial fishing industry is frequently described as one of the most hazardous occupations in the United States. The objective, to maximize the catch, is routinely challenged by a variety of elements due to the environment, the vessel, the crew, and how they interact with each other. This study developed and evaluated a version of Wiegmann and Shappell’s (2003) Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), specifically for commercial fishing industry vessels (HFACS-FV), using data from ten years of fatal fishing vessel accidents. For this study, the accident investigation information was converted into the HFACS-FV format by independent raters and …

A Primer On The Human Readiness Level Scale (Ansi/Hfes 400-2021), Kelly Steelman, Holly Handley, Katie Plant (Ed.), Gesa Praetorius (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

"The Human Readiness Level (HRL) Scale is a simple 9-level scale for evaluating, tracking, and communicating the readiness of a technology for safe and effective human use. It is modeled after the well-established Technology Readiness Level (TRL) framework that is used throughout the government and industry to communicate the maturity of a technology and to support decision making about technology acquisition. Here we (1) introduce the ANSI/HFES 400-2021 Standard that defines the HRL scale and (2) provide concrete examples of evaluation activities to support the application of HRLs in the development of automated driving systems."

Machine Learning In Requirements Elicitation: A Literature Review, Cheligeer Cheligeer, Jingwei Huang, Guosong Wu, Nadia Bhuiyan, Yuan Xu, Yong Zeng

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

A growing trend in requirements elicitation is the use of machine learning (ML) techniques to automate the cumbersome requirement handling process. This literature review summarizes and analyzes studies that incorporate ML and natural language processing (NLP) into demand elicitation. We answer the following research questions: (1) What requirement elicitation activities are supported by ML? (2) What data sources are used to build ML-based requirement solutions? (3) What technologies, algorithms, and tools are used to build ML-based requirement elicitation? (4) How to construct an ML-based requirements elicitation method? (5) What are the available tools to support ML-based requirements elicitation methodology? Keywords …

A Probabilistic Perspective Of Human-Machine Interaction, Mustafa Canan, Mustafa Demir, Samuel Kovacic

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Human-machine interaction (HMI) has become an essential part of the daily routine in organizations. Although the machines are designed with state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence applications, they are limited in their ability to mimic human behavior. The human-human interaction occurs between two or more humans; when a machine replaces a human, the interaction dynamics are not the same. The results indicate that a machine that interacts with a human can increase the mental uncertainty that a human experiences. Developments in decision sciences indicate that using quantum probability theory (QPT) improves the understanding of human decision-making than merely using classical probability theory (CPT). …

Theorizing The Initial Response Of Countries In Bringing Covid-19 Pandemic Under Control: The Effect Of Change Readiness Of Countries, M. Mahdi Moeini Gharagozloo, Farinaz Sabz Ali Pour, Chen Chen, Mozhgan Moeini Gharagozloo

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Pandemic crises can bring the biggest and deepest shocks to countries around the world. In the first quarter of 2020, a global pandemic named “COVID-19” spread all over the world and not only took so many lives and created so much fear but also brought a tremendous financial pain as a result of shutting down economies to fight with this unknown contagious virus. This paper examines how countries’ change readiness enables them to bring the spread of an international crisis under control. We propose that higher levels of change readiness would help countries to cope with risks and uncertainties generated …

What Makes An Expert? Characterizing Perceptions Of Expertise And Intuition Among Early-Career Engineers, Caroline Bolton

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to characterize if and how practicing engineers’ perceptions of expertise development, decision-making processes, and engineering intuition vary by aspects of identity, specifically gender and career stage. This thesis is built from ongoing work of the Miskioğlu group on the relationship between expertise and intuition in engineering. Intuition is a characteristic of experts used in decision-making, and the importance of experience in the development of expertise is well documented in literature. There is a gap around how intuition relates to experience, prompting the need to compare the perceptions of early career engineers and mid-to-late career engineers. This thesis …

Zips Racing Electric 2022 Brakes Subsystem Design, Nicholas Thomas

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project will include the design, manufacture, and assembly of the entire brakes subsystem for the Zips Racing Electric (ZRE) 2022 car. Goals of the brakes system include a lightweight, modular, machinable, and rigid design. The project will begin in the Fall semester with the design of the pedals and rotors as well as calculations to specify master cylinders, calipers, pads, etc. Software such as SolidWorks CAD, SolidWorks FEA, and Mastercam CAM will be employed. Next, the second semester will involve manufacturing or purchasing necessary components. Prototype pedals will be manufactured for physical testing.

The project will be completed individually. …

Effect Of Room Air Exposure On The Field Emission Performance Of Uv Light Irradiated Si-Gated Field Emitter Arrays, Ranajoy Bhattacharya, Mason Cannon, Rushmita Bhattacharjee, Jim Browning

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Field emission cathodes are promising candidates in nanoscale vacuum channel transistors and are used in microwave vacuum electron devices. Prior research has shown that UV light exposure as well as 350 °C vacuum bake can desorb water vapor from Si field emission tips, resulting in lower work function and improved emission performance. However, after long exposure to room air (greater than 24 h), the improved performance is lost as water adsorbs on the tips. In this study, experiments were carried on two sets of 1000 × 1000 Si-gated field emitter arrays to determine the length of time that emitters can …

Handwritten English Word Recognition Using A Deep Learning Based Object Detection Architecture, Riktim Mondal, Samir Malakar, Elisa H. Barney Smith, Ram Sarkar

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Handwriting is used to distribute information among people. To access this information for further analysis the page needs to be optically scanned and converted to machine recognizable form. Due to unconstrained writing styles along with connected and overlapping characters, handwriting recognition remains a challenging task. Most of the methods in the literature use lexicon-based approaches and train their models on large datasets having near 50 K word samples to achieve good results. This results in high computational requirements. While these models use around 50 K words in their dictionary when recognizing handwritten English text, the actual number of words in …

Predicting Radiated Emissions From A Cable Harness Through Component Level Tests, Fuwei Ma

Masters Theses

“In this work, a procedure is developed to predict the radiated emissions from a cable harness using component-level tests. Direct measurement on the engine control unit is utilized to accurately characterize the equivalent common mode source voltages and impedance associated with the device. The cable harness geometry is reduced using the equivalent cable bundle approach by lumping wires according to the source and load impedance compared with characteristic impedance of the harness, which dramatically reduces the measurement effort and allows practical 3D full-wave simulation of the radiated emissions. Radiated emissions are predicted from an engine control unit (ECU) and an …

Am Surface Roughness And Its Impact On Drag, Jackson Landry Chandler

Honors Academy

“The main goal of this thesis is to quantify additive manufacturing (AM) surface roughness, as a precursor to identifying its impact on unsteady transient flow properties. Experimental data using the Hirox optical microscopes and SEM imaging collected from the nylon and stainless-steel lattice structures contained an inherent level of surface roughness at the finer scale. Surface Roughness have a negative effect on additively manufactured materials and as such should be mitigated whenever possible. Surface roughness increases unwanted features such as the level of drag, skin friction, negative heat transfer/mass transfer properties, and other unwanted unsteady transitional flow characteristics. Though exceptions …

Atomistic-Continuum Membrane And Machine Learning Models For Two-Dimensional Materials, Upenda Yadav

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

“What could we do with layered structures with just the right layers?” asked Richard Feynman in his famous 1959 lecture, “There’s plenty of room at the bottom.” With the help of the amazing developments of the past several years, we are coming close to answering that question. In 2004, graphene was first isolated from graphite and only six short years later it won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Graphene is one atomic layer of Carbon, it is the thinnest and yet the strongest materials we have ever seen. It is 200 times stronger than its equivalent weight in steel and …

Ransombuster Iot: A Intrusion Detection And Dataset Creation Tool For Ransomware Attacks Within Iot Networks, Jackson M. Walker

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The proposed research follows the design-science guidelines(Hevner, 2004). This paper uses these design-science methods for developing the guidelines for the implementation of the proposed architecture, understanding previous research contributions, and evaluating of research. This paper proposes a network artifact for studying ransomware IoT intrusion detection techniques and offers a proposed network architecture to serve as a framework for creating a publicly available dataset for IoT research on ransomware.

Deepfakes: Ai Technology Of The Future, Hosanna Root

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Deepfakes technology’s danger stems from its ability to create realistic but fake synthesized media that people often identify as something that is real. With this powerful technology in the wrong hands, deepfakes can cause devastating havoc through information warfare, election campaign disruptions, and more, creating distrust in society. Disinformation is already rampant today, even without wide deployments of deepfakes, which is concerning given the fact that deepfakes’ nefarious full potentials are yet to be reached.

Cell Mechanics In Cardiovascular Disease And Electrospun Scaffold For Vascular Tissue Engineering, Alex Park Rickel

Dissertations and Theses

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. Atherosclerosis, one of the primary CVDs, is characterized as a chronic inflammatory disease. In the initial stages of atherosclerosis, there is a buildup of cholesterol and lipoproteins that triggers monocytes to enter the arterial wall and begin accumulating lipids. Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) begin to detach and migrate from the media toward the intima in a process known as phenotypic switching. Phenotypic switching transitions VSMCs from a contractile to synthetic phenotype and they gain the capacity for migration, proliferation, and secretion of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. Synthetic VSMCs experience …

Modeling And Simulation Of A Power Plant Boiler Including The Dynamics Of Swell And Shrink, Richard Perman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Renewables such as photovoltaics and wind turbines have seen consistent growth in markets across the globe. While renewables increase grid capacity and reduce the use of fossil fuels, their generation rates fluctuate subject to external factors. As the ratio of renewables to nonrenewables increases, so does variability of net load on intermediate and peaking power plants. Power plants with heat recovery steam generators (HRSG) constitute a significant proportion in these categories. There are several interconnected systems within HRSGs, including drum boilers which exhibit interesting transient phenomena known as swell and shrink. Improved understanding, dynamic modeling, and real-time simulation (RTS) of …

Flame-Generated Turbulence For Flame Acceleration And Detonation Transition, Rachel Hytovick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Detonations are a supersonic mode of combustion witnessed in a variety of applications, from next-generation propulsion devices to catastrophic explosions and the formation of supernovas. Detonations are typically initiated through the deflagration to detonation transition (DDT), a detailed process where a subsonic flame undergoes rapid acceleration increasing compressibility until a hotspot forms on the flame front inciting a detonation wave to form. Due to the complex nature of the phenomena, DDT is commonly investigated in three stages – (i) preconditioning, (ii) detonation onset, and (iii) wave propagation and stability. The research presented explores each of these stages individually, with a …

Design And Analysis Of A Foldable Propeller Blade, Annan Mashin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Deployable structures have made an immense impact in the engineering world. The concept of the deployable structure has been able to reduce costs and sizing limits across a variety of use cases. However, sizing and cost reduction are not the only reasons that deployable structures are prominent. There are unique propeller blades that have entered into the world of deployable structures, where the ability to be stowed away and deployed to a much larger diameter can increase launch flexibility, and the engine efficiencies of aircraft. Although, most of the deployable propeller blades that have been designed in studies have the …

Experimental And Computational Heat Transfer Study Of Sco2 Single Jet Impingement, John Richardson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The present study experimentally investigates the heat transfer capability of supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) single-jet impingement. The evaluated jet Reynolds number range is between 80,000 and 1,000,000, with a non-dimensional jet-to-target surface spacing of 2.8. CO2-impinging jet stagnation conditions were maintained at approximately 20 MPa and a temperature of 673 K for most experiments. The goal is to understand how changes in the aforementioned parameters influence heat transfer between the working fluid and the heated surface. Additionally, due to the elevated Reynolds numbers and difference in thermodynamic properties between air and CO2, air-derived impingement correlations may not be appropriate for …

Computational Modeling Of Respiratory Airflow In Human Distal Airways Using Hybrid Lung Model, Adnan Islam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A major challenge in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of the human respiratory system is the complex variation of geometric scale from the trachea to the peripheral airways. The current literature on image-based lung flow analysis is limited to a few (typically 5) generations beyond the trachea. Such studies, which are limited largely by computational intensity and computational cost, also have limited accuracy. In this study we propose a hybrid methodology that enables CFD analysis from the middle to the distal airways through to the alveolar level. A hybrid lung model is generated where the middle airways are reconstructed …

Detecting And Tracking Vulnerable Road Users' Trajectories Using Different Types Of Sensors Fusion, Zhongchuan Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Vulnerable road user (VRU) detection and tracking has been a key challenge in transportation research. Different types of sensors such as the camera, LiDAR, and inertial measurement units (IMUs) have been used for this purpose. For detection and tracking with the camera, it is necessary to perform calibration to obtain correct GPS trajectories. This method is often tedious and necessitates accurate ground truth data. Moreover, if the camera performs any pan-tilt-zoom function, it is usually necessary to recalibrate the camera. In this thesis, we propose camera calibration using an auxiliary sensor: ultra-wideband (UWB). USBs are capable of tracking a road …

Extreme-Pressure Ignition Studies Of Methane And Natural Gas With Co2 With Applications In Rockets And Gas Turbines, Cory Kinney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Although concerns about carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their impact on climate change has led to an increase in renewable energy electricity generation, natural gas power plants remain the dominant source of electricity generation in the United States. Until the capacity of renewable energy sources can meet growing electricity demand, natural gas power generation will likely remain an important source of electricity generation. Supercritical CO2 (sCO2) power generation cycles offer an alternative to traditional gas turbines by reusing and sequestering CO2 from the combustion process to prevent its release into the atmosphere. This study seeks to understand natural gas ignition …