Engineering Commons^™

The Application Of Deep Learning Algorithms To Pediatric Vascular Anomalies Using A Limited Dataset, Briana I. Robertson

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Growth Of Pseudomorphic Gesn At Low Pressure With Sn Composition Of 16.7%, Joshua Grant, Grey Abernathy, Oluwatobi Olorunsola, Solomon Opeyemi Ojo, Sylvester Amoah, Emmanuel Wangila, Samir K. Saha, Abbas Sabbar, Wei Du, Murtadha Alher, Bao-Hua Li, Shui-Qing Yu

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Group-IV alloy GeSn holds great promise for the high-performance optoelectronic devices that can be monolithically integrated on Si for near- and mid-infrared applications. Growth of GeSn using chemical vapor deposition technique with various Sn and Ge precursors has been investigated worldwide. To achieve relatively high Sn incorporation, the use of higher pressure and/or higher order Ge hydrides precursors were reported. In this work, we successfully demonstrated the growth of high-quality GeSn with Sn composition of 16.7% at low pressure of 12 Torr. The alloy was grown using the commercially available GeH₄ and SnCl₄ precursors via a chemical vapor …

Seismic Performance Assessment Of Building Contents: Monetary Losses And Injuries, Sereen Majdalaweyh

All Dissertations

Building contents include all the components that are not attached to the building which the owners place after the construction phase, such as furniture, electrical equipment, glassware, and other personal items. Loss and damage assessment of building contents proved to be challenging in performance-based earthquake engineering frameworks because of the data sparsity. Damages to building contents during an earthquake not only cause monetary losses; tumbling and over-toppling of heavy building contents could result in injuries and even deaths of occupants. While major advancements have been made in performance-based earthquake engineering; however, the focus is mainly on damages and collapse risk …

Mechanical Interfacial Locking And Multiscale Modeling Of Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites For Structural Applications, Anmol Kothari

All Dissertations

The ever-growing pressure of reducing the adverse impact of transportation systems on environment has pushed industries towards fuel-efficient and sustainable solutions. While several approaches have been used to improve fuel efficiency, the light-weighting of structural components has proven broadly effective. In this regard, reinforced thermoplastic composites (RTPC), owing to their high recyclability, higher impact strength and fast cycle times, have become competitive candidates at an industrial scale. However, to implement RTPC toward large scale structural applications several challenges pertaining to material design and manufacturing effects need to be addressed. To this end, a computational study is carried out to address …

Coupled Thermal Mechanical Analysis Methodology For Thermal Performance Evaluation And Failure Mode Identification Of Thermal Barrier Coatings For Heavy Duty Diesel Engines, Sean Moser

All Dissertations

Consumer demand and government regulation, as well as the Department of Energy’s SuperTruck program has motivated extraordinary effort to maximize the heavy-duty diesel engine’s thermal efficiency. Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) provide an avenue for increasing the thermal efficiency of the mixing controlled combustion (MCC) process through the reduction of heat transfer losses. The myriad of previous studies presents conflicting conclusions, both in the merit of TBCs for cycle improvement, and also for coating durability and potential adverse effects from coating failure. While the most recent studies with thin thermal barrier coatings (~100-250 µm) have shown a majority of positive cycle …

Influencing The Inflammatory Response Through Multi-Scale Geometry, Antibiotic Release, And Fluid Management In A Textile-Based Biomaterial Wound Dressing, Elizabeth Gianino

All Dissertations

The total population of diagnosed and undiagnosed diabetes mellitus in the United states is expected to rise by 54% between the years of 2015 and 2030 contributing to $200 billion in health care expense. The exponential rise in common diabetic wounds, such as diabetic foot ulcers, puts a large population at risk for complications such as infection, amputation, and even death. Peripheral neuropathy leading to late diagnoses, patient non-compliance, and lack of holistic treatment options all contribute to complications with the incidence of new ulcer formation after treatment reaching 50%. This work explores the design, development, and in vitro evaluation …

Investigation And Characterization Of New Optically Stimulated Luminescence (Osl) Dosimetric Materials, Linyu Pan

All Dissertations

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dosimeters have attracted increasing attention due to advantages over TL dosimeters, including no thermal quenching and higher sensitivity. Nevertheless, currently, there are only two commercially available OSL dosimeters, BeO and Al₂O₃:C. An OSL dosimeter requires low effective atomic number (Z_eff < 16), at least one type of recombination center and one type of trap, and UV~blue emission. In this dissertation, motivated by the search of new OSL dosimetric materials, a systematic investigation of alumina (Z_eff = 11.3) and magnesium aluminate spinel (Z_eff = 11.2) based materials was performed in terms of the engineering of the recombination centers and electronic traps. Microstructural characterization was executed by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy. Luminescence was characterized under X-ray excitation (radioluminescence; RL) at ambient and …

Towards Understanding Protein Immobilization Rules Through Site-Specific Covalent Immobilization Of T4 Lysozyme, Maxwell Hilbert

All Dissertations

Soluble enzymes have the unique ability to assist the conversion of complex substrates in fewer steps compared to conventional chemical synthesis; however, when immobilized to a surface, the insoluble enzyme's activity and stability can suffer in its new environment. To improve upon future immobilized enzyme efficacy, a fundamental understanding of the interactions across the enzyme, linker, and surface during covalent, site-specific immobilization that can be detrimental to its activity is required. More specifically, using a well-characterized and model enzyme, T4 lysozyme (T4L), 28 different cysteine attachment points' effects on site-specifically immobilized activity are examined. Different combinations of heterobifunctional amine-to-sulfhydryl crosslinkers …

Time-Lapse Observation Of Sarcomeric Addition In Hypertrophic Models Based On A Tissue Like Cardiomyocyte Culture, Ailin Wei

All Dissertations

Cardiac hypertrophy is the response of the heart to increased mechanical stress exerted on the heart. In a hypertrophic heart, the muscles elongate or/and thicken with cardiomyocytes growing sizes. It is assumed that cardiomyocytes elongate by adding sarcomeres in series; the cardiomyocytes thicken with the addition of sarcomeres in the parallel position.

In this study, a tissue-like culture model was achieved with step-like ICDs. Uniaxial static stretch has been applied to our unique culture model for studying mechanical-load-induced cardiac hypertrophy. Hypertrophic responses of these cardiomyocytes have been confirmed on transcriptional and translational levels in our tissue-like model. The two-photon excitation …

Development Of Solution Blow Spun Nanofibers As Electrical And Whole Cell Biosensing Interfaces, Craig Levar Miller

All Dissertations

Infectious pathogens place a huge burden on the US economy with more than $120 billion spent annually for direct and indirect costs for the treatment of infectious diseases. Rapid detection schemes continue to evolve in order to meet the demand of early diagnosis. In chronic wound infections, bacterial load is capable of impeding the healing process. Additionally, bacterial virulence production works coherently with bacterial load to produce toxins and molecules that prolongs the healing cycle. This work examines the use of nonwoven polymeric conductive and non-conductive nanofiber mats as synthetic biosensor scaffolds, drug delivery and biosensor interface constructs. A custom-made …

A Youthful Metaverse: Towards Designing Safe, Equitable, And Emotionally Fulfilling Social Virtual Reality Spaces For Younger Users, Divine Maloney

All Dissertations

Social virtual reality (VR) represents the modern rendition of the metaverse, this dissertation aims to fill the research gaps while highlighting trends of youth in VR. The scientific contributions of this research include 1) expanding the current HCI understanding of the social dynamics and the interactions of teens in emerging novel online digital spaces; 2) bridging two research areas that have not been widely studied in HCI, social VR and young users in social VR; and 3) generating design implications to inform the design of future social VR platforms to better support and protect teens’ online social experiences, results which …

A Double-Sided Stack Low-Inductance Wire-Bondless Sic Power Module With A Ceramic Interposer, Si Huang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation research is to develop a novel three-dimensional (3-D) wire bondless power module package for silicon carbide (SiC) power devices to achieve a low parasitic inductance and an improved thermal performance. A half-bridge module consisting of 900-V SiC MOSFETs is realized to minimize stray parasitic inductance as well as to provide both vertical and horizontal cooling paths to maximize heat dissipation. The proposed 3-D power module package was designed, simulated, fabricated and tested. In this module, low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) substrate with vias is utilized as an interposer of which both top and bottom sides …

Multifunctional Programmable Self-Assembled Nanoparticles In Nanomedicine, Yoshie Sakamaki

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Developing methodologies to control the architecture of nanoparticles (NPs) at the atomic level prevents their inhomogeneity and leads to a variety of expected functions. Rationally designed nanoparticles can either be programmed or crystallized structures into pre-determined structures achieving tunable particle pore size and physiochemistry. In this dissertation, two broad classes of multifunctional nanoparticles are developed, metal-organic frameworks and DNA-NP aggregates.

Metal-organic frameworks are a novel class of highly porous crystalline materials built from organic linkers and metal cluster-based secondary building units. However, applications in bioremediation have not been developed very well especially in applications regarding drug delivery systems (DDS). The …

Preliminary Development Of The Dialysis-Membrane-Based Passive Biocide Delivery System For Spacecraft Water Recovery Units, Rogelio Elias Garcia Fernandez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this investigation is to explore the capabilities of a dialysis-membrane-based system for the in-line dosing of silver ions to treated water in spacecraft water recovery units. The spacecraft environmental control and life support system community (ECLSS) are interested in adopting silver ions as a biocide in future spacecraft water recovery processes since silver ions are effective biocide at concentrations that humans can safely consume. The system has been designed following the configuration of the Water Processor Assembly (WPA) aboard the International Space Station. In this configuration, silver ions have to be added at the last step in …

Recombinant Production And Purification Of Green Fluorescent Protein (Gfp)-Fused Metal Binding Protein For Palladium Nanoparticle Synthesis, Shadrach Ibinola

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In lieu of chemical and physical methods, biologically guided synthesis is increasingly used as a cost-effective medium for the fabrication of nanoparticles (NP). Recently, a palladium metal binding sequence Pd4 (TSNAVHPTLRHL) has been demonstrated to be instrumental in the production of palladium (Pd) nanoparticles. Although, by eliminating the additional cost of purification of the protein, the crude lysate of E. coli containing Pd specific protein has been proven to be a viable cost-effective means for the synthesis of Pd NP, studies have not be done to ascertain the comparative catalytic activity of nanoparticles synthesized from both clarified lysate and pure …

Automated Flight Controller Adaptive Compensation For Actuator Failures In Transport Type Aircraft, Daniel James Fresella

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aircraft operate over a wide range of conditions including atmospheric, weight, and center ofgravity changes. This presents a substantial challenge to automatic control system designers. When these operating conditions are merged with a partial or full control surface failure, automatic flight control is near impossible with conventional controllers. Additionally, when pilots experience control failure emergencies during flight, workload and fatigue increase drastically. The continued research of automatic flight control systems that can seamlessly adapt to unmodelled failures will enable a new generation of robust aircraft control. In this paper a 9th order 6 degree of freedom aircraft model is used …

Investigation Of Iron-Nickel Films Based Catalysts: Controlling Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (Her) Through An Electrode-Electrolyte Engineering Approach, Sergio Ivan Perez Bakovic

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electrochemical energy conversion technologies need to be economically viable in order to be adopted. Earth-abundant transition metals (i.e., Fe, Co, and Ni) have attracted attention due to their high availability, low cost, and catalytic characteristics that are in many cases found in and exploited by nature. Herein, we synthesize FexNi100-xOy electrocatalyst films and study how the electrocatalyst-electrolyte interactions alter the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).In this work, FexNi100-xOy films were synthesized to study the composition, chemical state, and morphology. Characterization results provided a well-established electrocatalyst film platform to then proceed with electrochemical evaluations. The effects of the electrode composition and electrochemically …

Assessment Of The Skeletonization And Motion Monitoring System For The Security Efficiency Of The United States Airports, Haoruo Fu

Theses and Dissertations

The screening processes at airports, including passengers and baggage, have changed dramatically in the past twenty years. The goal of the X-ray scanning is to enhance airport screening by preventing passengers from carrying weapons and contraband. X-ray is more effective compared to traditional pat-down. The X-ray shoots beams through passengers and their baggage, which provides an inner view to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners. Issues and concerns of the use of X-ray have also been raised, as some passengers complained about possible health issues due to the body exposure of radioactive waves; other experts pointed out possible human factor …

Helicopter Flight Energy Modeling And Scaling For Urban Air Mobility Applications, Nolan Gene Hopkins

Theses and Dissertations

The costs associated with conducting full-scale helicopter flight tests in terms of both time and money beg to question the validity of using small-scale model helicopters in order to predict full-scale performance. To do this, the energy change for a small time interval is determined throughout a full-scale helicopter’s flight of a given profile, and the overall energy use compared to model results. The profile is then scaled based on a variety of factors, and the accuracy of energy scaling compared for each. Scaling dimensions based off helicopter weight and energy reserve modeling show promising results, but comparison of relative …

Flight Test Evaluation Of Elevator Stick Force Gradients On General Aviation Aircraft, Isaac Lee Faust

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this research is to establish a suitable method of changing elevator stick force gradients on a Piper Warrior II. After finding a range of stick force gradients, the gradients will later be evaluated to get handling qualities ratings. A stick force gradient is the change in stick force as the airspeed deviates from trim condition. An aircraft’s yoke force gives pilots haptic feedback which improves their situational awareness without the need to assess instrument readings. A high stick force gradient will give the pilots a lot of feedback but will require more physical exertion to fly the …

Applications In Multi-Band Isolation Of Spectra With Data-Adaptive Sub-Banding (Midas): Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis To Optimize Midas-Based De-Noising Methods When Processing Infrasound And Other Signals Of Interest, Everett Raymond Coots

Theses and Dissertations

The ever-present challenge faced by the signal processing analyst is to get more from the available data, whether it be exploiting the same data in new ways to garner new information, or simply to increase the confidence in existing qualitative metrics. Traditional techniques include filtering (to improve the signal to noise ratio of detected signals or images or to isolate and possibly remove interfering signals), feature detection/extraction (identifying key characteristics within the signal) and signal decomposition (identification of dominant signals of interest relative to noise terms). Current research by our team began with an emphasis on the filtering of signals …

Smart Glasses Assisting Visually-Impaired People, Ali Delham Algarni

Theses and Dissertations

Smart Glasses Assisting Visually-Impaired artificial intelligence system providing speech recognition, object recognition, face recognition, and distance to all features for visually impaired people's enhanced (daily) autonomy. Smart Glasses Assisting Visually-Impaired People is a new integrative process that combines as such, the invention is both a further use of the technologies supporting the features listed above and an improvement to the overall activities carried out by visually impaired people in their daily lives activities such as: providing vocal commands, being able to read text, being able to receive spoken information about various objects in their surroundings, being aware of their location …

A Joint Soft Warping And Clustering Approach To Detecting Time Series Anomalies, Christopher John Schuchmann

Theses and Dissertations

Unsupervised anomalous time series detection methods focus on identifying outliers without prior knowledge of the dataset. However, these methods often require multiple parameters to be optimized, with adequate performance tied to their careful tuning and prior domain knowledge. In this work, two methods are proposed for detecting outlier time series that adopt a joint clustering and alignment optimization to filter out the desired signals. The time series are globally clustered while simultaneously being aligned to other signals in their same cluster group. This alternating optimization employs time-warping similarity measures to help identify closely matching time series as well as the …

English-To-Ipa Transcription, Riley Roberts

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The purpose of this project was to create a tool that could automate English-to-IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription. Research was done to determine what would be required to perform such a transcription. After researching and experimenting with existing tools, it was determined that developing the signal processing and Artificial Intelligence model portion of the application would be too intensive to successfully complete within the timeframe of this project.

The choice was made to develop an iOS application, with the Python library Allosaurus used to do the speech processing and as the Artificial Intelligence model. This model was then deployed in …

An Innovative Triboelectric Stent Sensor: Prospective Cardiovascular Health Monitor Device, Ulises Vidaurri Romero

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research that has focused on TENGs have lacked the proper application of this energy generator. Currently, heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States. With increasing demand for self-sustainable medical devices, this nitinol health monitor sensor device (NHMS) integrates the TENG applications with medical applications. The NHMS features memory shape nitinol electrodes that preserves the device structure while using PDMS and PVDF triboelectric effect to measure heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing patterns. Three constant pressures were measured in this study. At a constant pressure of stage 1, the NHMS produces an average AC of …

Resiliency Of Utah's Road Network: A Logit-Based Approach, Max Evan Barnes

Theses and Dissertations

The Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) manages and maintains a complex state-wide network of highways. Recent incidents such as the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Min- neapolis, Minnesota, and the I-85/Piedmont Road fire and subsequent bridge collapse in Atlanta, Georgia, have brought identification of transportation network vulnerabilities to the forefront of UDOT’s planning efforts. Traditional estimates of transportation network impacts have focused on increases to user travel time or the volume of affected traffic, but studies of these disasters have revealed that when facing a degraded transportation network, people adjust their trip making in terms of destination, mode, and …

Roi-Aware Content-Adaptive Video Streaming System For Power Savings, William Oswald

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

The demand for mobile video streams is constantly increasing. With this demand comes a need for mobile devices to receive more videos at ever increasing quality. However, due to the large size of video data and intensive computational requirements, video streaming requires frequent memory access that consumes a substantial amount of mobile device power; as a result, the battery life of mobile devices is limited. In this thesis, a video content-adaptable Region-of-Interest (ROI)-aware video storage technique that promotes power savings is presented. During the video encoding process on the transmitting server, based on the macroblock variance and ROI characterization, the …

Bridge Load Posting Prediction, Sabarethinam Kameshwar, Md. Manik Mia, Sai Bandaru

Publications

There are approximately 13,000 bridges in Louisiana facilitating movement of people, goods, and services. At present, about 12% of the bridges are load posted, i.e., they are deemed to lack the strength to safely carry all legal loads. With time bridges will age and deteriorate; at the same time, legal loads might increase. Load posted bridges disrupt the movement of goods and commerce. Therefore, objective of this research was to estimate the number of load posted bridges in Louisiana over the next 50 years. For this purpose, herein, a data based approach was used. For a given bridge type, the …

Smart Battery Management System For Electric Vehicles: Selflearning Algorithms For Simultaneous State And Parameter Estimation, And Stress Detection, Avimanyu Sahoo, Samir Ahmed

Publications

The project proposes to develop parameter-varying SOH-coupled models for lithium-ion battery and self-learning algorithms to learn the model for simultaneous state and parameter estimation and fault detection. The traditional battery models use constant parameters, limiting their accuracy for predicting the state of the charge and health over the complete life-cycle. In practice, the battery parameters vary with the change in the state of charge and state of health. SOH-coupled models can be used to estimate the state of charge and health accurately. Further, obtaining the model parameters is also a challenging task for designing filters or observers for state estimation. …

Expanding The Concept Of Comprehensive Area Ratio Parameter To The South-Central States: Towards Simplifying The Structural Evaluation Of Flexible Pavements At The Network Level, Mena Souliman, Samer Dessouky, Nitish R. Bastola

Publications

The surface deflection bowl data collected through falling weight deflectometer (FWD) test is utilized by highway agencies in assessing the performance of the flexible pavement. However, a robust method to evaluate pavement sections utilizing FWD data from all the sensors is seldom developed. There is always a need for DOTs and highway agencies to have a simplified procedure, which can be directly implemented in agencies' databases. This study focuses on expanding and validating the concept of previously developed area ratio parameters towards the pavement section of South-Central States (Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas) in effectively analyzing the pavement …