Engineering Commons^™

Smart And Sustainable Aquaponics, Ryan Toal, Kevin Claggett, Justin Goh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

As the global population increases, new ways of sustainable and efficient food production need to be explored in order to meet the growing demand from society. In this paper we explore the methods and functionality of an off-grid, semi-autonomous aquaponics system. This system will serve as a proof of concept for a large scale aquaponics system which can be modelled in other parts of the world where arable land is scarce. It was found that though the initial startup costs are high, it will be able to reduce the cost of food in the long run. The system implements a …

Waterless Light Fountain, Lucas Villalba Eirea

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

The Waterless light fountain is born from the need for art projects for Franklin street in Santa Clara University than is going to be remodeled into an arts and history paseo, one of the ideas discussed was to determine if there may be a way to develop a waterless light fountain that could be displayed either on a temporary or permanent basis. In this paper, we will explain the design process and build of the fountain, using Neopixels (RGB LEDs) to generate the light used as the main art element. An Arduino is used as the control unit, controlling the …

Development And Physicochemical Characterization Of Acetalated Dextran Aerosol Particle Systems For Deep Lung Delivery, Zimeng Wang, Sweta K. Gupta, Samantha A. Meenach

Chemical, Biomolecular, and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Biocompatible, biodegradable polymers are commonly used as excipients to improve the drug delivery properties of aerosol formulations, in which acetalated dextran (Ac-Dex) exhibits promising potential as a polymer in various therapeutic applications. Despite this promise, there is no comprehensive study on the use of Ac-Dex as an excipient for dry powder aerosol formulations. In this study, we developed and characterized pulmonary drug delivery aerosol microparticle systems based on spray-dried Ac-Dex with capabilities of (1) delivering therapeutics to the deep lung, (2) targeting the particles to a desired location within the lungs, and (3) releasing the therapeutics in a controlled fashion. …

Techno-Economic Analyses Of Large-Scale Electric Vehicle Systems, Florida Solar Energy Center, Zhihua Qu

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This project developed the process, methodology and algorithms for computer models to evaluate the techno-economic implications of a large-scale electrified transportation sector. The model factors include developing and interacting with a network of electric vehicles and the electric grid, the infrastructure for electric vehicle charging, integrating the transportation and power systems into the urban setting, studying the impact of distributed energy storage and determining the economic impact of increased renewable energy and EVs on the electricity grid and its stability. The modeling related project results are presented in five journal articles and two conference papers. In this final report, the …

Multi-Scale Spatial Cognition Models And Bio-Inspired Robot Navigation, Martin I. Llofriu Alonso

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The rodent navigation system has been the focus of study for over a century. Discoveries made lately have provided insight on the inner workings of this system. Since then, computational approaches have been used to test hypothesis, as well as to improve robotics navigation and learning by taking inspiration on the rodent navigation system.

This dissertation focuses on the study of the multi-scale representation of the rat’s current location found in the rat hippocampus. It first introduces a model that uses these different scales in the Morris maze task to show their advantages. The generalization power of larger scales of …

Efficient Dehydration And Recovery Of Ionic Liquid After Lignocellulosic Processing Using Pervaporation, Jian Sun, Jian Shi, N. V. S. N. Murthy Konda, Dan Campos, Dajiang Liu, Stuart Nemser, Julia Shamshina, Tanmoy Dutta, Paula Berton, Gabriela Gurau, Robin D. Rogers, Blake A. Simmons, Seema Singh

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Background: Biomass pretreatment using certain ionic liquids (ILs) is very efficient, generally producing a substrate that is amenable to saccharification with fermentable sugar yields approaching theoretical limits. Although promising, several challenges must be addressed before an IL pretreatment technology can become commercially viable. One of the most significant challenges is the affordable and scalable recovery and recycle of the IL itself. Pervaporation (PV) is a highly selective and scalable membrane separation process for quantitatively recovering volatile solutes or solvents directly from non-volatile solvents that could prove more versatile for IL dehydration.

Results: We evaluated a commercially available PV system for …

Scu Mini Baja, Christian Ruiz, Mauricio Jimenez, Anmol Josen, Christian Hellmers, Angel Robles, Matthew Nagy, Ruben Contreras, Westley Tusa, Chad Russick

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

Baja SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) is an intercollegiate competition to design, fabricate, and race a small, single passenger, off-road vehicle powered by a 10 HP Briggs & Stratton 4-Stroke gasoline engine. The purpose of this project was to optimize the design of a baja vehicle appropriate enough to compete in the SAE competition held in California and perform finite element analysis (FEA) for the verification of the frame and overall design of the vehicle. The design of this vehicle was created through outside research of previous baja buggies made for the competition and the group was split into three …

A Modified Sumner Method For Obtaining The Astronomical Vessel Position, Tien-Pen Hsu, Guo-Yu Weng, Chih-Li Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

An adaptive boundaries technique (ABT) yielded by the geometrical properties of celestial triangles is proposed to deal with problems resulting from ex-meridian or meridian sights when the Sumner method is used. Due to the trial-and-error characteristic of the Sumner method, an iteration method is introduced to improve numerical accuracy. Combining the ABT and the iteration method into the Sumner method, this modified Sumner method (MSM) is developed so that it successfully determines the astronomical vessel position (AVP). Especially when the non-simultaneous sights condition is encountered, based on the running fix concept, middle-latitude sailing is adopted to translate Sumner points to …

Rf Location Tracking: A Modular Antenna System Implementation, Alan Tao Feng, Razma Mogharrab, Carlos Rivera

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

From the Amazon Prime Air drone delivery service to the usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in military operations, recent years have seen the development of autonomous flight technologies becoming one of the major research topics in the drone industry. Tracking the geographic position of drones is a crucial part of any autonomous flight, but the common methods of drone location tracking either have too large of an error margin or require extensive environmental setup. The aforementioned issues are major roadblocks in the advancement of autonomous flight operations. The proposed solution is a new and improved method to track the …

Identification Of Roadway Assets By Integration Of Lidar And Camera Images, Michelle Mekker, Yun-Jou Lin, Magdy I. Elahnasawy, Tamer S.A. Shamseldin, Ayman Habib, Darcy M. Bullock

Indiana Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Summit

No abstract provided.

Connected Vehicle Data For Work Zone Performance Measures, Michelle Mekker, Howell Li, Yun-Jou Lin, Magdy I. Elahnasawy, Tamer S.A. Shamseldin, Ayman Habib, Darcy M. Bullock

Indiana Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Summit

No abstract provided.

Connected Vehicle Data For Traffic Signal Performance Measures, Jijo K. Mathew

Indiana Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Summit

No abstract provided.

Connected Vehicle Data For Interstate Performance Measures, Rahul Sakhare, Howell Li

Indiana Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Summit

No abstract provided.

Connected Vehicle (Cv) Technology Overview, Howell Li, W Benjamin Smith

Indiana Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Summit

No abstract provided.

Zinc-Rich Lithium Silicate Coatings For Corrosion Prevention In Steels, Jiang-Jhy Chang, Wei-Chung Yeih, Kuo-Lien Chen, Maochieh Chi

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

In this study, we investigated the properties of zinc-rich lithium silicate coatings using various moduli of lithium silicate and zinc powder ratios, which are defined as the mass ratios of zinc powder over lithium silicate. Coating properties examined included film-forming ability, workability, mechanical behavior, resistance to highly alkali or acid solutions, and weather resistance (ultraviolet exposure test). The results showed that the zinc powder ratio significantly influenced workability and filmforming ability. When the zinc powder ratio of the coating was low, the coating delaminated and cracked. When the zinc powder ratio was high, the workability of the coating was found …

Hydrodynamic Prediction Of The Ducted Propeller By Cfd Solver, Sohrab Majdfar, Hassan Ghassemi, Hamid Forouzan, Arash Ashrafi

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Ducted propellers are usually used in many kinds of vessels, i.e., fishing vessels, trawlers, and submarines which have provided high efficiency in propulsion system. In this article, the effects of the length and angle of 19A type duct on the hydrodynamic performance were investigated. First, the ducted propeller (19A type duct) was selected for the study and modeling of this duct was later developed. Then, ducted propeller performance was analyzed by a RANS turbulence model of SST-K-ω and validated with the experimental results which indicated an acceptable accuracy. Finally, the effects of the implemented changes were analyzed considering the alternation …

Robust Trajectory Tracking Control Of Underactuated Underwater Vehicle Subject To Uncertainties, Yuan Chen, Jing Li, Kanglin Wang, Shurong Ning

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

A composite robust control scheme is proposed by combining a sliding mode controller with an adaptive fuzzy control algorithm to control a 3-DOF underactuated underwater vehicle with model parameter perturbations and environmental disturbances based on the backstepping control method and the Lyapunov stability theory. The adaptive fuzzy control algorithm is employed to compensate for model parameter perturbations and the sliding mode controller is adopted to eliminate the effects of environmental disturbances and approximation errors. A horizontal dynamic model and tracking error equations are established to describe the trajectory tracking control for the underactuated underwater vehicle. The relation between sliding mode …

Experimental Study On Hydrodynamic Performance Of A New Type Of Deep Draft Multi-Column Fdpso, Jia-Yang Gu, Yu-Lin Xie, Pei Zhang, Yu Chen, Xiang-Hong Huang, Yan-Wu Tao

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

This paper presents an experimental study on the hydrodynamic performance of a new type of deep draft multi-column FDPSO. The operating depth of this new type FDPSO is 1500 m. The main dimension, the special variable cross-section column and the cabin arrangement of the octagonal pontoon are introduced. As taking into account the depth limit of the water basin, the 300 m water-depth equivalent truncated mooring system is adopted. The platform’s natural period and dimensionless damping coefficient were measured out by the free decay experiment. The FDPSO's motion responses in operation condition and self-survival condition are studied. At the same …

Energy Payback Time Of A Solar Photovoltaic Powered Waste Plastic Recyclebot System, Shan Zhong, Pratiksha Rakhe, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

The growth of both plastic consumption and prosumer 3-D printing are driving an interest in producing 3-D printer filaments from waste plastic. This study quantifies the embodied energy of a vertical DC solar photovoltaic (PV) powered recyclebot based on life cycle energy analysis and compares it to horizontal AC recyclebots, conventional recycling, and the production of a virgin 3-D printer filament. The energy payback time (EPBT) is calculated using the embodied energy of the materials making up the recyclebot itself and is found to be about five days for the extrusion of a poly lactic acid (PLA) filament or 2.5 …

Open Source Multi-Head 3d Printer For Polymer-Metal Composite Component Manufacturing, J. Laureto, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

As low-cost desktop 3D printing is now dominated by free and open source self-replicating rapid prototype (RepRap) derivatives, there is an intense interest in extending the scope of potential applications to manufacturing. This study describes a manufacturing technology that enables a constrained set of polymer-metal composite components. This paper provides (1) free and open source hardware and (2) software for printing systems that achieves metal wire embedment into a polymer matrix 3D-printed part via a novel weaving and wrapping method using (3) OpenSCAD and parametric coding for customized g-code commands. Composite parts are evaluated from the technical viability of manufacturing …

Multiple-Phase Modeling Of Degradation Signal For Condition Monitoring And Remaining Useful Life Prediction, Yuxin Wen, Jianguo Wu, Yuan Yuan

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Remaining useful life prediction plays an important role in ensuring the safety, availability, and efficiency of various engineering systems. In this paper, we propose a flexible Bayesian multiple-phase modeling approach to characterize degradation signals for prognosis. The priors are specified with a novel stochastic process and the multiple-phase model is formulated to a novel state-space model to facilitate online monitoring and prediction. A particle filtering algorithm with stratified sampling and partial Gibbs resample-move strategy is developed for online model updating and residual life prediction. The advantages of the proposed method are demonstrated through extensive numerical studies and real case studies.

Analysis And Testing Of A Coaxial Magnetic Gearbox With Flux Concentration Halbach Rotors, Debarupa Som, Kang Li, Joshua Kadel, Jason Wright, Sina Modaresahmadi, Jonathan Bird, W. William

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Halbach array magnetic gearboxes have been discussed as being able to create high torque density. However, Halbach arrays are difficult to mechanically assembly and often the effective air-gap must be made larger in order to provide space for a retaining sleeve. This paper investigates the benefits of using an additional ferromagnetic retaining pole within the Halbach array structure. It is shown that utilizing this flux concentration ferromagnetic pole improves the torque density and can also help retain the magnets in place.

Identifying Design Parameters Controlling Damage Behaviors Of Continuous Fiber-Reinforced Thermoplastic Composites Using Micromechanics As A Virtual Testing Tool, Ditho Pulungan, Gilles Lubineau, Arief Yudhanto, Recep Yaldiz, Warden Schijve

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we propose a micromechanical approach to predict damage mechanisms and their interactions in glass fibers/polypropylene thermoplastic composites. First, a representative volume element (RVE) of such materials was rigorously determined using a geometrical two-point probability function and the eigenvalue stabilization of homogenized elastic tensor obtained by Hill–Mandel kinematic homogenization. Next, the 3D finite element models of the RVE were developed accordingly. The fibers were modeled with an isotropic linear elastic material. The matrix was modeled with an isotropic linear elastic, rate-independent hyperbolic Drucker–Prager plasticity coupled with a ductile damage model that is able to show pressure dependency of …

Analysis Of An Experimental Space Debris Removal Mission, Krista L. L. Roth

Theses and Dissertations

Encountering space debris is an ever-increasing problem in space exploration and exploitation, especially in Low Earth Orbit. While many space-faring governing bodies have attempted to control the orbital lifetime post mission completion of satellites and rocker bodies, objects already in orbit pose a danger to future mission planning. Currently, governments and academic institutions are working to develop missions to remove space debris; however, the proposed missions are typically costly primary missions. This research proposes an alternative to use an upper stage rocket, to be called a chaser, already launching a primary mission near the desired debris as a host for …

Artificial Intelligence Hardware Accelerator, Maor Bernstein, Patrick Miller

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

This paper documents the investigation and implementation of the mathematics behind artificial intelligence using a programmable gate array interfaced through a software API. Machine learning is made possible through training on large amounts of information and is often performed across clusters of CPUs in an attempt to minimize runtime. In an attempt to make this process less resource intensive, we are researching how to optimize the most intensive of operations by offloading them to a field of programmable gate array.

Vtol Search And Rescue, Nicholas Keyes, Francesca Caruso, Nick Gagliardi, Joshua Ramayrat, Kia Moazzami

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This project focuses on the design of a hybrid vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft that, by using separate propulsion systems, transitions from a quadcopter into horizontal flight. It was designed for use in search and rescue (SAR) missions in national parks due to their high costs, long search times, and the volume of these missions. The aircraft can be easily deployed in less than a couple minutes reducing search time, costs only $2000 saving SAR teams money, and allows for camera integration for hiker location. The aircraft used a pre-built airframe with added modifications, and a specifically designed avionic …

Portable, Powerless Automation Of Valve Actuation For Microfluidic Large Scale Integration Technology, Andrew Schmidt, Matthew Fitzgerald

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Microfluidic large-scale integration (mLSI) is an emerging field that has the potential to fully automate the biological experimentation and technology development. mLSI offers high-throughput, while maintaining reduced costs and sample size in biochemical tests and experiments. The pneumatic control systems, and the use of solenoid valves that are needed for mLSI make this technology bulky and limits its use to specialized labs. Moreover, since the field is relatively new, few scientists are trained in microfluidic chip design and microfabrication. Eliminating the peripheral equipment from standard testing protocol will allow mLSI to be used in point-of-care settings and more widespread usage …

Optimum Injury And Illness Prevention Cost For U.S. Construction Projects, Sathyanarayanan Rajendran, Morgan Bliss, Dominic Klyve

Mathematics Faculty Scholarship

Worker injuries and illnesses can affect the profitability of an organization. Regardless of the regulatory requirements for safety and health, many organizations prefer to see positive returns (i.e., better safety metric performance) on their safety investments (i.e., project costs associated with injury and illness prevention programs). Understanding the relationship between costs associated with an injury and illness prevention program of a construction project and project safety performance is critical to the future success of construction organizations in the United States. In evaluating this relationship, the authors’ goal was to identify an equilibrium point of injury and illness prevention program investment …

The Solar Microgrid Project In Togo, Christian Jason Wintery, Alexander Mayorkis

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Danyi Mempassem, Togo, Africa has villagers in need of electricity, however, they cannot afford to put in the infrastructure and then pay the steep cost of energy from the government. The best option for energy for the village is an affordable and renewable resource but due to limitations of geography the only viable option is a photo-voltaic system. We designed a working solar microgrid tailored for the location and weather of the village which can support all of the lights, cell phone chargers, and televisions that the villagers need/desire while being reliable, sustainable, safe, and affordable. The design and implementation …

Benchtop Centrifuge For Materials Science, Ryan Schulz, Thomas Valentine, Abhay Gupta

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

The Benchtop Centrifuge was designed to serve for research purposes within theMechanical Engineering Department at Santa Clara University. The prototype has been completely assembled and is functioning to the desired specifications of applying up to 1000 g’s of force for over 4 hours. The current uses are anticipated for separation of particles within materials for material processing and testing. The overall systemdesign has been adapted froma legacy project within the University. Various tests were conducted in order to ensure safety and usability of the system. Through Abaqus analysis and drop-test experiments, it was found enclosure itself can withstand an impact …