Engineering Commons^™

Investigating The Mechanical Behaviors Of Organic/Inorganic Composite Bone Scaffolds, Parker Davidson

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The regeneration of bone over a large area cannot occur without a structure for the bone cells to bind and divide. The use of an organic/inorganic composite bone scaffold appears to be a promising alternative to the current clinical standard of bone grafting. Bone grafting is very limited, in that the size and shape of the area are hard to replicate and the use of donor tissue can trigger an immunologic response resulting in rejection of the bone tissue. This study experimented with composite bone scaffolds which can be made to fit the shape of the area in which bone …

Design Of Exercise Equipment For Wheelchair Users: A Case Study In Accessibility Standards, Kate Craddock Rescsanszky

Honors Scholar Theses

Engineers must consider a number of aspects of every project they work on. Accessibility is one aspect that presents a unique challenge. Rather than being based on absolute material parameters, accessibility is based on how people interact with technology and their built environment. Since 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act has been the predominant standard in accessibility because of its wide reach and legal mandate. In addition to the ADA, the ASTM and the Institute for Universal Design offer helpful guidelines for designing for accessibility. However, in addition to standards, guidelines, and recommendations, it is important to consult the intended …

Influence Of Personality On Emotional Contagion Through Social Media, Theodore T. Jensen

Honors Scholar Theses

The rapid growth of computers and computing technologies in the recent past has led to dramatic changes in modern social interactions. Connectivity through the internet and social networking sites is a massive part of people's lives, with younger generations learning to interact more and more through these means. It is necessary to recognize the emotional influence of these forms of communication- their influence on mental health will grow as they become a larger part of the social fabric. Facebook and other social media have been shown to be a form of emotional contagion; emotional states can be transferred from one …

Smart As A Cryptographic Processor, Saroja Kanchi, Nozar Tabrizi, Cody Hayden

Electrical & Computer Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

SMaRT is a 16-bit 2.5-address RISC-type single-cycle processor, which was recently designed and successfully mapped into a FPGA chip in our ECE department. In this paper, we use SMaRT to run the well-known encryption algorithm, Data Encryption Standard. For information security purposes, encryption is a must in today’s sophisticated and ever-increasing computer communications such as ATM machines and SIM cards. For comparison and evaluation purposes, we also map the same algorithm on the HC12, a same-size but CISC-type off-the-shelf microcontroller, Our results show that compared to HC12, SMaRT code is only 14% longer in terms of the static number of …

The Eagle Programming Language, Samuel G. Horlbeck Olsen

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

C remains the dominant systems programming language despite many new languages attempting to take its place. Modern languages generally value abstraction and safety over speed and direct control of hardware. They are therefore not well suited to the low-level tasks for which C was designed. This paper introduces a novel programming language, Eagle, which represents a fast, elegant alternative to C. It allows low-level programming while providing optional modern features like reference counting, closures, generators, and classes. In addition to specifying this language and reviewing the current alternatives, the paper describes the implementation of a working Eagle compiler. The language …

Thermal Conductivity Measurements Of Nanomaterials, Javier Acosta Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

Thermal conductivity “k” can be defined as a material property where heat is diffused due to a temperature gradient within the material. Among the applications for thermal conductivity are: thermoelectrics, thermal interface materials, thin films, insulation, among many others. A study was made to compare the different types of studies of thermal conductivity of nanomaterials, as well as, a comparison among the different types of setups used to measure thermal conductivity. For this study a custom made thermal conductivity tester was built, this tester was validated by measuring materials with both low and high thermal conductivity, and comparing the results …

Nonlinear Dynamics Of Electrostatically Actuated Nanotweezers, Bin Liu

Theses and Dissertations

Bin Liu, Nonlinear Dynamics of Electrostatically Actuated Nanotweezers. Master of Science (MS), May 2016, 77 pp, 6 tables, 59 figures, references, 25 titles. The amplitude-frequency response of electrostatic nanotube nanotweezer device system is investigated; soft alter current was setting at near half natural frequency impulse on nanotubes which are referred to as two arms, parametric and primary resonances will be shown in the results, respectively. Firstly we are using the Method of Multiple Scales (MMS) analytical model; results will be compared with Reduced Order Model (ROM). By variation and comparison of multiple parameters including van der wall molecular forces, electrostatic …

Impact Of Virtualization On Cloud Network Security, Koushicaa Sundar

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, experimental evaluation of the effect of virtualization on the availability of servers has been performed under Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks for popular server Operating Systems such as Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 R2 virtualized using Hyper-V. A comparative evaluation of the performance of the servers before and after virtualization under DDoS attacks indicates that after virtualization there is a considerable increase in the vulnerability to attacks and a decline in the performance of the virtualized server compared to when the server is not virtualized.

Graphene-Based Nanomaterials For Hydrogen Generation And Storage, Lin Wei

Theses and Dissertations

Hydrogen energy is promising candidate to replace fossil fuel. However, the usage of hydrogen energy was greatly limited due to its generation and storage. In this thesis report, the author synthesized novel metal/carbon nanomaterials used for the hydrogen storage and hydrogen evolution reaction. These materials were characterization by XRD, Raman, XPS, SEM, EDX, etc. And the surface area and the hydrogen storage properties were tested by ASAP 2020, using the BET measurement and hydrogen isotherm curves to discuss the gas adsorption properties. As for hydrogen evolution reaction, the materials were made into electrodes and tested with LSV, CV to shows …

Optimizing Dam Siting In The Paru River In Brazil Using A Multi-Objective Approach, Henrique De Paula

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

How should a decision-maker choose which hydropower plant to build in a given river? Hydropower plant expansion is a task that involves several stakeholders, objectives, and resources. It requires that decision-makers use not only experience and previous knowledge to come up with their final decision, but also the use of tools to help them to decide, as well as to support their choices. The present project developed a computation model to optimize the choice of hydropower plants that can be built within a given river, considering three different objectives - energy generation, flooded surface area and river connectivity. The input …

Ism S-Band Cubesat Radio Designed For The Polysat System Board, Craig Lee Francis

Master's Theses

Cal Poly’s PolySat CubeSat satellites have begun to conduct more complex and scientifically significant experiments. The large data products generated by these missions demonstrate the necessity for higher data rate communication than currently provided by the PolySat UHF radio. This thesis leverages the proliferation of consumer wireless monolithic transceivers to develop a 250kbps to 2000kbps, 2W CubeSat radio operating within the 2.45GHz Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) radio band.

Estimating a link budget for a realistic CubeSat leads to the conclusion that this system will require a large deployable CubeSat antenna, large earth station satellite dish, and a fine-pointing attitude …

Optimization Of Rfid System Coverage In A Manufacturing Environment, Scott D. Malatesta

Master's Theses

This paper compiles existing ideas, theories, and experiments across multiple disciplines to provide guidance for a company looking to implement an optimal RFID system in their production facility. The desire is to maximize the information received by the system while minimizing the cost. Four potential layouts of RFID antennas, two with overlapping antenna coverage and two with non-overlapping layouts, are first analyzed to understand the special coverage and the number of antennas required. The value of information is then quantified to determine whether higher coverage layouts are worth the additional costs associated with the higher number of antennas required. It …

Solar-Powered Hot Tub, Jonathan Peterson, Anthony Zepeda

Electrical Engineering

This paper discusses the design and implementation of a solar-powered hot tub. The concept of this project was to design an independently-operated hot tub powered by a 12V rechargeable battery, charged during the day by a single 400W solar panel. For this purpose, a twenty-year-old name-brand hot tub was purchased, in used condition. The plumbing, AC electrical wiring, and mechanical pumps were all removed and replaced with new components to meet our design specifications. Additionally, a solar water-heater was designed and integrated into the system to directly apply the sun’s heat to water pumped in and out of the tub, …

An Arithmetic-Based Deterministic Centroid Initialization Method For The K-Means Clustering Algorithm, Matthew Michael Mayo

Theses and Dissertations

One of the greatest challenges in k-means clustering is positioning the initial cluster centers, or centroids, as close to optimal as possible, and doing so in an amount of time deemed reasonable. Traditional fc-means utilizes a randomization process for initializing these centroids, and poor initialization can lead to increased numbers of required clustering iterations to reach convergence, and a greater overall runtime. This research proposes a simple, arithmetic-based deterministic centroid initialization method which is much faster than randomized initialization. Preliminary experiments suggest that this collection of methods, referred to herein as the sharding centroid initialization algorithm family, often outperforms random …

Ultra Short Mr Relaxometry And Histological Image Processing For Validation Of Diffusion Mri, Amin Nazaran

Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is an imaging modality that acquires an image with little to no damage to the tissue. MRI does not introduce foreign particles or high energy radiation into the body, making it one of the least invasive medical imaging modalities. MRI can achieve excellent soft tissue contrast and is therefore useful for diagnosis of a wide variety of diseases. While there are a wide variety of available techniques for generating contrast in MRI, there are still many open areas for research. For example, many tissues in the human body exhibit such rapid signal decay that they are …

Heart Beat Monitor, Ivan Mireles, Sneha Pottian

Mechatronics Final Projects

This project is used to detect the number of heartbeats per minute from the fingertip of a patient. It is also meant to display how a heart beats based off the signal it picks up from the pulse through an analog counter. Once the user turns on the power button, they will be instructed to place their finger on the sensing tip (ref. To Fig. 1). Once the user has placed their finger on the pulse sensor, the system will require that the start button be pressed to start counting up the heart beats. As the heart beats are sensed …

Campus Cruiser, Mikey Robison, Todd Edwards

Mechatronics Final Projects

Throughout the course of this semester we designed and built an electronic control unit for a gas-powered go-kart. The goal for our project was to design and install an electronic control unit that would incorporate: an electronic throttle, an electronic kill switch, two tachometers – one to measure vehicle speed and one to measure engine shaft speed – with LCDs to display the speed and RPM values. The control unit, displays, and controls were mounted on steering wheel and dashboard housings that included two LEDs to display the status of the engine kill switch and a speaker which beeps to …

Microwire Regenerative Peripheral Nerve Interfaces With Wireless Recording And Stimulation Capabilities, Ali Ajam

Theses and Dissertations

A scalable microwire peripheral nerve interface was developed, which interacted with regenerated peripheral nerves in microchannel scaffolds. Neural interface technologies are envisioned to facilitate direct connections between the nervous system and external technologies such as limb prosthetics or data acquisition systems for further processing. Presented here is an animal study using a handcrafted microwire regenerative peripheral nerve interface, a novel neural interface device for communicating with peripheral nerves. The neural interface studies using animal models are crucial in the evaluation of efficacy and safety of implantable medical devices before their use in clinical studies.16-electrode microwire microchannel scaffolds were developed for …

Safte-Vat Functionality Effects On Flight Instructors' Situation Awareness And Instrument Student Pilots' Performance During Ftd Training, Rafael E. Abreu Vega

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

SAFTE-VAT is a virtual air traffic control systems that adds the capability to integrate automated air traffic control functionality and generate semiautonomous and autonomous air traffic to the Frasca 172S level 6 plus FTD to improve behavioral fidelity and to facilitate flight instructors the capacity to focus more on instructing student pilots instead of role-playing ATC duties. While SAFTE-VAT may offer a more realistic ATC interaction experience onboard the FTD that may result in a positive transfer of training increase, the effects on flight instructors’ situation awareness and overall student pilot performance are uncertain. In this small study, flight instructors …

An Experimental Study Of Momentum-Driven Unsteady Jets, Sravan Kumar Artham

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Jets are seen commonly in nature and engineering and can be broadly classified into steady and unsteady jets. The study of unsteady jets has received little attention when compared to its steady counterpart. A type of unsteady jet is the turbulent puff which is a momentum driven jet in which fluid is ejected from a jet orifice intermittently. Common examples of turbulent puff like jets are coughs and volcanoes. The studies on momentum driven unsteady jets have primarily focused on single ejection events (single puffs) where an instantaneous supply of momentum drives the source fluid downstream of a nozzle. This …

Computational Investigation Of Impingement Cooling For Regeneratively Cooled Rocket Nozzles, Bianca A. De Angelo

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Jet impingement cooling is an internal cooling configuration used in the thermal management of temperature sensitive systems. With rocket engine combustion temperatures rising as high as 3600 K, it is essential for a cooling method to be applied to ensure that the nozzle integrity can be maintained. Therefore, a novel heat transfer study is conducted to investigate if jet impingement cooling is feasible for a regenerative cooling rocket nozzle application. Regenerative cooling for liquid propellant rockets has been widely studied. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there is currently no literature describing this method in conjunction with impingement …

An Experimental Study Of Synthetic Jet Actuators With Application In Airfoil Lco Control, Sanjay Krishnappa

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

An experimental study on the development and implementation of Synthetic Jet Actuators (SJAs) is conducted for eliminating aeroelastic phenomenon such as Limit Cycle Oscillations (LCO). One of the biggest challenges involved in the design of UAVs operating in unsteady atmosphere conditions is the susceptibility of the airframe to aeroelastic instabilities, such as flutter or LCO. Suppression of such instabilities can be achieved through the implementation of Active Flow Control (AFC) techniques, however to this day, a limited amount of experimental studies exist. Thus, the focus of this work is to develop a new AFC method consisting of an actuator that …

Mechanical And Electrical Characterization Of Hybrid Carbon Nanotube Sheet-Graphene Nanocomposites For Sensing Applications, Jiukun Li

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The unique mechanical and electrical properties of carbon nanotubes and graphitic structures have drawn extensive attention from researchers over the past two decades. The electro-mechanical behavior of these structures and their composites, in which electrical resistance changes when mechanical deformation is applied facilitates their use in sensing applications.

In this work, carbon nanotube sheet- epoxy nanocomposites with the matrix modified with various contents of coarse and fine graphene nanoplatelets are fabricated. The addition of a secondary filler results in improvements of both electrical and mechanical properties. In addition, with the inclusion of the second filler, change in resistivity with mechanical …

Fluidic Jet Turbulence Generators For Deflagration To Detonation Transition In Pulsed Detonation Combustors, Jarrett E. Lowe

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The goal of this study is to establish the dominant flow structure required to effectively accelerate the turbulent deflagration flame front to detonation velocity in the shortest possible distance while using a single Jet in Cross Flow (JICF). Jets in crossflow, depending on orientation and momentum ratio, can induce two types of flow structures that propagate downstream; vortex filaments and turbulent eddies. Vortex flow structures are coherent rotating columns that can persist for a considerable distance before diffusing. Turbulent eddies are characterized as random fluctuations in flow velocity or small pockets of rotation. The test rig used for this study …

Study Of Hybrid Magneto-Active Propellant Management Device For Slosh Damping, Leander Paul

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Sloshing of liquid upon the application of an external force is a natural phenomenon as the free surface is allowed to move without any constraints. Study of slosh is an ongoing research for many decades and many novel inventions in Propellant Management Devices (PMDs) such as the rigid baffles and elastomeric membranes have been implemented to counteract the free surface effect in both passive and active membrane known as Magneto-Active Propellant Management Device (MAPMD) to actively control the free surface effect and reduce fuel slosh is explored in this research. Being a hybrid membrane, it would initially offer passive resistance …

2d Aeroacoustic Analysis Of Flow In The Flame Trench, Meghan Pokorski

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

We present here a methodology for using the commercial software ANSYSFLUENT to predict the acoustic field associated with Space-Launch System (SLS). We consider a two-dimensional model of flame deflector, and flame trench. The ANSYS code is then used to simulate the internal flow. Both the steady state case is considered along with other cases where the inflow has a harmonic component. A Ffowcs-Williams Hawking (FWH) surface is then constructed within the computational domain to use the computed flow fluctuations to obtain the acoustic field. The acoustic data was then compared to the experimental data.

When using the ANSYS code for …

Analysis Of A Coupled Micro- And Triple-Impingement Cooling Configuration In The C3x Vane, Chase D. Rossman

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This study attempts to improve the trailing edge protection of a turbine vane by incorporating two concepts from the literature. These two concepts are optimized near wall cooling passages and a triple-impingement configuration in the vane trailing edge. Finally this study explores a CFD conjugate analysis based on the Shear Stress Transport k(l) turbulence model. The overall goal is to produce a more effective cooling configuration by studying the effects of the flow and heat transfer of the dual configuration, while keeping the integrity of the turbine vane. Star-CCM+ was utilized to carry out the computational data on a 3-D …

Prediction Of Tonal Acoustic Radiation Due To Feedback-Loop Resonant Interactions In Transitional Airfoils, Seyyed Saman Salehian

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The objective to this work is to employ the surface integral methods to study the far-field noise propagation from the flow acoustic resonant interactions of the transitional airfoil. The Potential-Theoretic Method (PTM) as an advancement to traditional Kirchhoff methods is presented. The PTM eliminated the need to calculate the normal derivatives of pressure and an arbitrary Kirchhoff surface can be employed. The numerical procedure to implement the PTM is fairly simple. The formulation and physical assumptions of the approach is reviewed, and the numerical procedure is implemented. Furthermore, the two dimensional formulation of the Ffowcs Williams - Hawkings (FW-H) equation …

Sensing, Actuation, And Embedded Control For A Custom Scr Nitrogen Oxides Emissions Reduction System, Anuj Kalidas Sharma

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Diesel engines are the main power source for medium and heavy duty on road vehicles. With the rising standards for mileage of vehicles set by the Corporate Average Fuel Economy and the Environmental Protection Agency, diesel engines should soon be considered in lieu of gas engines. Despite advantages of diesel engines, diesel emissions include harmful gasses like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems have long been used to reduce diesel emissions from medium to heavy-duty diesel engines. Primary focus of this research effort is the implementation and improvement of a SCR system on light …

Real-Time Optimization Based Power Flow Controller For Energy Consumption And Emissions Reduction In A Parallel Hev, Abdulla Abdulaziz Karmustaji

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

As the regulations on the fuel economy and emissions standards become higher, Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) are gaining more popularity in the market. HEVs improvements in fuel economy and emissions strongly depend on the energy management strategy. An optimization based power flow controller is presented in this thesis to find the appropriate power split between the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and the electric motor to reduce the energy consumption and emissions. However, emissions were not taken into consideration in results due to lack of reliable results. A basic power flow controller was built to compare to the optimization based controller. …