Engineering Commons^™

A Data Model To Manage Data For Water Resources Systems Modeling, Adel M. Abdallah, David E. Rosenberg

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Current practices to identify, organize, analyze, and serve data to water resources systems models are typically model and dataset-specific. Data are stored in different formats, described with different vocabularies, and require manual, model-specific, and time-intensive manipulations to find, organize, compare, and then serve to models. This paper presents the Water Management Data Model (WaMDaM) implemented in a relational database. WaMDaM uses contextual metadata, controlled vocabularies, and supporting software tools to organize and store water management data from multiple sources and models and allow users to more easily interact with its database. Five use cases use thirteen datasets and models focused …

Electrical Properties And Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Effectiveness Of Interlayered Systems Composed By Carbon Nanotube Filled Carbon Nanofiber Mats And Polymer Composites, Claudia A. Ramirez-Herrera, Homero Gonzalez, Felipe De La Torre, Laura Benitez, Jose G. Cabanas-Moreno, Karen Lozano

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The demand for multifunctional requirements in aerospace, military, automobile, sports, and energy applications has encouraged the investigation of new composite materials. This study focuses on the development of multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) filled polypropylene composites and carbon nanofiber composite mats. The developed systems were then used to prepare interlayered composites that exhibited improved electrical conductivity and electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding efficiency. MWCNT-carbon nanofiber composite mats were developed by centrifugally spinning mixtures of MWCNT suspended in aqueous poly(vinyl alcohol) solutions. The developed nanofibers were then dehydrated under sulfuric acid vapors and then heat treated. Interlayered samples were fabricated using a nanoreinforced …

The Nature Of Stalls: Not All Stalls Are Created Equal, Nihad E. Daidzic

Aviation Department Publications

FAA Safety Seminar (GL1588593F) held at Modern Avionics/Air Trek North, Eden Prairie, MN at 9:00 CST on Saturday, February 9, 2019.

Design And Analysis Of Novel Actuation Mechanism With Controllable Stiffness, Erivelton Gualter Dos Santos, Hanz Richter

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Actuators intended for human–machine interaction systems are usually designed to be mechanically compliant. Conventional actuators are not suitable for this purpose due to typically high stiffness. Advanced powered prosthetic and orthotic devices can vary their stiffness during a motion cycle and are power-efficient. This paper proposes a novel actuator design that modulates stiffness by means of a flexible beam. A motorized drive system varies the active length of the cantilever beam, thus achieving stiffness modulation. New large deflection formulation for cantilever beams with rolling contact constraints is used to determine the moment produced by the actuator. To validate the proposed …

The Effect Of Fine Material Amount On Optimum Water Content Of Roller Compacted Concrete, Kubilay Akçaözoğlu, Bedrettin Menemencioğlu

International Journal of Business and Technology

In this study the effect of fine material amount on the optimum water content of roller compacted concrete (RCC) was investigated. The fine aggregate was replaced with calcite which maximum particle size was 63 μ, in amount of 0%, 2%, 4%, 6%, 10% and 14% by weight of total aggregate. Six different mixtures were prepared in the study. The optimum water contents of the mixtures were determined by using modified proctor test. Optimum water content, maximum dry unit weight and maximum fresh unit weight of produced specimens were measured. Optimum water content of specimens decreased depending on increasing fine aggregate …

The Effect Of Particles Pm10 And Pm2.5 In Dust Emission Of Urban Infrastructure From Thermal Power Plant Technology Kosovo, Afrim Syla

International Journal of Business and Technology

Airborne particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters less than 10 microns (referred to as PM10) is one of the six criteria pollutants used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as indicator of air quality. During the last decade, the health effects of urban aerosols have become a major concern for the society.

The main environmental problems in Kosovo include all issues related to water supply and sanitation system, air quality, solid waste management and urban infrastructure. The major problem remains high pollutions, energy losses and low collection efficiency. The awareness of environmental issues among the general public is poor. Air quality …

Using Of Proper Pavement Material For The Intersections With Slow-Moving Traffic, Bekim Selimi

International Journal of Business and Technology

Use of proper pavement material for some of intersections need special attention by road designers. At Camp Bondsteel-Kosovo on 2002 were built four road intersections using the concrete as pavement material. Heavy and slow-moving trucks that are turning or accelerating exposed these intersections to some of the highest stress level. After some years this intresections start deteriorating on their surface due to friction. The concrete pavements did not survive this period of usage and after eight years were removed and replaced with asphalt pavements. After more than seven years, the asphalt has shown minor distress but is still in good …

The Effect Of Elevated Temperature On The Lightweight Concrete Containing Waste Pet Aggregate, Semiha Akçaözoğlu

International Journal of Business and Technology

In this study, the effect of waste PET as lightweight aggregate (WPLA) replacement with conventional aggregate on the some physical and mechanical properties and residual compressive strength of concrete was investigated. For this purpose, five different mixtures were prepared (the reference mixture and four WPLA mixtures including 30%, 40%, 50% and 60% waste PET aggregate by volume). The fresh and dry unit weights, compressive strengths, flexural-tensile strengths, water absorption and porosity ratios of the mixtures were measured. In addition the specimens exposed to elevated temperatures at 150, 300 and 450 °C and the residual compressive strengths were measured. Test results …

Negative Impacts (Sbs) In Residential Buildings Case Studies From Kosovo, Muhamet Ahmeti, Mimoza Sylejmani

International Journal of Business and Technology

This paper presents the negative impacts on residential buildings in Kosovo, - as well as the main factors of the occurrence of sick building syndrome (SBS) in residential buildings in the case of Kosovo. It also examines the impact of different materials on this phenomenon and how many constructions in Kosovo are protected from this phenomenon.

For the assessment of the impact of materials on health and the environment, it is necessary to consider all the phases. Starting from the phase of construction, selection of materials, application from the beginning of the use of the building, including all the materials …

Reducing The Porosity And Sealing Cracks By Using Crystalline Admixture In Conventional Concrete, Visar Krelani, Liberato Ferrara

International Journal of Business and Technology

There is a continuous increase of quality on civil engineering materials in developed countries and parallel increase of need for new constructions in developing countries. Professional community should propose solutions for the durability that can resist in different severe environments. The most important factor that can affect concrete durability is represented by the pore distribution. Transport properties can take place through the porous network inside the cementitious composites and the aggregates interface, permitting the ingress of aggressive agents damaging concrete function intrinsically as a material and the wellfunctioning of the entire structure. The use of a crystalline admixture during the …

Seismic Actions Induced By Cladding Panels On Precast Concrete Frame Structures, Bruno Dal Lago, Francesco Foti, Luca Martinelli

International Journal of Business and Technology

The strong earthquakes occurred in Southern Europe in the last decade pointed out a poor seismic performance of the connection system of the cladding of precast industrial structures. The cladding of these buildings usually consists of sandwich concrete panels of remarkable mass, connected to the frame structure with mechanical devices. The estimation of the out-of-plane seismic action on these connections is a key step for their correct proportioning. However, the formulation currently provided in the Eurocode 8 for the estimation of the seismic action on non-structural elements was calibrated with different objectives. Furthermore, given there is no in-plane structure-panel interaction, …

State Feedback Of Complex Systems Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, Vassiliki Mpelogianni, Ioannis Arvanitakis, Peter P. Groumpos

International Journal of Business and Technology

Complex systems have become a research area with increasing interest over the last years. The emergence of new technologies, the increase in computational power with reduced resources and cost, the integration of the physical world with computer based systems has created the possibility of significantly improving the quality of life of humans. While a significant degree of automation within these systems exists and has been provided in the past decade with examples of the smart homes and energy efficient buildings, a paradigm shift towards autonomy has been noted. The need for autonomy requires the extraction of a model; while a …

Maturity Level Of Kosovo Manufacturing Industry With Regard To Industry 4.0, Fatmir Azemi, Edmond Hajrizi, Bekim Maloku

International Journal of Business and Technology

In this paper the concept of Maturity Level of Kosovo Industry will be presented according to the Industry 4.0. Digitalization of factory has impact the entire business environment and lead to Smart Enterprises. To create a model of Smart Factory, first we have analyzed the existing situation of Kosovo Manufacturing Industry with regard to revolution of Industry. In this paper we will describe the results of a recent research at the Kosovo manufacturing companies and are included metalworking and furniture industry, where is developed a Maturity Level for Kosovo Industry. To describe the Maturity Level of Kosovo Industry we have …

Applying A Revised Approach Of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps On A Hybrid Electrical Energy System, Ekavi Antoniou, Eleni S. Vergini, Peter P. Groumpos

International Journal of Business and Technology

Complex systems modeling is a rapidly developing research field which incorporates various scientific sectors from bio medicine and energy to economic and social sciences. However, as the systems’ complexity increases pure mathematical modeling techniques prove to be a rather laborious task which demands wasting many resources and in many occasions, could not lead to the desired system response. This realization led researchers turn their attention into the field of computational intelligence; Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic etc. In this way scientists were able to provide a model of a system which is strongly characterized by fuzziness and uncertainties. Fuzzy Cognitive …

Decision Making Based On Data Analyses Using Data Warehouses, Valdrin Haxhiu

International Journal of Business and Technology

Data warehouses are a collection of several databases, whose goal is to help different companies and corporations make important decisions about their activities. These decisions are taken from the analyses that are made to the data within the data warehouse. These data are taken from data that companies and corporations collect on daily basis from their branches that may be located in different cities, regions, states and continents. Data that are entered to data warehouses are historical data and they represent that part of data that is important for making decisions. These data go under a transformation process in order …

Characteristics And Temporal Behavior Of Internet Backbone Traffic, Artan Salihu, Muharrem Shefkiu, Arianit Maraj

International Journal of Business and Technology

With the rapid increase demand for data usage, Internet has become complex and harder to analyze. Characterizing the Internet traffic might reveal information that are important for Network Operators to formulate policy decisions, develop techniques to detect network anomalies, help better provision network resources (capacity, buffers) and use workload characteristics for simulations (typical packet sizes, flow durations, common protocols).

In this paper, using passive monitoring and measurements, we show collected data traffic at Internet backbone routers. First, we reveal main observations on patterns and characteristics of this dataset including packet sizes, traffic volume for inter and intra domain and protocol …

Permission-Based Privacy Analysis For Android Applications, Erza Gashi, Zhilbert Tafa

International Journal of Business and Technology

While Information and Communication Technology (ICT) trends are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), mobile applications are becoming more and more popular. Mostly due to their pervasiveness and the level of interaction with the users, along with the great number of advantages, the mobile applications bring up a great number of privacy related issues as well. These platforms can gather our very sensitive private data by only granting them a list of permissions during the installation process. Additionally, most of the users can find it difficult, or even useless, to analyze system permissions. Thus, their guess of app’s safety …

A Need For An Integrative Security Model For Semantic Stream Reasoning Systems, Admirim Aliti, Edmond Jajaga, Kozeta Sevrani

International Journal of Business and Technology

State-of-the-art security frameworks have been extensively addressing security issues for web resources, agents and services in the Semantic Web. The provision of Stream Reasoning as a new area spanning Semantic Web and Data Stream Management Systems has eventually opened up new challenges. Namely, their decentralized nature, the metadata descriptions, the number of users, agents, and services, make securing Stream Reasoning systems difficult to handle. Thus, there is an inherent need of developing new security models which will handle security and automate security mechanisms to a more autonomous system that supports complex and dynamic relationships between data, clients and service providers. …

Why Modeling Complex Dynamic Systems Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps?, Peter P. Groumpos

International Journal of Business and Technology

The difficult problem of modeling Complex Dynamic Systems (CDS) is carefully reviewed. Main characteristics of CDS are considered and analyzed. Today’s mathematical models and approaches cannot provide satisfactory answers to the challenging problems of the society. The key problem of complex dynamic systems and control theory consists in the development of methods of qualitative analysis of the dynamics and behavior of such systems and in the construction of efficient control algorithms for their efficient operation. The purpose of control to bring the system to a point of its phase space which corresponds to maximal or minimal value of the chosen …

Prediction Of Punching Shear Capacity Of Two-Ways Frp Reinforced Concrete Slabs, Ilker Fatih Kara, Besian Sinani

International Journal of Business and Technology

An innovative solution to the corrosion problem is the use of fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) as an alternative reinforcing material in concrete structures. In addition to the non corrodible nature of FRP materials, they also have a high strength-to-weight ratio that makes them attractive as reinforcement for concrete structures. Extensive research programs have been carried out to investigate the flexural behavior of concrete members reinforced with FRP reinforcement. On the other hand, the shear behavior of concrete members, especially punching shear of two-way slabs, reinforced with FRP bars has not yet been fully explored. The existing provisions for punching of slabs …

Assessment Of Reinforced Concrete Half Joint According To En-1992-1-1, Xhemshir Mulliqi

International Journal of Business and Technology

A half-joint is a particular type of RC structure .When using precast beams in reinforced concrete frame structures, dapped beams ends are often required in the bearing area to keep the floor structure as thin as possible. The arrangement and detailing of the reinforcement is an important factor in the performance of a half-joint. For pre-tensioned members, the prestressing force and tendons should be ignored, but for post-tensioned members the prestressing force should be considered as an external force acting on the half-joint. This paper aims to calculate dapped beam ends according to the EN 1992-1-1.

Electrochromic Semiconductors As Colorimetric Sers Substrates With High Reproducibility And Renewability, Shan Cong, Zhen Wang, Wenbin Gong, Zhigang Chen, Weibang Lu, John R. Lombardi, Zhigang Zhao

Publications and Research

Electrochromic technology has been actively researched for displays, adjustable mirrors, smart windows, and other cutting-edge applications. However, it has never been proposed to overcome the critical problems in the field of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Herein, we demonstrate a generic electrochromic strategy for ensuring the reproducibility and renewability of SERS substrates, which are both scientifically and technically important due to the great need for quantitative analysis, standardized production and low cost in SERS. This color-changing strategy is based on a unique quantitative relationship between the SERS signal amplification and the coloration degree within a certain range, in which the SERS …

Obstacles To Translating The Promise Of Nanoparticles Into Viable Amyloid Disease Therapeutics, N. P. Van Der Munnik, M. A. Moss, M. J. Uline

Faculty Publications

Nanoparticles (NPs) constitute a powerful therapeutic platform with exciting prospects as potential inhibitors of amyloid-β (Aβ) aggregation, a process associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Researchers have synthesized and tested a large collection of NPs with disparate sizes, shapes, electrostatic properties and surface ligands that evoke a variety of responses on Aβ aggregation. In spite of a decade of research on the NP-Aβ system and many promising experimental results, NPs have failed to progress to any level of clinical trials for AD. A theoretical framework with which to approach this physical system is presented featuring two simple metrics, (1) the extent …

Improving Human-Machine Collaboration Through Transparency-Based Feedback – Part I: Human Trust And Workload Model, Kumar Akash, Katelyn Polson, Neera Jain

School of Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we establish a partially observable Markov decision process(POMDP) model framework that captures dynamic changes in human trust and workload for contexts that involve interactions between humans and intelligent decision-aid systems. We use a reconnaissance mission study to elicit a dynamic change in human trust and workload with respect to the system’s reliability and user interface transparency as well as the presence or absence of danger. We use human subject data to estimate transition and observation probabilities of the POMDP model and analyze the trust-workload behavior of humans. Our results indicate that higher transparency is more likely to …

Improving Human-Machine Collaboration Through Transparency-Based Feedback – Part Ii: Control Design And Synthesis, Kumar Akash, Tahira Reid, Neera Jain

School of Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

To attain improved human-machine collaboration, it is necessary for autonomous systems to infer human trust and workload and respond accordingly. In turn, autonomous systems require models that capture both human trust and workload dynamics. In a companion paper, we developed a trust-workload partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) model framework that captured changes in human trust and workload for contexts that involve interaction between a human and an intelligent decision-aid system. In this paper, we defne intuitive reward functions and show that these can be readily transformed for integration with the proposed POMDP model. We synthesize a near-optimal control policy …

Fc2: Cloud-Based Cluster Provisioning For Distributed Machine Learning, Nguyen Binh Duong Ta

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Training large, complex machine learning models such as deep neural networks with big data requires powerful computing clusters, which are costly to acquire, use and maintain. As a result, many machine learning researchers turn to cloud computing services for on-demand and elastic resource provisioning capabilities. Two issues have arisen from this trend: (1) if not configured properly, training models on cloud-based clusters could incur significant cost and time, and (2) many researchers in machine learning tend to focus more on model and algorithm development, so they may not have the time or skills to deal with system setup, resource selection …

Diagnostic Performance Of Receptor-Specific Surgical Specimen Staining Correlates With Receptor Expression Level, Jasmin M. Schaefer, Connor W. Barth, Scott C. Davis, Summer L. Gibbs

Dartmouth Scholarship

Intraoperative margin assessment is imperative to cancer cure but is a continued challenge to successful surgery. Breast conserving surgery is a relevant example, where a cosmetically improved outcome is gained over mastectomy, but re-excision is required in >25  %   of cases due to positive or closely involved margins. Clinical translation of margin assessment modalities that must directly contact the patient or required administered contrast agents are time consuming and costly to move from bench to bedside. Tumor resections provide a unique surgical opportunity to deploy margin assessment technologies including contrast agents on the resected tissues, substantially shortening the path to …

Mechanical Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

Mechanical Engineering: News & Publications (2013-2023)

• Esteemed Professor Emeritus Yunus Çengel to Guest Lecture at Georgia Southern

The Santa Clara, 2019-02-07, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

1995 - Monterey County Water Conservation Alternatives - An Analysis

Monterey County Water Resources Agency Engineering Reports

The major goal of this study ,prepared by Agland Investment Services, Inc. on behalf of the Monterey County Water Resources Agency, was to estimate the direct and regional economic impacts of different policies aimed at encouraging agricultural water conservation in the Salinas Valley. The study also looked at combinations of conservation measures which could provide a least cost conservation contribution to the seawater intrusion problem. Agland concluded that policymakers should consider adopting a least cost approach when they considered the mix of infrastructure projects and urban and rural conservation measures.