Other Engineering Commons^™

Insect Inspired Behavioral Strategies For Improving Multi-Agent System Resilience In The Presence Of Contagious Faults, James E. Hand

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

As Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) become increasingly involved in every aspect of everyday life the need to maintain reliability and resilience within these systems grows. However, in equal measure bad actors wishing to maliciously control or alter these systems are growing in both scale and capability. Thus, there is a present need for control schemes and agent behaviors that provide security against these threats while also avoiding large degradation in system performance as a tradeoff. Current research has covered a wide breadth of avenues and strategies that provide measurable resilience to faulted agents. However, these strategies often require group consensus, specialized …

Quantification Of The Depth-Of-Field In A Self-Aligned Focusing Schlieren System, Alexander Ephraim

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This thesis investigates self-aligned focusing schlieren (SAFS) as a step toward future volumetric and quantitative measurements of three-dimensional compressible flows. Conventional schlieren imaging provides valuable visualization of density gradients, but it records only a line-of-sight projection and therefore does not directly resolve the spatial distribution of structures through the depth of the flowfield. SAFS addresses part of this limitation by introducing depth sensitivity, but its depth response has not been well characterized quantitatively. To help lay the foundation for future volumetric and quantitative SAFS methods, this work addresses two related problems. First, calibrated quantitative schlieren imaging is applied to an …

Developing Low-Cost Gnss Remote Sensing Hardware To Measure Precipitable Water Vapor For Flash Flood Nowcasting In Southern Appalachia, Austin Gleydura

Student Research Symposium (SRS)

Flash flood prediction in Southern Appalachia is particularly challenging due to steep terrain, narrow valleys, highly localized rainfall patterns, and limited measurement coverage. Traditional remote sensing methods, such as Doppler radar and microwave radiometry, suffer from reduced resolution at extended range and signal blockage by mountains, while satellite instruments like MODIS lack sufficient spatio-temporal resolution for sub-kilometer measurements critical to flash flood nowcasting. GNSS-Meteorology offers an established alternative for measuring precipitable water vapor (PWV) and is currently integrated into several numerical weather models. Recent research demonstrates that GNSS-derived PWV products can be used to accurately predict rainfall intensity and timing …

Comparative Analysis Of Codes Of Ethical Conduct And Professionalism In Engineering And Project Management Associations, Valarie Denney, James W. Marion

Publications

This research details the similarities and differences in moral values and perspective from 15 engineering and project management association codes of conduct and professionalism. The methodology uses text mining of selected codes counting and summarizing keywords, evaluating document similarities through cosine similarity, and assessing the influence of various ethical schools of thought. Key findings reveal differences in the emphasis of core ethical values like fairness, honesty, and responsibility across different associations. This research is important for engineering and project management professionals to purposefully develop and evolve codes of ethics and professional development to enhance integrity, accountability, and ethical decision-making.

Defining Safe Training Datasets For Machine Learning Models Using Ontologies, Lynn C. Vonder Haar

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Machine Learning (ML) models have been gaining popularity in recent years in a wide variety of domains, including safety-critical domains. While ML models have shown high accuracy in their predictions, they are still considered black boxes, meaning that developers and users do not know how the models make their decisions. While this is simply a nuisance in some domains, in safetycritical domains, this makes ML models difficult to trust. To fully utilize ML models in safetycritical domains, there needs to be a method to improve trust in their safety and accuracy without human experts checking each decision. This research proposes …

Interactive Planetarium Project, Eric Babcock, Cody Park, Johann Van Hilst

Discovery Day - Prescott

The Interactive Planetarium Project will design and build the software framework for connectivity between the Digistar 6 planetarium projection software and the smartphones of all audience members in the Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium. The goal of this project is to make planetarium shows more participatory, add a feature to our planetarium shows that many other universities do not yet have, and create a framework for future students and faculty to build from. To demonstrate our technology, we will make a real-time competitive trivia game able to support 60 concurrent users (number of expected audience members in the planetarium).

The …

The Impact Of Automation On Student's Career Decision, Muhammad Hizkil Imran, Arshveen Ramesh, T Rudran

Introduction to Research Methods RSCH 202

We study the impact of automation on employment and students’ career paths, by obtaining credible datasets from the Government of Singapore. The manufacturing and construction sectors were the most affected industries over the last 15 years. Along with the limited studies, we propose a survey to quantify and analyse students’ views on automation. The shift in employment rate in various sectors due to automation was found to be a contributing factor for students’ career decisions. Based on our findings, we observed that more students are acknowledging the impact of automation and finding the need for job securities and opportunities by …

Studies Of Oval Tube And Fin Heat Exchangers, Phillip Nielsen

Discovery Day - Prescott

Heating Ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) is a system which changes the temperature of the surroundings for the purposes of cooling or heating. This system requires energy to maintain a temperature difference from the outside temperature. This is important since minimized power is one of the requirements for the system to achieve a better efficiency. Optimizing the flow over the evaporator coils is one way to increase the cooling efficiency. This will reduce the power required to have a sustainable system. Optimizing the flow to increase the energy transfer between the fins and the incoming air could result in a greater …

Tech Comm Eagle Eye-Tracking Control System, Gabiella Lail, Robert Shaw, Hunter Smatla, Matthew Gary

Discovery Day - Prescott

Mobile eye-tracking systems provide usability research support as well as access to a wide range of robotics and technical communication research opportunities. Optical tracking systems are often prohibitively expensive and do not provide the mobility or flexibility needed for a variety of research application possibilities. Our team proposes building a simple mobile eye-tracking system to be used in-house at ERAU for heat-mapping, robotics, control systems, and various technical communication applications in a structured research environment. The mobile eyetracking system will become part of a larger research and hands-on technical communication usability lab and research center. The research team intends to …

Forward Osmosis Flow Rate Differential Using Different Osmotic Agents, John M. Trzinski

Beyond: Undergraduate Research Journal

Life support is one of the most vital systems flown on manned spaceflight missions. The systems currently used are large, heavy, inefficient, and power consuming in an environment that requires nearly perfect conditions to function. Forward Osmosis (FO) is a form of filtration that uses the natural properties of water and concentration gradients to filter water without the need for any electricity. An experiment was conducted during the Embry Riddle Summer 2018 study abroad to the LUNARES research station in Piła, Poland. This experiment explored how the flow rate of water through a FO filtration system could be affected by …

The Role Of Stakeholders After Development Of The Baseline Scheduled Maintenance Program, Danita Baghdasarin

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The principles of systems engineering can be applied to various aviation systems. This position paper emphasizes the importance of stakeholder collaboration in the various stages of the system life cycle, where the system is the aircraft scheduled maintenance program and the stakeholders are the constituents of the Industry Steering Committee (ISC): regulatory authorities, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and operators. The author discusses accidents with maintenance-related contributing factors, and highlights opportunities to improve coordination among stakeholders in order to ensure safe and effective maintenance.

Subjectivity In Failure Mode Effects Analysis (Fmea) Severity Classification Within A Reliability Centered Maintenance (Rcm) Context, Marc Banghart, Kari Babski-Reeves, Linkan Bian, Lesley Strawderman

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

This research paper investigated subjectivity in the severity rating of failure modes within a risk analysis process. Although several risk analysis processes can be utilized, the study considered the application of Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) or Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) due to its common use within the Aerospace Industry. The study investigated both differences in severity selection given varying amounts of experience as well as any association between severity selection and the provided input information. The main goal of the research was to investigate the impact of data quality on severity selection and to identify factors …

Infographic : Engineers And Athletes: Comparison Of Professions And Genders, Mckenna James, Leroy Long Iii

Publications

In this infographic, the career earnings for engineers and athletes are compared. Two separate comparisons are performed: profession and gender. In the first comparison, inventors, athletes, and superheros with the highest net worth are shown. Based on the results, inventors are making billions more than the highest paid athletes and superheroes. Even the wealthiest superheroes, Black Panther and Iron Man, earn their wealth from engineering-related technology and knowledge. In the second comparison, the salary of men and women in both athletics and engineering are displayed. Based on the results, women make significantly less than men in athletics. However, women are …

The Capabilities Of The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (Goes-16), Brandon M. Kane

Student Works

This report investigates the capability of the new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-16 (GOES-16) satellite to display 16 channels of the electromagnetic spectrum, to produce images at a higher resolution at increased intervals, and to detect and display lightning. This report also discusses the main instrumentation aboard the new geostationary satellite and how it aids in creating accurate data collection, which in turn, produces quicker weather forecasts and warnings. The 16 different channels produced by the Advanced Baseline Imager aboard the new satellite are analyzed in detail as to the functions and wavelengths on which the channels operate. The image resolution …

Ergonomics In Space Flight – Past, Present, & Future, Robert Consolo

Human Factors and Applied Psychology Student Conference

From the days of “The Rocket Men” to the uprising of SpaceX, spaceflight has always inspired awe in humanity. If you examine the men that were apart of those first missions, you will find that they were not only the most capable, but won the genetic lottery to become this nations first astronauts. Looking to the times of Mercury, you see the extreme constraints that potential astronaut candidates had to meet in order to go to space. Aside from the rigorous medical testing, potential candidates also had to meet strict height and weight requirements. Early candidates could not be taller …

Late Morning Concurrent Sessions: Innovations In Aviation Technologies: Presentation: Relative Material Loss: A Methodology For Assessing Island Airport Steel Marine Bulkheads, Robert Ernsting, Constantine M. Koursaris

Aviation / Aeronautics / Aerospace International Research Conference

A July 2015 report from the Airports Council International – North America (ACI-NA) states “U.S. airports are long overdue for [a] major structural improvement projects. Most U.S. airports are aging, … and because of budgetary restrictions, they’re not aging well.”(Garcia and Clampet, 2015). The average US age is 40 years old with the youngest (Denver International) recently turning 20 years old. As airports continue to age, airport commissioners will struggle to find creative ways to either fund airport replacements or extend the service life of existing airport facilities (commonly referred to as service life extension projects or SLEP). Due to …

Sac Drone History, John Dale

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

Learn about the previously classified Strategic Air Command drone reconnaissance program covering targets in China, N. Korea, & N. Vietnam, from the pilot who was in charge. Specially modified C-130s launched the drones that were then recovered in mid-air by helicopters. They went where manned aircraft could not and some wouldn’t make it back! This program contributed to the amazing UAVs of today.

Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar Systems (Joint Stars) --- The Early Days, George Cusimano

ERAU Prescott Aviation History Program

J-STARS is the airborne, battle management radar platform that was such a resounding success during Desert Storm I . Hear the exciting story of the challenges associated with its early development, from the Flight Test Engineer and Mission Commander who was involved from the very start.

Derivation And Application Of A Conserved Orbital Energy For The Inverted Pendulum Bipedal Walking Model, Jerry E. Pratt, Sergey V. Drakunov

Publications

We present an analysis of a point mass, point foot, planar inverted pendulum model for bipedal walking. Using this model, we derive expressions for a conserved quantity, the “Orbital Energy”, given a smooth Center of Mass trajectory. Given a closed form Center of Mass Trajectory, the equation for the Orbital Energy is a closed form expression except for an integral term, which we show to be the first moment of area under the Center of Mass path. Hence, given a Center of Mass trajectory, it is straightforward and computationally simple to compute phase portraits for the system. In fact, for …

Experimental Investigation Of The Velocity Field In Buoyant Diffusion Flames Using Piv And Tpiv Algorithm, Lulu Sun, Xiangyang Zhou, Shankar Mahalingam, David R. Weise

Publications

We investigated a simultaneous temporally and spatially resolved 2-D velocity field above a burning circular pan of alcohol using particle image velocimetry (PIV). The results obtained from PIV were used to assess a thermal particle image velocimetry (TPIV) algorithm previously developed to approximate the velocity field using the temperature field, simultaneously captured by an infrared (IR) thermal camera. By tracing “thermal particles,” which were assumed to be virtual particles that corresponded to pixels of temperature values in successive IR images, the TPIV algorithm estimated a larger scale instantaneous velocity field than either a single-point velocity measurement (e.g., LDV) or the …

Numerical Simulation Of Live Chaparral Fire Behavior Using Firetec, Lulu Sun, Xiangyang Zhou, Shankar Mahalingam, Jesse Canfield, Rodman Linn

Publications

Fire spread through chaparral fuels is a significant feature of wildland fire in southern California. In order to study the detailed physical processes involved during fire spread, FIRETEC, a coupled atmosphere/wildfire behavior model was refined to examine chaparral fire behavior. FIRETEC combines a sophisticated fine-scale model to simulate a three- dimensional wildfire, moving over a terrain-following finite volume grid, with the motions of the local atmosphere. It accounts for the microscopic details of a fire with macroscopic resolution by dividing quantities into mean and fluctuating parts and the resulting transport equations are solved by using a finite difference method. In …

Adaptive Synchronization Of Chaos For Secure Communication, Manish Pantha

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

The purpose of this thesis is to study the use of adaptive synchronization of chaos for secure communication. Several non-linear models were studied, the one-dimensional logistic map, two-dimensional coupled logistic map, three dimensional Lorenz systems with and without time delay. Numerical simulation using MATLAB was conducted. The Lorenz system with time delay was studied numerically as well as by testing an analog circuit and comparisons was made between them. It has been pointed out in many research papers that for low-dimensional chaotic processes, once intercepted, the information can be readily extracted, so the interest has been directed to higher dimensional …

Fire Behavior Of Some Southern California Live Chaparral Fuels, Lulu Sun, Xiangyang Zhou, Shankar Mahalingam, David R. Weise

Publications

Wildfire spread in living vegetation, such as chaparral in southern California, often causes significant damage to infrastructure and ecosystems. In order to study wildfire spread in living vegetation, four of the most common chaparral in southern California, chamise, manzanita, scrub oak and ceanothus, were burned and compared. The observed fire behavior included mass loss rate, flame height, temperature structure and velocity field above the burning fuel bed. It was observed that flame height increases mainly with heat release rate. By using successive images of the temperature field, a recently developed thermal particle image velocity (TPIV) algorithm was applied to estimate …

Ir-Based Estimation Of Velocities Above Flames Spreading Over Different Fuels, Lulu Sun, Xiangyang Zhou, David R. Weise, Shankar Mahalingam

Publications

Wildfire spread in living vegetation such as chaparral in California and eucalyptus forests in Australia often causes significant damage to infrastructure and ecosystems. A physically based empirical model to predict fire spread rate is used in the United States to assist in a variety of fire management operations. The spread model does not adequately describe the chemical processes of combustion in live fuels.

Prior to describing and modeling the chemical processes of combustion in wildland fuels using computational fluid dynamics, we are investigating a technique to non-intrusively measure flame gas velocities using thermal imagery. By tracing "hot" pixels through successive …

The Offenses Of Missile Defense System Failure, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes the political psychology of analyses of a recent United States testing failure of components of a limited ballistic missile defense system.