Engineering Commons^™

Turning Farm Waste Into Energy: Pragmatic Approaches For Cleaner Midwestern American Communities, Rebecca Gaisie

Selected or Submitted Student Research Papers/Projects

Mismanagement of farm waste in the Midwest of the United States has resulted in significant methane emissions, water contamination, and public health concerns. The present manure management rules are still inconsistent, underfunded, and insufficient to motivate individuals to behave in a way that benefits the environment, despite increasing concerns about the environment. This policy study investigates anaerobic digestion as a potential means to convert waste into energy that could support rural and environmental development. Some of the problems with the federal and state legislation examined in this study under an EPI framework are a lack of incentives, inadequate technical support, …

Co2 Utilization For Cementitious Materials - A Review, Seongho Han, Jae Hong Kim, Rohitashva Kumar Singh, Surendra P. Shah

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This review examines methods for utilizing CO₂ in construction materials to reduce the carbon footprint of cement and concrete production. Key approaches include direct carbonation of calcium silicates through CO₂ curing, use of industrial by-products as supplementary cementitious materials activated by carbonation, production of alternative binders and aggregates via CO₂ treatment of waste materials, injection of CO₂ into fresh concrete mixtures, and use of CO₂-dissolved mixing water. Both academic research and emerging commercial technologies are covered. While these methods show promise for enhancing material properties and sequestering CO₂, challenges remain in optimizing …

Active Suspension System, Jens Clausen, Felix Derrouaz, Jacky Quan

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This thesis presents the design, development, and prototyping of an active suspension system intended for high-performance racing applications, with a focus on karting. The goal of the project was to create a geometrically active suspension capable of dynamically adjusting key parameters such as camber, caster, toe, and track width in real-time to improve grip, cornering stability, and overall vehicle performance.

The team conducted extensive research into suspension theory, customer needs, and existing industry solutions before developing a mechanical platform based on a Short-Long Arm (SLA) double wishbone configuration. Using linear actuators to introduce five degrees of freedom, the system was …

Introducing Apprentices To Brightspace, Peter O'Farrell

Case studies: Brightspace

Apprentice Tradespeople come to Bolton Street to study the theoretical aspect of their trades in blocks of 10 or 11 weeks. The 11-week block of learning includes 10 weeks of learning and 1 week of exams. The students have consistently given feedback that they find the 10 weeks quite busy with substantial amounts of new material to take in during the classes. These are NFC Level 6 students. The MAMF (Mechanical Automation Maintenance Fitter) apprentices taught in the School of Mechanical Engineering undertake a broad range of subject matter over a 35-hour college week, including technical drawing. There are sixteen …

Limbgod(Pat. Pending): Wearable Garment For Amputation Prevention, Naomi Choi Dpm, Mba, Phuc An Dinh Bs, Ms, Eric Lee Bs, Francois M. Lokenye Dpm

Posters

Approximately 1.6 million people in the U.S. have lower limb amputations, which is expected to double by 2050 (Wong et al.). Socio-economic factors: income, education, rural residency & race, impact amputation risk (Okesina et al.), with Black Americans 70% are more likely to undergo major lower limb amputations than white Americans, even after adjusting for care access & comorbidities (Feinglass et al., Holman et al., Regenbogen et al.). Within 5 years, up to 50% of first-time amputees require another amputation (Dilingham et al., Glaser et al.) & those with comorbidities face a 77% five-year mortality rate (Fortington et al.).

Development Of Sustainable Nano-Engineered Cementitious Composites Reinforced With Graphene Oxide From Invasive Seaweed, Steven Garcia, Will Weber, Noah Chun

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

This research explores the integration of graphene oxide (GO) derived from invasive sargassum seaweed into cementitious composites to enhance concrete performance while addressing critical environmental and sustainability challenges. With the dual goal of reducing the carbon footprint of cement and repurposing harmful sargassum blooms in Puerto Rico, the research investigates the viability of sargassum-derived GO (SGO) as a partial cement substitute in mortar mixes. The study is motivated by the urgent need to lower cement-related CO₂ emissions—currently contributing nearly 8% of global totals—and by the ecological and economic burdens caused by the accumulation of sargassum along coastlines. Graphene oxide, with …

Ai Diagnostic Tool For Covid-19 Severity, Hunter Lau, Ryan Lang, Aidan Furuhashi

Bioengineering Senior Theses

With the advent of COVID-19 pandemic global, healthcare systems were challenged with resource constraints plaguing hospital environments around the world with consequences that presented weaknesses in our healthcare system. This demonstrated the importance of triage in unprecedented scenarios. This project presents an integrated AI-driven diagnostic tool to predict the severity of COVID-19 cases using length of stay as an analog. By using clinical data and radiographic chest images, this project integrates a XGBoost clinical data model with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model utilizing chest CT images to create a comprehensive assessment of patient case severity through predicted length of …

2025- The Twenty-Ninth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the 29th Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 16-18, 2025. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Bridging Deterministic And Probabilistic Analysis For Dam Safety, Giselle Aviles

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

Dams play a critical role in water supply, flood control, energy generation, and infrastructure resilience. However, many existing dams face significant risks due to aging structures, evolving environmental conditions, and outdated design methodologies. These dams pose a danger to downstream populations, demanding greater attention to investment in measures to help reduce risks to public safety and economic assets. Traditional deterministic methods for dam stability assessments rely on static factors of safety (FS), often resulting in either overly conservative or underestimated designs. In this approach, engineers input known material properties, loads, and the dam's geometry into a single FS, which is …

Cob Structure Optimization For Oaxacan Community Center, Dana Johnson, Benjamin Lanzas, Alfonso Zepeda Perez

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

Oaxaca, Mexico is one of the most seismically active states in the country. Earthen-based structures are common in this area as well due to their cultural acceptance, affordability, and accessibility. However, due to the seismicity, these structures often face challenges related to durability. This project serves as an exploration, aimed at increasing the lifespan and resilience of cob construction. The design builds off of the work of GRUPEDSAC, a nonprofit focused on utilizing bioconstruction to provide structures for rural communities in Mexico. This thesis proposes the incorporation of a hybrid wall system that incorporates cob with timber framing, and is …

Pajaro River Levee Remedial Design For Climate Resiliency, Anna Krebs, Karina Martin, Olivia Leonardis

Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering Senior Theses

With climate change causing extreme weather events, low-income, underrepresented residents living in Pajaro, California need a more resilient flood mitigation solution because existing infrastructure– the Pajaro River Levee– has recently failed. A hydraulic analysis and overtopping analysis was performed to evaluate potential levee cross sections for a 1.7 mile stretch along the Pajaro River in California. These cross-sections were assessed based on both their material costs and ability to provide sufficient evacuation time.

Changes In The Western Flank Of The North Atlantic Subtropical High Since 1140 Ce: Extremes, Drivers, And Hydroclimatic Patterns, Joshua C. Bregy, Justin T. Maxwell, Scott M. Robeson, Grant L. Harley, Valerie Trouet

Publications

Summer circulation and moisture patterns in the Southeast United States are controlled by the position of the North Atlantic subtropical high. In a warming climate, the subtropical high is projected to strengthen and expand west, but there remains uncertainty regarding its variability and linkages to natural drivers. Here, we use a tree-ring network across the Southeast United States to reconstruct the relative intensity of the pressure gradient across the subtropical high’s western flank over the past 870 years. Variations in the flank’s position and the pressure gradient have been a major driver of the hydroclimate—including creating a Southeast-Caribbean moisture dipole—since …

L.G. Twidwell Fifty-Six Years Of Research A Summary, Larry G. Twidwell

Metallurgical & Materials Engineering

Larry G. Twidwell, D.Sc. is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at Montana Technological University. He has fifty-six years of experience in teaching and directing research in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at Montana Tech. Twidwell and his graduate students and coworkers have conducted research emphasizing extractive metallurgy and the application of extractive metallurgical engineering to the treatment of metallurgical wastes, process waters and byproducts. Four books, seventy-seven M.Sc. theses, one-hundred-thirty refereed publications and one hundred-eight national and international presentations have resulted from their research efforts. Twidwell has received several outstanding teacher/researcher awards during his tenure at …

Low-Complexity Pneumatic Assistive Device For Individuals Suffering From Hand Paralysis, Wilson Narducci, Giancarlo Raffaele, Noorullah Imran, Austin Grimes, Brandon Cianfaglione, Nitin Bhogaraju

Expo Student Presentations

2025 Spring Expo Video Essay Presentation

• Engineering

L2 Certification Rocket Launch, Seungyou Cho

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

The LOC 835 high-power rocket with J275W-12 motor at Argonia, KS, for L2 certification, was auspiciously launched and returned. J means the motor can exert 640-1280 Ns of impulse, which makes a sizeable propelling sound. Even though four main hindrances occurred from the construction to the launch, the issues were revised correctly. The rail button and the tracker were severe issues, so I devised the method of drilling a hole for the rail button, but there was no way to replace a broken tracker. The wind speed on the launch day was so strong that the rocket flew 1-2 miles …

A Novel Robotic Pedaling Paradigm To Improve Lower Limb Movement Post-Stroke, Tom S. Ruopp

Dissertations (1934 -)

Prior work in our lab revealed that while impaired paretic neuromuscular output contributes to movement difficulties post-stroke, compensation is more related to interlimb coordination (ILC) deficits. Specifically, ILC deficits were revealed in the context of lower limb split-crank pedaling. Participants who demonstrated larger levels of compensation during a conventional, solid-crank pedaling task also demonstrated larger deficits in ILC i.e. maintaining a 180-degree phase relationship during split-crank. To address this deficit, our lab created a novel, split-crank pedaling robot named CUped. CUped (pronounced Cupid) is so called because it compels use of the paretic limb during a movement that resembles pedaling. …

2025 (Spring) Ensi Informer Magazine, Morehead State University. Engineering Sciences Department

ENSI Informer Magazine Archive

The ENSI Informer Magazine published in the spring of 2025.

Approximations And Bounds For Optimal Controls Via Finite Fourier Series, Gabriel Nicolosi, Terry Friesz, Christopher Griffin

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This work considers the problem of approximating initial condition and time-dependent optimal control and trajectory surfaces using multivariable finite Fourier series. A modified Augmented Lagrangian algorithm for translating the optimal control problem into an unconstrained optimization one is proposed. A quadratic control problem in the context of Newtonian mechanics is solved to demonstrate the proposed algorithm and various computational results are presented. Use of automatic differentiation is explored to circumvent the elaborated gradient computation in the first-order optimization procedure. Furthermore, mean square error bounds are derived for the case of one and two-dimensional Fourier series approximations, suggesting a general bound …

Computational Modeling Of Astrophysical Systems, Leleya Iris Stallard

Spring Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

This research project focuses on the computational modeling of astrophysical systems using Femap with NX Nastran. The goal was to simulate and analyze the vibrational behavior and structural deformation of celestial bodies under different material compositions and collision conditions. Materials such as iron, granite, titanium, and models for white dwarf stars were used to investigate how varying physical properties affect the systems' dynamic responses. Both isotropic and anisotropic models were created to represent realistic astrophysical materials. Through static and modal analyses, the study explored how internal structure and material stiffness influence the reaction of celestial objects to applied forces and …

Gis Cpd Geospatial Skills, Niamh O'Reilly

Case studies: Digital Education

The GIS CPD programme is delivered to people from industry wishing to develop their Geospatial skills in GIS. For many this is an important skill. Many organisations and companies encourage and pay for their staff to attend the programme and get the CPD Students gain important skills for managing, analysing and presenting geospatial data in a GIS environment. certificate. Students come from many different industries including local authorities, semi state bodies, National mapping agency, transport consultant practices, cable companies, environmental companies. The programme has been running for almost 30 years by my former colleague Eamonn Donnelly. Up until the pandemic …

Driver Drowsiness Detection Master, Xiaochuan Cao, Anas Hourani

SACAD: Scholarly Activities

The Driver Drowsiness Detection master project is a computer vision project that works towards improving road safety. The project uses three factors (EAR, MAR, and head tilting) that recognize and alert drivers in real-time when they are drowsy. The overall purpose is to decrease road accidents by informing drivers of their fatigue.

Zooplankton Protect Viruses From Sunlight Disinfection, J. A. Wang, O. Aryal, L. N. Brownstein, H. Shwwa, A. L. Rickard, A. E. Stephens, M. Lanzarini-Lopes, Niveen S. Ismail

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Sunlight disinfection is an important inactivation process for enteric viruses in water. Understanding how dark biotic processes, such as zooplankton filter feeding, impact sunlight disinfection for viruses has important implications for public health. This research quantifies the uptake of MS2, a model for enteric viruses, by the filter feeder Branchionus plicatilis (rotifer) and the effects of such uptake on subsequent sunlight inactivation of MS2. Experiments co-incubating MS2 with rotifers showed 2.6 log viral removal over 120 hours. Viable virus was recovered from rotifer bodies after co-incubation, indicating incomplete viral inactivation via ingestion. When live rotifers were co-incubated with MS2 and …

Microphysics Regimes Due To Haze–Cloud Interactions: Cloud Oscillation And Cloud Collapse, Fan Yang, Hamed F. Sadi, Raymond Shaw, Fabian Hoffmann, Pei Hou, Aaron Wang, Mikhail Ovchinnikov

Michigan Tech Publications

It is known that aqueous haze particles can be activated into cloud droplets in a supersaturated environment. However, haze–cloud interactions have not been fully explored, partly because haze particles are not represented in most cloud-resolving models. Here, we conduct a series of large-eddy simulations (LESs) of a cloud in a convection chamber using a haze-capable Eulerian-based bin microphysics scheme to explore haze–cloud interactions over a wide range of aerosol injection rates. Results show that the cloud is in a slow microphysics regime at low aerosol injection rates, where the cloud responds slowly to an environmental change and droplet deactivation is …

Impact Of Delayed Artificial Aging On Tensile Properties And Microstructural Evolution Of Directed Energy Deposited Scalmalloy®, Rachel Boillat-Newport, Sriram Praneeth Isanaka, Frank Liou

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Scalmalloy® is a novel alloy designed to work with the unique processing inherent in additive manufacturing (AM). This alloy is post-processed using a single artificial aging treatment rather than a multistep heat treatment, as often noted in traditional manufacturing processes. Much of the literature details the impact of direct aging treatments around the temperature and time recommended by the manufacturer, 325 °C for 4 h; however, few studies have explored the impact of delayed artificial aging on the resulting mechanical and microstructural behavior. This study explored this missing link and determined the impact that the time between the fabrication of …

Exploring Strategies And Innovations In Airline Profitability Assessment: The Role Of Artificial Intelligence, Elif Degirmenci

Journal of Global Hospitality and Tourism

The airline industry's profitability assessment remains a complex yet critical aspect of strategic decision-making, spanning from hub profitability to individual flight performance. This paper explores the diverse methodologies and challenges involved in evaluating both line and network profitability, emphasizing the need for innovative approaches in reconciling variable costs associated with aircraft types and route assignments. Traditional methods are juxtaposed with innovative concepts like the Blended Aircraft Cost model, offering insights into enhancing market route profitability. Additionally, advanced methodologies such as horizontal and vertical methods are discussed, alongside the role of artificial intelligence in revolutionizing real-time profitability analysis. Through a comprehensive …

Aiops–Driven Adaptive Anomaly Detection In Evolving Cloud Environments Using Transfer Learning, Mayur Shivakumar

Master's Theses

As cloud-based microservice architectures have become the foundation of contempo- rary enterprise solutions, performance interference, wherein co-located services com- pete for shared resources, remains a significant challenge. This phenomenon, often referred to as the noisy neighbor problem, manifests when one workload unexpect- edly increases the CPU, memory, disk I/O, or network consumption, resulting in latency spikes or throughput degradation for other services. While existing isolation mechanisms (e.g., cgroups and QoS policies) provide some mitigation, they rarely prevent contention entirely, particularly in dynamic, rapidly evolving environments with frequent code deployments.

This thesis proposes an AIOps-driven adaptive anomaly detection framework that integrates …

Smart Home Hvac Digital Twin Ml Meta-Model For Electric Power Distribution Systems With Solar Pv And Cta-2045 Controls, Rosemary E. Alden, Evan S. Jones, Steven B. Poore, Dan M. Ionel

Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Research

Building modeling, specifically heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) load and equivalent energy storage calculations, represent a key focus for decarbonization of buildings and smart grid controls. In this paper, an ultra-fast one minute resolution Hybrid Machine Learning Model (HMLM) is proposed as part of a novel contribution in the field of residential physics-based smart home surrogate modeling. Emulation of white box models, or digital twins, with editable parameters through machine learning (ML) meta-modeling serves as an alternative to wide-spread experimental big data collection. The HMLM employs combined k-means clustering with multiple linear regression (MLR) to emulate minutely HVAC power …

Quality Assurance Framework For Recovered Binders And Aggregates From Asphalt Mixtures Incorporating Recycled Materials, Eslam Deef-Allah, Magdy Abdelrahman

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study proposes that a proactive quality assurance (QA) framework for asphalt mixes with recycled materials, i.e., reclaimed asphalt pavement and recycled asphalt shingles, should be developed. Quality control (QC) is generally concerned with the contractor's obligation to produce mixes which meet the job mix formula (JMF) targets. However, QA considers the variability in fabrication processes and materials and offers monitoring by evaluating the contractor's performance. Although both aggregate gradations and asphalt contents were within the JMF specifications, the recovered binders revealed significant differences from the contract binders in the JMF. Rheological tests indicated increased stiffness and elasticity but reduced …

A High-Temperature Lithium-Aluminum Alloy/Oxygen Or Air Fuel Cell, Sarwan S. Sandhu

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper is in support of our current effort in the development of an experimental hybrid (lithium- aluminum alloy/electrolyte/oxygen or air) fuel cell for the acquisition of the experimental data required to characterize its performance behavior. The literature-based assembled formulation provided in this paper can be used to predict the cell open-circuit electric potential, lithium amount in the cell anode alloy, and g-atom ratio of lithium to aluminum in the cell anode as a function of time at any cell discharge current level. The ohmic voltage losses can also be computed in the cell cathode, anode, and two electrolytes at …

Analyzing The Resilience Of Infrastructure-Based Vs. Camera-Based Lane Detection In Autonomous Vehicles, Pritesh Yashaswi Patil

Masters Theses

Traditional autonomous vehicle perception subsystems that use on-board sensors have the drawbacks of high computational load and data duplication. Infrastructure-based sensors, which can provide high-quality information without the computational burden and data duplication, are an alternative to traditional autonomous vehicle perception subsystems. However, these technologies are still in the early stages of development and have not been extensively evaluated for lane detection system performance. Therefore, there is a lack of quantitative data on their performance relative to traditional perception methods, especially during hazardous scenarios, such as lane line occlusion, sensor failure, and environmental obstructions. This need is addressed by evaluating …