Engineering Commons^™

Dose Deposition And Electrostatic Charging Of Kapton Films Irradiated With Electrons, Youssef Abouhussien, Gennady Miloshevsky

Graduate Research Posters

Kapton films are widely utilized in harsh radiation environments where radiation resistant insulating materials are required. For space applications, Kapton polymers are used on satellites as substrates for solar arrays and outer layers of thermal systems. Kapton is also used in nuclear power plants as wire insulation. Kapton materials can be exposed in nuclear reactors to a reactive chemical environment in addition to severe radiation. It is of utmost important to understand how Kapton materials behave under high irradiation conditions and mitigate radiation damage effects. High-energy electrons can deposit ionizing dose and electric charge deeply inside Kapton materials. The charge …

Photolithographic Micropatterning Of Organic, Flexible Biomaterials And Its Applications, Sayantan Pradhan, Sayantan Pradhan, Meng Xu, Vamsi K. Yadavalli

Graduate Research Posters

A current trend in biodevices has involved a shift from traditional rigid platforms to flexible and stretchable formats. These flexible devices are expected to have a significant impact on future healthcare, disease diagnostics and therapeutics. However, the fabrication of such flexible devices has been limited by the choice of materials. Biomimetic composites of naturally derived and synthetic polymers provide exciting opportunities to develop mechanically flexible, physiologically compliant, and degradable bioelectronic systems. Advantages include the ability to provide conformal contact at non-planar biointerfaces, being able to be degraded at controllable rate, and invoking minimal reactions within the body. These factors present …

Jxb Force Effects On Beryllium Melt Splashing In Fusion Devices, Cheng Zhang, Gennady Miloshevsky

Graduate Research Posters

Instability and disruption of high-temperature plasma in fusion devices may result in the edge-localized modes (ELMs) and lead to melting of plasma facing components (PFCs) causing their damage. Beryllium (Be) is used as a first wall for PFCs due to its low density, high strength, and high thermal conductivity. However, melting of Be on the surface of first wall is of a great concern as splashing of a molten Be layer will result in the plasma contamination and termination of fusion reaction. Therefore, it is important to understand the physics mechanisms characterizing the splashing of Be from a pool under …

A Facile, Fast, And Low-Cost Method For Fabrication Of Micro/Nano-Textured Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Amir Esmaeili, Noshin Mir, Reza Mohammadi

Graduate Research Posters

Background

Alkyl ketene dimer (AKD) is frequently used in paper industry as an inexpensive sizing agent. The formation of a fractal structure after curing the solidified AKD for an extra-long time (4 - 6 days) results in superhydrophobicity. In this study, a facile and low-cost method was utilized to turn AKD’s surface superhydrophobic in a very short period of time.

Method

We fabricated a superhydrophobic layer by dipping glass and paper substrates in molten AKD and then treating them with ethanol after solidification. The samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Confocal …

Spatio-Temporal Evolution Of Warm Dense Plasmas: Molecular Dynamics Modeling, Harrison Wenzel, Gennady Miloshevsky

Graduate Research Posters

SPATIO-TEMPORAL EVOLUTION OF WARM DENSE PLASMAS: MOLECULAR

DYNAMICS MODELING Cole Wenzel and Gennady Miloshevsky

Virginia Commonwealth University, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, 401

West Main St, Richmond, VA 23284-3015

The exo-atmospheric detonation of nuclear device would be of great impact on the material integrity of orbiting satellites. The spectral energy distribution of high intensity X-ray flux, ~10 28 -10 35 photons/(cm 2 ∙s), originating from a nuclear blast is described by the Planck's blackbody function with the temperature from 0.1 keV to 10 keV. Particular damage would occur to the multi-layered, solar cell panels of satellites. However, the X-ray …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Shielding Material, Vehicle Shape And Astronaut Position For Deep Space Travel, Daniel Bond, Braden Goddard, Robert Singleterry, Sama Bilbao Y Leon

Graduate Research Posters

Background: As future crewed, deep space missions are being planned, it is important to assess how spacecraft design can be used to minimize radiation exposure. Collectively with shielding material, vehicle shape and astronaut position must be used to protect astronauts from the two primary sources of space radiation: Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) and Solar Particle Events (SPEs).

Methods: The On-Line Tool for the Assessment of Radiation in Space (OLTARIS) version 4.1 analysis package is used to evaluate and analyze this detailed radiation field. Developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Langley Research Center, the tool enables engineering and …

Perfusion Cell Seeding And Expansion In Dual Mechanical Stimulation Bioreactor For In Vitro Tissue Development, Sarah Saunders, Sam Coles, Joao S. Soares

Graduate Research Posters

BACKGROUND: Engineered tissues are an exciting potential source of small diameter vascular grafts due to limited supply and patency of available alternatives. Engineered tissue vascular grafts (ETVGs) will provide physiological function that resembles native arteries and maintain the required mechanical properties as they integrate with host tissue. Mechanical stimulation during incubation encourages proper cell alignment and increases extracellular matrix deposition. The enhanced organization of the engineered tissue leads to improved compliance over synthetic alternatives without sacrificing strength and may lead to better integration in vivo.

METHODS: We have developed a bioreactor that mechanically trains grafts during incubation. To test the …

Elastic Foundations As Heterogeneous Adventitial Boundary Condition For The Assessment Of Aortic Wall And Peri-Aortic Stiffness From Dense-Mri Data Using Inverse Fem Approach, Johane H. Bracamonte, John S. Wilson, Joao S. Soares

Graduate Research Posters

Background: The establishment of in vivo, patient-specific, and regionally resolved techniques to quantify aortic properties is key for improving risk assessment in clinical practice and scientific understanding of cardiovascular growth and remodeling. Many in vivo studies quantify vascular stiffness using Pulse Wave Velocity. This method provides an averaged measure of stiffness for the entire aorta, ignoring variations in wall stiffness and boundary conditions. Previous studies using Displacement Encoding with Stimulated Echoes Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DENSE-MRI) suggested that the infrarenal abdominal aorta (IAA) deforms heterogeneously throughout the cardiac cycle.

Method: Herein, we hypothesize that the aortic wall strain heterogeneity is driven …

Harvesting Electrical Energy Produced By Electrogenic Bacteria In Microbial Fuel Cells, Chinedu Ahuchaogu, Kausik Das

Pursue: Undergraduate Research Journal

Cellular respiration is the process by which organic matter oxidizes, and the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the food releases. Normally, cellular respiration occurs inside the mitochondria of cells; however, a unique type of bacteria releases electrons externally. These specialized organisms are called electrogenic bacteria. Our goal is to construct a microbial fuel cell (MFC) with electrogenic bacteria, harvest the external electrons created by cellular respiration, and channel them through an external circuit to generate electricity. Mud soil, which has a high number of electrogenic bacteria in the environment, was used to construct an MFC. In the presence …

Utilizing Institutional Data For Curriculum Enhancement To Improve Student Success In Undergraduate Computing Programs, Prateek Basavaraj

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Student success is one of the widely discussed topics in post-secondary institutions and is measured in terms of the graduation and retention rates of programs. The goal of an educational institution is to achieve maximum student success and, hence, high graduation and retention rates. There are multiple studies on factors affecting student success. One of the factors that contributes to student success is the "program curriculum." Unfortunately, the traditional program curricula at many higher education institutions were developed with a belief or assumption that all students possess equal expertise, skills, and follow a similar learning path. The traditional curricular development …

Journal Of The Arkansas Academy Of Science - Volume 74, 2020, Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

Business Meeting Report (Secretary's And Treasurer's Report), Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

Recruitment To Editorial Positions, Academy Editors

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Process For Thermal And Mechanical Modelling Of Screw-Driven Pellets Extrusion, Kaixiang Shi

Master’s Theses

The overall goal of the thesis project is to develop a process for thermal and mechanical modelling of the screw-driven pellets extrusion process, and applying the model results to design extruder temperature and flow rate controllers.

The proposed extruder is designed for metal 3D printing. The device demonstrates great potential in tackling some of the major issues faced by the metal additive manufacturing community. It eliminates the use of metal powder for workplace and workers safety. It is able to produce end-use parts with industrial grade mechanical and microstructural properties. It utilizes low cost metal-loaded polymer pellets as feedstock. However, …

Automatic Chest X-Rays Analysis Using Statistical Machine Learning Strategies, Hermann Yepdjio Nkouanga

All Master's Theses

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease responsible for the deaths of more than one million people worldwide every year. Even though it is preventable and curable, it remains a major threat to humanity that needs to be taken care of. It is often diagnosed in developed countries using approaches such as sputum smear microscopy and culture methods. However, since these approaches are rather expensive, they are not commonly used in poor regions of the globe such as India, Africa, and Bangladesh. Instead, the well known and affordable chest x-ray (CXR) interpretation by radiologists is the technique employed in those places. Nevertheless, …

Image Forgery Detection With Machine Learning, Lubna Alzamil

All Master's Theses

The issue of forged images is currently a global issue that spreads mainly via social networks. Image forgery has weakened Internet users’ confidence in digital images. In recent years, extensive research has been devoted to the development of new techniques to combat various image forgery attacks. Detecting fake images prevents counterfeit photos from being used to deceive or cause harm to others. In this thesis, we propose methods using the error level analysis algorithm to detect manipulated images. We show that our combination of image pre-processing and machine learning techniques is an efficient approach to detecting image forgery attacks.

A Hybrid Physical Model Based Artificial Neural Network Approach To Predict Surface Texture In The Honing Of Engine Cylinder Bore, Burhan Afzel, Xueping Zhang, Anil K. Srivastava

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

This study proposes a hybrid model that utilizes a physical model and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) approach to predict surface roughness during cylinder bore honing with an improved prediction efficiency of 90% compared to the standalone physical model. As a critical component of internal combustion engine technology, improvement in the surface roughness of cylinder bore can significantly reduce friction, wear and oil consumption, resulting in improved engine performance. Desired surface roughness in cylinder bore is imparted by honing, which serves as the terminal process in cylinder bore manufacturing. The cylinder bore honing process consists of rough honing, fine honing, and …

Enhanced Water Electrolysis: Effect Of Temperature On The Oxygen Evolution Reaction At Cobalt Oxide Nanoparticles Modified Glassy Carbon Electrodes, Aya Akl, Hany A. Elazab, Mohamed A. Sadek, Mohamed S. El-Deab

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Water splitting producing hydrogen and oxygen gases appears promising in view of the increasing need of renewable energy sources and storage strategies. Investigation of stable and highly efficient electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is targeted in this study at cobalt oxide nanoparticle modified glassy carbon (nano-CoOx/GC) electrodes. The effect of the preparation (Tp) and measuring temperature (Tm) on the electrocatalytic activity of nano-CoOx/GC towards the OER is investigated under various operating conditions. Linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), cyclic voltammetry (CV) as well as SEM and XRD techniques were used to probe the electrocatalytic and morphological characteristics of nano-CoOx prepared under …

Using Geothermal Energy To Reduce Oil Production Costs, Will Gosnold, Mark Ballesteros, Dongmei Wang, Josh Crowell

Geology and Geological Engineering Faculty Publications

The economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the oil industry has been devastating. The decline in demand and price collapse have been particularly disruptive for shale oil extraction which is inherently more expensive than conventional operations. Survival and continuing operations will depend partly on reducing operating costs, and a ubiquitous and substantial cost in oil production is electrical power used primarily for pumping the wells. The Bakken in North Dakota play is particularly vulnerable because there is not an adequate electrical grid in the region. Many Bakken fields rely on generators burning propane, gasoline or diesel fuel at costs …

Optimal Feature Selection For Learning-Based Algorithms For Sentiment Classification, Zhaoxia Wang, Zhiping Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Sentiment classification is an important branch of cognitive computation—thus the further studies of properties of sentiment analysis is important. Sentiment classification on text data has been an active topic for the last two decades and learning-based methods are very popular and widely used in various applications. For learning-based methods, a lot of enhanced technical strategies have been used to improve the performance of the methods. Feature selection is one of these strategies and it has been studied by many researchers. However, an existing unsolved difficult problem is the choice of a suitable number of features for obtaining the best sentiment …

Why Do I Have To Know This? Engineering In A Globalized Society, Caleb Cunningham

Honors Theses

Through a pilot comparative study, this thesis examines the problem-solving of chemical engineering students and chemical engineering faculty. Specifically, the thesis examines the extent to which individuals include global factors (cultural, social, environmental, and economic) into their engineering solutions as specified by ABET. Several hypotheses were investigated in this pilot study: (i) having a study abroad experience would increase the likelihood that participants included the global factors of interest, (ii) the type (PUI, Research Intensive, Unique) of institution students attended would impact how individuals approached the problem, (iii) students with similar career aspirations would approach the problems similarly, (iv) having …

Site-Specific Irrigation Management In A Sub-Humid Climate Using A Spatial Evapotranspiration Model With Satellite And Airborne Imagery, Sandeep Bhatti, Derek M. Heeren, J. Burdette Barker, Christopher M. U. Neale, Wayne Woldt, Mitchell S. Maguire, Daran Rudnick

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Variable Rate Irrigation (VRI) considers spatial variability in soil and plant characteristics to optimize irrigation management in agricultural fields. The advent of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) creates an opportunity to utilize high-resolution (spatial and temporal) imagery into irrigation management due to decreasing costs, ease of operation, and reduction of regulatory constraints. This research aimed to evaluate the use of UAS data for VRI, and to quantify the potential of VRI in terms of relative crop and water response. Irrigation treatments were: (1) VRI using Landsat imagery (VRI-L), (2) VRI using UAS imagery (VRI-U), (3) uniform (U), and (4) rainfed (R). …

Two-Stage Deep Learning Architecture For Pneumonia Detection And Its Diagnosis In Chest Radiographs, Barath Narayanan, Venkata Salini Priyamvada Davuluru, Russell C. Hardie

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Approximately two million pediatric deaths occur every year due to Pneumonia. Detection and diagnosis of Pneumonia plays an important role in reducing these deaths. Chest radiography is one of the most commonly used modalities to detect pneumonia. In this paper, we propose a novel two-stage deep learning architecture to detect pneumonia and classify its type in chest radiographs. This architecture contains one network to classify images as either normal or pneumonic, and another deep learning network to classify the type as either bacterial or viral. In this paper, we study and compare the performance of various stage one networks such …

Glaciernet: A Deep-Learning Approach For Debris-Covered Glacier Mapping, Zhiyuan Xie, Umesh K. Haritashya, Vijayan K. Asari, Brennan W. Young, Michael P. Bishop, Jeffrey S. Kargel

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Rising global temperatures over the past decades is directly affecting glacier dynamics. To understand glacier fluctuations and document regional glacier-state trends, glacier-boundary detection is necessary. Debris-covered glacier (DCG) mapping, however, is notoriously difficult using conventional geospatial technology methods. Therefore, in this research for automated DCG mapping, we evaluate the utility of a convolutional neural network (CNN), which is a deep learning feed-forward neural network. The CNN inputs include Landsat satellite images, an Advanced Land Observation Satellite (ALOS) digital elevation model (DEM) and DEM-derived land-surface parameters. Our CNN based deep-learning approach named GlacierNet was designed by appropriately choosing the type, number …

Mitosisnet: End-To-End Mitotic Cell Detection By Multi-Task Learning, Md Zahangir Alom, Theus Aspiras, Tarek M. Taha, Tj Bowen, Vijayan K. Asari

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Mitotic cell detection is one of the challenging problems in the field of computational pathology. Currently, mitotic cell detection and counting are one of the strongest prognostic markers for breast cancer diagnosis. The clinical visual inspection on histology slides is tedious, error prone, and time consuming for the pathologist. Thus, automatic mitotic cell detection approaches are highly demanded in clinical practice. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end multi-task learning system for mitosis detection from pathological images which is named"MitosisNet". MitosisNet consist of segmentation, detection, and classification models where the segmentation, and detection models are used for mitosis reference region …

A Relook At Canada’S Western Canada Sedimentary Basin For Power Generation And Direct-Use Energy Production, Catherine Hickson, Katie Huang, Darrell Cotterill, Will Gosnold, Dick Benoit

Geology and Geological Engineering Faculty Publications

The Alberta No. 1 Project, under the terms of Canada’s Federal government’s Emerging Renewable Power Program (ERPP), must produce 5MWe net. The goal of this study was to identify areas where three essential constraining conditions overlap; (1) the temperature gradient is sufficiently high that 120°C brines at depths of 4,500m or less are potentially available, (2) there are formations at the depths targeted with known high fluid flows, and (3) there is adequate existing infrastructure that supports low-cost power grid connection as well as a direct use application. A fluid temperature of at least 120^oC is needed to …

Rapid Orbital Motion Emulator (Rome): Kinematics Modeling And Control, Ahmed Elsadek Ahmed Seleit

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Space missions design requires already tested and trusted control algorithms for spacecraft motion. Rapidly testing control algorithms at a low cost is essential. A novel robotic system that emulates orbital motion in a laboratory environment is presented. The system is composed of a six degree of freedom robotic manipulator fixed on top of an omnidirectional ground vehicle accompanied with onboard computer and sensors. The integrated mobile manipulator is used as a testbed to emulate and realize orbital motion and control algorithms. The kinematic relations of the ground vehicle, robotic manipulator and the coupled kinematics are derived. The system is used …

Emulsion Characterization Study For Improved Bilgewater Treatment And Management, Daniela Diaz Hernandez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

The need for proper management of bilgewater to meet discharge regulations (e.g., 15 ppm oil) has revealed the necessity to expand the current understanding of bilgewater emulsions. This study proposed to evaluate emulsion stability under various environmental conditions and to identify governing parameters for emulsion formation. The stabilizing properties of eight-commercial cleaners and two-neat surfactants were evaluated. In situ characterization techniques were used for monitoring emulsion stability. Additionally, a needle-type pH microsensor and fluorescence spectroscopy were used for analyzing mass transfer at the oil-water interface. Water quality of extracted bilgewater showed to highly vary between vessels (e.g., conductivity: 1.74 -- …

An Investigation Of Life Cycle Sustainability Implications Of Emerging Heavy-Duty Truck Technologies In The Age Of Autonomy, Burak Sen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Heavy-duty trucks (HDTs) play a central role in U.S. freight transportation, carrying most of the goods across the country. The projected increase in freight activity (e.g. truck-miles-traveled) raises concerns regarding the potential sustainability impacts of the U.S. freight industry, marking HDTs as an ideal domain for improving the sustainability performance of U.S. freight transportation. However, the transition to sustainable trucking is a challenging task, for which multiple sustainability objectives must be considered and addressed under a variety of emerging HDT technologies while composing a sustainable HDT fleet. To gain insights into the sustainability implications of emerging HDT technologies as well …

Saperi: Approaching Gender Gap Using Spatial Ability Training Week In High-School Context, Maria Giulia Ballatore, Gavin Duffy, Sheryl Sorby, Anita Tabacco

Conference papers

The purpose of this paper is to describe the structure of a girls summer school, “SAperI – Spatial Ability per l’Ingegneria” (in English, “Knowledge – Spatial Ability for Engineering”), and to illustrate its impact on spatial ability development and future career preferences on those who participated in the week long summer school compared to a control group that did not participate.The 5 days school,
organized by Politecnico di Torino (Italy), was included in a larger project addressing 17 years old high-school students. Thirtyseven girls actively took part in a summer school, while 167 students (both males and females) were tested …