Engineering Commons^™

Investigating The Removal Of Stormwater Pollutants In Small-Scale, Constructed Treatment Wetlands, Katlyn Edwards

Rose-Hulman Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships

Eutrophication of US surface waters is a growing problem due to nitrogen and phosphorus runoff in stormwater. In natural ecosystems, wetlands can absorb and remove a variety of water pollutants, including nutrients. Wetlands also provide flood control and wildlife habitat. Mimicking natural systems, constructed treatment wetlands can remove stormwater pollutants, are economic to build and maintain, provide a bionetwork for a wide range of plants and animals, and can be used for educational purposes.

While constructed treatment wetlands can remove stormwater pollutants such as total suspended solids, organic carbon, and nitrates, a significant reduction in phosphate concentrations has not been …

Dripline: A Distributed Experiment Control System, Eric Gonzalez, Ben Laroque, Noah Oblath

STAR Program Research Presentations

Project 8 is a nuclear physics experiment which seeks to measure the mass of neutrinos. The experiment requires the use of various pieces of hardware which need to be controlled, and from this need, a software system named Dripline is being developed. Because most researchers have some knowledge in Python and it is easier to understand the syntax of Python as opposed to C++, a Python application programming interface (API) is being created to allow any researcher working with Dripline ease of use. As development progresses, features may be added or removed as needed which requires constant testing, debugging, and …

Illuminator, Volume 2, Issue 12, Batten College Of Engineering & Technology, Old Dominion University

College of Engineering & Technology Newsletter

August 2019 issue of Illuminator, a monthly publication of ODU's Batten College of Engineering and Technology.

Modeling And Simulation Of A Utility-Scale Battery Energy Storage System, Oluwaseun M. Akeyo, Vandana Rallabandi, Nicholas Jewell, Dan M. Ionel

Power and Energy Institute of Kentucky Faculty Publications

This paper presents the modeling and simulation study of a utility-scale MW level Li-ion based battery energy storage system (BESS). A runtime equivalent circuit model, including the terminal voltage variation as a function of the state of charge and current, connected to a bidirectional power conversion system (PCS), was developed based on measurements from an operational utility-scale battery demonstrator. The accelerated response of the battery unit was verified by pulse discharging it from maximum to minimum SOC and its application for grid resiliency was demonstrated through an example droop control frequency response. For the purpose of validating the equivalent BESS …

Towards A Theoretical Explanation Of How Pavement Condition Index Deteriorates Over Time, Edgar Daniel Rodriguez Velasquez, Carlos M. Chang Albitres, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

To predict how the Pavement Condition Index will change over time, practitioners use a complex empirical formula derived in the 1980s. In this paper, we provide a possible theoretical explanation for this formula, an explanation based on general ideas of invariance. In general, the existence of a theoretical explanation makes a formula more reliable; thus, we hope that our explanation will make predictions of road quality more reliable.

Materials Science And Engineering, Joshua P. Steimel

Pacific Open Texts

This text serves to provide a brief overview of some of the myriad of topics available for study in the field of Materials Science. This is by no means a comprehensive compilation of Materials Science and Engineering topics but is instead meant as an introduction to the topic for entry-level undergraduates who want to pursue a career studying materials.

Secondary Electron Yield Measurements Of Carbon Nanotube Forests: Dependence On Morphology And Substrate, Brian Wood, Jordan Lee, Gregory Wilson, T. -C. Shen, Jr Dennison

Journal Articles

Total, secondary, and backscatter electron yield data were taken with beam energies between 15 eV and 30 keV, in conjunction with energy emission data, to determine the extent of suppression of yield caused by carbon nanotube (CNT) forest coatings on substrates. CNT forests can potentially lower substrate yield due to both its inherently low-yield, low-atomic number (Z) carbon composition, and its bundled, high-aspect ratio structure. Rough surfaces, and in particular, surfaces with deep high-aspect-ratio voids, can suppress yields, as the electrons emitted from lower lying surfaces are recaptured by surface protrusions rather than escaping the near-surface region. Yields of multilayered …

Oxidation Behavior Of Zirconium, Zircaloy-3, Zircaloy-4, Zr-1nb, And Zr- 2.5nb In Air And Oxygen, Jordan L. Vandegrift, Patrick M. Price, John-Paul Stroud, Clemente J. Parga, Isabella J. Van Rooyen, Brian J. Jaques, Darryl P. Butt

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility at the Idaho National Laboratory currently utilizes a legacy Zircaloy- 3 cladding, which is no longer commercially available. TREAT is air cooled and routinely operates at temperatures well above that of traditional reactor designs. This study investigates the oxidation behavior of pure zirconium and its alloys (Zircaloy-3, Zircaloy-4, Zr-1Nb, Zr-2.5Nb) in Ar+20%O₂ and N₂+20%O₂ atmospheres at temperatures ranging from 400–800 °C to determine which alloy should be implemented as TREAT's cladding. While the oxidation behavior of zirconium based cladding materials has been extensively documented, this study focuses on direct comparison …

Machine Learning-Based Network Vulnerability Analysis Of Industrial Internet Of Things, Maede Zolanvari, Marcio Teixeira, Lav Gupta, Khaled Khan, Raj Jain

Computer Science Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Map My Murder: A Digital Forensic Study Of Mobile Health And Fitness Applications, Courtney Hassenfeldt, Shabana Baig, Ibrahim Baggili, Xiaolu Zhang

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The ongoing popularity of health and fitness applications catalyzes

the need for exploring forensic artifacts produced by them. Sensitive

Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is requested by the applications

during account creation. Augmenting that with ongoing

user activities, such as the user’s walking paths, could potentially

create exculpatory or inculpatory digital evidence. We conducted

extensive manual analysis and explored forensic artifacts produced

by (n = 13) popular Android mobile health and fitness applications.

We also developed and implemented a tool that aided in the timely

acquisition and identification of artifacts from the examined applications.

Additionally, our work explored the type of …

Tutorial: Are You My Neighbor?: Bringing Order To Neighbor Computing Problems, David Anastasiu, Huzefa Rangwala, Andrea Tagarelli

Faculty Publications

Finding nearest neighbors is an important topic that has attracted much attention over the years and has applications in many fields, such as market basket analysis, plagiarism and anomaly detection, community detection, ligand-based virtual screening, etc. As data are easier and easier to collect, finding neighbors has become a potential bottleneck in analysis pipelines. Performing pairwise comparisons given the massive datasets of today is no longer feasible. The high computational complexity of the task has led researchers to develop approximate methods, which find many but not all of the nearest neighbors. Yet, for some types of data, efficient exact solutions …

Spring-Guided Electromagnetic Vibrations Energy Harvester, Ghufran Jaber Aldawood

Master's Theses

In recent years, vibration based energy harvesting techniques showed a promising alternative to power wireless sensor networks (WSN). Billions of low power sensors are currently used widely in wireless sensor networks (WSN) and the Internet of Things environment (IoT). These sensors are currently powered by a traditional power source, i.e. a disposable battery. Vibrations are an abundant source of kinetic energy that can serve as the power source for these sensor nodes. This approach eliminates the necessity for frequent battery replacement due to their short-life span and hazardous disposal process. The adverse and irreversible effect from the disposal of these …

Metal Related Nanoparticles' Physical Behaviors In Different Physiologica Environments, Muhetaer Tuerhong

Master's Theses

In the past decades, the development of nanotechnology has had tremendous successes in material science. In this technology, the pertinent materials are used at the intermediate scale between individual molecules and their size in the nanometer region(1-100nm) compared to bulk materials. This nanoscale size provides a larger surface area; therefore, nanoparticles would be perfect essential components of nanotechnology. The reduced size of nanoparticles has a larger surface ratio to volume, which can modify their chemical, mechanical, structural, and electrical properties.

In this study, the main goal is to test different metal related nanoparticles, such as CuNPs (Copper nanoparticles), FeNPs (Iron …

A Study Of The Mono-Stable And Bi-Stable Magnetic Spring Based Vibration Energy Harvesters Subject To Harmonic Excitation, Hieu Tri Nguyen

Master's Theses

Continuous improvement in electronics manufacturing has led to the deployment of low-power sensors, which has resulted in an urgent need for developing energy harvesters capable of generating electric power using abundant and free energy sources such as ambient vibrations. The work presented here is motivated by the growing interest in targeting nonlinear energy harvesting through magnetic interactions, which are compatible with ambient vibration energy sources that are often characterized by a broadband frequency spectrum and can be particularly rich with low frequencies. In this work, experimental and theoretical studies were performed to investigate a magnetic- levitation-based vibration energy harvester that …

Dynamic Identification Of Soil-Structure System Designed By Direct Displacement-Based Method For Different Site Conditions, Vahidreza Mahmoudabadi, Omid Bahar, Mohammad Kazem Jafari, Amir Safiey

Publications

This study mainly aims to assess the performance of soil-structure systems designed by direct displacement-based method coupled with strong column-weak beam design concept through various system identification techniques under strong ground motions. To this end, various system identification methods are employed to evaluate the dynamic characteristics of a structure (i.e., modal frequency, system damping, mode shapes, and plastic hinge formation pattern) under a strong seismic excitation considering soil-structure interaction for different site conditions as specified by ASCE 7-10. The scope of the study narrowed down to the code-complying low- to high-rise steel moment resisting frames with various heights (4, 8, …

Design And Analysis Of A Traveling Wave Fault Locator, Gerald Austin Taylor

Master's Theses

The accuracy of fault location is an integral part of power system operations. Improved fault location can reduce maintenance time, increase efficiency, and save money. When a fault occurs, it sends a disturbance in the current and voltage in each direction at almost the speed of light. This disturbance is called a traveling wave, and can be used to locate faults. In efforts to increase accuracy, the use of traveling wave theory to locate faults has become more popular.

This thesis goes through the process of designing and testing a traveling wave fault locator. The design includes analog and digital …

Microextrusion 3d Printing Of Optical Waveguides And Microheaters, Edidiong Nseowo Udofia

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The drive for smaller and more compact devices presents several challenges in materials and fabrication strategies. Although photolithography is a well-developed method for creating microdevices, the disparate requirements in fabrication strategies, material choices, equipment and process complexities have limited its applications. Microextrusion printing (μEP) provides a promising alternative for microfabrication. Compared to the traditional techniques, the attractions lie in the wide range of printable material choice, greater design freedom, fewer processing steps, lower cost for customized production, and the plurality of compatible substrates. However, while extrusion-based 3D printing processes have been successfully applied at the macroscale, this seeming simplicity belies …

Development Of A Multimode Instrument For Remote Measurements Of Unsaturated Soil Properties, Sean Elliott Salazar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The hydromechanical behavior of soil is governed by parameters that include the moisture content, soil matric potential, texture, and the mineralogical composition of the soil. Remote characterization of these and other key properties of the soil offers advantages over conventional in situ or laboratory-based measurements: information may be acquired rapidly over large, or inaccessible areas; samples do not need to be collected; and the measurements are non-destructive. A field-deployable, ground-based remote sensor, designated the Soil Observation Laser Absorption Spectrometer (SOLAS), was developed to infer parameters of bare soils and other natural surfaces over intermediate (100 m) and long (1,000 m) …

The Development Of Initial Asphalt Mixture Acceptance Criteria Using The Scb Test And The I-Fit Test, Nathan Delman Parnell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cracking has become the primary asphalt pavement distress in Arkansas. Arkansas along with other states have implemented a test to measure rutting resistance. This paper presents research to implement a cracking resistance test to further modify the Superpave volumetric asphalt mixture design method in Arkansas. The Illinois Flexibility Index Test (I-FIT) was the test chosen to analyze for this research. Two aging methods were tested, a short term oven aging (AASHTO R30 ST) and a long term oven aging (NCAT) method. Six asphalt mixtures were selected to be tested. The mixtures testes were recreated from Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) …

Fqstat: A Parallel Architecture For Very High-Speed Assessment Of Sequencing Quality Metrics, Sree K. Chanumolu, Mustafa Albahrani, Hasan H. Otu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Background: High throughput DNA/RNA sequencing has revolutionized biological and clinical research. Sequencing is widely used, and generates very large amounts of data, mainly due to reduced cost and advanced technologies. Quickly assessing the quality of giga-to-tera base levels of sequencing data has become a routine but important task. Identification and elimination of low-quality sequence data is crucial for reliability of downstream analysis results. There is a need for a high-speed tool that uses optimized parallel programming for batch processing and simply gauges the quality of sequencing data from multiple datasets independent of any other processing steps.

Results: FQStat is a …

Asap: A Source Code Authorship Program, Matthew F. Tennyson Phd

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Source code authorship attribution is the task of determining who wrote a computer program, based on its source code, usually when the author is either unknown or under dispute. Areas where this can be applied include software forensics, cases of software copyright infringement, and detecting plagiarism. Numerous methods of source code authorship attribution have been proposed and studied. However, there are no known easily accessible and user-friendly programs that perform this task. Instead, researchers typically develop software in an ad hoc manner for use in their studies, and the software is rarely made publicly available. In this paper, we present …

Organically Modified Inorganic Nanoparticles For Halochromic Ionophores And Nucleic Acids, William Johnston

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, four nanoparticle reaction schemes were developed as substrates for halochromic dyes or nucleic acids. The reaction schemes include the use of two substrates: silica nanoparticles and halloysite nanotubes. The protocols can incorporate silica (SiO2) nanoparticles and halloysite aluminosilicate (AlO2SiO2) nanotubes due to the presence of silane groups on the surface of either substrate. The reaction schemes are presented along with detailed protocols which were written to facilitate both reproducibility and to serve as an aid to further study and for easy modification of the protocol to suit a researcher's needs. The data is discussed in the materials …

Design, Microfabrication And Characterization Of Concentric Gold Nanoring Electrode For Neurochemical Sensing, Haocheng Yin

Doctoral Dissertations

Nanoelectrodes have become widely used in electrochemical sensing in recent decades. When compared to microelectrodes, it has many unique advantages such as high signal to noise ratio, small sample volume requirement, and lower detection limits.

This work reports on the microfabrication and characterization of a gold nanoring electrode (Au NRE) patterned on top of a silicon (Si) micropillar. An NRE of 165  10 nm in width was micropatterned on 4.6  1 µm diameter  17.5  2.5 µm long Si micropillar with an intervening 50 nm thick hafnium oxide insulating layer. Scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy …

Perceptions Of Immigration Among Nonmetropolitan Nebraskans: Nebraska Rural Poll Research Report 19-2, Rebecca Vogt, Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel, Randolph Cantrell, Bradley Lubben, L. J. Mcelravy, Timothy Meyer, Jason L. Weigle

Rural Futures Institute: Publications

The percent of Nebraska’s population that is foreign born has steadily increased during the past decade. In fact, its growth in foreign born population since 2010 ranks in the top 10 among all states. Given these changes, are rural Nebraskans aware of recent immigrants in their community? How do they perceive immigrants and their impacts on rural Nebraska? How do they view various immigration policies? This paper provides a detailed analysis of these questions. This report details 1,776 responses to the 2019 Nebraska Rural Poll, the 24th annual effort to understand rural Nebraskans’ perceptions. Respondents were asked a series of …

Fabrication Of Polyvinylidene Fluoride Hollow Fiber Membranes For Membrane Distillation, Abdullah Al Balushi

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Desalination technologies can help humanity tap into the most abundant source of water on earth, seawater; however, desalination is an energy-demanding process. Most of the desalination plants worldwide use conventional energy resources; therefore, desalination leaves a large carbon footprint. Solar energy is an available source of energy that can be harvested and integrated into desalination systems.

Membrane distillation (MD) is an emerging purification technology that many offers many advantages over traditional desalination systems. For starters, it can utilize low-grade thermal energy to drive the separation, therefore, it can be suitably integrated into the solar-thermal energy scheme. Additionally, MD can be …

Flexible Electrochemical Sensors Based On Iridium Oxide For Biomedical Applications, Xuesong Yang

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Considering the disadvantages of the costly, laborious, and time-consuming traditional clinical analyses, there is a tendency of developing non-hospital point-of-care which allows patients to monitor their health conditions conveniently at home. To optimize the convenience of the point-of-care instruments, a wearable device with the ability of detecting different biological components in different biological conditions is preferer. The device should also have the qualities of rapid analyses, high accuracy, and high sensitivity. To accomplish these requirements, we proposed a flexible electrochemical sensor based on iridium oxide (IrOx). As a noble metal, iridium oxide has the advantages of bio-compatible, stable, and corrosive …

Affine Invariance In Multilayer Perceptron Training, Son Nam Nguyen

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Training methods for both shallow and deep neural nets are dominated by first order algorithms related to back propagation and conjugate gradient. However, these methods lack affine invariance so performance is damaged by nonzero input means, dependent inputs, dependent hidden units and the use of only one learning factor. This dissertation reviews affine invariance and shows how MLP training can be made partially affine invariant when Newton's method is used to train small numbers of MLP parameters. Several novel methods are proposed for scalable partially affine invariant MLP training. The potential application of the algorithm to deep learning is discussed. …

Nonlinear Control Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles With Cable Suspended Payloads, Ameya Godbole

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The research focuses on the mathematical modeling and control of an unmanned aerial vehicle with cable suspended payload. A comprehensive mathematical model is derived for a quadcopter with a cable suspended payload using the Newton-Euler method and the Euler-Lagrange formulation. These methods assume that the cable is massless and always taut and cannot be used to simulate the cases when the cable is flexible. Hence, an alternative approach to model the flexibility of the cable is presented using Lagrangian mechanics by approximating the cable to be a chain of serially connected links. The motion of the payload induces disturbances on …

Modeling And Simulation Of Contact And Impact Dynamics In Multibody Systems, Abhishek Chatterjee

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Contact and impact analyses are an essential part of multibody dynamic simulations. Modeling of contact and impact problems have applications in a wide variety of areas including robotics, earthquake engineering, computer graphics, and manufacturing. Collisions between objects typically take place over surfaces that are represented by a set of points in the operation space, thereby requiring multi-point contact and impact analysis. Analysis of multi-point contact and impact may lead to indeterminate (underdetermined) problems with more number of unknowns (contact forces) than equations. This work pertains to the problem of resolving multi-point contact and impact problems in multibody systems consisting of …

Numerical Simulation Of Biodiesel Synthesis In A Continuous Flow Microreactor And A Porous Media Reactor, Terdsak Neadkratoke

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Biodiesel has become an increasingly popular fossil fuel substitute in recent years. Constant attempts are being made to develop new technology that increases the efficiency and yield of biodiesel production units. Numerical simulation can play an integral role in evaluating new reactor designs or optimizing existing ones. Various attempts have been made to develop an accurate computational model that represents biodiesel production. Many computational models for transesterification are based on simplified kinetic models that do not include the effect of saponification. Furthermore, many models assume isothermal conditions and uniform spatial concentrations. Therefore, these models would not be appropriate for evaluating …