Engineering Commons^™

Improved Pbs Algorithm For Multi-Agent Path Planning Based On Conflict Guidance And Punishment Mechanism, Jinbao Zhang, Jianlin Mao, Chengze Qian, Guimi Sun, Kaixin Tong

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the bottleneck in which the priority-based search (priority-based search, PBS) algorithm for multi-agent path planning easily falls into conflict loops and generates invalid node expansions in complex scenarios, an improved algorithm based on conflict guidance and a punishment mechanism (improved PBS multi-agent path finding algorithm based on conflict guidance and punishment mechanism, CGP-PBS) was proposed. A conflict-guided node expansion mechanism was constructed; in high-level search, it comprehensively evaluated path cost and the number of conflicts, preferentially expanded child nodes with high potential for conflict resolution, and delayed the expansion of high-conflict nodes, thereby effectively compressing the search …

Research On Temporal Action Localization Methods For Cross-Modal Understanding, Jinwei Li, Xiaoyang Liu, Rusheng Ju

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the problems of insufficient localization accuracy and high model complexity in the temporal action localization (TAL) task for video-text cross-modal understanding, an anchor-free action transformer (AFAT) model was proposed. Based on the anchor-free framework, the local self-attention mechanism of Transformer was introduced to enhance the global modeling capability of temporal features. A multi-scale feature pyramid structure was combined to strengthen the representation of actions with different durations, and a lightweight predictor was adopted to reduce computational redundancy. Experimental results show that the average precision of this model on the THUMOS14 dataset is significantly improved compared with the …

How Does Competitive Adsorption Between Vma And Pce Influence Yield Stress Of Cement Paste? A Novel Insight From Interparticle Forces And Percolation Threshold, Huamin Sun, Le Teng, Xiaohan Yu, Xin Shu, Zhangli Hu, Jiaping Liu, Kamal H. Khayat

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Viscosity modifying admixture (VMA) and polycarboxylate superplasticizer (PCE) are often combined to optimize rheological properties of cement-based materials. However, the competitive adsorption of these complex admixtures can greatly influence rheological properties. Many studies have investigated the variation of yield stress due to competitive adsorption between VMA and PCE; but the mechanisms are not fully understood. This study aims to shed a new light on this question in cement paste systems prepared with low water-to-binder ratios of 0.16–0.30. The competitive adsorption of VMA and PCE was quantitatively assessed using the Total Organic Carbon and Ultraviolet-Visible Spectroscopy measurements. The effect of competitive …

Influence Of Stormwater Flooding Events On The Mobile County School District Student Population, Kadence Kali Johnston

Honors Theses

Mobile County, Alabama, receives among the highest annual rainfall totals in the United States resulting in frequent stormwater flooding that intersects with existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Within the Mobile County Public School System (MCPSS), 77% of students are economically disadvantaged and over 10% experience homelessness, creating heightened risk for educational disruption during flood events. This study investigates how stormwater flooding influences school attendance, closures, and academic performance across MCPSS, providing insight into how climate-driven hazards exacerbate educational inequities. The research integrates flood frequency, school performance metrics, and GIS flood-zone mapping and teacher perceptions to understand how flooding affects student learning opportunities. …

Robot Remote Control Utility, Jeremy Cantu, Paul Uhlig

Systems Manuals - 2026

The purpose of this document is to describe the Robot Control Management Utility developed in the course of this graduate project. Information included in this document will include the background of the developed product, as well as the functional requirements, data structures, software modules, interface design, installation guide, and sample and troubleshooting guides.

Dataset To Analyzing Energy Use In 2 & 3d Imaging Systems And Workflows, Michael J. Bennett

Published Works

Analyzing Energy Use in 2D & 3D Imaging Systems and Workflows Dataset

CONTENTS: Z-WaveReportingProfiles; SessionInput; DroneFlights; SessionsComputed; Types; ByType; GrossSummaryUnweighted; WeightingSummary; Raw Sampling History Data

Managing Risks Under Nuclear Power Plant Projects: A Latent Similarity-Guided Contract Customization, Mariam Elazhary, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Global energy is transforming, with nuclear power emerging as a pivotal player in achieving sustainable and low-carbon energy goals. The nature of nuclear technology introduces unique challenges, such as stringent safety and environmental requirements. Existing studies focus on general risk identification, such as supply chain delays, cost overruns, and public perception issues. However, these studies fail to address integrating these risks into tailored contractual provisions, which are critical for navigating the unique challenges of nuclear projects. The goal of this paper is to examine how standard construction contracts can be tailored to better accommodate the risks inherent in nuclear power …

Interpretable Machine Learning Of Plasma Proteomics Reveals Stage-Specific Signatures Across The Alzheimer's Disease Continuum, Hemshankar Laugi

2026 Spring Honors Capstones Projects

Alzheimer’s pathology begins years before clinical symptoms, starting early with amyloid-β accumulation, followed by tau deposition and neurodegeneration. Although existing tools, such as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) screening and PET/MRI imaging, can accurately track disease progression, they are invasive, expensive, and not scalable for population-level screening. So, there is a growing interest in using blood-based plasma biomarkers as a scalable alternative. While recent studies demonstrate strong predictive performance with plasma biomarkers, most rely on a small set of canonical blood-based protein biomarkers such as amyloid-β, p-tau, and neurofilament light. These biomarkers primarily reflect downstream brain pathology and may fail to capture …

Dimpled Surfaces For Thermal Performance Enhancement In Solar Collectors, Furqan Jamil, Baig, Amna Adil, Aasia Farrukh

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

With escalating environmental concerns, solar energy is a feasible approach to support a sustainable environment, considering the pressing need to move away from fossil fuels. Optimizing solar collector’s efficiency improves energy capture and lowers carbon emissions. One innovative technique is to the surface of solar collectors. The heat transfer is greatly increased by adding such tiny indentations, encouraging turbulence in the incoming working fluid. The article reviews the effect of dimples on the efficiency of various collector applications, including flat plate collector, solar water heaters, solar air collectors, parabolic trough solar collectors, photovoltaic thermal systems, desalination, and many others. The …

Adaptive Solar Energy Collection Fenestration Systems; Measured Performance On Test Cell Under Real Weather Conditions., Noel O’Neill

Doctoral

Buildings account for a significant share of global energy use, and improving façade performance is critical to achieving nearly zero-energy building targets. This research addresses the challenge of integrating multiple adaptive functions into a single façade system to reduce heat loss, harness solar energy, and provide dynamic environmental control. The aim was to design, construct, and evaluate an adaptive Multi-Functional Façade (MFF) that integrates vacuum glazing, switchable opacity glazing, and a ventilated cavity with active airflow control to provide façade insulation, heated fresh air, recirculated air, or exhaust ventilation.

A Solar Thermal Test Cell (STTC) designed to Passive House standard, …

Resilience Modeling Method For Combat System-Of-Systems Based On Hypernetwork And Game Theory, Yuxian Duan, Hanqiang Deng, Jiarui Zhang, Jian Huang, Shijia Zhang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In view of the difficulties in dynamic reconfiguration and resilience evaluation faced by modern combat system-of-systems in a highly adversarial environment, and the deficiencies of existing studies in depicting high-order interaction relationships and cluster evolution mechanisms, this paper proposed a resilience modeling method for combat system-of-systems integrating hypernetwork and game theory, aiming to analyze the resilience mechanism of the system-of-systems in all dimensions from micro, mesoscopic, to macro levels. At the micro level, a high-order motif structure was introduced to represent the complex interaction modes among combat units, which overcame the information loss of traditional binary relationships in depicting …

Simulation Study Of Elevator Group Control Scheduling Based On Real-Time Occupancy Perception, Yiyong Han, Shiyu Wang, Yang Ye, Zhen Zhang, Fengque Pei, Minghai Yuan

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the conflict between car space allocation and peak passenger flow response efficiency in elevator group control scheduling, a multi-objective scheduling method based on proximal policy optimization (PPO) with real-time occupancy perception was proposed. A simulation environment considering car capacity constraints was constructed, and a reward-penalty mechanism with average passenger waiting time, system energy consumption, and car congestion as optimization objectives was designed. Based on this, state and action spaces were defined to form a PPO-based scheduling framework; a simulation platform integrating traffic flow visualization, policy scheduling, and performance evaluation was developed. Simulation results show that this method …

Adaptive Spatiotemporal Graph Neural Network-Based Net Load Forecasting For Residential Areas, Yongqi Yang, Cong Wang, Hongli Zhang, Ping Ma, Yue Meng, Tianhao Zhou

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the issue that traditional residential overall power load forecasting methods fail to fully consider the differences in users' electricity consumption habits, making it difficult to improve prediction accuracy, a residential net load forecasting method combining representation learning clustering and an AGCN-Transformer was proposed. The representation learning method was utilized to fully extract the latent features of users' net load data, and users were divided into different groups based on the similarity of electricity consumption behaviors; the net load data of the same group were aggregated, and a graph structure suitable for this task was constructed by comprehensively …

Evolution And Prospects Of Polarization Image Simulation Technology, Gengpeng Li, Wei Cai, Zhiyong Yang, Zhili Zhang, Xiaowei Wang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Polarization image simulation technology is a key means to break through the bottleneck of polarization data acquisition and promote the development of polarization vision. This study systematically reviewed three evolutionary paradigms of this technology: Physical mechanism simulation, based on the polarization bidirectional reflectance distribution function and polarization ray tracing, strictly solves polarization light transmission, which has high interpretability and credibility, but it is computationally complex and lacks visual realism. Data-driven simulation, using models like neural radiance fields to learn polarization appearance from data, has high generation efficiency and visual fidelity but weaker physical consistency and interpretability. Physics-data fusion simulation …

Mbse Design And Approach-Phase Operational Simulation Of Bdsbas Airborne Receiver, Ruihua Liu, Tongwei Wang, Zan Ma

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In view of the problem that traditional document-based design methods are difficult to effectively capture the dynamic characteristics and internal interactions in navigation accuracy and integrity assurance required by BeiDou satellite-based augmentation system (BDSBAS) airborne receivers during the approach phase, which easily leads to designs deviating from actual requirements and affects system performance, a model-based systems engineering(MBSE) method was introduced. A multi-dimensional system architecture model encompassing system requirement analysis, behavior description, structure design, and parameter constraints was established. Taking BDSBAS as the object, a co-simulation method of system modeling language and MATLAB for required navigation performance (RNP) was proposed, …

Simulation Study On The Vulnerability Of Belt And Road Composite Transportation Network Based On Cascading Failure, Mingjun Qian, Chao Yin, Zhiwen Huang, Quanneng Wang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the issues of unclear cascading failure propagation mechanisms and difficult-to-quantify vulnerability evolution laws caused by the structural complexity and node heterogeneity of the "Belt and Road" multimodal transport network, a vulnerability assessment method for composite transportation networks integrating physical analogy and improved cascading failure model was proposed. Sub-networks were constructed based on main transportation modes of the Belt and Road, and nodes in the same city were coupled to build a composite transportation network model. An information entropy-Joule's law model was constructed to identify key nodes of the composite network and its subnetworks. A load-capacity cascading failure …

Distributed Cooperative Control Of Swarm Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Based On Multi-Route Clustering, Yuyang Xiong, Chuntao Li, Wenhao Qiu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the collaborative control and formation maintenance problems of large-scale swarm unmanned aerial vehicles, a distributed cooperative control method for unmanned aerial vehicles based on multi-route clustering was proposed. Leveraging the characteristics of multiple routes, the overall cooperative control problem of the swarm was decoupled into the cooperative control within the same route and the consensus control between multiple routes. Within the same route, a forward-neighbor information interaction mechanism was designed to determine the neighbor relationships, and a velocity-guided cooperative algorithm was utilized to achieve the desired velocity matching and spacing maintenance of unmanned aerial vehicles; between multiple …

Multi-Scale Modeling Method For Intelligent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Swarm Combat, Yelei Zhu, Shoulin Shen, Jiang Zhu, Chuanhua Wen

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Intelligent unmanned aerial vehicle swarm combat exhibits multi-scale characteristics of microlevel tactical autonomy, meso-level resource constraints, and macro-level network collaboration. In view of the problem that a single-scale modeling method is difficult to simultaneously characterize individual decision-making details, resource flow process, and system collaboration mechanism, a multi-scale modeling method integrating multi-agent modeling, system dynamics, and complex network theory was proposed. By designing six formal coupling operators to achieve cross-layer information mapping, a time progression mechanism based on a master-slave clock and hybrid synchronization was established, and a proof of error boundedness was provided. A prototype system was implemented on …

Modeling And Simulation Of Efficient State Information Diffusion In Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Mengyao Jia, Shaozhu Gu, Junhan Wang, Denghao Wang, Du Xu, Xiaoning Zhang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To solve the problems of significant communication overhead and limited real-time response capability in the traditional flooding-based state diffusion mechanism, an efficient diffusion algorithm based on regional partitioning and information compression was proposed. A multi-dimensional feature clustering method integrating geographic distance and link quality was used to achieve high-cohesion network partitioning through weighted Euclidean distance and the K-means algorithm; a dynamic selection mechanism for representative nodes was designed to conduct comprehensive scoring by combining the link quality and geographic centrality of nodes, realizing the efficient compression and aggregated transmission of regional information. Simulation results indicate that the algorithm significantly …

Research On Safety Monitoring System For Digital Twin Fully Mechanized Mining Face In Thin Coal Seams, Ya Liu, Zhaoyun Zhang, Cheng An, Canguang Zheng

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To solve the problems of opaque production processes, difficult expression of production information, and high difficulty in real-time model driving and safety monitoring in fully mechanized mining faces of thin coal seams, studying the use of digital twin technology and risk early warning models to solve beyond-visual-range visual production operations and safety monitoring control of the working face has important theoretical and practical value. This paper studied the construction methods of the digital twin system for fully mechanized mining faces in thin coal seams and discussed the construction of high-precision three-dimensional models, the real-time collection and processing conversion of …

Trajectory-Aware Dynamic Offloading For High-Mobility Vehicular Edge Systems, Haoran Xu, Zhiqin Huang, Youwu Hu, Zheyi Chen

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the problems of service interruptions, task failures, and resource waste caused by high mobility of intelligent vehicles (IVs) in vehicular edge computing (VEC), this paper proposes a trajectory-aware dynamic offloading (TADO) framework for high-mobility vehicular edge systems. A lightweight T-pattern trajectory-aware algorithm is designed to efficiently predict the next-hop road side unit (RSU) by mining spatio-temporal patterns from historical trajectories of vehicles, offering a forward-looking reference for offloading decisions. A joint optimization model is constructed, and a service interruption risk factor driven by trajectory prediction is introduced. An improved DRL method is developed. It takes the predicted …

Multi-Auv Pursuit Algorithm With Phased Guidance Based On Maddpg, Sen Zhang, Sihang Shen, Xiaojie Sun, Jingping Shao, Shuaiqiang Guo, Yingjie Deng

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the problems such as low exploration and sampling efficiency and sparse rewards in the early training stage under the complex target pursuit environment of multiple AUVs based on MADDPG, a phased-guidance curriculum MADDPG (PGC-MADDPG) algorithm was proposed. The pursuit task was divided into two phases, i.e., target tracking and encircling, through curriculum learning. In the target tracking phase, an experience strategy based on the APF method was introduced as a guidance item to provide prior knowledge of the target direction and accelerate the AUV training speed. After entering the encircling phase, the APF guidance item was removed, …

Study On Trajectory Optimization Of Spray Painting Robot Based On Improved Sparrow Search Algorithm, Jie Yang, Zhenkai Xiong, Longyan Wang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the challenges posed by the complex working environment to the trajectory planning of the spray painting robot, a multi-strategy integrated sparrow search algorithm (MISSA) was proposed with the dual optimization objectives of time efficiency and motion smoothness. The 3-5-3 polynomial interpolation method was adopted to design the trajectory curve, aiming to ensure continuous angular displacement, angular velocity, and angular acceleration throughout the process. A multidimensional optimization problem with joint constraints was constructed using the total trajectory duration as the performance index. MISSA, which integrates refraction reverse learning, sine-cosine adaptive adjustment, and Cauchy mutation, was utilized to optimize …

Research On Multi-Objective Hybrid Flow-Shop Scheduling With Order Splitting, Junjie Yu, Weixi Ji, Chen Chen, Jingyu Lu, Chaoyang Zhang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the order splitting multi-objective hybrid flow-shop scheduling problem (OSMOHFSP), a dual-objective optimization model was formulated with the objectives of minimizing makespan and total order tardiness. Fixed sub-batch specification constraints were incorporated to reflect common splitting limitations in actual production. A sub-batch generation strategy based on a candidate set of sub-batch specifications was designed to efficiently filter feasible splitting combinations, effectively reducing the search space dimensionality and computational complexity. A hybrid multi-objective metaheuristic algorithm integrating NSGA-II and SA was proposed. The global search capability was enhanced by constructing two crossover and four mutation operators. An improved SA embedding …

Ultra-Short-Term Photovoltaic Power Prediction Method Based On Spatio-Temporal Feature Enhancement Of Ground-Based Cloud Images, Zhiwei Kou, Fengyue Xin, Xiaoming Cui, Yu Yin, Feifan Li, Yongsheng Qi

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In view of the time lag in ground-based cloud image acquisition and the insufficient accuracy of existing photovoltaic power prediction models, an ultra-short-term photovoltaic power prediction method named spatial-temporal feature enhancement-ground-based cloud image-improved LSTM (STFE-GCI-ILSTM), which is based on spatio-temporal feature enhancement-ground-based cloud images-improved long short-term memory (LSTM) network was proposed. A ground-based cloud image prediction model with multi-scale spatio-temporal feature enhancement (STFE-GCI) was constructed. By spatial feature enhancement, temporal feature enhancement, and multi-scale feature fusion technologies, the deep spatio-temporal features of historical cloud image sequences were extracted to generate future predicted cloud image sequences, thereby eliminating the time …

Simulation Platform Based On Soc-Fpga Clusters For Cxl-Ethernet Heterogeneous Interconnection, Xu Zhang, Ke Liu, Mingyu Chen

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To address the difficulty of balancing simulation speed and topology flexibility when simulating large-scale, CXL-Ethernet heterogeneous interconnect datacenter scenarios with existing CXL simulation platforms, this paper presents CNetSim, a semi-physical simulation platform based on an SoC-FPGA cluster. The platform employs SoC-FPGA hardware to emulate endpoint nodes, leveraging their real processors and memory devices as well as FPGA-implemented CXL. mem protocol to support high-speed execution of standard Linux systems and real distributed applications. Meanwhile, it utilizes the flexible topology configuration capability of software simulation to implement CXL switched networks and inter-rack Ethernet interconnects based on DPDK on simulation servers. Simulation …

Optimization Of Convective Heat Transfer Parameters For Spindles Based On Finite Element Thermal Analysis, Jiali Zhang, Haiping Liu, Qinsheng Jiang, Sina Dang

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: In view of the low simulation accuracy of existing finite element models for thermal characteristics of spindles caused by ignoring the influences of geometric characteristics of convective surfaces and fluid flow patterns and often adopting constant temperature loading in the setting of convective heat transfer boundary conditions, this paper proposed an optimization method for convective heat transfer parameters of spindles based on finite element thermal analysis. Combined with the geometric shapes and spatial positions of various convective surfaces of the spindle system, the calculation criterion of the convective heat transfer coefficient was determined through dimensional analysis according to the …

Simulation And Optimization Of Task Offloading In Mine Edge Computing For Low-Concurrency Devices, Zhaolu Guo, Qianhui Liu

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: With the advancement of mine intelligence, task offloading technology has become a core technology of mine edge computing (MEC). For edge computing systems deployed with mine low-concurrency devices (MLCD), a discrete-event simulation model for MEC task offloading oriented to MLCD was constructed to solve the collaborative optimization problem of task processing latency and load balancing of mine edge servers (MES). By dynamically simulating the queuing, transmission, and computation processes of tasks, the objective of minimizing task processing latency was achieved. An improved evolutionary algorithm, ISBT-EA, was proposed, which integrated a task-characteristic-driven initialization strategy and local search operators, enhancing the …

Prediction Of Industrial Concentration Parameters Based On Caudformer Model, Kaipeng Xu, Yan Wang, Xin Zhang, Yang Liu, Zhenzhong Wang, Xiang Liu, Zhicheng Ji

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: To solve the problems in the industrial concentration process of traditional Chinese medicine that traditional prediction methods are difficult to deal with complex characteristics such as nonlinearity, high-dimensional coupling, and highly skewed distribution and that existing deep learning models insufficiently consider causal relationships among variables, ignore frequency-domain periodic characteristics, and lack long-range dependency modeling capabilities, an improved multivariate time series prediction model CauDformer was proposed in this paper. Based on the iTransformer architecture, a causal multi-head self-attention mechanism (C-MHSA) was introduced to compulsorily constrain the dependency direction among variables by utilizing a lower triangular causal mask, guiding the model …

Understanding The Structural Drivers Of Useful Exergy Intensity, João Santos, Tiago Domingos, Tânia Sousa, Matthew Kuperus Heun, André Serrenho

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Energy-Economy Decomposition Analysis Across 112 Countries 1971-2020