Engineering Commons^™

Trends In Commercial-Off-The-Shelf Vs. Proprietary Applications, Vijay K. Agrawal, Vipin K. Agrawal, A. Ross Taylor

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This study examines factors valued by IS managers in deciding if COTS software is a viable alternative to proprietary software. The results indicate managers who anticipate increased usage of COTS packages in 5 years used the same top three factors in the formation of their decisions to adopt COTS as their colleagues who anticipated either zero change in COTS usage or an increased usage of proprietary software used in deciding not to adopt COTS software. Managers anticipating increased COTS usage had a statistically significant higher value for each of those items compared to managers not anticipating growth in COTS software.

Online Trust Cues: Perceptions And Application, Antonina A. Bauman

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This qualitative study analyzes perceptions of online trust cues as identified by shoppers from three countries: Germany, Russia, and the USA. A novel approach of the repertory grid method is used to study online trust cues in business-to-consumers commercial online transactions. This study resulted in the list of web site elements and features that consumers recognize as trust cues and use to evaluate e-vendor’s trustworthiness. Findings show that out of fourteen categories of online trust cues, identified by online shoppers, three categories of online trust cues are found to be common across three cultures while eleven categories are culture specific. …

Evaluation Of Classification And Ensemble Algorithms For Bank Customer Marketing Response Prediction, Olatunji Apampa

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This article attempts to improve the performance of classification algorithms used in the bank customer marketing response prediction of an unnamed Portuguese bank using the Random Forest ensemble. A thorough exploratory data analysis (EDA) was conducted on the data in order to ascertain the presence of anomalies such as outliers and extreme values. The EDA revealed that the bank data had 45, 211 instances and 17 features, with 11.7% positive responses. This was in addition to the detection of outliers and extreme values. Classification algorithms used for modelling the bank dataset include; Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Naïve Bayes and the …

The Perceived Business Benefit Of Cloud Computing: An Exploratory Study, Thomas Chen, Ta-Tao Chuang, Kazuo Nakatani

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The objective of the research is to study the benefits of cloud computing perceived by adopters and examine the impact of moderating factors on the relationship between the type of cloud computing and the perceived benefit. The moderating factors include firm size and value-chain activities. A measurement instrument of a 5-point Likert scale was administered on businesses of different sizes in Taiwan. The benefit of cloud computing measured in the study were: cost reduction, improved capability and enhanced scalability. The results show that the perceived benefit of cloud computing varies depending on the type of cloud computing, the value chain …

Characterization Of Piezoelectric Device For Implanted Pacemaker Energy Harvesting, Sunny Jay, Manuel Caballero, William Quinn, John Barrett, Martin Hill

Conference Papers

Novel implanted cardiac pacemakers that are powered by energy harvesters driven by the cardiac motion and have a 40 year lifetime are currently under development. To satisfy space constraints and energy requirements of the device, silicon-based MEMS energy harvesters are being developed in the EU project (MANpower). Such MEMS harvesters for vibration frequencies below 50 Hz have not been widely reported. In this paper, an analytical model and a 3D finite element model (FEM) to predict displacement and open circuit voltage, validated through experimental analysis using an off-the-shelf low frequency energy harvester, are presented. The harvester was excited through constant …

Traser: A Traffic Signal Event-Based Recorder, Chenhui Liu, Anuj Sharma, Edward Smaglik, Sirisha Kothuri

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the past decades, the demand for high-resolution event-based traffic signal indication and detector data has increased due to the need for the collection and reporting of performance measures. This paper will first lay a groundwork for why this type of data acquisition is important, followed by the introduction of a new low-cost, user-friendly, high-resolution traffic signal event-based recorder—TraSER, with integrated video. This paper describes TraSER’s structure, operating principles, and field applications. TraSER allows researchers to be able to collect high-resolution event-based controller data at signalized intersections easily and conveniently. The paper concludes with a discussion on future expansion of …

Rational Synthesis To Optimize Ruthenium-Based Biomass Conversion Catalysts, Shuo Cao

Theses and Dissertations

With worldwide petroleum resources dwindling and greenhouse gas emissions rising, it is urgent to find renewable replacements for petroleum-derived products. A biomass-derived chemical with high potential as a platform intermediate, γ-valerolactone (GVL) can be readily synthesized by hydrogenation of levulinic acid (LA), itself a common biomass intermediate, using supported Ru catalysts. Overall, vapor phase hydrogenation is more energy sensitive as the higher boiling point of LA (~245°C) and requires a high energy input, comparable to liquid phase hydrogenation, which is more economical. To date the literature on many novel biomass conversion processes such as the hydrogenation of LA to GVL …

Electrochemical Studies Of Cerium And Uranium In Licl-Kcl Eutectic For Fundamentals Of Pyroprocessing Technology, Dalsung Yoon

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the characteristics of special nuclear materials in LiCl-KCl eutectic salt is extremely important in terms of effective system operation and material accountability for safeguarding pyroprocessing technology. By considering that uranium (U) is the most abundant and important element in the used nuclear fuel, measurements and analyses of U properties were performed in LiCl-KCl eutectic salt. Therefore, the electrochemical techniques such as cyclic voltammetry (CV), open circuit potential (OCP), Tafel, linear polarization (LP), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were conducted under different experimental conditions to explore the electrochemical, thermodynamic, and kinetic properties of U in LiCl-KCl eutectic. The ultimate goal …

Ultra–Low Power Straintronic Nanomagnetic Computing With Saw Waves: An Experimental Study Of Saw Induced Magnetization Switching And Properties Of Magnetic Nanostructures, Vimal G. Sampath

Theses and Dissertations

A recent International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) report (2.0, 2015 edition) has shown that Moore’s law is unlikely to hold beyond 2028. There is a need for alternate devices to replace CMOS based devices, if further miniaturization and high energy efficiency is desired. The goal of this dissertation is to experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of nanomagnetic memory and logic devices that can be clocked with acoustic waves in an extremely energy efficient manner. While clocking nanomagnetic logic by stressing the magnetostrictive layer of a multiferroic logic element with with an electric field applied across the piezoelectric layer is known …

Distributed Sparse Signal Recovery In Networked Systems, Puxiao Han

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, two classes of distributed algorithms are developed for sparse signal recovery in large sensor networks. All the proposed approaches consist of local computation (LC) and global computation (GC) steps carried out by a group of distributed local sensors, and do not require the local sensors to know the global sensing matrix. These algorithms are based on the original approximate message passing (AMP) and iterative hard thresholding (IHT) algorithms in the area of compressed sensing (CS), also known as sparse signal recovery. For distributed AMP (DiAMP), we develop a communication-efficient algorithm GCAMP. Numerical results demonstrate that it outperforms …

Using Mavt To Incorporate Public Perception When Choosing A Nuclear Fuel Cycle, Stephen Clement

Theses and Dissertations

Nuclear energy is a source of carbon free power. With many countries striving to make deep carbon cuts in their energy sectors, nuclear energy could be a large part of the solution. One of the main obstacles standing in the way of the use of nuclear energy is the issue of used nuclear fuel disposal. According to the NEI, the U.S. creates about 2000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel per year and has generated around 76,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel over the last 4 decades. While there are technical problems that need to be solved, it is …

Resilient Dynamic State Estimation In The Presence Of False Information Injection Attacks, Jingyang Lu

Theses and Dissertations

The impact of false information injection is investigated for linear dynamic systems with multiple sensors. First, it is assumed that the system is unaware of the existence of false information and the adversary is trying to maximize the negative effect of the false information on Kalman filter's estimation performance under a power constraint. The false information attack under different conditions is mathematically characterized. For the adversary, many closed-form results for the optimal attack strategies that maximize the Kalman filter's estimation error are theoretically derived. It is shown that by choosing the optimal correlation coefficients among the false information and allocating …

Mitigating Interference During Virtual Machine Live Migration Through Storage Offloading, Morgan S. Stuart

Theses and Dissertations

Today's cloud landscape has evolved computing infrastructure into a dynamic, high utilization, service-oriented paradigm. This shift has enabled the commoditization of large-scale storage and distributed computation, allowing engineers to tackle previously untenable problems without large upfront investment. A key enabler of flexibility in the cloud is the ability to transfer running virtual machines across subnets or even datacenters using live migration. However, live migration can be a costly process, one that has the potential to interfere with other applications not involved with the migration. This work investigates storage interference through experimentation with real-world systems and well-established benchmarks. In order to …

Design And Development Of A High-Temperature High-Pressure Rolling Ball Viscometer/Densimeter And Evaluation Of Star Polymer-Solvent Mixtures, Matthew Stanton Newkirk

Theses and Dissertations

Modern automotive applications such as transmission clutch plates, combustion chambers, diesel fuel injector tips, and axle gears and friction plates operate at temperatures that can exceed 250°C and pressures of 40,000 psia. Industrial practice is to add homopolymers and copolymers to base oils to modify bulk fluid viscosity and frictional properties for these demanding applications. However, designing polymeric additives for lubricants and predicting their performance is limited by the lack of available high-temperature high-pressure (HTHP) viscosity and density data needed to test contemporary lubricity models. Thus, a major objective of this thesis is the design, development, and commissioning of a …

In Vitro Visualization Of Pediatric Sized Mechanical Heart Valve Performance Using Aortic Root Model In Mock Circulatory Loop, Sarah Lederer

Theses and Dissertations

Congenital heart valve disease is one of the most common abnormalities in children, with common valve defects being aortic stenosis, mitral stenosis, and valvular regurgitation. Although adult sized mechanical heart valve (MHV) replacements are widely studied and utilized, there are currently no FDA approved prosthetic heart valves available for the pediatric population. This is due to a variety of reasons such as a limited patient pool for clinical trials, limited valve sizes, and complex health histories in children. Much like adult sized mechanical heart valves, potential complications with pediatric heart valve replacements include thrombosis, blood damage due to high shear …

A Theoretical Simulation Of The Settling Of Proppants In A Hydraulic Fracturing Process, Nisreen Alseamr

Theses and Dissertations

Hydraulic fracturing is a process for the extraction of hydrocarbons from underground formations. It involves pumping a specialized fluid into the wellbore under high pressures to form and support fractures in the rock. Fracturing stimulates the well to increase the production of oil and the natural gas which are the pillars of the energy economy. Key to this process is the use of proppants, which are solid materials used to keep the fractures open. Understanding the transport of proppant particles through a fluid is important to improve the efficiency and reduce environmental impact of fracturing. An increase of the settling …

Magnetic Materials Characterization And Modeling For The Enhanced Design Of Magnetic Shielding Of Cryomodules In Particle Accelerators., Sanjay K. Sah

Theses and Dissertations

Particle accelerators produce beams of high-energy particles, which are used for both fundamental and applied scientific research and are critical to the development of accelerator driven sub-critical reactor systems. An effective magnetic shield is very important to achieve higher quality factor (Qo) of the cryomodule of a particle accelerator. The allowed value of field inside the cavity due to all external fields (particularly the Earth’s magnetic field) is ~15 mG or less. The goal of this PhD dissertation is to comprehensively study the magnetic properties of commonly used magnetic shielding materials at both cryogenic and room temperatures. This knowledge can …

Electric Field Controlled Strain Induced Switching Of Magnetization Of Galfenol Nanomagnets In Magneto-Electrically Coupled Multiferroic Stack, Hasnain Ahmad

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to control the bi-stable magnetization states of shape anisotropic single domain nanomagnets has enormous potential for spawning non-volatile and energy-efficient computing and signal processing systems. One of the most energy efficient switching methods is to adopt a system of a 2-phase multiferroic nanomagnet, where a voltage applied on the piezoelectric layer generates a strain in it and the strain is elastically transferred to the magnetostrictive nanomagnet which rotates the magnetization states of the nanomagnet at room temperature via the converse magnet-electric effect. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the magnetization of a Co nanomagnet can be switched between …

Efficiency Evaluation Of A Magnetically Driven Multiple Disk Centrifugal Blood Pump, Kayla H. Moody

Theses and Dissertations

Heart failure is expected to ail over 8 million people in America by 2030 leaving many in need of cardiac replacement. To accommodate this large volume of people, ventricular assist devices (VADs) are necessary to provide mechanical circulatory support. Current VADs exhibit issues such as thrombosis and hemolysis caused by large local pressure drops and turbulent flow within the pump. Multiple disk centrifugal pumps (MDCPs) use shearing and centrifugal forces to produce laminar flow patterns and eliminate large pressure drops within the pump which greatly reduce risks that are in current VADs. The MDCP has a shaft drive system (SDS) …

In-House Fabrication Of Multi-Sized Polystyrene Microcarriers For Neural Stem Cell Expansion, Jessica Forrester

Theses and Dissertations

The clinical demand for neural stem cells drives the need for a reproducible method used to generate a large quantity of well-characterized cells to support regenerative therapies. Microcarriers are currently being used as a scaffold for stem cell culture to aid in this expansion process because they provide a larger surface area while also requiring fewer cell passages compared to monolayer culture. The main objective of this project was to investigate how human neural stem cell attachment, proliferation, and multipotency would respond to three-dimensional (3D) culture using peptide-coated microcarriers of varying diameters. In this study, multi-sized polystyrene microcarriers were fabricated …

Fabricating Superhydrophobic And Superoleophobic Surfaces With Multiscale Roughness Using Airbrush And Electrospray, Karam N. Almilaji

Theses and Dissertations

Examples of superhydrophobic surfaces found in nature such as self-cleaning property of lotus leaf and walking on water ability of water strider have led to an extensive investigation in this area over the past few decades. When a water droplet rests on a textured surface, it may either form a liquid-solid-vapor composite interface by which the liquid droplet partially sits on air pockets or it may wet the surface in which the water replaces the trapped air depending on the surface roughness and the surface chemistry. Super water repellent surfaces have numerous applications in our daily life such as drag …

Effects Of Antidepressants On Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell Differentiation On Clinically Relevant Titanium Surfaces, Nancy B. Ayad

Theses and Dissertations

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most frequently prescribed class of drugs worldwide and are implemented in the treatment of depression and other psychiatric disorders. SSRIs relieve depressive symptoms by modulating levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. SSRIs block the function of the serotonin transporter, thereby increasing concentrations of extracellular serotonin. However, serotonin levels in the neurons of the brain only account for 5% while the remaining 95% is present outside the brain. Serotonin receptors and transporter are located on bone resident cells (mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)), osteoblasts and osteoclasts, and serotonergic activity is believed to affect …

Wide-Band Gap Devices For Dc Breaker Applications, Olukayode O. Sodipe

Master's Theses

With the increasing interest in wide-band gap devices, their potential benefits in power applications have been studied and explored with numerous studies conducted for both SiC and GaN devices. This thesis investigates the use of wide-band gap devices as the switching element in a semiconductor DC breaker. It involves the design of an efficient semiconductor DC breaker, its simulation in SPICE, construction of a hardware prototype and the comparative study of SiC and Si versions of the aforementioned breaker. The results obtained from the experiments conducted in the process of concluding this thesis show that the SiC version of the …

Addressing The Impact Of Gavins Point Dam On The Lowermost~1400 Kilometers Of The Missouri River, Gregory Leaphart

Theses and Dissertations

The Missouri River originates in the Rocky Mountains in western Montana and joins the Mississippi River near St. Louis, Missouri. Beginning in the early 1900s, engineering efforts, such as dam construction, channel narrowing, and river alignment, were performed for flood control, navigational purposes, to use of water for agricultural and industrial needs, to produce hydroelectric power and the impounded lakes for recreation. These projects permanently altered the flow and sediment transport regimes in the river and the exchange of sediment with the surrounding floodplain. We focus on the long term effects of dam construction and channel narrowing on approximately the …

Investigation Of Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Devices For Radiation Detection Applications, Rahmi Orhon Pak

Theses and Dissertations

Radioactive materials, as they decay, generate different high-frequency electromagnetic radiation such as alpha particles, beta particles, x-rays, gamma-rays, and neutrons. Nuclear detectors could stop these high-energy ionizing radiations, collect and transport the charges generated to an external circuit, and produce an electrical signal which is amplified by readout electronics to measure the energy of nuclear interaction. Thus, nuclear detectors are important tools for accounting of radioactive materials and have widespread applications in nuclear power plants, nuclear waste management, in national security, in medical imaging such as x-ray mammography, digital chest radiography, CT scan, and in high energy astronomy for NASA …

Development Of Novel High-Throughput Methodologies To Evaluate The Thermal Stability Of High-Temperature Thin-Film Crystals For Energy Applications, Jonathan Kenneth Bunn

Theses and Dissertations

High temperature materials are used in a variety of energy applications such as jet turbines, high temperature sensors, and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). Discovery of new materials and their optimization represents a difficult engineering challenge, as the materials have to be designed to have a high figure of merit during intense high temperature operations.

The large number of engineering considerations involved in the identification and optimization of such materials makes traditional one-by-one material investigations prohibitively time consuming. The time needed to explore large parameter domains can be significantly decreased through the use of high-throughput experimentation (HTE). HTE is an …

Active Analytics: Adapting Web Pages Automatically Based On Analytics Data, William R. Carle Ii

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Web designers are expected to perform the difficult task of adapting a site’s design to fit changing usage trends. Web analytics tools give designers a window into website usage patterns, but they must be analyzed and applied to a website's user interface design manually. A framework for marrying live analytics data with user interface design could allow for interfaces that adapt dynamically to usage patterns, with little or no action from the designers. The goal of this research is to create a framework that utilizes web analytics data to automatically update and enhance web user interfaces. In this research, we …

Modeling Older Driver Behavior On Freeway Merging Ramps, Lina Lwambagaza

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Merging from on-ramps to mainline traffic is one of the most challenging driving maneuvers on freeways. The challenges are further heightened for older drivers, as they are known to have longer perception-reaction times, larger acceptance gaps, and slower acceleration rates. In this research, VISSIM, a microscopic traffic simulation software, was used to evaluate the influence of the aging drivers on the operations of a typical diamond interchange. First, drivers were recorded on video cameras as they negotiated joining the mainline traffic from an on-ramp acceleration lane at two sites along I-75 in Southwest Florida. Several measures of effectiveness were collected …

Positive Feedforward Control Design For Stabilization Of A Single-Bus Dc Power Distribution System Using An Improved Impedance Identification Technique, Silvia Arrúa

Theses and Dissertations

Due to recent advances in power electronics technology, DC power distribution systems offer distinct advantages over traditional AC systems for many applications such as electric vehicles, more electric aircrafts and industrial applications. For example, for the All-Electric ship proposed by the U.S. Navy the preferred design option is the adoption of a Medium Voltage DC power distribution system, due to the high power level required on board and the highly dynamic nature of the electric loads.

These DC power distribution systems consist of generation units, energy storage systems and different loads connected to one or more DC busses through switching …

Discrepancy Analysis Between Close-Range Photogrammetry And Terrestrial Lidar, Sam R. Newsome Jr

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This study presents a comparison of building measurements performed on 3D models generated by two different approaches. In one approach, the models were produced via close-range photogrammetry. Such models are based on still-frame photographs that are, post-processed with commercially available photogrammetric software. In the second approach, 3D point-cloud models were generated via laser scanning. For this purpose, three case studies were conducted. The first was a simple one story structure, the second was a multi-story Maya ruin, and the third was an earth filled terrace. Several benchmarks within a closed traverse were established to serve as standard georeference points for …