Systems Engineering Commons^™

Deep Multi-Modal U-Net Fusion Methodology Of Infrared And Ultrasonic Images For Porosity Detection In Additive Manufacturing, Christian E. Zamiela

Theses and Dissertations

We developed a deep fusion methodology of non-destructive (NDT) in-situ infrared and ex- situ ultrasonic images for localization of porosity detection without compromising the integrity of printed components that aims to improve the Laser-based additive manufacturing (LBAM) process. A core challenge with LBAM is that lack of fusion between successive layers of printed metal can lead to porosity and abnormalities in the printed component. We developed a sensor fusion U-Net methodology that fills the gap in fusing in-situ thermal images with ex-situ ultrasonic images by employing a U-Net Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for feature extraction and two-dimensional object localization. We …

A Dual Perspective Towards Building Resilience In Manufacturing Organizations, Steven A. Fazio

Theses and Dissertations

Modern manufacturing organizations exist in the most complex and competitive environment the world has ever known. This environment consists of demanding customers, enabling, but resource intensive Industry 4.0 technology, dynamic regulations, geopolitical perturbations, and innovative, ever-expanding global competition. Successful manufacturing organizations must excel in this environment while facing emergent disruptions generated as biproducts of complex man-made and natural systems. The research presented in this thesis provides a novel two-sided approach to the creation of resilience in the modern manufacturing organization. First, the systems engineering method is demonstrated as the qualitative framework for building literature-derived organizational resilience factors into organizational structures …

The Development Of Authentic Virtual Reality Scenarios To Measure Individuals’ Level Of Systems Thinking Skills And Learning Abilities, Vidanelage L. Dayarathna

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation develops virtual reality modules to capture individuals’ learning abilities and systems thinking skills in dynamic environments. In the first chapter, an immersive queuing theory teaching module is developed using virtual reality technology. The objective of the study is to present systems engineering concepts in a more sophisticated environment and measure students learning abilities. Furthermore, the study explores the performance gaps between male and female students in manufacturing systems concepts. To investigate the gender biases toward the performance of developed VR module, three efficacy measures (simulation sickness questionnaire, systems usability scale, and presence questionnaire) and two effectiveness measures (NASA …

Testing Of Methods For Reducing Motivational Bias In Multi - Criteria Decision Analysis Problems, Chadwick Samuel Kerr

Theses and Dissertations

The idea of multi-criteria decision making has been around for quite a while. All judgement tasks are potential points of bias introduction. Each judgement task was assessed to identify common biases introduced through an extensive literature review for each task and bias. In several other studies, the distinction is made between cognitive and motivational biases. Cognitive biases are widely studied and well known with mitigations that have been validated. Motivational biases are judgements influenced by the decision maker’s desire for a specific outcome, also referred to as intentional bias, that are hard to correct and received very little testing and …

Using A Systemic Skills Model To Build An Effective 21st Century Workforce: Factors That Impact The Ability To Navigate Complex Systems, Morteza Nagahi

Theses and Dissertations

The growth of technology and the proliferation of information made modern complex systems more fragile and vulnerable. As a result, competitive advantage is no longer achieved exclusively through strategic planning but by developing an influential cadre of technical people who can efficiently manage and navigate modern complex systems. The dissertation aims to provide educators, practitioners, and organizations with a model that helps to measure individuals’ systems thinking skills, complex problem solving, personality traits, and the impacting demographic factors such as managerial and work experience, current occupation type, organizational ownership structure, and education level. The intent is to study how these …

Development And Application Of A Digital Twin For Chiller Plant Performance Assessment, Mihir Kale

All Theses

As the complexity of industrial equipment continues to increase, the management of the individual machines and integrated operations becomes difficult without computer tools. The availability of streaming data from manufacturing floors, plant operations, and deployed fleets can be overwhelming to analyze, although it provides opportunities to improve performance. The use of dedicated monitoring systems in the plant and field to troubleshoot machinery can be integrated within a product lifecycle management (PLM) architecture to offer greater features. PLM offers virtual processes and software tools for the design, analysis, monitoring, and support of engineering systems and products. Within this paradigm, a digital …

Airspace Integration Of New Entrants And Safety Risk Management Models, Fadjimata Issoufou Anaroua

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

In recent years, the demand for airspace access of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) increased significantly and is continuously increasing for different altitude-types UAS. A similar evolution is expected from Commercial Space Operations (CSO) in the next years. These aviation/aerospace systems will need to be seamlessly integrated into the National Airspace System (NAS), at their operational altitude levels, and accounted for from all perspectives, including proactively addressing their safety hazards. This thesis captures the requirements for the new entrants’ integration, and then identifies and analyzes the safety risks added to the NAS operations by its new entrants, the future omnipresent UAS …

Machine Learning Application For Mission Data Reprogramming, Paolo A. Bingham

Theses and Dissertations

Before entering a conflict or theater, USAF aircraft require updated mission data software reprogramming. Mission data controls all electronic warfare (EW) operations of the aircraft. EW operations include identifying and jamming radar operated systems, whether they are friendly or hostile. The process of reprogramming software is continuous and routinely updated for every EW system annually. On specific circumstances, the process can be expedited to months, but this puts a strain on the development team and shifts all attention to one specific mission data file. Unfortunately, a growing number of requests to upgrade mission data to a higher priority state, has …

Meta-Analysis Of Performance Characteristics Of Modern Database Schemas, Carter Grove

Theses and Dissertations

Industry and academia alike are more commonly using databases as solutions to advanced and complex problems. Unfortunately, not all database schemas are created equal and can yield different advantages in different areas. To try to understand what database schema might be best suited for a user’s needs, we sought out to distinguish how databases are measured against each other, what their performance characteristics are, and what advantages each type of database inherently possesses. To allow for the ingestion of data across the five different categories of database schemas, we used a met-analysis of past literature and aggregated the data to …

The Effect Of Information Acquisition Automation And Workspace Design On Human Pattern Recognition For Information Fusion, Kellie L. Turner

Theses and Dissertations

Automation employed in information fusion systems is designed to help humans combine information derived from multiple sources to form a cohesive assessment of the situation. Research using the Levels of Automation model (Parasuraman, Wickens, and Sheridan, 2000) have produced conflicting results, which Patterson (2017) posited was because it focused solely on analytical processing while neglecting the effects of intuitive cognition. The present study examined how information acquisition automation affects the human’s ability to detect patterns in data needed to reach higher levels of information fusion. Results showed that when information acquisition was performed through manual operations, pattern recognition performance was …

Applications In Multi-Band Isolation Of Spectra With Data-Adaptive Sub-Banding (Midas): Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis To Optimize Midas-Based De-Noising Methods When Processing Infrasound And Other Signals Of Interest, Everett Raymond Coots

Theses and Dissertations

The ever-present challenge faced by the signal processing analyst is to get more from the available data, whether it be exploiting the same data in new ways to garner new information, or simply to increase the confidence in existing qualitative metrics. Traditional techniques include filtering (to improve the signal to noise ratio of detected signals or images or to isolate and possibly remove interfering signals), feature detection/extraction (identifying key characteristics within the signal) and signal decomposition (identification of dominant signals of interest relative to noise terms). Current research by our team began with an emphasis on the filtering of signals …

A Joint Soft Warping And Clustering Approach To Detecting Time Series Anomalies, Christopher John Schuchmann

Theses and Dissertations

Unsupervised anomalous time series detection methods focus on identifying outliers without prior knowledge of the dataset. However, these methods often require multiple parameters to be optimized, with adequate performance tied to their careful tuning and prior domain knowledge. In this work, two methods are proposed for detecting outlier time series that adopt a joint clustering and alignment optimization to filter out the desired signals. The time series are globally clustered while simultaneously being aligned to other signals in their same cluster group. This alternating optimization employs time-warping similarity measures to help identify closely matching time series as well as the …

Assessment Of Visual Field Performance Asymmetries While Utilizing Aircraft Attitude Symbology, George A. Reis

Theses and Dissertations

Two experiments were conducted to examine visual performance asymmetries when perceiving complex, meaningful visual stimuli, such as the Arc Segment Attitude Reference (ASAR). The ASAR symbology represents an aircraft’s attitude. Experiment 1 examined participants’ performance while recalling and reporting various attitudes of ASAR symbology and a Gabor patch, which were briefly presented in the peripheral visual field. Performance was assessed for coordinate and categorical judgments at various display locations. The results were consistent with the horizontal-vertical anisotropy literature, which implies that performance would be better for stimuli placed on the horizontal meridian as compared to stimuli placed on the vertical …

A Vision-Based Quality Control Model For Manufacturing Systems, Alejandra Figueroa-Lopez

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Business and Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Science by Alejandra Figueroa-Lopez on November 25, 2021.

Reducing Kidney Discard With Artificial Intelligence Decision Support: The Need For A Transdisciplinary Systems Approach, Richard Threlkeld, Lirim Ashiku, Casey I. Canfield, Daniel Burton Shank, Mark A. Schnitzler, Krista L. Lentine, David A. Axelrod, Anil Choudary Reddy Battineni, Henry Randall, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Purpose of Review: A transdisciplinary systems approach to the design of an artificial intelligence (AI) decision support system can more effectively address the limitations of AI systems. By incorporating stakeholder input early in the process, the final product is more likely to improve decision-making and effectively reduce kidney discard.

Recent Findings: Kidney discard is a complex problem that will require increased coordination between transplant stakeholders. An AI decision support system has significant potential, but there are challenges associated with overfitting, poor explainability, and inadequate trust. A transdisciplinary approach provides a holistic perspective that incorporates expertise from engineering, social science, and …

Systems Statistical Engineering – Hierarchical Fuzzy Constraint Propagation, Hengameh Fakhravar, Hesamoddin Tahami

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Driven by a growing requirement during the 21st century for the integration of rigorous statistical analyses in engineering research, there has been a movement within the statistics and quality communities to evolve a unified statistical engineering body of knowledge (Hoerl & Snee, 2010). Systems Statistical Engineering research seeks to integrate causal Bayesian hierarchical modeling (Pearl, 2009) and cybernetic control theory within Beer's Viable System Model (S Beer, 1972; Stafford Beer, 1979, 1985) and the Complex Systems Governance framework (Keating, 2014; Keating & Katina, 2015, 2016) to produce multivariate systemic models for robust dynamic systems mission performance. (Cotter & Quigley, 2018) …

Third Party Risk Management And Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management, Jerald Garner

Operations Management Presentations

Today’s business environment continues to be a challenge. Businesses whether small, or large leverage third-party vendors to provide critical services like data handling (security, transmitting, and storage), cloud storage/applications, and systems security monitoring.

Each business must ask themselves a few simple questions about one of their most valuable assets “Data”. If or when it leaves your secure working environment:

• How secure is your customer data in transit and storage?
• Do your third-party vendors handle your “critical information”?
  • Provide a secure environment for processing?
  • Comply with a proven Cyber Security Framework?
  • Perform a “Due Diligence” on-boarding step for the Nth vendors …

A Methodology For Reliability-Based Selection Of System Of Systems, Justin Brown

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

Currently, Department of Defense (DoD) systems underperform and have inadequate reliability compared to acquisition expectations. Additionally, System of Systems (SoS) complexity and non-quantifiable approaches to selecting systems to perform a mission cause challenges for the decision-maker. Beyond DoD, mission-critical scenarios exist where responses are not data-driven, such as hurricane response, wildfire response, and littoral search and research missions. Optimization of these missions within a short amount of time can not only increase the probability of success and reduce the cost of performing the mission but allow systems to be used for additional missions.

This dissertation presents solution methodologies to address …

Hidden In Plain Sight: Why Sustainment Is So Critical To The Circular Supply Chains For Technical Products, Dave Peterson

Operations Management Presentations

• Technical products are typically complex, long-lived and high-cost equipment—such as: aircraft, vehicles, ships, capital equipment/machinery and utilities infrastructure. While many technical products are manufactured via traditional linear supply chains, their useful lives often rely upon sustainment systems incorporating significant aspects of circular supply chains. This webinar takes a closer look at technical products and the critical role of systems sustainment to achieve and fulfill circular supply chains. The key takeaways from this webinar are:
  • The Earth is running out of resources which will have a direct impact upon maintaining/improving our quality of life.
  • The circular economy philosophy has definite relevance …

Applying Model-Based Systems Engineering And Fidelity Quantification To Support Fair Fight In A Distributed Simulation System, Nathaniel Erbe, David Lemmer

Theses and Dissertations

Current 5th and 6th generation fighter aircraft capabilities, and the DoD's push towards digital engineering have created an environment in which simulated testing using live, virtual, and constructive assets has increasing utility. These simulations need to be credible in the eyes of the stakeholders, which for distributed simulation systems includes establishing fair fight between simulation services. Fair fight is when multiple simulations interoperate without generating one-sided systematic advantages. Issues that impede fair fight can be categorized into interoperability issues at the simulations implementation level and incompatible representations of reality between underlying models. This research used model-based systems engineering to generate …

Requirements Analysis And Architecture For An Operational Study Of Fatigue In Usaf Mobility Aircrew, Jonathan F. Mecham

Theses and Dissertations

Aircrew fatigue in flight operations is a known hazard that has driven the creation of fatigue-reducing regulation and fatigue risk management systems industry wide. In addition, biomathematical models have been created and tested to forecast the effectiveness of aircrew under conditions of time-zone shifts and long duty days. However, limited operational studies exist to validate these models or to help understand how individual factors can affect them. Operational studies have a variety of limitations that make gathering typical data regarding fatigue or sleep difficult. This research takes systems requirement analysis approach to design a study that measures effects of circadian …

Collaborative All-Source Navigation With Integrity, Jonathon S. Gipson

Theses and Dissertations

The novel ARMAS-SOM framework fuses collaborative all-source sensor information in a resilient manner with fault detection, exclusion, and integrity solutions recognizable to a GNSS user. This framework uses a multi-filter residual monitoring approach for fault detection and exclusion and is augmented with an additional "observability" EKF sub-layer for resilience. We monitor the a posteriori state covariances in this sub-layer to provide intrinsic awareness when navigation state observability assumptions required for integrity are in danger. This is used to selectively augment the framework with offboard information to preserve resilience. By maintaining split parallel collaborative and proprioceptive estimation instances and employing a …

Interdependent Infrastructure Recovery Using Multilayered Networks And Optimization, Brigham A. Moore

Theses and Dissertations

Interdependent infrastructure recovery modeling and simulation are complicated due to various interdependent connections and complexities. Current efforts have identified both operational and restoration interdependency subtypes and coupling strategies that have not been integrated into one comprehensive model. This research presents a model which simultaneously integrates nine interdependency subtypes and four coupling strategies in a multi-objective format to provide the most tailorable and comprehensive network-based recovery model available. This research also created a defense-centric interdependent infrastructure database by modifying the existing CLARC database. This research then addressed assumptions regarding recovery work management in order to address the impact of work crew …

Critical Chain – Or Why Wedding Planners Get Ulcers, Greg Hutto

Operations Management Presentations

Planning a wedding is one of the most challenging projects in a young life… So much to do! A respected journal in the project management literature -- Southern Bride -- advises well-off young couples to escape stress and employ a professional wedding planner+. In today's webinar we will contrast two project planning methods in examining one such wedding project -- hastily planned and beset with troubles. We will shed light on the science & art of project management and possibly help our wedding planners (both professional and amateur) avoid stress-induced medical complications. In this webinar, we’ll be spending time with …

Algebraic, Computational, And Data-Driven Methods For Control-Theoretic Analysis And Learning Of Ensemble Systems, Wei Miao

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, we study a class of problems involving a population of dynamical systems under a common control signal, namely, ensemble systems, through both control-theoretic and data-driven perspectives. These problems are stemmed from the growing need to understand and manipulate large collections of dynamical systems in emerging scientific areas such as quantum control, neuroscience, and magnetic resonance imaging. We examine fundamental control-theoretic properties such as ensemble controllability of ensemble systems and ensemble reachability of ensemble states, and propose ensemble control design approaches to devise control signals that steer ensemble systems to desired profiles. We show that these control-theoretic properties …

Elucidating And Leveraging Dynamics-Function Relationships In Neural Circuits Through Modeling And Optimal Control, Sruti Mallik

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

A fundamental research question in neuroscience pertains to understanding how neural networks through their activity encode and decode information. In this research, we build on methods from theoretical domains such as control theory, dynamical systems analysis and reinforcement learning to investigate such questions. Our objective is two-fold: first, to use methods from engineering to identify specific objectives that neural circuits might be optimizing through their spatiotemporal activity patterns, and second, to draw motivation from neuroscience to formulate new engineering principles such as synthesis of dynamical networks for decentralized control applications. We specifically take a top-down, optimization driven approach in our …

Efficiently Estimating Survival Signature And Two-Terminal Reliability Of Heterogeneous Networks Through Multi-Objective Optimization, Daniel Bruno Lopes Da Silva

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The two-terminal reliability problem is a classical reliability problem with applications in wired and wireless communication networks, electronic circuit design, computer networks, and electrical power distribution, among other systems. However, the two-terminal reliability problem is among the hardest combinatorial problems and is intractable for large, complex networks. Several exact methods to solve the two-terminal reliability problem have been proposed since the 1960s, but they have exponential time complexity in general. Hence, practical studies involving large network-type systems resort to approximation methods to estimate the system's reliability. One attractive approach for quantifying the reliability of complex systems is to use signatures, …

Quantitative Set-Based Design For Complex System Development, Nicholas J. Shallcross

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation comprises a body of research facilitating decision-making and complex system development with quantitative set-based design (SBD). SBD is concurrent product development methodology, which develops and analyzes many design alternatives for longer time periods enabling design maturation and uncertainty reduction. SBD improves design space exploration, facilitating the identification of resilient and affordable systems. The literature contains numerous qualitative descriptions and quantitative methodologies describing limited aspects of the SBD process. However, there exist no methodologies enabling the quantitative management of SBD programs throughout the entire product development cycle. This research addresses this knowledge gap by developing the process framework and …

Application Of A Blockchain Enabled Model In Disaster Aids Supply Network Resilience, Farinaz Sabz Ali Pour

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The disaster area is a dynamic environment. The bottleneck in distributing the supplies may be from the damaged infrastructure or the unavailability of accurate information about the required amounts. The success of the disaster response network is based on collaboration, coordination, sovereignty, and equality in relief distribution. Therefore, a reliable dynamic communication system is required to facilitate the interactions, enhance the knowledge for the relief operation, prioritize, and coordinate the goods distribution. One of the promising innovative technologies is blockchain technology which enables transparent, secure, and real-time information exchange and automation through smart contracts. This study analyzes the application of …

Risks To Student Achievement In Higher Education, Angela Atwell, Bettina Mrusek, James Solti, Keith Wilson

Publications

A university system sets out to deliver educational experiences that meet set goals such as the achievement of learning outcomes for individual courses and program outcomes for degree programs. There are many factors that impact the successful achievement of student learning outcomes and there-fore successful program design and implementation. If courses are not effec-tively designed with assessments properly aligned to learning outcomes, student achievement is challenging to measure. If faculty do not consistently adhere to college and/or university policies regarding submission of assignments, student behavior and perceptions of expectations in future courses may be skewed. In addition, students may, for …