Engineering Commons^™

Electrochemical Removal Of Estrogenic Compounds From Drinking Water, Emily Maher

Dissertations (1934 -)

Estrogenic compounds in water pose a range of ecological health risks such as fish feminization and public health risks including reproductive health issues, precocious puberty, cancer, and increased rates of obesity and diabetes. Drinking water treatment systems were not designed to remove estrogenic compounds. This research evaluated the use of advanced drinking water treatment processes, specifically electrocoagulation (EC) and electrooxidation (EO), for the removal of estrogenic compounds. Bench-scale experiments revealed that, during EC, current density correlated well with an increase in estrogenic compound removal, while conductivity did not impact removal. Higher stir rates and faster polarity reversal times improved estrogenic …

Biomethane Production From Biodegradable Plastics, Nicholas John Norio Benn

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Organic polymer plastics are often short-lived commodities for single-use that result in landfill buildup and persistence in the environment. Plastic waste accumulation can cause ecological damage. Plastic production continues to outpace plastic waste management and perpetuates the growing epidemic of plastic pollution. More efficient handling of plastics would be beneficial. One improvement involves biodegradable plastics (i.e., bioplastics), particularly polylactic acid (PLA) and polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), which can alleviate environmental concerns stemming from mismanagement. Yet, there are currently no bioplastic waste management strategies scalable to handle the millions of pounds of bioplastics that enter the waste stream. Therefore, new bioplastic resource recovery …

Pathologically-Validated Tumor Prediction Maps In Mri, Alex Barrington

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive cancer with an average 5-year survival rate of about 5%. Following treatment with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, diagnosing tumor recurrence requires serial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Infiltrative tumor cells beyond gadolinium enhancement on T1-weighted MRI are difficult to detect. This study therefore aims to improve tumor detection beyond traditional tumor margins. To accomplish this, a neural network model was trained to classify tissue samples as ‘tumor’ or ‘not tumor’. This model was then used to classify thousands of tiles from histology samples acquired at autopsy with known MRI locations on the patient’s final clinical …

Chemical Pretreatment And Dewaterability Of Aanaerobically Digested Bio-P Biosolids, Eileen Margaret Kennedy

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Phosphorous (P) effluent regulations from water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) have become more stringent to reduce the damage of eutrophication caused by excess amounts of P. Enhanced biological phosphorus removal (EBPR) is a popular method to help comply with these regulations combined with other practices such as filtration. However, the sludges from facilities that employ EBPR (bio-P sludges) are difficult to dewater and require more polymer than conventional sludge, thereby increasing the cost of solids handling at these facilities. The monovalent to divalent (M/D) cation ratio, which is important in dewatering, is reportedly altered during the EBPR process. P speciation …

A Comparison Of Model Reduction Techniques For Multi-Zone Building Thermal Models, John Burroughs

Master's Theses (2009 -)

In this thesis model order reduction techniques are applied to a set of systems representing the thermodynamics of a multi-zone building. The models are intended to be used in a model predictive control (MPC) application, with the individual zones defined using a simplified two temperature model. There has been an increased interest in model identification and reduction for MPC applications of building models that include multi-zone and non-linear models, but the most of this work has focused on models where individual zones are represented with a higher order model. Manual pole/zero removal, dominant eigenvalue, and balanced model reduction methods are …

Magnetic Gears And Magnetically Geared Electrical Machines With Reduced Rare-Earth Materials, Ali Hussain Al-Qarni

Master's Theses (2009 -)

This thesis covers a new emerging class of electrical machines, namely, Magnetic Gears (MGs) and Magnetically Geared Machines (MGMs). This particular kind of gears/machines are able of either scaling up or down the revolution-per-minute to meet various load profiles as in the case of mechanical gearboxes. Mechanical gearboxes have historically dominated various applications due to their relatively high torque density. However, mechanical gearboxes require physical contact between the rotational components, whereas MGs and MGMs accomplish fundamentally the same function via a contactless mechanism. This physical isolation between the rotational components lead to several advantages in a favor of MGs and …

Developing Origami-Based Approaches To Realize Novel Architectures And Behaviors For Deployable Space Arrays, Nathan Alan Pehrson

Theses and Dissertations

Origami-based approaches for the folding of thick materials for specific application to large deployable space arrays is explored in this work. The folding approaches presented utilize strain energy, spatial kinematics, membranes, compliant mechanisms, and or in combination together to fold finite-thickness materials viewed through the lens of origami-based engineering. Novel architectures and behaviors of mechanisms are developed to achieve packaging efficiency, deployment, and self-stiffening. A method for the folding of monolithic thick-sheet materials is developed by incorporating compliant mechanisms into the material itself to strategically add degrees of freedom. The design and characterization of the compliant mechanisms with consideration to …

Optimal Direct Yaw Moment Control Of A 4wd Electric Vehicle, Winston James Wight

Master's Theses

This thesis is concerned with electronic stability of an all-wheel drive electric vehicle with independent motors mounted in each wheel. The additional controllability and speed permitted using independent motors can be exploited to improve the handling and stability of electric vehicles. In this thesis, these improvements arise from employing a direct yaw moment control (DYC) system that seeks to adapt the understeer gradient of the vehicle and achieve neutral steer by employing a supervisory controller and simultaneously tracking an ideal yaw rate and ideal sideslip angle. DYC enhances vehicle stability by generating a corrective yaw moment realized by a torque …

Dear Neil Armstrong: Letters To The First Man From All Mankind, James R. Hansen

Purdue University Press Book Previews

In the years between the historic first moon landing by Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, and his death at age 82 on August 25, 2012, Neil Armstrong received hundreds of thousands of cards and letters from all over the world, congratulating him, praising him, requesting pictures and autographs, and asking him what must have seemed to him to be limitless—and occasionally intrusive—questions. Of course, all the famous astronauts received fan mail, but the sheer volume Armstrong had to deal with for more than four decades after his moon landing was staggering.

Today, the preponderance of those letters—some 75,000 of …

Enginews, Fall 2019, School Of Computer Science & Engineering

News, Magazines and Reports

The IDEA Lab at SHU offers a variety of state of the art equipment available for students to use.

Identification Of Bridges With Fracture-Prone Details, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Rick Younce, Sudhir Palle

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Welded steel girder bridges can contain details that can high welding and service stresses and are termed constraintinduced fractures (CIF). The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has steel bridges with weld details known to cause CIFs whose girders have experienced fracture events. The Cabinet’s bridge inventory was reviewed and additional candidate bridges with potential CIF details were identified. A review of bridge plans and pictures along with followup field investigations pinpointed bridges with CIF details that warrant up-close (i.e., arm’s length) inspections. Several uninspected bridges were identified as candidates for inspection to determine if they contain CIF details. Guidance is provided to …

Machine Learning Methods Of Material Decomposition In Special Computed Tomography Using Photon Counting Detectors, Kevin Zimmerman

Dissertations (1934 -)

Energy-resolved photon counting detectors have potential improvements over conventional scintillating x-ray detectors and can be used for spectral computed tomography (CT) applications such as material decomposition. However, photon counting detector are difficult to model because they have many non-ideal physical phenomena. We developed machine learning algorithms to model the spectral measurements of energy-resolved photon counting detectors for the purposes of material decomposition and image reconstruction. A feed-forward neural network was used to estimate path lengths of different materials that the x-ray path traversed from spectral measurements of a photon counting detector using calibration measurements on an experimental bench-top CT system. …

In-Plane Cyclic Shear Performance Of Pipe Stem Reinforced Cob Wall, Dezire Q'Anna Perez-Barbante

Master's Theses

This thesis investigates full-scale pipe stem reinforced cob walls under in-plane cyclic shear loads. Cob is the combination of clay subsoils, sand, straw and water that is built in lifts to produce monolithic walls. There is insufficient amount of information on cob as a building material in today’s age. The prior research that exists has examined varying straw content and type, water content, and mixture ratios to determine their effect on strength. There is currently one report that analyzes full-scale cob walls under in-plane loading. This thesis looks to iterate the full-scale tests and specifically studies the effect of reinforcement …

Characterization And Drying Of Oxyhydroxides On Aluminum Clad Spent Nuclear Fuel, Matthew Shalloo

Theses and Dissertations

Research reactors such as the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) and the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) employ aluminum-clad fuel elements made up of many thin plates with uranium dispersed within. In most engineering applications, aluminum is considered to have favorable corrosion characteristics. It forms a thin oxide layer [Al2O3] under atmospheric conditions that is impenetrable to oxygen thus stopping any further corrosion. However, both aluminum metal and Al2O3 react with water to form hydrous oxides which are less protective against further corrosion and form significantly thicker layers than oxidation in dry air. As a result, aluminum-clad spent nuclear fuel (ASNF) …

Experimental Investigation Of Hydraulic Effects On Unsaturated Soils Behaviors, Muwafaq Awad

Theses and Dissertations

Geo-structures are frequently constructed in or on soils with unsaturated conditions and are subjected to variations of moisture contents due to seasonal changes. Even though unsaturated soil mechanics have been established for several decades, it has not been fully implemented in practice today because of a lack of understanding of the interaction between the soil, water, and air phases. Many experimental research studies have been conducted to improve the understanding of unsaturated behavior but these studies are typically limited to small soil elements tested under fully drained conditions. The goal of this research is to evaluate the effect of hydraulics …

A Non-Contacting System For Rail Neutral Temperature And Stress Measurements, Katelyn Knopf

Theses and Dissertations

Continuous Welded Rail (CWR) has become the standard in modern railway track construction around the world because it alleviates well-documented disadvantages of rail joints in a track. CWR practice results in long segments of continuous rail in the track that will develop significant thermal elongation. To avoid the use of impractical large thermal expansion joints and limit the expected thermal elongation, the rail is anchored to the ties. Consequently, the rail is exposed to higher thermal stress demands as the rail temperature varies. At the time a CWR is laid, the rail is free of thermal stresses; the temperature at …

Evaluating Measurement Of Strain Hardening Method For Mechanical Assessment Of Geomembrane Service Life In Msw Landfills, Alaa Alsharaballi

Theses and Dissertations

The increased household production result in more construction of municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills and lagoons. One major part of these engineering projects is high-density polyethylene (HDPE) geomembrane. Geomembrane is an impermeable layer that used along bottom and sides of landfills and lagoons to contain the leachate and to protect the groundwater. Although of their chemicals resistance and high strength, it can be aged under service conditions such as high temperature, ultraviolet (UV) light, and chemicals exposure. These conditions accelerate oxidation of geomembrane and lead to brittle behavior and stress cracking which reduce its service life.

Our objective in this …

E-Grocery Home Delivery Impacts On Food Distribution, Access And Equity: A Portland Case Study, Miguel Figliozzi, Katherine Keeling

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The adoption of e-grocery home delivery (HD) has the potential to change social norms of acquiring household foods and sundries. This case study of Portland, OR reviews the new elements of distribution, inclusion, exclusion, and value created by the service of four major e-grocery businesses: Shipt, Instacart, Amazon Prime Now, and Walmart. These e-grocers are reviewed in terms of service areas, pricing, and inventory choice, as these are key factors on consumer experience. New distribution services are not confided or distributed around traditional industrial or wholesale land use areas. Coverage is extensive, in the Portland metropolitan statistical area, 94% of …

Effective Capacity In Wireless Networks: A Comprehensive Survey, Muhammad Amjad, Mubashir Husain Rehmani, Leila Musavian

Publications

Low latency applications, such as multimedia communications, autonomous vehicles, and Tactile Internet are the emerging applications for next-generation wireless networks, such as 5th generation (5G) mobile networks. Existing physical layer channel models, however, do not explicitly consider quality of service (QoS) aware related parameters under specific delay constraints. To investigate the performance of low-latency applications in future networks, a new mathematical framework is needed. Effective capacity (EC), which is a link-layer channel model with QoS-awareness, can be used to investigate the performance of wireless networks under certain statistical delay constraints. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on existing …

Inspex: Optimize Range Sensors For Environment Perception As A Portable System, Julie Foucault, Suzanne Lesecq, Gabriela Dudnik, Marc Correvon, Rosemary O’Keeffe, Vincenza Di Palma, Marco Passoni, Fabio Quaglia, Laurent Ouvry, Steven Buckley, Jean Herveg, Andrea Di Matteo, Tiana Rakotovao, Olivier Debicki, Nicolas Mareau, John Barrett, Susan Rea, Alan Mcgibney, François Birot, Hugues De Chaumont, Richard Banach, Joseph Razavi, Cian Ó’Murchú

NIMBUS Articles

Environment perception is crucial for the safe navigation of vehicles and robots to detect obstacles in their surroundings. It is also of paramount interest for navigation of human beings in reduced visibility conditions. Obstacle avoidance systems typically combine multiple sensing technologies (i.e., LiDAR, radar, ultrasound and visual) to detect various types of obstacles under different lighting and weather conditions, with the drawbacks of a given technology being offset by others. These systems require powerful computational capability to fuse the mass of data, which limits their use to high-end vehicles and robots. INSPEX delivers a low-power, small-size and lightweight environment perception …

Reduction Of Structural Damage From The Thermal Expansion Of Concrete Using Multifunctional Materials, Darren Hartl, Mirmilad Mirsayar

Publications

This study leveraged past successes in the analysis and design of shape memory alloy (SMA) components to address the issue of thermal expansion in concrete structures. Since the SMA used in the current work is relatively cheaper than other common SMAs (less than $50/lb compared to NiTi which is $200/lb due to difficulties in processing), it is anticipated that the findings of the study could be implemented in real infrastructures made of concrete, asphalt concrete, and other complex large infrastructure. Low-cost Fe-SMAs and other multifunctional materials can be considered as a replacement for components made of steel (e.g., in reinforced …

Comparison Of The Electrical Response Of Cu And Ag Ion-Conducting Sdc Memristors Over The Temperature Range 6 K To 300 K, Kolton Drake, Tonglin Lu, Md. Kamrul H. Majumdar, Kristy A. Campbell

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Electrical performance of self-directed channel (SDC) ion-conducting memristors which use Ag and Cu as the mobile ion source are compared over the temperature range of 6 K to 300 K. The Cu-based SDC memristors operate at temperatures as low as 6 K, whereas Ag-based SDC memristors are damaged if operated below 125 K. It is also observed that Cu reversibly diffuses into the active Ge₂Se₃ layer during normal device shelf-life, thus changing the state of a Cu-based memristor over time. This was not observed for the Ag-based SDC devices. The response of each device type to sinusoidal …

Explaining Regressions Via Alignment Slicing And Mending, Haijun Wang, Yun Lin, Zijiang Yang, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jinsong Dong, Qinghua Zheng, Ting Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Regression faults, which make working code stop functioning, are often introduced when developers make changes to the software. Many regression fault localization techniques have been proposed. However, issues like inaccuracy and lack of explanation are still obstacles for their practical application. In this work, we propose a trace-based approach to identifying not only where the root cause of a regression bug lies, but also how the defect is propagated to its manifestation as the explanation. In our approach, we keep the trace of original correct version as reference and infer the faulty steps on the trace of regression version so …

Generic Construction Of Elgamal-Type Attribute-Based Encryption Schemes With Revocability And Dual-Policy, Shengmin Xu, Yinghui Zhang, Yingjiu Li, Ximeng Liu, Guomin Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cloud is a computing paradigm for allowing data owners to outsource their data to enjoy on-demand services and mitigate the burden of local data storage. However, secure sharing of data via cloud remains an essential issue since the cloud service provider is untrusted. Fortunately, asymmetric-key encryption, such as identity-based encryption (IBE) and attribute-based encryption (ABE), provides a promising tool to offer data confidentiality and has been widely applied in cloud-based applications. In this paper, we summarize the common properties of most of IBE and ABE and introduce a cryptographic primitive called ElGamal type cryptosystem. This primitive can be used to …

Nonlinear Characterizing Of A New Titanium Nitride On Aluminum Oxide Metalens, Michael A. Cumming

Theses and Dissertations

A sample metalens generated from Titanium Nitride deposited onto Aluminum Oxide was designed to focus at 10 microns with a beam centered at 800nm, and when analyzed with high intensity illumination was found to have a focal length of 9.650 ±.003µm at an intensity of 16.93[MW/cm² ]. Analyzing this change by comparing it to a Fresnel Lens’ physics shows that for this lens, the effective nonlinear index of refraction is certainly greater than the nonlinear index of just Titanium Nitride itself, at −1.6239 × 10⁻¹⁵[m²/W] compared to the materials −1.3 × 10⁻¹⁵[m^{2 …}

Wetland Arid Vegetation – Studies Of Vegetated Stormwater Management System Performance In Northern Utah – Field & Lab Experiences, Ryan Dupont, Margie Rycewicz-Borecki, Trixie Rife

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Motivation for the Work We’ve Done – The Why

Summary of the Work We’ve Done - The What & The How

Findings - The How Well

Conclusions & Recommendations – The So What

Barriers And Opportunities To Electric Vehicle Development In Nepal, Allyson Krupa

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As the global carbon dioxide level reaches its highest point in human history (407.4 parts per million), energy systems must transition from fossil fuel to renewable-powered sources. Since the transportation sector contributes nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, electric mobility offers a significant opportunity to reduce GHG emissions. Globally, there has been a rise in demand for electric vehicles. In Nepal, a clean energy transition within the context of rising urbanization and air pollution is imperative for quality of life, socio-economic development, and broadly climate change mitigation/adaptation. Furthermore, Nepal’s vast hydropower potential may increase energy independence and provide …

Soil-Recycled Aggregate-Geopolymer Road Base/Subbase Mixtures: Steps Towards Sustainability, Mohammad Khattak, Daniel Odion

Publications

This study deals with the development of Soil-Geopolymer mixtures using flyash, alkali activator and recycled aggregates (RAG) including recycled concrete (RCA) and reclaimed asphalt (RAP) as an alternative to soil-cement for pavement base and subbase layers. Several mix constituents were varied such as flyash type and content, RCA and RAP content and ratio of sodium silicate and sodium hydroxide. Experiment design was established and mechanical and durability characteristics of Soil-RAG-Geopolymer mixtures were evaluated and then compared to the conventional soil-cement mixtures. The results of the testing showed that for the selected Soil-RAG-Geopolymer mixtures the strength, stiffness, permanent deformation, and durability …

The Impact Of Hurricane Harvey On Pavement Structures In The South East Texas And South West Louisiana, Stefan Romanoschi

Publications

This study developed a methodology to estimate the damage caused by flooding, such that caused by Hurricane Harvey, on a road or street network. The flooded street or pavement sections are identified using GIS flood maps with street GIS maps used for pavement management systems (PMS) by cities or state authorities. Then the damage caused by flooding directly through the increase moisture in foundation layers or indirectly due to the increase heavy traffic during the relief effort is estimated. An example Excel macro was created to illustrate the estimation process. The methodology estimates the increase in rehabilitation costs since the …

The Jump Seat Experience, Luke Moriarty

Student Works

It was a Tuesday afternoon as I sat in the conference room of Aegean Airlines, an airline based in the country of Greece. My fellow peers, professors and I were here on a study abroad program, currently participating in a week long workshop with the airline company. It was lunch time, all gathered around at rectangle tables when we found out the answer to our long-anticipated question. The Chief Pilot stood up stating he had an announcement to make. All of the students including myself had a look confusion and anticipation on our faces, we wondered could this be what …