Engineering Commons^™

Improving Offensive Player Performance Measures For Assessing Free Agent Major League Baseball Players, Henley Wells

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Professional sports teams are important to their local economies, so successful franchises are significant contributors to their prosperity. This need for successful teams drives the owners and general managers to perform in-depth analyses on potential players to gain insight, so the best players can be chosen. Major League Baseball is one of the largest sports leagues in the world, so their analysis of players must be excellent to ensure they sign the best players and can compete at a high level.

Baseball is a complex sport with many different statistics evaluating nearly every part of a player’s game. Because of …

Curriculum Optimization Via Activity-On-Node Network Modeling, Caroline Rhomberg

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

University degree plans must be carefully planned so that they allow students the best chance of succeeding. Although for the better, with the advancement of technology and its incorporation into the classroom, it can be argued that the complexity and difficulty of some long-established engineering core classes has changed. With this trend certain combinations of engineering courses have become unfavorable in terms of course withdrawal and fail rates stemming from the interaction of course challenges. A wealth of data has been collected on this topic and will be utilized in this project. As one can imagine, the probability of success …

Characterizing Statin Use Among Prediabetic Patients With Predictive Analytics, Alexandra Gentile

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and can cause severe impairments to those diagnosed. Prediabetes is a state when a patient has higher fasting plasma glucose levels than a non-diabetic person but is not quite high enough to be considered diabetes. Both diabetic and prediabetic patients are at higher risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD), which is the leading cause of death in the United States. The primary form for prevention and treatment of CVD is through statin therapy. Statins are a class of medications used to treat and prevent CVD by limiting cholesterol …

Optimal Emergency Response Shelter Placement Based On Population Vulnerabilities, Alexander Johnson

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Hurricane Florence was a category 4 storm which caused an estimated $24 billion in damages and the loss of 53 lives. During and immediately following Florence, there were 235 shelters operating in and around the North Carolina (NC) area. These were used as temporary housing for storm victims and by emergency responders to distribute relief supplies and provide medical services. Emergency officials consider several factors when deciding where to open shelters, including, for example, proximity of victims and their levels of medical needs. Access disparities, or factors creating barriers that limit entry to shelters, put certain populations and regions at …

A Simulation Approach To Evaluate The Impact Of Breast Cancer Overdiagnosis On Patient Outcomes, Sierra Wagner

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Breast cancer overdiagnosis risk is difficult to estimate and varies significantly across current research. This research establishes a simulation approach to examine the relationship between breast cancer overdiagnosis and patient outcome and understand the impact that the range of breast cancer overdiagnosis rate estimates in the current literature has on patient outcomes. Overdiagnosis is represented in this study by a set of disease regression probabilities. Using microsimulation, we evaluate patient outcome, measured by number of mammograms and lifetime breast cancer mortality risk, as a function of treatment policy and regression probability. We use numerical experiments to evaluate treatment policies and …

Intruder Preference And Route Selection: A Gis Data Approach, Griffin Mathews

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requested an Engineering Research and Development Center study incorporating modeling and simulation to determine the selection, amount, and optimal location of sensor suites along the U.S. Border. The study objective is to maximize the probability of detection and apprehension of illegal elements attempting to enter. A study on intruders and their preferences were conducted to create an intruder preference value map to determine the preferred intruder routes taken after crossing the border. The results of this research were integrated into another study on the selection and simulation of sensor suites.

Intruder context and preferences …

Hybrid Machine Learning Architecture For Automated Detection And Grading Of Retinal Images For Diabetic Retinopathy, Barath Narayanan, Barath Narayanan, Russell C. Hardie, Manawaduge Supun De Silva, Nathaniel K. Kueterman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Purpose: Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness, affecting over 93 million people. An automated clinical retinal screening process would be highly beneficial and provide a valuable second opinion for doctors worldwide. A computer-aided system to detect and grade the retinal images would enhance the workflow of endocrinologists. Approach: For this research, we make use of a publicly available dataset comprised of 3662 images. We present a hybrid machine learning architecture to detect and grade the level of diabetic retinopathy (DR) severity. We also present and compare simple transfer learning-based approaches using established networks such as AlexNet, VGG16, ResNet, …

Redesign And Quantitative Assessment Of An Accelerated Venous Valve Fatigue Apparatus, Megan Kueh

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) is a form of cardiovascular disease that is caused when valves in the leg become incompetent. Current treatment methods serve to manage symptoms, but there are currently no ways to treat the underlying cause of CVI. A venous valve prosthetic made from a xenograft of a bovine jugular vein is one possible treatment method currently in the research phase. Prosthetic valves must be tested with an accelerated wear tester prior to approval for clinical testing. Although such testers exist for heart valves, physiological differences between heart and venous valves restrict the use those testers on venous …

The Utilization Of Autofluorescence To Study The Effects Of L-Buthionine-Sulfoximine On Cellular Metabolism In Vitro, Madison Belew

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Oxidative damage and stress impacts metabolic activity and has been implicated in a number of diseases . These medical conditions have been found to be associated with a lack of glutathione (GSH). There is a need to study the effects that the absence of glutathione has in order to expand knowledge of indicators that cause conditions like cataracts, cancer, or impaired wound healing. L-buthionine-sulfoximine (BSO) has been used in past studies to hinder GSH production and induce oxidative stress within a cell. This study explores the effects of BSO and induced oxidative stress on the metabolic activity and processes within …

Cascaded Linear Regulator With Positive Voltage Tracking Switching Regulator, Brandon K. Nghe

Master's Theses

This thesis presents the design, simulation, and hardware implementation of a proposed method for improving efficiency of voltage regulator. Typically, voltage regulator used for noise-sensitive and low-power applications involves the use of a linear regulator due to its high power-supply rejection ratio properties. However, the efficiency of a linear regulator depends heavily on the difference between its input voltage and output voltage. A larger voltage difference across the linear regulator results in higher losses. Therefore, reducing the voltage difference is the key in increasing regulator’s efficiency. In this thesis, a pre switching regulator stage with positive voltage tracking cascaded to …

Chaprates, Brinly Xavier, Micole Amanda Marietta, Nidhi Vedantam

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

On the Chapman campus, through taking and choosing various classes, there is a significant need for communication and feedback between students and peers, professors, tutors, and study groups. With this, we wanted to create an application that enables users from various majors to not only easily and effectively communicate with various people in their field, but one that also enables them to give and receive feedback on various classes through a rating system. We believe that the application will aid students in a myriad of specific ways, including being involved in study groups and getting tutoring help, determining which classes …

The Design And Analysis Of Large Solar Pv Farm Configurations With Dc Connected Battery Systems, Oluwaseun M. Akeyo, Vandana Rallabandi, Nicholas Jewell, Dan M. Ionel

Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky Faculty Publications

Typically, solar inverters curtail or “clip” the available power from the PV system when it exceeds the maximum ac capacity. This paper discusses a battery system connected to the dc-link of an inverter to recuperate this PV energy. Contrary to conventional approaches, which employ two dc-dc converters, one each for the battery and solar PV system, the proposed configuration utilizes a single dc-dc converter capable of simultaneously operating as a charge controller and a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) tracking device. In addition to improving the overall system capacity factor, increasing the conversion efficiencies and ensuring MPPT stability, the proposed …

The Development And Evaluation Of A New Analytical Model For The Characterization Of Friction Induced Disc Brake Vibration, Michael Vladimirov

Master's Theses

This research proposes a new method of modeling vibration of disc brake systems. This modeling method treats the brake pads of a disc braking system as lumped spring-mass-damper subsystems and the disc as a continuous bar. This modeling concept increases both the ease of analytical expression and the insight provided into the behavior of the real-world systems. This paper describes the analytical expression of this model and its implementation in Matlab. A parameter variation study yielded results that agree with existing research, which serves to validate the fundamental principles of this proposed modeling method.

Dewatering Of Chlorella Through Carbon Dioxide Hydrate Formation For Biofuel Production, Charles Dow

Master's Theses

Renewable energy alternatives are currently of interest to meet ever-growing energy demands due to fossil fuel depletion and climate change. Biofuels, an alternative source, can be made from a range of organic matter. One option is algae, which can be grown without impacting food production and in a variety of conditions, however, the feasibility of converting algae into biofuel is of concern. Dewatering algae is a critical step in the process to make oil extraction more efficient. This study utilizes carbon dioxide clathrate hydrates as a novel process to dewater water saturated algae solutions. Clathrate hydrates are crystalline solids formed …

Design Of A Laminated Carbon Fiber I-Beam, Kyle Huber

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Advancing Space Flight Medical Care Through On-Demand Protein Therapeutic Production Capabilities, Emily Long Zhao

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) is an in vitro protein synthesis system that provides a uniquely adaptable platform for protein production. In recent years, lyophilization of CFPS have expanded the capabilities of this system by improving reagent stability outside of cold-chain storage. This project sought to utilize lyophilized CFPS reagents to develop a convenient, shelf-stable, on-demand therapeutic protein production platform. The therapeutic protein production potential of this novel platform was demonstrated by the successful expression of an FDA approved therapeutic protein. With the advancement of shelf-stable, on-demand protein therapeutic production platforms comes the potential to provide point-of-care medical treatment for space-flight …

Aerodynamic Interactions Of Synchronized Propellers, Nathan Welker, Samuel Johnson

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Emerging advances in electric-propulsion technology are enabling aircraft to use distributed electric propulsion (DEP) to increase efficiency and maneuverability. Distributed electric propulsion can also provide unique take-off and landing abilities which are not commonly found on traditional aircraft. The implementation of DEP effectively decreases the spacing between propellers, introducing complex aerodynamic interactions that are not well understood. This study aims to obtain experimental measurements of the flow fields of synchronized propellers at close-proximity in a side-by-side configuration using particle image velocimetry (PIV) in a wind tunnel. The results of this work will be focused on identifying the impact closely-spaced propellers …

Comparison Of Wake Expansion Methods For Use In Wake Expansion Continuation Optimization, Jared J. Thomas

Utah Space Grant Consortium

This paper presents a comparison of three methods for expanding the wake for use with wake expansion continuation (WEC) optimization. A process related to continuation optimization methods for reducing multi-modality in the wind farm layout optimization problem. A reduction in multi-modality is achieved by starting with an increased wake spread, while maintaining normal velocity deficits at the center of the wakes, and then reducing the wake spread for each of a series of optimization runs until the standard wake spread is used. Three wake expansion methods were tested: (1) increasing the wake expansion angle, (2) multiplying the wake diameter, and …

Monte-Carlo Methods And The Step-Back Kalman Filter For Orbital State Estimation, Louis Tonc

Utah Space Grant Consortium

This research assesses the performance of filtering schemes for tracking uncooperative satellites through space-based optical measurements, and identifies a simple and numerically stable methodology that ameliorates the poor performance of standard filtering schemes at a substantially reduced cost in comparison to nonlinear particle filter-based remedies. Traditional filtering schemes, such as the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF), both diverge when tracking a resident space object (RSO) in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) when there is a long time duration between measurements. This divergence is identified as a consequence of nonlinearity in the dynamics and nonlinearity in the optical measurements, …

One-Dimensional Turbulence Modeling Of Soot Formation And Transport In Non-Premixed Turbulent Flames, Victoria B. Stephens

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Soot modeling in turbulent flames involves tightly coupled problems of combustion chemistry, particle transport, compressible fluid dynamics, and turbulence behavior in addition to soot chemistry and transport. Significant uncertainties accompany soot modeling and transport in such systems, hindering progress toward accurate combustion models and predictive simulation tools. The one-dimensional turbulence (ODT) model, using a stochastic approach to turbulence modeling, captures the full range of length and time scales in a simulation and provides detailed statistical data of the flow con-figuration, chemistry, and particle transport. Previously, ODT has demonstrated accuracy and computational efficiency compared to direct numerical simulation (DNS) of turbulent, …

Ultra-Low Power Adcs For Space Sensors And Instruments, Shea Smith, Wood Chiang

Utah Space Grant Consortium

A 28nm 0.1V 10-bit 2kS/s Successive Approximation Register ADC design is proposed. This design opens the doors to both low supply and low power space sensors and instruments. Due to the stringent voltage supply unique challenges arise that are met with innovation in the sample switch and comparator design. These components of the ADC architecture are optimized to perform successfully at a 0.1V supply with a sample rate suitable for most sensor applications.

Development Of An Inertial Measurement-Based Assessment Of Disease Severity In Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Turner Palombo, Suzanne Vernon, Shad Roundy

Utah Space Grant Consortium

While myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is relatively new and poorly understood, a recent upsurge in research has identified the disease’s core symptoms, including post-exertional malaise and orthostatic intolerance. The FDA has yet to approve any treatments for ME/CFS, partially due to a lack of validated efficacy endpoints.

The central focus of this research is to develop ME/CFS efficacy endpoints using a non-invasive, inertial measurement-based approach. Accessible endpoints will provide a way to properly evaluate potential treatments for ME/CFS. Using a Kalman filter, inertial measurement unit (IMU) data can be converted to optimized leg angle estimates. These angle estimates can …

Validating A Finite Element Model With Ansys Workbench For Isotruss® Structures Subject To Uniaxial Compression, Hanna B. Opdahl

Utah Space Grant Consortium

The purpose of this study is to develop, verify, and validate a finite element (FE) model of IsoTruss® structures subject to uniaxial compression. The FE model is implemented in ANSYS WorkBench and verified using axial stiffness and critical buckling loads that are derived from traditional mechanics. The buckling failure modes include global buckling and local bay buckling. The predictions from the FE model and mechanics calculations are validated by experimental data generated in preceding studies. Results indicate that the effective material modulus is highly affected by variations in manufacturing. Adjustment factors are applied to the nominal material properties to accurately …

An Examination Into The Defining Characteristics Of Flexible Solar Aircraft Configurations Through Optimization, Taylor Mcdonnell

Utah Space Grant Consortium

This paper examines the defining characteristics of various solar aircraft configurations through gradient-based multidisciplinary design optimization. We first present a general gradient-based solar aircraft optimization framework which accounts for nonlinear aeroelastic effects resulting from structural flexibility. We then apply this framework to several discrete SR-HALE aircraft geometric, structural, and propulsion system configuration choices to determine the defining characteristics of each configuration choice.

Improving Technologies In Anesthesia, Patrick Kolbay, Joseph Orr

Utah Space Grant Consortium

General anesthesia is well known to offer physicians access to a broad variety of invasive procedures otherwise deemed too risky. Anesthesia machines provides the means for anesthetizing patients safely in the hospital operating room. However, these devices are increasingly unable to meet the demands and needs outside of the hospital. Developing countries struggle to purchase and maintain these costly devices, leading to a 40-fold increase in anesthesia-related deaths compared to developed countries. Small-office practices in the United States experience significantly poorer anesthesia outcomes and increased legal claims versus their larger hospital counterparts, resulting in 60% more anesthesia-related deaths. Environmental impacts …

Masking And Detecting Radiation-Induced Errors In Sram-Based Fpgas Through Partial Circuit Replication, Andrew M. Keller

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Radiation found in terrestrial and space environments can induce errors into SRAM-based FPGAs. Replication of circuitry can be used mask and detect these errors to improve reliability or availability. This work advances the understanding and implementation of partial circuit replication in SRAM-based FPGAs. Partial circuit replication is the replication of a subset of the components in a circuit. A reliability model is presented that evaluates the reliability benefit of partial circuit replication. The model suggests that the reliability benefit is inversely related to the portion of the circuit replicated. A partial triple module redundancy case study is also presented that …

Leveraging Commercial Nuclear Reactors To Power Space Exploration, Ben Johnson

Utah Space Grant Consortium

This study is aimed at exploring the adaptation of commercial nuclear reactors as an alternative to NASA’s current high-power fission reactor systems, particularly with respect to applications on the surface of Mars. The study concludes that while the Kilopower architecture is brilliantly poised to provide affordable, near-term power in the 1-10 kilowatts electric (kWe) range, the financial barrier to higher power scaling of such systems is significant. This financial barrier adds risk to the development of greater than 10kWe systems and is likely to result in the failure to successfully scale the technology to higher powers for space exploration applications. …

Model Reference Predictive Adaptive Control For Large Scale Soft Robots, Phillip Hyatt, Curtis Johnson

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Past work has shown Model Predictive Control (MPC) to be an effective strategy for controlling continuum joint soft robots using rudimentary models, however the in-accuracies of these models often mean that an integration scheme must be combined with MPC. Presented in this work is a novel dynamic model formulation for continuum joint soft robots which is more accurate than the authors’ previous models yet remains fast enough for MPC. This model is based on the Piecewise Constant Curvature (PCC) assumption and a relatively new configuration representation and allows for computationally efficient simulation. Due to the difficulty in determining model parameters …

Three-Dimensional Hydrodynamic Focusing For Integrated Optofluidic Detection Enhancement, Eric Scott Hamilton

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Integrated optofluidics are ideal for high sensitivity detection due to the size of device features being near the small scale of sample particles (10 microns). Novel integrated optofluidic designs enable single molecule detection through hydrodynamic focusing, making the approach ideal for low concentration biosensing. Detection was enhanced and device operation characterized. Further enhancement is promised with optimization of existing designs.

Ensuring Extramobile And Intramobile Motion On Cylindrical Developable Mechanisms, Jared Butler

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Developable mechanisms offer the ability to deploy to perform tasks then return to a hidden position along or interior to a predetermined developable surface. It is often advantageous for these mechanisms to not penetrate the surface along which they conform. This paper presents the limits of extramobile and intramobile motion (motion exterior to and interior to a developable surface). Three conditions are identified that determine a limit of extramobile and intramobile behavior. It is shown that the more difficult of these conditions to predict is never reached prior to the more simple cases. This is demonstrated for all possible Grashof …