Engineering Commons^™

Data-Enabled Distribution Grid Management, Zohreh Sadat Hosseini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 2020, U.S. electric utilities installed more than 94 million advanced meters, which brought the percentage of residential customers equipped with smart meters to 75%. This significant investment allows collecting extensive customer data at the distribution level, however, the data are not currently leveraged effectively to help with system operations. This dissertation aims to use the smart meters’ data to improve the grid’s reliability, stability, and controllability by solving two of the most challenging problems at the distribution level, namely distribution network phase identification and outage identification.

Distribution networks have typically been the least observable and most dynamic and locally …

Improving Quantification Of Mitral Regurgitation Through Computational Fluid Dynamics And Ex Vivo Testing, Alexandra Flowers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mitral regurgitation (MR) is a prominent cardiac disease affecting more than two million people in the United States alone. In order for patients to receive proper therapy, regurgitant volume must first be quantified. As there are an array of methods to do so, the proximal isovelocity surface area (PISA) method continues to be the most accurate and clinically used method. However, there are some difficulties obtaining the necessary measurements need for this when performing transthoracic echocardiography. This study aims to evaluate and present techniques that may be used to more accurately quantify regurgitation through ex vivo testing and computational fluid …

A Water-Surface Self-Leveling Landing Platform For Small-Scale Uavs, Mbidi Santos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Because many of the most widely used UAVs, such as the Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL), cannot land securely on sloped or fast-changing surfaces, there is a need to design better deployment and landing stations. This document proposes an approach to design a water-surface self-leveling landing platform by implementing the best concept to be used as a safe ground for UAVs to land and deploy on open waters. After conceptualizing multiple design ideas, these options were laid out in a decision matrix with four criteria: degrees of freedom, mechanical complexity, manufacturing, and cost. The chosen concept was the spherical parallel …

Classification Of Electropherograms Using Machine Learning For Parkinson’S Disease, Soroush Dehghan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative movement disorder that progresses gradually over time. The onset of symptoms in people who are suffering from PD can vary from case to case, and it depends on the progression of the disease in each patient. The PD symptoms gradually develop and exacerbate the patient’s movements throughout time. An early diagnosis of PD could improve the outcomes of treatments and could potentially delay the progression of this disorder and that makes discovering a new diagnostic method valuable. In this study, I investigate the feasibility of using a machine learning (ML) approach to classify PD …

Learning Approach For Fast Approximate Matrix Factorizations, Haiyan Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Efficiently computing an (approximate) orthonormal basis and low-rank approximation for the input data X plays a crucial role in data analysis. One of the most efficient algorithms for such tasks is the randomized algorithm, which proceeds by computing a projection XA with a random projection matrix A of much smaller size, and then computing the orthonormal basis as well as low-rank factorizations of the tall matrix XA. While a random matrix A is the de facto choice, in this work, we improve upon its performance by utilizing a learning approach to find an adaptive projection matrix A from a set …

Monitoring Of State Transitions In Extreme Environment Application Materials Using Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors, Sabuj Khadka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By embedding both a single fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor and a thermocouple (TC) during the manufacturing for extreme environment applications of certain classes of materials such as metals and polymers, a novel in-situ approach was developed to precisely monitor their entire manufacturing processes. This novel monitoring technique was able to identify many characteristic points during the curing of room and high-temperature epoxies and the solidification processes of metal alloys composed of tin and bismuth which were selected in this research purely for verification purposes. Some of the characteristic points identified for the epoxies were: (i) the gel point, (ii) …

Structural And Hemodynamic Analysis Of Transcatheter Aortic Valves, Dong Qiu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) procedure has become a well-established procedure for high, intermediate-risk, and low-risk patients. However, there is limited clinical data on the TAV's long-term durability, unlike SAV devices. Computational simulations can be an alternative way to evaluate the TAV devices. This dissertation aims to conduct structural and hemodynamic analyses on the TAV devices under different conditions using computational simulation approaches.

Initially, the impact of the bicuspid aortic valve on the TAV devices was evaluated. The result indicated that the CoreValve-like supra-annular self-expandable device was likely to have increased stress and strain on the leaflet when it …

Pulmonary Valve Replacement, Mina Shafiei

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Currently, transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement (TPVR) is a well-established alternative for surgical pulmonary valve replacement (SPVR) to treat pulmonary valve disorders in patients with prior congenital heart surgery. Edwards Sapien 3 valve is a bioprosthesis originally designed for the aortic position but has been used off-label in native right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT). It is currently under clinical trial to get food and drug administration (FDA) approval.

This study is a comparison of the performance of Sapien 3 with surgical bioprosthetics. The in vitro tests result showed Sapien 3 experiences less degree of opening and effective orifice area in pulmonic …

A Sound Artist’S Breakdown Of Field Recording Over History, Maria Chavez, Kristina Warren

Mathematics & Computer Science Faculty Scholarship

The conceptual sound artist, turntablist, and curator Maria Chavez muses about storing and accessing sounds. Building on Ursula Le Guin’s concept of the carrier bag, she describes four eras of sound recording and containment.

Thin Liquid Films On A Rotary Bell Atomizer In Surface-Following Coordinates, Mark Doerre, Nelson Akafuah

Institute of Research for Technology Development Faculty Publications

This article analyzes a published formulation of the Navier–Stokes equations cast into surface-following coordinates and provides some additional mathematical background to follow the article. Ubiquitous in the paint shops of automotive plants around the world, a high-speed rotary bell is succinctly described as a rapidly spinning concave axisymmetric surface with liquid paint supplied from a port coinciding with the center of rotation. The spinning surface transfers momentum to the paint film causing it to flow outward. Upon reaching the bell periphery, it is flung off, subsequently forming an atomized spray transferred to an automotive body through advection and electrostatics. Common …

Ferrihydrite Enrichment In The Rhizosphere Of Unsaturated Soil Improves Nutrient Retention While Limiting Arsenic And Uranium Plant Uptake, Arindam Malakar, Daniel D. Snow, Michael Kaiser, Jordan Shields, Bijesh Maharjan, Harkamal Walia, Daran Rudnick, Chittaranjan Ray

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Improvement of nutrient use efficiency and limiting trace elements such as arsenic and uranium bioavailability is critical for sustainable agriculture and food safety. Arsenic and uranium possess different properties and mobility in soils, which complicates the effort to reduce their uptake by plants. Here, we postulate that unsaturated soil amended with ferrihydrite nanominerals leads to improved nutrient retention and helps reduce uptake of these geogenic contaminants. Unsaturated soil is primarily oxic and can provide a stable environment for ferrihydrite nanominerals. To demonstrate the utility of ferrihydrite soil amendment, maize was grown in an unsaturated agricultural soil that is known to …

Inspire Newsletter Spring 2022, Missouri University Of Science And Technology. Inspire - University Transportation Center

INSPIRE Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Inspire Newsletter Fall 2022, Missouri University Of Science And Technology. Inspire - University Transportation Center

INSPIRE Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Availability Heuristic In Construction Workforce Decision-Making Amid Covid-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence And Mitigation Strategy, Yunping Liang, Anil Baral, Mohsen Shahandashti, Baabak Ashuri

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

The decision-making situations of the construction workforce have been drastically altered since the outbreak of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The new situation, where decision-makers strive to promptly respond to the unprecedented crisis to sustain essential construction operations without compromising the safety and health of workers, implies the presence of an availability heuristic. An availability heuristic has the potential to bring unconscious, systematic errors to the decision-making process. This study creates a decision-making experiment to empirically examine the presence of an availability heuristic and the effectiveness of a corresponding mitigation strategy in construction workforce decision-making under COVID-19 uncertainties. The experiment …

Measuring Engineering Students’ Engagement In Sustainability Design Concepts, Karen Perez, Donald Plumlee

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Within industries, governments, and accreditation organizations, there has been a push to incorporate sustainability concepts into engineering education. Universities like Boise State University (BSU) are starting to place greater emphasis on the inclusion of sustainability concepts in different engineering program curricula. As part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the BSU mechanical engineering program is integrating sustainability concepts specifically by using active learning modules (ALMs) suitable for each level of student education, progressing from freshman to senior. ALMs have shown to be more effective in improving motivation in the classroom compared to traditional learning. To measure …

Team H&H Rc Baja: Chassis & Suspension, John Huff

All Undergraduate Projects

An RC car needed to be created to meet set requirements to compete in the annual American Society of Mechanical Engineers RC Baja Competition. Students of the Mechanical Engineering Department of Central Washington University developed an RC car that has working suspension/ chassis size to hold a all components of a working RC car with a floating rear end. This RC car needed to meet set requirements to compete in the annual American Society of Mechanical Engineers RC Baja Competition. The requirements relative to the suspension/chassis is that the RC car must not exceed a weight of 10lb, must not …

Graphene-Metal Metasurface For Cloaking Of Cylindrical Objects At Low-Terahertz Frequencies, Shefali Pawar, Hossein Mehrpour Bernety, Alexander B. Yakovlev

Faculty and Student Publications

Most of the theoretical studies involving graphene, typically assume an ultra-high mobility and/or high value of Fermi energy to achieve exciting functionalities such as polarization conversion, absorption, cloaking, among others. In practice, however, graphene with such high mobility is very difficult to realize, on account of the numerous flaws and impurities that inevitably are introduced during the graphene growth and transfer process. This severely compromises graphene's practical performance, despite the appeal of theoretical predictions. A novel design was presented in 'X. Wang et al., IEEE Trans. Antenna Propagat., vol. 67, pp. 2452-2461, 2019', wherein a graphene metasurface was devised to …

Regularizing The Deepsurv Network Using Projection Loss For Medical Risk Assessment, Phawis Thammasorn, Stephanie K. Schaub, Daniel S. Hippe, Matthew B. Spraker, Jan C. Peeken, Landon S. Wootton

Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

State-of-the-art deep survival prediction approaches expand network parameters to accommodate performance over a fine discretization of output time. For medical applications where data are limited, the regression-based Deepsurv approach is more advantageous because its continuous output design limits unnecessary network parameters. Despite the practical advantage, the typical network lacks control over the feature distribution causing the network to be more prone to noisy information and occasional poor prediction performance. We propose a novel projection loss as a regularizing objective to improve the time-to-event Deepsurv model. The loss formulation maximizes the lower bound of the multiple-correlation coefficient between the network’s features …

Sedi-Sensor: Pollution Monitoring In Plaster Creek, Joseph Lewis, Kris Miedema, Christian Ro, Isaac Spackman, Moses Yang

Student Papers and Reports

Pollution reduction in Plaster Creek is difficult to quantify. This team deployed a turbidity probe capable of retrieving data sufficient to study intermittent flooding.

Data Analytics And Visualization For Virtual Simulation, Sri Lekha Koppaka

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Healthcare organizations attract a diversity of caregivers and patients by providing essential care. While interacting with people of various races, ethnicity, and economical background, caregivers need to be empathetic and compassionate. Proper training and exposure are needed to understand the patient’s background and handle different situations and provide the best care for the patient. With social determinants of health (SDOH) as the basis, the thesis focuses on providing exposure through “Wright LIFE (Lifelike Immersion for Equity) - A simulation-based training tool” to two such scenarios covering patients from the LGBTQIA+ community & autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This interactive tool helps …

Fbxl16 Promotes Breast Cancer Cell Growth And Diminishes Fulvestrant Responsiveness By Stabilizing Erα Protein, Krushangi Nirav Shah

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women. Approximately 75% of breast cancers are estrogen receptor alpha positive (ER+) and are treatable with endocrine therapies and/or CDK inhibitors. However, endocrine therapy (ET) resistance and metastasis are major obstacles in advanced ERα+ breast cancer (ER+ BCa) therapeutics. Upregulated oncogenic ERα activity plays critical role in progression of ER+ BCa. One essential mechanism of regulating ERα signaling is the ubiquitination-dependent proteasomal degradation of ERα. Owing to its direct effect on ERα degradation, fulvestrant is a first-line FDA-approved ET for metastatic and locally advanced breast cancer and a second-line drug for treatment …

Computer Enabled Interventions To Communication And Behavioral Problems In Collaborative Work Environments, Ashutosh Shivakumar

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Task success in co-located and distributed collaborative work settings is characterized by clear and efficient communication between participating members. Communication issues like 1) Unwanted interruptions and 2) Delayed feedback in collaborative work based distributed scenarios have the potential to impede task coordination and significantly decrease the probability of accomplishing task objective. Research shows that 1) Interrupting tasks at random moments can cause users to take up to 30% longer to resume tasks, commit up to twice the errors, and experience up to twice the negative effect than when interrupted at boundaries 2) Skill retention in collaborative learning tasks improves with …

Supervised Machine Learning Techniques Applied To Low-Cost Air Quality Sensor Suites, Peter Wahman

All Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Low-cost PM sensors have garnered interest for their ability to reduce the cost of investigating PM concentrations in both indoor and outdoor spaces. They perform well in high concentration lab testing with correlation coefficients greater than 0.9. In real-world applications, the correlation coefficients drop significantly because of sensing floors and adverse ambient conditions. There are plenty of supervised machine learning techniques that aim to correct the measurements ranging from linear regression to more advanced neural networks and random forests. This work aims to use those more complicated techniques to adjust the measurements using other data sets gathered by a sensor …

A Knowledge-Based Model For Context-Aware Smart Service Systems, Thang Le Dinh, Thanh Thoa Pham Thi, Cuong Pham-Nguyen, Le Nguyen Hoai Nam

Articles

The advancement of the Internet of Things, big data, and mobile computing leads to the need for smart services that enable the context awareness and the adaptability to their changing contexts. Today, designing a smart service system is a complex task due to the lack of an adequate model support in awareness and pervasive environment. In this paper, we present the concept of a context-aware smart service system and propose a knowledge model for context-aware smart service systems. The proposed model organizes the domain and context-aware knowledge into knowledge components based on the three levels of services: Services, Service system, …

Electric Vehicles: Design, Development And Growth Directions, David Kennedy

Conference Papers

The transition from Petrol/Diesel and LPG powered vehicles to electric types and hydrogen powered is in progress. The world demand, from China to UK and Tokyo to New York is growing and includes new brands to established companies. Toyota has developed Hybrids on almost all of its Petrol/Diesel models during this transition. The scale of the industry is enormous with experts arguing for and against the performance, sustainability, ethical reasoning, costs and reliability of the technology for now and the future, providing logical answers to support or reject their arguments for success or failure. One in 12 cars sold across …

Transferring Studies Across Embodiments: A Case Study In Confusion Detection, Na Li, Robert J. Ross

Articles

Human-robot studies are expensive to conduct and difficult to control, and as such researchers sometimes turn to human-avatar interaction in the hope of faster and cheaper data collection that can be transferred to the robot domain. In terms of our work, we are particularly interested in the challenge of detecting and modelling user confusion in interaction, and as part of this research programme, we conducted situated dialogue studies to investigate users' reactions in confusing scenarios that we give in both physical and virtual environments. In this paper, we present a combined review of these studies and the results that we …

A Systematic Review Of How Cloud Infrastructure And Gdpr Have Affected Digital Investigations In A Multinational Business Context, Stuart Fraser, A.Omar Portillo-Dominguez

Other

With cloud infrastructure becoming an ever more popular platform for business network implementations, and with ever-tightening data protection regulation, the ability to carry out digital investigations has become more difficult. This has led to areas of research that have looked to restore the balance to digital investigations in this environment. These areas include the use of blockchain, data tracing, and digital forensics as a service. With so many methods to consider, this article looks at how each method aims to return the balance and make it possible to carry out an investigation that complies with new privacy regulations (e.g., the …

A Systematic Literature Review Exploring The Barriers To Innovative Modular Construction Methods For The International Hyper-Scale Data Centre Sector, Peter E. Lonergan, A.Omar Portillo-Dominguez

Other

Data centres form the essential global infrastructure relied upon for multiple industries such as the internet, financial services, and telecommunications. Consequently, data centre construction has developed into a buoyant business sector, leveraging increasing global investment. However, traditional means of data centre procurement do not match stakeholder’s ambitions or current delivery demands. Thus, there is a need for the adoption of new and innovative construction methodologies in the sector to introduce improvements for the delivery of this essential infrastructure. As a step in that direction, this paper presents a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that investigates the barriers preventing the implementation of …

Advancing Competency In Managing Risk And Knowledge: Steps Toward Operationalisation Of The Risk-Knowledge Infinity Cycle (Rki Cycle) Part 3: Uncovering Knowledge For Qrm Through Knowledge Mapping At Node 1, Martin Lipa, Valerie Mulholland, Anne Greene

Articles

To date, literature on the Risk-Knowledge Infinity Cycle (RKI Cycle) has mainly been theoretical. This paper series intent is to focus on the operationalisation of the RKI Cycle by describing a series of steps – the “How to” – for RKI Cycle deployment, to help move the RKI Cycle from theory to practice. The third paper in this series focuses on ensuring the best available knowledge flows into QRM through a case study demonstrating knowledge mapping to support effective quality risk assessment during commissioning and qualification activities.

Impact Of Deicers On Low-Temperature Performance Of Missouri Pavements, Jun Liu, Yizhuang David Wang, Farshad Kerahroudi Saberi, Jenny Liu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The use of deicer chemicals for highway winter maintenance operations is an essential strategy for ensuring a reasonably high level of service. It's critical to quantify their effectiveness and potentially detrimental effects on transportation infrastructure (i.e., asphalt and concrete pavements). In this study, nine deicer chemicals used in the state of Missouri were collected. The ice-melting test was conducted to quantify the performance characteristics of deicer chemicals. Freeze-thaw (F-T) test of concrete in the presence of deicer was conducted to quantify the negative effects of deicers to concrete. Low-temperature behavior of asphalt mixture affected by deicers was quantified by asphalt …