Engineering Commons^™

Development Of A Hydrometallurgical Process For The Extraction Of Cobalt, Manganese, And Nickel From Acid Mine Drainage Treatment Byproduct, Alejandro Agudelo Mira

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Critical minerals (CMs) are defined as crucial elements for the country's economy due to the development of new cutting-edge applications and the risk of an eventual disruption in their supply chain. The unique chemical and physical properties of the CMs have made these elements decisive in the growth of industries such as telecommunications, army, medicine, Aerospace, etc. In 2022, the US Geological Survey established a list of 50 CMs, including manganese, cobalt, nickel, aluminum, magnesium, and others. Of the total of CMs, 26 are 100% imported from outside the United States (Venditti, 2022).

Driven by the ever-increasing demand for critical …

Analysis Of The Brittle Failure Mechanism Of Underground Stone Mine Pillars By Implementing Numerical Modeling In Flac3d, Rosbel Jimenez

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The room and pillar mining method is the most commonly utilized method for extracting minerals found in flat-lying stratiform, and it has been used in the majority of underground stone mines in the United States (Esterhuizen et al., 2011), as a consequence, it is a primary topic of study in the mining field. If a set or layout of pillars is unstable, it can cause a major collapse, resulting in not only the destruction of the underground mine, but also air blast, subsidence, and convergence of the mine opening, especially if they occur in a short period of time (Esterhuizen …

Blowdown Wastewater Co-Treatment With Produced Water For Resource Recovery: Moving Towards Zero Liquid Discharge And Sustainable Waste Management, Mohammad Hafez Ahmed

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Cooling of low-pressure steam and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) process at coal-fired powerplants often require large quantities of freshwater and can generate waste streams from the blowdown (BD) operations. Treating these wastewaters for reuse can offset the freshwater demand, which is beneficial especially in semiarid and arid regions. However, the traditional treatment (i.e., chemical softening and evaporation) of cooling BD water (BDW) is chemical- and energy-intensive and adds to the overall costs of water management for powerplants. Furthermore, the updated Effluent Limitation Guidelines and Standards for powerplants set forth by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) …

Spatio-Temporal Deep Learning Approaches For Addressing Track Association Problem Using Automatic Identification System (Ais) Data, Md Asif Bin Syed

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In the realm of marine surveillance, track association constitutes a pivotal yet challenging task, involving the identification and tracking of unlabelled vessel trajectories. The need for accurate data association algorithms stems from the urge to spot unusual vessel movements or threat detection. These algorithms link sequential observations containing location and motion information to specific moving objects, helping to build their real-time trajectories. These threat detection algorithms will be useful when a vessel attempts to conceal its identity. The algorithm can then identify and track the specific vessel from its incoming signal. The data for this study is sourced from the …

Probabilistic Short Term Solar Driver Forecasting With Neural Network Ensembles, Joshua Daniell

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Commonly utilized space weather indices and proxies drive predictive models for thermosphere density, directly impacting objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO) by influencing atmospheric drag forces. A set of solar proxies and indices (drivers), F_10.7, S_10.7, M_10.7, and Y_10.7, are created from a mixture of ground based radio observations and satellite instrument data. These solar drivers represent heating in various levels of the thermosphere and are used as inputs by the JB2008 empirical thermosphere density model. The United States Air Force (USAF) operational High Accuracy Satellite Drag Model (HASDM) relies on JB2008, and …

Framework For Data Acquisition And Fusion Of Camera And Radar For Autonomous Vehicle Systems, Clay Edward Vincent

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The primary contribution is the development of the data collection testing methodology for autonomous driving systems of a hybrid electric passenger vehicle. As automotive manufacturers begin to develop adaptive cruise control technology in vehicles, progress is being made toward the development of fully-autonomous vehicles. Adaptive cruise control capability is classified into five levels defined by the Society of Automotive Engineering. Some vehicles under development have attained higher levels of autonomy, but the focus of most commercial development is Level 2 autonomy. As the level of autonomy increases, the sensor technology becomes more advanced with a sensor suite which includes radar, …

Machine Learning For Biosensors, Gayathri Anapanani

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Biosensors have become increasingly popular as diagnostic tools due to their ability to detect and quantify biological analytes in a wide range of applications. With the growing demand for faster and more reliable biosensing devices, machine learning has become a valuable tool in enhancing biosensor performance. In this report, we review recent progress in the application of machine learning to biosensors. We discuss the potential benefits of using machine learning in biosensors, including improved sensitivity, selectivity, and accuracy. We also discuss the various machine learning techniques that have been applied to biosensors, including data preprocessing, feature extraction, and classification and …

Multimaterial, Core-Shell Direct Ink Writing Of Flexible Strain Sensors For Pneumatically-Actuated Soft Robotic Hinge Joints, John Michael Burke

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Direct ink writing (DIW) provides for an expansive material library and the ability to print multiple materials with tailored functionalities in a controllable and single-step process. Particularly beneficial is the net shape printing under ambient conditions of a wide range of materials normally incompatible with one another. Coaxial DIW is a 3D printing technique that allows for two dissimilar inks to be extruded simultaneously in a co-flow manner. In this work, custom-designed coaxial nozzles were 3D-printed using a stereolithography printer. Composite inks comprised of thermoplastic polyurethane and silver were developed and studied. The coaxial nozzles were then used to co-extrude …

Accessing The Relative Sustainability Of Point-Of-Use Water Disinfection Technologies Through Costs And Environmental Impacts, Bright C. Elijah

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

According to the World Health Organization, 785 million people lack access to basic drinking water facilities, and 144 million people rely on surface water which is prone to microbial contamination. Point-of-use (POU) water disinfection technologies can be adopted to help address these issues by treating water at the household level; however, navigating various POU disinfection technologies for a given water source or location can be difficult. While numerous conventional POU technologies exist (e.g., boiling water, POU chlorination), new emerging POU technologies (e.g., using novel materials or advanced processes) have been coined by developers to be lower cost with higher treatment …

Owasp Zap Vs Snort For Sqli Vulnerability Scanning, Christopher Kalaani

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Web applications are important to protect from threats that will compromise sensitive information. Web vulnerability scanners are a prominent tool for this purpose, as they can be utilized to find vulnerabilities in a web application to be rectified. Two popular open-source tools were compared head-to-head, OWASP ZAP and Snort. The performance metrics evaluated were SQLi attacks detected, false positives, false negatives, processing time, and memory usage. OWASP ZAP yielded fewer false positives and had less processing time. Snort used significantly fewer memory resources. The internal workings of ZAP’s Active Scan feature and Snort’s implementation of the Boyer-Moore and Aho-Corasick algorithms …

Cardiomyocyte-Specific Modified Mrna For Myocardial Regeneration In A Porcine Myocardial Infarction Model, Jiacheng Sun

All ETDs from UAB

The inability of adult mammalian cardiomyocytes (CMs) to undergo cell renewal following ischemic injury stands as a major impediment to heart function recovery and contributes to heart failure (HF). Current therapeutic approaches do not offer an effective approach of reactivating CM cell division to prevent HF in humans. Recognizing this challenge, gene therapy has emerged as a promising approach to promote CM proliferation and enhance cardiac repair. A particularly notable approach is the utilization of modified mRNA (modRNA), which provides a safe, controlled, transient, non-viral, and clinically relevant means of gene delivery. The study was conducted using a novel cardiomyocyte …

Moment-Based Reinforcement Learning For Ensemble Control, Yao-Chi Yu, Vignesh Narayanan, Jr-Shin Li

Publications

Problems involving controlling the collective behavior of a population of structurally similar dynamical systems, the so-called ensemble control, arise in diverse emerging applications and pose a grand challenge in systems science and control engineering. Owing to the severely under-actuated nature and the difficulty of placing large-scale sensor networks, ensemble systems are limited to being actuated and monitored at the population level. Moreover, mathematical models describing the dynamics of ensemble systems are often elusive. Therefore, it is essential to design broadcast controls that excite the entire population in such a way that the heterogeneity in system dynamics are robustly compensated. In …

Mechanisms Linking The Circadian Clock To Cardiac Physiology, Lamario J. Williams

All ETDs from UAB

Rationale: Cardiovascular disease continues to be the leading cause of death in America. Many aspects of both cardiovascular physiology (e.g., blood pressure, heart rate) and pathophysiology (e.g., myocardial infarctions, sudden cardiac death) exhibit time-of-day dependent fluctuations (termed diurnal variations). Circadian clocks consist of transcriptional feedback cascades directly modulating expression of genes involved in processes such as metabolism, signaling, and ion transport. Interestingly, genetic deletion of a core circadian clock component in the heart (cardiomyocyte-specific Bmal1 knockout mice) leads to chronic induction of the transcriptional repressor E4 Promoter-Binding Protein 4 (E4BP4) associated with early-onset dilated cardiomyopathy, metabolic inflexibility, and electrophysiologic disturbances. …

Analysis Of Correlation Between Molecular Weight Distribution And Melt Flow Index Of Polyethylene And Polypropyle Blends, Ethan Stonecipher

All ETDs from UAB

Recycling of plastics is one of the biggest challenges facing the earth in the 21st century due to the environmental impact they have on the waste stream. One of the biggest challenges in the recycling of these materials are their incompatibility; therefore, the segregation of waste in order to repurpose them back into something useful for a second life is an important barrier to overcome. This study expands on work done in literature to correlate rheological properties of linear virgin plastics to their ��w, which is useful in deducing some mechanical behaviors of the material. The benefit being the impact …

Enhancing Community Resiliency With Big Data And Machine Learning: Property Damage And Flood Forecasting During Hurricanes, Mujungu Lawrence Museru

All ETDs from UAB

Globally, coastal communities face significant vulnerability to the risks and impacts of flooding. This study addresses two critical aspects of flood management: enhanced flood damage assessment and coastal flooding prediction. Traditional flood damage modeling techniques have limitations, and the availability of comprehensive datasets is limited. The first part addresses these challenges. Multivariable machine learning models are applied to enhance flood damage assessment. A comprehensive dataset is developed by combining the Alabama property dataset with the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims dataset from Hurricane Katrina. Spatial varying datasets are added to enhance the comprehensiveness of NFIP dataset and oversampling techniques …

Inkjet-Printed Reseroir Computing Network For In Situ Sensor Predictions, Steven D. Gardner

All ETDs from UAB

The technological achievements made with silicon-based transistors have led to nearly all the computing seen today, complete with benefits such as maximized operating speeds, parallel/tensor processing, minimized power overhead, etc. The silicon electronics industry is foundational to scientific progression with its profound impact on modeling, simulations, and fast/reliable computing. However, silicon-based transistors have evolved to meet their physical limitations and have saturated fields of innovation. New fields in computing outside of silicon-based methods have emerged as exotic materials enter the research domain. The suite of super-performing materials like Graphene, Carbon Nanotubes, and Molybdenum Disulfide have chaotic, non-linear behaviors that make …

The Effects Of Alzheimer's Disease-Associated Variants And Ligands On The Structure And Function Of Trem2, Hunter Byron Dean

All ETDs from UAB

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a devastating, complex form of dementia. Contributions from genetics make up almost 70% of a person’s risk of developing AD, but the mechanisms by which this occurs are not well understood. Attempts to tease apart the risk contributions from individual genes have identified lipid processing and activation of innate immunity as convergent pathways for many of the known genetic risk factors. One of the strongest known risk factors, TREM2, codes for a transmembrane receptor that activates a protective immune response when it detects bound lipids. Variants in TREM2 that control AD risk have been identified, but …

Unveiling The Commuting Experience Of An Urban University Community, Jannatul Adan Joarder

All ETDs from UAB

Conducting a comprehensive commuter survey is a prevalent task that can help to guide traffic operations, planning, designing, and infrastructure development decision. It is one of the best approaches to comprehending commuters’ attitudes and preferences and the present commuting practices. The commuting behavior of the commuters at and around a university campus varies from that of residential or commercial areas as the university often serves a diverse community of transportation users such as students, faculty, and staff who serve the university or receive services from the university in a variety of ways. The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is …

Improved Myocardial Infarct Repair Via Cardiac Tissue Engineering And Modified Rna, Lu Wang

All ETDs from UAB

Cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of death in the United States and the world. Myocardial infarction (MI) happens when there is an occlusion in the blood vessel. Cardiomyocytes (CM) die quickly after MI and are replaced by a fibrotic scar. Since adult mammalian cardiomyocytes have a limited capacity to regenerate, the damages induced by MI usually deteriorate into more severe symptoms such as heart failure. In order to achieve regeneration of the cardiomyocytes, numerous therapies have been proposed, including cellular therapy and CM cell cycle re-entry. During this dissertation study, we focused on improving myocardial infarct repair via cardiac …

Impacts Of Transportation Network Companies On Urban Congestion In A Medium-Sized City, Furat Shakir Salman

All ETDs from UAB

The rise of ride-hailing and on-demand transportation services offered by Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) (such as Uber and Lyft) has been one of the key factors contributing to the growth of shared mobility services in recent years. The presence of contradictory findings on the impacts of TNCs necessitates the undertaking of an investigation into the shifts in mode choice that occur in the context of TNC services and their impacts on urban congestion. As a result of difficulties in gathering TNCs field data, it is still not possible to fully assess the impact of these services on urban congestion. Moreover, …

Development And Evaluation Of A Nanomatrix Coated Stent Using A Vascular Sheet With Atherosclerosis Model, Xixi Zhang

All ETDs from UAB

While cardiovascular stent technology has considerable advances, there are hurdles to overcome due to the dysfunctional stented arteries which fail to maintain vascular homeostasis. Current stent designs ignored the significance of promoting functional artery healing (pro-healing). Therefore, we developed a pro-healing nanomatrix coating for stent. Previous studies investigated its effect on individual vascular cell type. In natural artery, there are multiple vascular cell types that strongly affect stent performance. Thus, an in vitro vascular double-layer (VDL) system was used to observe stent effects on different vascular cell types. And the pro-healing ability and mechanism of the nanomatrix coated stent were …

A Cold Plasma-Enabled Reduction Process For The Fabrication Of Metallic Nanostructures Onto Polymeric Biomaterials, Gerardo Hernández Moreno

All ETDs from UAB

The design and manufacture of novel materials has served as the bedrock for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. There exists a need for more biocompatible implantable materials in the biomedical device space. The approach to developing biomaterials fit for biomedical devices has been focused on decreasing overall physiological interaction with the local environment. However, the development of more biomechanically favorable materials has placed an emphasis on designing materials that display biomimetic and biomechanical properties resembling that of the host tissue at the implant site. As biomaterials engineering has progressed, the race to find materials that interact at the nano- and …

Analytical Methods Using Cardiac Mri To Assess Systolic And Diastolic Ventricular Function, Muhammad Rifqi Aufan

All ETDs from UAB

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has proven invaluable for clinical and research investigations due to its minimal invasiveness and excellent measurement precision and reproducibility. In particular, Cardiac MRI (CMR) is a powerful tool for evaluating anatomical and functional properties of the left ventricle (LV). In this study, two aspects of CMR applications of the LV are investigated: 1) assessment of diastolic function by quantifying LV stiffness index and related properties as a representation of intrinsic myocardium properties in patients with diastolic dysfunction and 2) evaluation of systolic function by relating myocardial strain and LV geometrical configuration with ejection fraction (EF). The …

Processing And Non-Destructive Evaluation Of Overmolded Thermoplastic Composites, Ibrahim Gundogdu

All ETDs from UAB

The overmolding process is one of the newly developed composite processing methods which allow to integrate continuous and discontinuous fiber reinforced composites for weight and cost reduction for a variety of applications. Continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastics (CFRTs) exhibit excellent mechanical properties such as high impact strength and stiffness, however forming them into complex shapes is challenging and the processing cost is high. On the other hand, the processing of discontinuous fiber reinforced composites, including long fiber reinforced thermoplastics (LFTs), into complex shapes is relatively easy compared to continuous fiber composites because of their high processibility. The integration of both continuous …

Flexural Behavior Of Composite Frp-Concrete-Steel Poles, Krenar Krasniqi

All ETDs from UAB

A new composite pole is being developed. The pole consists of an outer fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) shell, inside steel tube, and concrete filled between the two tubes (The composite FRP-concrete-steel pole is hereafter referred to as CFCSP). The FRP tube used in this research is produced using a centrifugal casting technique with glass-fibers oriented in the longitudinal and hoop direction. The longitudinal fibers provide flexural resistance to the section, whereas the hoop fibers confine the concrete and give shear resistance to the pole. The steel tube acts as longitudinal reinforcement, and the concrete is confined by the two tubes. …

Automated Structural Health Monitoring Of Pavements Using Google Street View Images, Ebisidor Jeremiah Agberebi

All ETDs from UAB

The Department of Transportation traditionally employed a structural health monitoring approach that involved training personnel to report the existing conditions of roadways. However, this approach is accompanied by huge costs that range from onboarding, vehicular equipment & maintenance cost, environmental costs from CO2 emission, safety costs, and the cost of errors made by personnel as each inspector would exercise his/ her discretion in analyzing the condition of the roadway. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a more efficient and effective approach to SHM. The incorporation of google street view images [‘GSV’ a Google roadway street data repository, with high-resolution images], …

Conceptual Architecture For Digital Twin Implementation In A Smart City Framework, Wesley Conwell

All ETDs from UAB

More than 9 billion people are expected to live on the planet in 2050, about two-thirds in cities. This substantial population growth in urban areas increases demands on cities' resources, services, and infrastructure. Hence, many cities leverage intelligent technologies to ensure urban communities' efficiency in integrating massive infrastructure components and services. Cities define this reconstruction of their operational framework as a smart city. Effective resource consumption management in a smart city integrative structure presents a problem with solutions concerning the distribution of city services. This dissertation aims to establish a conceptual framework to effectively manage resource consumption in a smart …

Breast Cancer Metastasic Potential Mediated By Cd44/Hyaluronic Acid Signaling And Strains In The Tumor Microenvironment, Adam David Kotar

All ETDs from UAB

Mechanical stimulation has been found to be an important regulator of nearly all biological processes, from maintaining normal homeostatic conditions to promoting pathological mechanisms of multiple diseases including cancer. While our knowledge of cancer continues to grow, our current models often lack the biophysical forces that are present in the body which could explain why numerous promising therapeutic agents discovered in research fail to translate into clinical efficacy. This study aims to demonstrate that breast cancer progression is mediated by strains in the tumor microenvironment (TME) in conjunction with trans-membranous glycoprotein receptor, CD44. There are many different sources of strain …

Creating Cool And Equitable Communities: A Comprehensive Study On Urban Heat Island Mitigation And Health Equity In Birmingham, Alabama, Bhuvana Sai Kumar Yandra

All ETDs from UAB

Abstract: Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) represent a severe hazard to people's health and quality of life, particularly in areas of cities with dense and at-risk populations. This integrative research aims to reduce the burden of UHIs caused by climate change and mitigate associated health risks and inequalities in Birmingham, Alabama. The study identifies areas most impacted by UHI effects and loss of vegetation and provides remediation strategies to combat these issues. In addition, the research expands to identify socioeconomically disadvantaged and health-vulnerable communities needing intervention to improve their quality of life. Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) trap heat, alter local climates …

Implications Of Physical Fault Injections On Single Chip Motes, Sara Faour, Mališa Vučinić, Filip Maksimovic, David Burnett, Paul Muhlethaler, Thomas Watteyne, Kristofer Pister

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Single-chip motes are wireless sensor nodes that integrate computation, communication, power and sensing on a single chip. We consider the security threats these novel devices are subject to when employed in safety-critical applications. Fault injection attacks are a prominent form of physical attacks that pose a threat to the normal and secure functioning of targeted devices, potentially compromising their intended behavior. These attacks have been studied mainly on commercial off-the-shelf devices which rely on external components such as crystal oscillators and passives. Such external components are absent from single-chip motes, resulting in a uniquely different attack surface compared to commercial …