Engineering Commons^™

A New Methodology For Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Bus Rapid Transit Strategies, Ahmad Alomari

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over the last few years, public transportation has become more desirable as capacity of existing roadways failed to keep up with rapidly increasing traffic demand. Buses are one of the most common modes of public transportation with low impact on network capacity, especially in small and congested urban areas. However, the use of regularly scheduled buses as the main public transport mode can become useless with the presence of traffic congestion and dense construction areas. In cases like these, innovative solutions, such as bus rapid transit (BRT), can provide an increased level of service without having to resort to other, …

Inland Waterway Operational Model & Simulation Along The Ohio River, Doug Kreis, Roy E. Sturgill, Brian K. Howell, Christopher W. Van Dyke, D. Stephen Voss

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The inland waterway system of the U.S. is a vital network for transporting key goods and commodities from the point of production to manufacturers and consumers. Shipping materials via the inland waterways is arguably the most economical and environmentally friendly option (compared to hauling freight by trains or railways). Despite the advantages the inland waterways enjoys over competing modes, key infrastructure – such as locks and dams, which help to control water levels on a number of rivers and make navigation possible – is declining. Limited funds have been allocated to make the necessary repairs to lock and dam facilities. …

Photonic Crystal-Based Flow Cytometry, Justin William Stewart

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Photonic crystals serve as powerful building blocks for the development of lab-on-chip devices. Currently they are used for a wide range of miniaturized optical components such as extremely compact waveguides to refractive-index based optical sensors. Here we propose a new technique for analyzing and characterizing cells through the design of a micro-flow cytometer using photonic crystals. While lab scale flow cytometers have been critical to many developments in cellular biology they are not portable, difficult to use and relatively expensive. By making a miniature sensor capable of replicating the same functionality as the large scale units with photonic crystals, we …

Computational Modeling Of Pathophysiologic Responses To Exercise In Fontan Patients, Ethan Kung, James C. Perry, Christopher Davis, Francesco Migliavacca, Giancarlo Pennati, Alessandro Giardini, Tain-Yen Hsia, Alison Marsden

Publications

Reduced exercise capacity is nearly universal among Fontan patients. Although many factors have emerged as possible contributors, the degree to which each impacts the overall hemodynamics is largely unknown. Computational modeling provides a means to test hypotheses of causes of exercise intolerance via precisely controlled virtual experiments and measurements. We quantified the physiological impacts of commonly encountered, clinically relevant dysfunctions introduced to the exercising Fontan system via a previously developed lumped-parameter model of Fontan exercise. Elevated pulmonary arterial pressure was observed in all cases of dysfunction, correlated with lowered cardiac output (CO), and often mediated by elevated atrial pressure. Pulmonary …

Added Mass Computation For Control Of An Open-Frame Remotely-Operated Vehicle: Application Using Wamit And Matlab, You-Hong Eng, Cheng-Siong Chin, Michael Wai-Shing Lau

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

In this paper, numerical modeling and testing of a complexshaped remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) are shown. The paper emphasizes on systematic modeling of hydrodynamic added mass using computational fluid dynamic software WAMITTM on the open frame ROV that is not commonly applied in practice. From initial design and prototype testing, a small-scale test using a free-decaying experiment is used to verify the theoretical models obtained from WAMITTM. Simulation results have shown to coincide with the experimental tests. The proposed method is able to determine the hydrodynamic added mass coefficients of the open frame ROV.

1d Phonon Bte Solver (Small Scale Heat Transport Simulation), Joseph A. Sudibyo, Amr Mohammed, Ali Shakouri

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In current technology, electronic devices shrink to the size of nanometers. The ability to accurately model heat transport to understand the thermal behavior of these small electronic devices becomes increasingly important. Since heat transport is very difficult to measure directly in small electronic devices, simulation becomes an effective means to model heat transport. A user-interactive simulation tool is created to model heat transport in small electronic devices of different lengths. Heat transport is modeled by solving one-dimensional Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) to obtain the transient temperature profile of a multi-length and multi-timescale thin film under constant temperature boundary condition or …

Simulation Of Plasmonic Waveguides Based On Long-Range Surface Plasmon Polaritons, Yugang Jing, Alexandra Boltasseva, Nathaniel Kinsey

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The demand for faster and smaller computing devices is growing larger and larger. In the recent decade, research has proven that plasmonic devices have exciting characteristics and performance for next generation on‑chip structures. However, most of these devices contain noble metals and are not CMOS compatible. This work numerically investigates the performance of plasmonic waveguide designs made of TiN, a CMOS compatible material with optical properties similar to gold. Through our work, we demonstrate that TiN nanophotonic devices can be useful for inter-chip connections. A series of simulations using COMSOL Multiphysics were performed to test the performance of these structures. …

Micro-Mechanics Simulation Tool Optimization, Ruixuan Ren, Marisol Koslowski

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Crystalline films grown epitaxially on substrates consisting of a different crystalline material are of considerable interest in optoelectronic devices and the semiconductor industry. One way to progress in this field is to develop simulation tools based on specially designed numerical method. A nanoHUB simulation tool was developed based on the phase field theory, which considers the propagation of dislocations inside the crystalline film. However, the current tool needs several improvements to be more realistic and user-friendly. First, the inputs of the simulation tool are adjusted so that the user can use this tool directly without any additional calculation. The output …

Microstructure Development Of Granular System During Compaction, Chen Shang, Marcial Gonzalez

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Granular materials is the second most manipulated material in the industry today. They are easy to transport and more and more newly developed materials cannot stand the process of traditional casting, like energetic materials and bio-materials, but will survive the powder compaction process. Having a better understanding of the microstructure development of granular systems during compaction process, especially for particles that will heavily deform under loading, will give an insight of how to better process the powders to produce materials with overall better performance comparing to bulk materials. The main theory and mechanism applied are Hertz law and nonlocal contact …

Simulation Of Bio-Inspired Porous Battery Electrodes, Raju Gupta, R. Edwin Garcia, Rui Tu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Advancement of technology has led to the increase in use of electronic devices. However, longer life of the rechargeable battery used in electronic devices is one of the biggest issue and demand in the world of electronic devices at present. Battery's performance is affected by the orientation, arrangement, shape and size, and porosity of the materials out of which battery electrodes are made. The goal of this project is to develop a set of numerical libraries that allow developing material micro structures that will allow increasing the performance of rechargeable batteries. We focused on the development of an algorithm that …

Crack Propagation Simulation Tool, Nilofer Rajpurkar, Hojin Kim, Alejandro Strachan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

In the massively engineered world that exists today, understanding material behavior is of paramount importance in caring for human safety in design. Molecular dynamic simulations on crack propagation through materials allow visualization of material behavior under stress. The tool, developed by the nanoHUB group as a part of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology at Purdue University, makes performing such simulations accessible to undergraduate students, highly qualified researchers, and all those in between. First, the input deck for the simulation parameters was simplified from the complex, language-specific code into a simple, user-friendly Graphic User Interface (GUI). Several interesting example cases were …

The Simulation Of Resonant Tunneling Diodes, Woodrow A. Gilbertson, Pengyu Long, Jim Fonseca, Gerhard Klimeck

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The goal of this project is to improve the simulation of an electrical device known as a Resonant Tunneling Diode (RTD). Diodes are in most electronic devices today, but RTDs have 10 times greater switching speeds than regular diodes. This increase in efficiency would have impacts from supercomputers to the next big cell phone. The increased functionality of the simulation tool will come from implementing more recent mathematical solvers and modeling techniques. The simulation tool makes use of a variant of Non-Equilibrium Green Functions (NEGF) with an effective mass approximation. The two contacts are treated as equilibrium regions and the …

Developing Compact Models For Passive Devices On Ibm 45nm Cmos Soi Technology, Yufei Feng, Yanfei Shen, Saeed Mohammadi

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The standard IBM 45 nm technology is widely adopted for industrial and academic purpose by integrates circuit designers. Original models provided by foundry are not accurate, which might cause inaccuracy in circuit simulations. Equivalent circuit models, using RLC elements to simulate electrical component, will effectively deliver their electrical performance. This study consists of four steps to construct these models. First, Cadence Virtuoso, the commercial circuit design software was used to run simulations and extract data for different device parameters. Second, analyzing tools, like Microsoft Excel or Matlab, are used to analyze the extracted data. Then, equations are written for each …

Thermal And Structural Modeling Of Electrochromics On Glass, Mahesh B. Manandhar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Advanced glazing is a type of window glazing that interacts with the surrounding environment to change its thermal and optical properties to create a more comfortable and energy efficient indoor environment. Electrochromics are one type of such advanced glazing materials that change their properties in response to an externally applied voltage controllable by the user or by automation.

The effectiveness of electrochromics depends upon how well it can keep off extreme temperature conditions from outdoors all year round as well as how structurally stable it can remain at such conditions. This research investigates the use of COMSOL, a finite element …

Gate Monte Carlo Simulations In A Cloud Computing Environment, Blake Austin Rowedder

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The GEANT4-based GATE is a unique and powerful Monte Carlo (MC) platform, which provides a single code library allowing the simulation of specific medical physics applications, e.g. PET, SPECT, CT, radiotherapy, and hadron therapy. However, this rigorous yet flexible platform is used only sparingly in the clinic due to its lengthy calculation time. By accessing the powerful computational resources of a cloud computing environment, GATE's runtime can be significantly reduced to clinically feasible levels without the sizable investment of a local high performance cluster. This study investigated a reliable and efficient execution of GATE MC simulations using a commercial cloud …

Measuring Autonomy And Solving General Stabilization Problems With Multi-Agent Systems, Rasheed A. Rajabzadeh

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Many distributed complex problems address a particular form of resource scheduling where proper resource management can cut costs by stabilizing a set of stochastic fluctuating parameters. Wireless sensor network communication, supply chain management, stock trading, intelligent traffic management, and smart grid systems are examples of these problems. Among the various solutions, a common strategy often used to address this type of problems is fluctuation reduction via resource buffering combined with load shifting. Respectively, stable wireless communication, demand for supplies, liquidity, traffic speed, and power demand reduce cost and can be achieved by properly managing sensor data buffers, warehouses, capital, distance …

Verifying Molecular Dynamics Using Dielectric Spectroscopy, Joshua Dee Smith

Theses and Dissertations

The electrical properties of proteins in solution are important for their structure and function. Computational biophysics studies of proteins need accurate parameters to ensure that numerical simulations match physical reality. Past work in this eld has compared the electrical properties of proteins obtained from dielectric spectroscopy to numerical simulations of proteins in water with adjustment of pKa values to try to capture the inevitable changes in electrical conformation that will occur in a complex structure such as a folded protein. However, fundamental veri cation of the charge parameters of the amino acid building blocks in common molecular dynamics software packages …

The Impact On Educational Technology Of A Fatal Airline Accident: A Case Study, Tim Brady

Publications

The name of the company should read Colgan Air not Cogan Airlines.

"This is a study of how a virtual technology burden was created that impacted the professional pilot college student and various colleges/universities that offer professional pilot degree programs. A cascading set of events began as a result of U.S. congressional reaction to a tragic airline accident. The resulting legislation forced the Federal Aviation Administration to publish new rules for first officer qualifications that were unmindful of the recommendations of professional pilot groups for simulation-based training. Ultimately, this placed a financial burden on both the college/university training curriculum and …

Simulations Of Fracture In Coatings With Complex Microstructures, Mathew R. Begley, William Pro, Rone Kwei Lim, Linda Petzold

Thermal Barrier Coatings IV

No abstract provided.

Simulation Of A Smart Home Energy Management System With Dynamic Price Response, Jason Y. Chan, Qinran Hu

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

With the continuing development of the smart grid combined with the fluctuating nature of the electricity market, the development of demand-side management with controllable loads have been greatly driven. With the amount of household loads in the residential sector, managing their energy usage has received lots of interest. This paper presents a simulation of a previously proposed hardware design of a smart home energy management system (SHEMS), focusing on the data collection and processing functions of the proposed design while implementing them onto standard household loads like an electric water heater and an electric vehicle charging station. It was found …

Design Of A Chart-Based Radar Simulator Augmented With A Multi-Agent Ship Traffic Simulation Platform, Shwu-Jing Chang, Yu-Ting Lai, Chun-Mai Hsu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

This paper presents a radar simulation system developed under a request to deliver a radar and an Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) for the navigation bridge of a ship maneuvering simulator. It is designed to dynamically generate radar image based on the electronic navigational chart database and sensor information to provide flexibility in navigation area for exercise and maintain consistency with other sensors or systems of the bridge, especially the ECDIS. Since the successful delivery of our study, the radar simulation system has been augmented with a Multi-Agent Ship Traffic (MAST) simulation platform and evolved into a versatile …

Development Of A Strapdown Inertial Navigation System Simulation Platform, Dah-Jing Jwo, Jyun-Han Shih, Chia-Sheng Hsu, Kai-Lun Yu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

This paper presents a strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) simulation platform. The numerical simulator solves the navigation equations in navigation frame where the quaternion vector is employed for attitude calculation. The measured quantities (angular body rates and specific force) are generated by the numerical simulator. The results are also confirmed with the navigation solutions given by a commercial inertial navigation system toolbox using the generated body angular rates and specific force of the SINS. The paper can provide the readers with further information for developing their own SINS simulation tools.

A Simulation Protocol For Exercise Physiology In Fontan Patients Using A Closed Loop Lumped-Parameter Model, Ethan Kung, Giancarlo Pennati, Francesco Migliavacca, Tian-Yen Hsia, Richard Figliola, Alison Marsden, Alessandro Giardini

Publications

Background: Reduced exercise capacity is nearly universal among Fontan patients, though its etiology is not yet fully understood. While previous computational studies have attempted to model Fontan exercise, they did not fully account for global physiologic mechanisms nor directly compare results against clinical and physiologic data. Methods: In this study, we developed a protocol to simulate Fontan lower-body exercise using a closed-loop lumped-parameter model describing the entire circulation. We analyzed clinical exercise data from a cohort of Fontan patients, incorporated previous clinical findings from literature, quantified a comprehensive list of physiological changes during exercise, translated them into a computational model …

Design Of Cpu Simulation Software For Armv7 Instruction Set Architecture, Dillon Tellier

Computer Engineering

Simulations have long been a part of the engineering process in both the professional and academic domain. From a pedagogic standpoint, simulations allow students to explore the dynamics of engineering scenarios by controlling variables, taking measurements, and observing behavior which would be difficult or impossible without simulation. One such tool is a CPU simulator used in Cal Poly’s Computer Architecture classes; this software simulates an instruction accurate operation of a computer processor and reports statistics regarding the execution of the supplied compiled machine code. For the last several years Cal Poly’s computer architecture classes have used a previous version of …

Calculation And Experimental Verification Of Longitudinal Spatial Hole Burning In High-Power Semiconductor Lasers, Ting Hao

Graduate Theses - Physics and Optical Engineering

Longitudinal spatial hole burning (LSHB) is believed to be one of the limiting factors in scaling the output power of high-power semiconductor lasers. In this work, a self-consistent simulation of LSHB was performed to investigate the non-uniform longitudinal photon density distribution, carrier density distribution, and gain distribution in a high-power semiconductor laser. The calculation is based on a modification to the semiconductor laser rate equations and solved using a finite difference approach, with Newton’s method employed to numerically solve the differential equations. The impact of LSHB on output power was analyzed with different parameters, including injection current, cavity length, and …

Lateral Dynamics Of Multiple Trailer Trucks In Windy Environments, David Wafer

All Theses

The lateral response of three-trailer commercial vehicles has been assessed using the simulation package TruckSim^TM. Aerodynamic and mechanical characterizations for the vehicle were developed for this investigation. Simulations were carried out with various aerodynamic and load configurations with several different arbitrarily defined crosswinds. The aerodynamic configurations were tested in constant and random crosswinds. The load configurations were tested only in random crosswinds. Each aerodynamic configuration differed by the aerodynamic side-force coefficient for the trailers. Each load configuration consisted of reducing the payload in a single trailer. The tractor was identically defined for each load and aerodynamic configuration. Increasing …

Strategies To Improve The Efficiency Of Emergency Medical Service (Ems) Systems Under More Realistic Conditions, Kanchala Sudtachat

All Dissertations

Emergency medical service (EMS) systems provide medical care to pre-hospital patients who need rapid response and transportation. This dissertation proposes a new realistic approach for EMS systems in two major focuses: multiple unit dispatching and relocation strategies. This work makes recommendations for multiple-unit dispatch to multiple call priorities based on simulation optimization and heuristics. The objective is to maximize the expected survival rate. Simulation models are proposed to determine the optimization. A heuristic algorithm is developed for large-scale problems. Numerical results show that dispatching while considering call priorities, rather than always dispatching the closest medical units, could improve the effectiveness …

Teaching Electrical Circuits Using A Virtual Lab, Md Zahidur Rahman

Publications and Research

This paper describes an engineering professor’s first attempt at designing and implementing a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) study in a basic electrical circuits course at LaGuardia Community College. Inspired by his understanding of Lee Shulman’s (2005) concept of “signature pedagogy” and Eric Mazur’s emphasis on student-centered approaches (2009, November 12), and aware that his students did not always understand the electrical theories and concepts presented in class, the author decided to change his pedagogy. He explains his efforts to train his students to think as engineers, first by making them more “visible” and “accountable” in the classroom, and …

Simulation Of An Intake Manifold Pre-Heater For Cold Diesel Engine Startup, Patrick K. Kreun

Masters Theses

Ensuring consistent, reliable diesel engine startups in cold temperatures is of utmost importance in a number of applications. Under extreme temperatures, the use of glow plugs is complemented by intake manifold heaters. In these, the energy released from combustion increases the intake air temperature before the air enters the main combustion chamber. Since the process also alters the stoichiometry of the fuel-air mixture at the intake ports, the preheater operation must be optimized in order to guarantee successful and reliable in-cylinder combustion during engine startups. This paper describes the development of an intake manifold model incorporating an air pre-heater for …

Computer Modeling And Simulation Of Implantable Medical Device Heating Due To Mri Gradient Coil Fields, Bryan David Stem

Open Access Theses

For patients with implantable medical devices, the ability to safely undergo MRI scanning is critical to ensuring the highest standard of care. The gradient coils of an MRI generate kilohertz frequency, time varying magnetic fields. These magnetic fields induce a voltage on the external case of metallic, implantable medical devices through electromagnetic induction. Since the magnetic field generated by a gradient coil is time varying, the induced voltage results in the flow of eddy currents which can cause heating effects. These heating effects have been successfully modeled using ANSYS Maxwell and ANSYS Mechanical software packages.

The multi-physics simulation and solution …