Engineering Commons^™

The Environmental And Nutritional Dilemma Of Beef Production And Consumption, Hannah A. Swilling, Stefano De Rosmini, Brooke Lovan

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Based on previous studies, it has been stated that beef production and consumption in the United States is detrimental to the environment. However, in depth studies analyzing the change of beef production and consumption, the environmental impacts, the external costs, the lifestyle implications as well as the nutritional, the social and the cultural aspects of beef have not been conducted. The goal of this study is to analyze the multiple aspects of the dilemma over beef production and consumption. This was done through an analysis of beef production and consumption data over the past 60 years to determine how it …

Use Of Saturated Lightweight Sand To Improve The Mechanical And Microstructural Properties Of Uhpc With Fiber Alignment, Huanghuang Huang, Le Teng, Xiaojian Gao, Kamal Khayat, Fazhou Wang, Zhichao Liu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper studied the influence of pre-saturated lightweight sand (LWS) on the mechanical and microstructural properties of UHPC cast with steel fiber alignment. The changes in hydration kinetics, porosity, nano-mechanical, and mechanical properties were studied. The LWS was used at 0–50% replacement volumes of total sand. Predominant fiber alignment was favored through a flow-induced casting method during casting of flexural prisms. Experiment results showed that the 28-d autogenous shrinkage was decreased from 450 to 275 μm/m with the LWS content increasing from 0 to 50%. The addition of 20% LWS led to maximum increases of 15%, 15%, and 20% in …

Evaluation Of Triple Negative Breast Cancer Tumor Matrix, Alejandra Ham

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Impact Of Sex On Proliferation And Maturation Of Primary Isolated Myoblasts, Elsa M. Bean

Biomedical Engineering

Peripheral arterial occlusive disease (PAOD) is caused by the buildup of atherosclerotic plaque causing restriction in blood flow in tissue, known as ischemia. It affects 8 million people in the United States and can hinder daily life through the onset of symptoms such as intermittent claudication and in extreme cases ulcers and gangrene. Surgical revascularization is not accessible to certain patient populations, such those of advanced age, highlighting a need for alternative therapies. For example, naturally occurring bypass arteries, called collateral blood vessels, can remodel and enlarge to bypass the occlusion. This process, known as arteriogenesis, has been studied as …

Establishing Pteridine Metabolism In A Progressive Isogenic Breast Cancer Cell Model – Part Ii, Lindsey Rasmussen, Zachary Foulks, Jiandong Wu, Casey Burton, Honglan Shi

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

Introduction: Determining the biological significance of pteridines in cancer development and progression remains an important step in understanding the altered levels of urinary pteridines seen in certain cancers. Our companion study revealed that several folate-derived pteridines and lumazines correlated with tumorigenicity in an isogenic, progressive breast cancer cell model, providing direct evidence for the tumorigenic origin of pteridines. Objectives: This study sought to elucidate the pteridine biosynthetic pathway in a progressive breast cancer model via direct pteridine dosing to determine how pteridine metabolism changes with tumorigenicity. Methods: First, MCF10AT breast cancer cells were dosed individually with 15 pteridines to determine …

An Engineering And Economic Analysis Of The Implementation Of The Carbo Rock-It, Lydia Huck

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The patented Carbo Rock-It system was developed to carbonate beverages for the craft brewing industry with the goal of reducing time, cost, and environmental impacts of the carbonation process. This research field tests, models, analyzes and optimizes the engineering and economic performance of a commercial-scale Carbo Rock-It placed in production at an operating brewery (Core Brewing and Distilling Co., Springdale, AR). Field tests indicated that the Carbo Rock-It was able to successfully carbonate twelve 120 BBL batches of Scarlet Letter Seltzer to 3.0 vol/vol while meeting all beverage quality and safety requirements. The Carbo Rock-It was able to reduce carbonation …

Quantitative Holistic Assessment Of Implementing Collaborative Planning Practices, Amr Elsayegh, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Practices of collaborative planning - as related to novel project delivery methods, information technologies, lean construction, and supply chain practices - can impact the cost and schedule performance of projects in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. However, there is a lack of research providing a quantitative holistic assessment of implementing collaborative planning practices. This paper fills this knowledge gap. Using an interdependent multistep research methodology, the authors (1) analyzed a holistic literature-based list of collaborative planning risks using 46 responses from industry expert surveys; (2) calculated the criticality of these risks and compared the obtained results using Spearman …

Examining The Different Snap-Through Characteristics Of Bistable Cfrp Composite Laminates, Vishrut Deshpande

All Theses

Bistable carbon fiber composites, whose bistability arises from having asymmetric fiber layouts in different layers, have shown immense potential for use in shape morphing and adaptive structure applications. While many studies in this field focus on these composite laminates’ external shapes at the two stable states, their snap-through behavior of shifting from one stable shape to the other remains a critical aspect to be investigated in complete detail. Moreover, symmetric loading conditions have been extensively studied based on the classical lamination theory, but the asymmetric loading conditions received far less attention. Therefore, this study examines an asymmetric, localized point load …

A Central Compact Hybrid-Variable Method With Spectral-Like Resolution, Md Mahmudul Hasan

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Numerical methods for hyperbolic conservation laws have been a driving force for theresearch in scientific computing and simulation science in the past decades, as many physical, biological, and engineering systems are governed by these equations, such as fluid mechanics, tumor growth, and virtual wind tunnel simulations. Despite the existence of many schemes in the literature, people have never stopped searching for more accurate and efficient methods for these problems. Indeed, the increasing complexity of systems in emerging applications demands better resolution of sub-grid scale phenomenon whereas classical methods usually fail to deliver high-fidelity simulation results of such systems within realistic …

Interval Observer-Based Supervision Of Nonlinear Networked Control Systems, Afef Najjar, Thach Ngoc Dinh, Messaoud Amairi, Tarek Raissi

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Networked control system (NCS) is a multidisciplinary area that attracts increasing attention today. In this paper, we deal with remote supervision of a nonlinear networked control systems class subject to network imperfections. Different from many existing researches that consider only the problem of small and/or constant communication delays, we focus on large and time-varying network delays problem in both measurement and control channels. The proposed method is a set-membership estimation-based predictor approach computing a guaranteed set of admissible state values when the uncertainties (i.e. measurement noises and system disturbances) are considered unknown but bounded with a priori known bounds. The …

An Efficient End-To-End Deep Neural Network For Interstitial Lung Disease Recognition And Classification, Masum Shah Junayed, Afsana Ahsan Jeny, Md Baharul Islam, Ikhtiar Ahmed, Afm Shahen Shah

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The automated Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs) classification technique is essential for assisting clinicians during the diagnosis process. Detecting and classifying ILDs patterns is a challenging problem. This paper introduces an end-to-end deep convolution neural network (CNN) for classifying ILDs patterns. The proposed model comprises four convolutional layers with different kernel sizes and Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function, followed by batch normalization and max-pooling with a size equal to the final feature map size well as four dense layers. We used the ADAM optimizer to minimize categorical cross-entropy. A dataset consisting of 21328 image patches of 128 CT scans with …

Evaluating The Role Of Carbon Quantum Dots Covered Silica Nanofillers On The Partial Discharge Performance Of Transformer Insulation, Kasi Viswanathan Palanisamy, Chandrasekar Subramaniam, Balaji Sakthivel

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The article presents the experimental results on the role of carbon quantum dots (CQD) covered silica nanofillers on the partial discharge (PD) properties of transformer oil insulation. The improvement in PD performance of nanofiller blend oil is tested with increased voltage gradient and nanofiller concentration. PD of nanoblend oils for various concentrations of modified silica ranging from 0 to 0.1%wt was measured. PD activity of the test samples is simulated in the laboratory with needle, rod and plane electrode geometry combinations. The facets of PD signals such as PD magnitude, PD inception and time duration of PD extracted from phase-resolved …

Strategic Integration Of Battery Energy Storage And Photovoltaic At Low Voltage Level Considering Multiobjective Cost-Benefit, Samarjit Patnaik, Manas Nayak, Meera Viswavandya

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Renewable energy sources, such as solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and battery energy storage systems (BESS), help reduce greenhouse gas emissions while fulfilling the world?s growing energy demand. The inclusion of BESS reduces the peak hour demand, and control of charging and discharging of BESS can be economical for distributors facing time-based energy pricing. This paper discusses a novel multiobjective Horse herd optimisation algorithm (MOHHOA) approach, which is inspired by the social behaviour of horses in herds for PV and BESS optimal allocation in the radial distribution system. The proposed algorithm combines multiple benefits like benefits from economic gain per day, …

Anomaly Detection In Rotating Machinery Using Autoencoders Based On Bidirectional Lstm And Gru Neural Networks, Krishna Patra, Rabi Narayan Sethi, Dhiren Kkumar Behera

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

A time series anomaly is a form of anomalous subsequence that indicates future faults will occur. The development of novel techniques for detecting this type of anomaly is significant for real-time system monitoring. Several algorithms have been used to classify anomalies successfully. However, the time series anomaly detection algorithm was not studied well. We use a new bidirectional LSTM and GRU neural networks-based hybrid autoencoder to detect if a machine is operating normally in this research. An autoencoder is trained on a set of 12 features taken from healthy operating data gathered promptly after a planned maintenance period using vibration …

Linking Bad Credentials To Safety Issues, Andrew Martin, Jeeyen Koo, Valerie Keathley-Helil, Mallory Brown, Jennifer Walton

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This study assesses (1) the effectiveness of the Kentucky Automated Truck Screening (KATS) system, (2) the relationship between credential and vehicle safety violations, (3) the relationship between credential and driver safety violations, and (4) the relationship between credential violations and crashes. The KATS system, which is installed at weigh stations throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is highly effective at detecting KYU, IFTA, and UCR violations with sensitivities of 80.54, 87.56, and 88.28 percent, respectively. However, the system is less effective at detecting IRP violations (sensitivity = 20.83 percent). There is a statistically significant relationship between credentialing and vehicle safety violations, …

A Physical Model Of Deadmans Run, Quinn Brandt

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A physical model of Deadmans Run and a pair of railroad bridges was constructed to assess the impacts of the bridges on flood flows. Lower Platte South Natural Resources District is planning a series of improvements to Deadmans Run to improve flood conveyance capacity and remove approximately 500 homes and businesses from the floodplain. The rail bridges are located less than a mile from the confluence of Deadmans Run and Salt Creek, meaning the bridges present a significant bottleneck to the planned improvements. The physical model was used to characterize the drag effects caused by the bridges, which was used …

Rheological Behavior Of Dspc-, Dbpc-, And Dppc-Oxygen Microbubbles And Their Effectiveness In Improving Survival In A Rat Model Of Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, Riaz Ur Rehman Mohammed

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) causes 75,000 deaths in the U.S., annually. It is characterized by hypoxemia and damage to the lung alveoli. ARDS Management strategies involve extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and mechanical ventilation, but none of these methods improve the mortality rates. Oxygen microbubbles (OMBs) consist of a lipid shell with an oxygen core and have potential to augment oxygenation to manage ARDS. Previous studies demonstrated significant improvements in systemic oxygenation and mortality upon administering OMBs.

We replicated an ARDS rat model by intratracheal administration of lipopolysaccharide at a 24 mg/kg dose. After inducing the disease in rats, the …

Ambient Temperature Phase Change Launcher, Johnny Molloy

Senior Honors Projects

JOHNNY MOLLOY (Mechanical Engineering) Ambient Temperature Phase Change Launcher Sponsor: Bahram Nassersharif (Mechanical Engineering)

Deployment of payloads stored in watertight cylindrical bodies in underwater environmental conditions are of interest to the marine and naval community. The proposed work will investigate the possibility of using inert carbon dioxide gas compressed into its liquid state and stored under pressure to launch payloads by means of expansion from a cylindrical tube. To suit the needs of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), this launching system must fire from up to 14 ft underwater, have two degrees of freedom, and the payload must not …

Detecting Cybersecurity And Behavioral Anomalies In Smart Grid Substation, Anfal Yahya Hathah

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the increasing number of cyberattacks on smart grid networks globally in the last decade, maintaining a stable electric power supply has become increasingly challenging. The shift from traditional means of measurement instrumentation to smarter devices in electrical substations is experiencing increasing incidents of intrusion. Defense against those intrusions is now a global trending research topic and is attracting governments’ attention. Various techniques have been developed to mitigate the effect of cyberattacks on national power grid systems. The state estimation technique has proven its capability in detecting random false data-injection attacks (FDIAs). However, attackers may have considerable knowledge of …

Learning Target Class Eigen Subspace (Ltc-Es) Via Eigen Knowledge Grid, Sanjay Kumar Sonbhadra, Sonali Agarwal, P. Nagabhushan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In one-class classification (OCC) tasks, only the target class (class-of-interest (CoI)) samples are well defined during training, whereas the other class samples are totally absent. In OCC algorithms, the high dimensional data adds computational overhead apart from its intrinsic property of curse of dimensionality. For target class learning, conventional dimensionality reduction (DR) techniques are not suitable due to negligence of the unique statistical properties of CoI samples. In this context, the present research proposes a novel target class guided DR technique to extract the eigen knowledge grid that contains the most promising eigenvectors of variance-covariance matrix of CoI samples. In …

A Novel Fault Detection Approach Based On Multilinear Sparse Pca: Application Onthe Semiconductor Manufacturing Processes, Riadh Toumi, Yahia Kourd, Dimitri Lefebvre

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Batch processes are extremely important to researchers since they are widely used in many fields such as biochemistry, pharmacy, and semiconductors. The powerful batch detection method is critical to increase the performance of the overall equipment and to reduce the use of check wafers. Many techniques have been used in batch process monitoring. Among them, the multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) is very useful in batch process monitoring because of the large number of records data. Therefore, batch processes have certain characteristics, such as multimodal batch nonlinearity trajectories, which were challenged by these MSPCs. In this paper, a novel process …

A Hybrid Acoustic-Rf Communication Framework For Networked Control Of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles: Design And Cosimulation, Saeed Nourizadeh Azar, Oytun Erdemi̇r, Mehrullah Soomro, Özgür Gürbüz Ünlüyurt, Ahmet Onat

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Underwater control applications, especially ones using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have become very popular for industrial and military underwater exploration missions. This has led to the requirement of establishing a high data rate communication link between base stations and AUVs, while underwater systems mostly rely on acoustic communications. However, limited data rate and considerable propagation delay are the major challenges for employing acoustic communication in missions requiring high control gains. In this paper, we propose a hybrid acoustic and RF communication framework for establishing a networked control system, in which, for long distance communication and control the acoustic link is …

Permaculture As An Ecopedagogy Curriculum And Alternative Theory Of Development : An Exploration Of The Ecological Consciousness Of Rural Western Kenyan Farmers Using Photo-Voice With A Farmer Field School During Covid-19, David Yisrael Epstein

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explores two main questions of farmers in Western Kenya – how they see farming as a creative process and their role in that – and how change is made possible in their community. I explore stories from farmers themselves, using photographs they have taken and stories they tell about those photographs, which answer these two questions. In doing so, I attempt to understand the degree to which collective action has taken root in a community exposed to a permaculture based curriculum within a farmer field school. It also importantly seeks to understand what happens when such a curriculum …

Ai-Synthesized Speech : Generation And Detection, Ehab Alsayed Albadawy Abdrabuh

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

From speech to images, and videos, advances in machine learning have led to dramatic improvements in the quality and realism of so-called AI-synthesized content. While there are many exciting and interesting applications, this type of content can also be used to create convincing and dangerous fakes. We seek to develop forensic techniques that can distinguish a real human voice from a synthesized voice. We observe that deep neural networks used to synthesize speech introduce specific and unusual artifacts not typically found in human speech. Although not necessarily audible, we develop various detection algorithms to measure these artifacts and be able …

Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault At The University Of Arkansas, Barrett Weidman

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This work was written to fulfill two main purposes. First, to help survivors of Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault (DFSA) process their experience by compiling the toxicological, pharmacological, and distribution of the three most used date-rape drugs. Second, to gauge the knowledge and interest of University of Arkansas students regarding drug impairments, sexual assault education, and bystander intervention training. A survey was conducted for the latter and revealed that 91.6% of students believe the University’s existing sexual assault prevention education and bystander intervention training have room for improvement. Also, 37.1% of students who have received this education report that the programming does …

Strain Measurements In Skewed Reduced Beam Section Special Moment Frame Connections, Elizabeth Moriconi

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

A series of experimental tests were conducted in the Civil Engineering Research and Education Center (CEREC) at the University of Arkansas to evaluate the effect of beam skew on a reduced beam section. Various degrees of skew on deep and shallow column depths were tested following a cyclical loading protocol, established by the AISC Seismic Provisions, to analyze the capacity of the out-of-plane skew connection [1]. Using the prequalified cyclical loading protocol allows for the evaluation of SMF connections in skew configurations against seismic events. Strain distributions throughout the RBS section, the welded beam-column connection, and the column flange were …

Comparing The Stiffness Of Cold In-Place Recycled Asphalt Pavement To Hot Mix Asphalt: Determining The Reproducibility Of The Stiffness Rebound Test, Tanner Turben

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Stiffness Raveling Mechanism Test (SRMT) was originally developed as an indirect measure of pavement stiffness to determine a pavement’s tendency to ravel, a type of damage. Regarding rehabilitation of existing roadways by Full Depth Reclamation (FDR) Cold In-Place Recycling (CIR), concern of field repeatability was expressed (Hill & Braham, 2016).

An analysis of lab-compacted samples of CIR and Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) was performed to determine if the results could be reproduced between CIR and HMA. Additionally, the experiment observed the effects of percent air voids, temperature, and moisture conditioning on CIR and HMA. Three samples were prepared for …

Community Transportation Needs And Willingness To Use Shared Micromobility: A Case Study Of Fort Smith, Arkansas, Anthony Michael Kammerer

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Shared micromobility is utilized in “targeted service areas with the usage generally intended for short trips such as "first- and last-mile" connections to complete trips made via other modes, including transit” (Price et al., 2021). In the United States, this practice has especially taken off with the implementation of sharing-based systems. This is evidenced by ridership numbers in the United States growing from 84 million riders nationwide in 2018 to 136 million riders in 2019 (NACTO, 2020). Users often use their smart phone or another similar device to unlock the vehicle after paying a fee on the device through their …

Isolation And Production Of Tandem Collagen Binding Domain From Clostridial Collagenase Colg And Developments In C1q Reagent Production For Future Molecule Characterization Work, Stephanie Beitle

Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis covers a two part project: the production methods to create a double collagen binding domain molecule with a growth factor for wound healing applications and the development of a new in-house production method for isolating C1q from bovine blood. The wound healing molecule was created using transformation, sonication, and purification before being tested via electrophoresis SDS page and Western blots to confirm the molecule’s presence. The C1q in-house production method utilizes an ultrafiltration flow cell rather than dialysis at a critical point in the process, allowing for researchers to not only be able to use a single small …

Comparing Actively Managed Mutual Fund Categories To Index Funds Using Linear Regression Forecasting And Portfolio Optimization, Luke Weiner

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The global investment industry offers a wide variety of investment products especially for individual investors. One such product, index funds, which are younger than actively managed mutual funds, have typically outperformed managed funds. Despite this phenomenon, investors have displayed a tendency to continue investing in actively managed funds. Although only a small percentage of actively managed funds outperform index funds, the costs of actively managed funds are significantly higher. Also, managed fund performances are most often determined by their fund category such as growth or real estate. I wanted to answer the following question for individual investors: can we …