Engineering Commons^™

Hands-On Structural Engineering Experiences With The "Anex" Mini-Laboratory, Richard A. Behr, Colin Othniel Benjamin, Azam A. Mirza

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The ANEX facility has been developed to allow nearly real-time comparisons of analysis results with experimental data gathered on small-scale structural models. ANEX has been used successfully for in-class demonstrations, student-designed experiments, and comprehensive design/build competitions in an introductory structural analysis course at the University of Missouri-Rolla. An expert system is now being developed to guide ANEX users and to act as a trouble-shooter and advisor in the event that analytical and experimental results do not correlate acceptably well. ANEX, using only simple, small-scale model structures, is able to enrich structural engineering instruction by introducing students to the sophisticated capabilities …

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

An Integrated Simulation Model Development Environment For Slam Ii Using Object-Oriented Paradigm, Rizvan Erol

Masters Theses

An integrated simulation model development environment was implemented to assist the modeler by automating certain activities of simulation modeling. The system included interactive model definition, experimental design, automatic simulation program generation in SLAM II. Object-oriented paradigm at software development stage was extensively used to conceptualize the structure, and rules of the SLAM II language in order to generate efficient, and modular program code. The present system targeted modeling of various probabilistic inventory control system problems. The remarkable advantages of the system were rapid model development time, and achieving reliable program code without requiring any knowledge in SLAM II. Object-oriented programming …

Nonlinear Large Displacement And Moderate Rotational Characteristics Of Composite Beams Incorporating Transverse Shear Strain, Stephen G. Creaghan

Theses and Dissertations

This research was directed toward the investigation of nonlinear large displacements and moderate rotations of composite beam structures considering a finite element potential energy approach incorporating through the thickness shear strain as an analytical function. This approach was compared to large rotation theories. Test cases were run to evaluate numerical algorithms Riks method and displacement imposed techniques were employed. The limitations and advantages of both methods were considered. Loading arrangements included concentrated forces as well as moments.

Parallel Simulation Of Structural Vhdl Circuits On Intel Hypercubes, Thomas A. Breeden

Theses and Dissertations

Many VLSI circuit designs are too large to be simulated with VHDL in a reasonable amount of time. One approach to reducing the simulation time is to distribute the simulation over several processors. This research creates an environment for designing and simulating structural VHDL circuits on the Intel iPSC/2 and iPSC/860 Hypercubes. Logic gates and system behaviors are partitioned among the processors, and signed changes are shared via event messages. Circuit simulations are run over the SPECTRUM parallel simulation testbed, and the null- message paradigm is used to avoid deadlock. Structural circuits ranging from forty to over one thousand logic …

An Assessment Of Software Safety As Applied To The Department Of Defense Software Development Process, Peter W. Colan, Robert W. Prouhet

Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzed the relationships between the DOD software development process, system safety requirements, and current structured software safety analysis techniques. The current state of software safety was assessed within the aerospace industry and DOD, and a training program for DOD System Safety Managers was developed. A telephone survey was conducted to gather information on current software safety analysis techniques and methodologies. Personal interviews were conducted with Aeronautical System Center System Safety Managers to gather data on job perception and perceived training needs. The results of the study indicate that the DOD guidance and policy documents needed to implement and …

Conceptual Design Of The Modular Transuranic Shipping Cask Mts-54, Vojislav Banjac

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

The storage, transportation, and disposal of radioactive waste has become a problem of immense proportions in the United States. This Thesis focuses on the transportation of defense transuranic (TRU) waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) repository near Carlsbad, New Mexico. The objective of the cask conceptual design was based on the following:

• Taking into account the latest available data on TRU waste drum mass, investigate the possibility of increased drum capacity per shipment over the current design;
• Present a new TRU cask design with increased drum capacity and the potential for transporting both Contact-handled (CH and Remote-handled (RH) …

On The Difficulty Of Manhattan Channel Routing, Ronald I. Greenberg, Joseph Jaja, Sridhar Krishnamurthy

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

We show that channel routing in the Manhattan model remains difficult even when all nets are single-sided. Given a set of n single-sided nets, we consider the problem of determining the minimum number of tracks required to obtain a dogleg-free routing. In addition to showing that the decision version of the problem isNP-complete, we show that there are problems requiring at least d+Omega(sqrt(n)) tracks, where d is the density. This existential lower bound does not follow from any of the known lower bounds in the literature.

Passive Damping Of A Solar Array, Mark A. Scharpen

Theses and Dissertations

This study was an attempt to conceptualize, design, build, and test a constrained layer damping device that uses mechanical advantage for the purpose of increasing the damping of transient vibration of a five-bay planar truss. The aluminum truss was clamped to a fixed support and simulated a solar array. A conventional constrained layer treatment was designed, built, and tested to serve as a benchmark for comparison. For the conventional treatment, Plunkett and Lee's segmented constraining layer technique was used. The improved device, two three-layer sandwich beams spanning the two bays nearest the built-in end, were supported several inches away from …

Behavior Of A Titanium Matrix Composite Under Quasi-Static Tensile And Compressive Loading, Keith L. Bearden

Theses and Dissertations

Quasi-Static tensile and compressive testing was performed on a unidirectional titanium matrix composite. The specific material was SCS-9/β 21S. The initial tensile and compressive modulus for both laminates was the same. The ninety degree laminate had a tensile and compressive modulus of 115.89 GPa. The zero degree laminate had a tensile and compressive modulus of 197.51 GPa. The ninety degree laminate exhibited a three stage stress/strain response in tension. The first stage is completely linearly elastic, however, partial debonding of the fiber from the matrix was observed. This partial debased did not effect the stress/strain response. The second stage is …

The Effects Of Viscosity On A Conically Derived Waverider, James A. Mundy

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigated the effects of the interaction between the viscous boundary layer and the shock wave produced by a Mach 10 inviscid optimized waverider. An implicit, Roe flux-splitting algorithm, developed by WL/FIMM, was used to solve the flow field. A validation for the inviscid version of the CFD algorithm was accomplished by comparing the numerical -data produced by the CFD code to the analytic results derived by Rasmussen, and by comparison to results of the explicit version of the same Roe flux-splitting code. The computational results compared favorably. The inviscid case studied using the implicit code produced results identical, …

Creating And Manipulating Formalized Software Architectures To Support A Domain-Oriented Application Composition System, Cynthia G. Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigated technology which enables sophisticated users to specify, generate, and maintain application software in domain-oriented terms. To realize this new technology, a development environment, called Architect, was designed and implemented. Using canonical formal specifications of domain objects, Architect rapidly composes these specifications into a software application and executes a prototype of that application as a means to demonstrate its correctness before any programming language specific code is generated. Architect depends upon the existence of a formal object base (or domain model) which was investigated by another student in related research. The research described in this thesis relied on …

Automated Control Of Aircraft In Formation Flight, Louis E. Buzogany

Theses and Dissertations

In this study, an automated formation control system for an aircraft formation comprised of one lead and multiple wing aircraft is analyzed. Second- order models of the C-130 aircraft are developed in order to accurately model the flying qualities of large aircraft. This automated formation control system is capable of controlling the C-130 aircraft in maneuvering formation flight, thus reducing the wing's pilot workload. During formation flight, the wing aircraft continuously measures the lead aircraft's relative position with an ideal on-board position sensor. This information, in addition to Proportional Plus Integral feedback control, is used to maintain the aircraft in …

Oxidative Mechanisms In Arterial Distension Injury: Observations Relevant To Restenosis After Angioplasty, Charles F. Babbs, Yuan Zhong

Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering Faculty Working Papers

Background: To explore the hypothesis that tissue iron and reactive oxygen species, including superoxide (O2), mediate acute inflammatory and late hyperplastic responses to vascular injury, we studied experimental overdistension of normal carotid and femoral arteries in dogs. Experimental design: Arterial segments isolated in situ were distended with Ringer solution at 2 atmospheres pressure. In initial experiments the arteries were excised immediately after distension and immersed in diaminobenzidine solutions containing Mn++ ions to initiate histochemical reactions for O2. In other experiments distended arterial segments were reperfused with arterial blood in the presence or absence of the iron chelator, deferoxamine, or the …

Stabilization Of Passively Mode-Locked Semiconductor Laser Repetition Frequency, Roger Helkey, Dennis J. Derickson, Alan Mar, John Wasserbauer, Robert L. Thornton

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Nsf Sponsored Innovation In Engineering And Cornputer Science, Jacob Abel, Patricia Daniels, James G. Harris, Harry Hedges

Electrical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Model For The Infrastructure Of Engineering Education, James G. Harris, Karen Frair, Win Aung, Susan T. Hill

Electrical Engineering

There are many ways to describe and model physical systems. The infrastructure of engineering education in the United States is an example of such a system, and it is the intent of this report to describe and model this infratructure. The means for doing this starts with the graduation statistics for the year 1989 given by the Computer Aided Science Policy Analysis & Research Database System (CASPAR) developed for the National Science Foundation by Quantum Research Corporation [1], and uses a simple categorization for the institutions that contribute to those statistics. This categorization sorts the post -secondary institutions in the …

Electrochemical Evaluation Of The Adherence Of Zinc To Aluminum Cathodes, Jang Sop Han, Thomas J. O'Keefe

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Excess fluoride ions in zinc electrolyte are known to cause problems with the removal of electrowon zinc from aluminum blanks. The mechanisms responsible for this undesirable adherence were studied. Acid zinc sulfate electrolyte similar to that employed in zinc electrowinning was used. Using electrolyte containing various fluoride ion concentrations, the initial nucleation and growth morphology of zinc and the aluminum electrode surface were examined using scanning electron microscopy. Electrochemical tests were also carried out in various solutions to obtain a better understanding of the polarization behavior of the system. © 1992.

Flow Excited Acoustic Resonance In A Deep Cavity: An Analytical Model, William W. Durgin, Hans R. Graf

Office of the Provost Scholarship

Flow past the opening of a deep cavity can excite and sustain longitudinal acoustic modes resulting in large pressure fluctuations and loud tone generation. An analytic model of the interaction of the free stream with the acoustic flow field using concentrated vortices in the shear layer is proposed. The model includes a computation of the power transferred by the traveling vortices to the acoustic oscillation in the cavity. Experimentally measured values for the vortex convection velocity and phase are used to enable calculation of the ensuing oscillation amplititude and frequency ratio. The radiated acoustic power is calculated using the model …

Acuta Enews November 1992, Vol. 21, No. 11

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Interchangeable NPA, NNX

President's Message

Permanent 800 numbers

Industry/ Regulatory updates

Making voice mail effective

The fax-on-demand solution

Simulated Crystalline Structures Of Aromatic Polyimides, Tze Wing Poon, B. David Silverman, Ravi F. Saraf, Angelo R. Rossi, Paul S. Ho

Ravi Saraf Publications

Semicrystalline structures involving molecular packing and optimized chain conformations of three polyimides have been obtained with the CHARMM moleculardynamics program, and their densities calculated. An eclipsed conformation of face-toface stacking of polymer chains with a relative shift is observed, and the shift is found to depend upon the molecular characteristics of the planar unit and chain linearity. Threedimensional structures obtained by calculating the optimized edge-on confirmation of the stacked units yield the smallest calculated density for PMDA-ODA, namely 1.515 g/cm³, followed by BPDA-PDA with 1.644 g/cm³ and PMDA-PDA with 1.712 g/cm³. Both PMDA-ODA and BPDA-PDA …

The Programmers' Playground: I/O Abstraction For Heterogeneous Distributed Systems, Kenneth J. Goldman, Michael D. Anderson

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A new high-level approach to interprocess communication in heterogeneous distributed systems in introduced, This approach, called I/O Abstraction, allows one to write each functional component of a distributed system as an encapsulated program that acts upon a set of local data structures, some of which may be published for external use. The functional components are separately configured by establishing logical connections among the published data structures. In order to illustrate this approach, we describe the The Programmers' Playground, a high-level language "veneer" and protocol designed to support I/O abstraction in heterogeneous computing environment. Support for communication among programs written in …

Computing Specificity, Ronald Loui, J. Norman, K. Stiefvater, A. Merrill, A. Costello, J. Olson

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

This note reports on an effort to implement a version of Poole's rule for specificity. Relatively, efficient implementation relies on correcting and improving a pruning lemma of Simari-Loui [92]. This in turn requires revision of Poole's specificity concept. The resulting system is a usable knowledge representation system with first-order-language and defeasible reasoning. Sample input and output are included in an appendix. It is a good candidate for multiple inheritance applications; it is useful for planning, but limited by the underlying search for plans.

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 8, Number 8, November 1992, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

A fourteen page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

Southern Nevada Effluent Wetlands: A Proposed Cooperative Venture Between The Bureau Of Reclamation & City Of Las Vegas, Bureau Of Reclamation

Publications (WR)

Throughout North America there is a growing interest in constructed wetlands, both as relatively inexpensive, low-maintenance systems for removing nutrients from wastewater, and as a means of using municipal wastewater to enhance wildlife habitat and create public use opportunities. Because wetlands appear to have good potential as a component in the overall management of scarce water resources, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) has undertaken several cooperative research and demonstration projects to evaluate their effectiveness in a variety of local environments. While a number of projects have demonstrated that wetlands can be beneficially employed to improve water quality, few such projects …

Development Of Knowledge-Based Systems For Aluminum Welding, R. J. Napolitano, H. Kulluk, Mark L. Nagurka, R. P. Martukanitz, P. B. Dickerson

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of Strontium-Doped La(Cr, Mn)O3 For Solid Oxide Fuel Cells, Rasit Koc, Harlan U. Anderson

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The (La, Sr) (Cr, Mn)O₃ system was investigated in an effort to develop an interconnect and cathode materials for solid oxide fuel cells. Sintering studies were done in air at temperatures below 1500°C. Significant improvements in densification were observed with substitution of 50 mol% Mn for chromium and a density of 95% theoretical was achieved with the substitution of 70 mol% Mn for chromium in the La(Cr, Mn)O₃ system. Electrical conductivity (d.c.) measurements were made as a function of temperature and oxygen activity. At 1000°C and 1 atm oxygen, the electrical conductivity ranged from 2.2-20 S cm^{-1 …}

Structural Ceramic Incorporating Boron Carbide Whiskers For The Strengthening Thereof, P. D. Ownby, J. Liu

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ceramic composites, and in particular structural ceramic composites, have enhanced strength, toughness and abrasion resistance due to the presence of up to about 40 volume percent of relatively large boron carbide whiskers. Although whiskers of various sizes were studied, those of particular interest are whiskers having an average diameter greater than about 3 micrometers, and particularly about 5 to about 8 micrometers, with an average aspect ratio of about 50. Due to the larger size, which had been predicted to be detrimental, there is less respiratory health risk when using these whiskers in the manufacturing of thse improved ceramic composites. …

Shock Tube Study Of The Effects Of Large Density Differences And Blowing Ratio On Heat Transfer To A Film-Cooled Flat Plate, Thomas A. Eads

Theses and Dissertations

The effects of coolant-to-mainstream density ratio (D.R.) and mass flux (blowing) ratio (Mb) on flat plate heat transfer were investigated in a shock tube. The round-nosed plate has a single row of holes inclined 35° downstream with two-diameter lateral spacing and hole length of three diameters. Mixing helium with air in the shock tube produced a D.R. range of 1.2 to 2.1. The parameters studied approach those of film-cooled turbine components. For an Mb range of 0.4 to 3 and 10% mainstream turbulence, heat flux was measured with thin-film heat flux gauges located 4 to 30 hole diameters downstream of …

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.