Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Novel Approach To Integrate Can Based Vehicle Sensors With Gps Using Adaptive Filters To Improve Localization Precision In Connected Vehicles From A Systems Engineering Perspective, Abhijit Vasili

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research and development in Connected Vehicles (CV) Technologies has increased exponentially, with the allocation of 75 MHz radio spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) dedicated to Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in 1999 and 30 MHz in the 5.9 GHz by the European Telecommunication Standards Institution (ETSI). Many applications have been tested and deployed in pilot programs across many cities all over the world.

CV pilot programs have played a vital role in evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the technology and understanding the effects of the applications over the safety of road users. The …

Efficient Management Of Nitrogen And Phosphorus At Centralized Water Reclamation Facilities, Helene Kassouf

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A variety of process configurations are employed at municipal water reclamation facilities (WRFs), such as 5-stage Bardenpho, oxidation ditch, modified Ludzack-Ettinger (MLE) process, and sidestream recycle. However, all of these configurations face certain challenges in achieving optimum treatment of nitrogen and phosphorus. In this dissertation, the driving objectives were to: (1) quantitatively assess the fate of nitrogen and phosphorus (mass fluxes) at a treatment facility that employs biological nutrient removal, aerobic digestion, and sidestream recycle, (2) evaluate the performance of a microbial fuel cell (MFC) as a technology to remove nitrogen from sidestreams at a treatment plant that employs that …

The Photophysical Studies Of Transition Metal Polyimines Encapsulated In Metal Organic Frameworks (Mof’S), Jacob M. Mayers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Light harvesting systems provide a platform that converts solar energy into other forms of energy. One of the most common examples of photon capturing and conversion into chemical energy is observed in photosynthetic organisms in both Eurkaroyic and Prokaryotic domains. Nature provides a model for successful light harvesting platforms which includes the compartmentalization of antenna complexes that contain separated donor and acceptor pairs that participate in efficient electron transfer processes. In order to mimic such systems, crystalline porous materials that exhibits regular cavities and pore dimensions provides an excellent starting place. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of porous …

Pressure Retarded Osmosis: A Potential Technology For Seawater Desalination Energy Recovery And Concentrate Management, Joshua Benjamin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Currently, a significant challenge with reverse osmosis-based desalination is reducing the energy consumption and environmental impacts of the process. This project analyzed the viability of using pressure-retarded osmosis (PRO) for energy recovery in seawater desalination facilities using brine concentrate (the draw solution) and other water sources (the feed solution) such as wastewater effluent. The primary goal of this project is to decrease the cost and overall energy consumption of seawater desalination through PRO-based energy recovery. Process modeling, statistical and sensitivity analysis, energy and cost analysis, geospatial and GIS analysis, laboratory-scale testing, water quality analysis, SEM-EDS microscopy, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), …

Crystal Structure Prediction Of Materials At Extreme Conditions, Ashley S. Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The prediction of the structure of a crystal given only the constituent elements is one of the greatest challenges in both materials science and computational science alike. If one were to try to predict a novel crystal by brute force, meaning by arranging the atoms in every possible position of the unit cell and optimizing the geometry to find the energy minima of the potential energy surface, the amount of computer resources required to complete the calculation on the timescale of a few years would vastly exceed the currently installed computational capacity of the entire world. Fortunately, several methods have …

A System Architecture For Water Distribution Networks, Noha Abdel-Mottaleb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines structure-function relationships of water distribution networks (WDNs), with focus on improving the decision-making process for water utilities. WDNs are lifeline infrastructure systems, necessary for the functioning of cities. Yet water utilities around the world struggle with emerging challenges that include but are not limited to aging infrastructure components, limited budgets, increased interdependencies between infrastructure systems, increased rates of urbanization, and increasing extreme weather conditions. This is why enhancing the performance of WDNs is a priority for water utilities around the world. This research begins to delineate a system architecture for WDNs and evaluates the use of various …

Investigation Of Immobilized Enzymes In Confined Environment Of Mesoporous Host Matrices, Xiaoliang Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Enzyme immobilization in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as a promising strategy, is attracting the interest of scientists from different disciplines with the expansion of MOF’s development. Different from other traditional host materials, their unique strengths of high surface areas, large yet adjustable pore sizes, functionalizable pore walls, and diverse architectures make MOFs an ideal platform to investigate hosted enzymes, which is critical to the industrial and commercial process. In addition to the protective function of MOFs, the extensive roles of MOFs in the enzyme immobilization are being well-explored by making full use of their remarkable properties like well-defined structure, high porosity, …

Modeling The Ambient Conditions Of A Manufacturing Environment Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (Cfd), Yang Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As manufacturing equipment evolve to higher speed and require high precision operations, the impact of environmental changes on machine accuracy becomes critical. Due to thermal expansion, the structure of the machine can change when ambient temperature varies. When the airflow in the laboratory changes, this also alters the operator's thermal comfort. Either the change in machine structure or operator comfort can ultimately affect machine accuracy. The manufacturing industry is currently using heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems to regulate the temperature of the working environment. However, since conventional HVAC systems determine whether to activate the HVAC system by collecting the …

Effects Of Nitrate On Arsenic Mobilization During Aquifer Storage And Recovery, Hania Hawasli

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aquifer storage and recovery technology is used to sustain water resources and to prevent saltwater intrusion. The injected water can come from various resources, including treated wastewater. In pilot ASR studies in the Tampa Bay region, researchers found high As concentrations in the recovered water from the oxidation of the arsenopyrite that is embedded in the aquifers. The presence of dissolved O2 in the injected water is a major factor in the arsenopyrite oxidation during ASR, however the effects of NO3- on the arsenopyrite has not been studied yet. This is an important knowledge gap because injected water may contain …

Texturing In Bi2Te3 Alloy Thermoelectric Materials: An Applied Physics Investigation, Oluwagbemiga P. Ojo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Thermoelectric devices provide the means for direct conversion between heat and electricity. The device conversion efficiency, or performance, is directly related to the thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, of the working materials. Bismuth telluride alloys are the materials currently in use in most thermoelectric devices for near room temperature solid-state refrigeration and power conversion applications. The vast majority of publications in the literature on thermoelectricity report on investigations towards developing new materials with enhanced thermoelectric properties, however Bi₂Te₃ alloys have been used in thermoelectric devices for decades.

In this thesis, an investigation of crystallographic texturing on large …

Constructing Frameworks For Task-Optimized Visualizations, Ghulam Jilani Abdul Rahim Quadri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Visualization is crucial in today’s data-driven world to augment and enhance human understanding and decision-making. Effective visualizations must support accuracy in visual task performance and expressive data communication. Effective visualization design depends on the visual channels used, chart types, or visual tasks. However, design choices and visual judgment are co-related, and effectiveness is not one-dimensional, leading to a significant need to understand the intersection of these factors to create optimized visualizations. Hence, constructing frameworks that consider both design decisions and the task being performed enables optimizing visualization design to maximize efficacy. This dissertation describes experiments, techniques, and user studies to …

Fiber-Based Supercapacitor For Wearable Electronics, Rohit Lallansingh Yadav

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Supercapacitors are significant devices that are used for energy storage and also have the capability of delivering energy at a faster rate than batteries. The increase in the significance of portable and wearable electronic equipment giving rise to pace in the development of flexible supercapacitor and flexible electrodes in recent years. A fiber-based supercapacitor (FSCs) is one of the most significant devices which have even helped us give pace knowing the properties of supercapacitor. These FSCs are said to have excellent electrochemical properties and flexibility. This did make function it in different forms of individual fibers or integrated textiles which …

Preparation And Characterization Of Single Layer Conducting Polymer Electrochromic And Touchchromic Devices, Sharan Kumar Indrakar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Electrochromic devices (ECDs) have triggered great interest because of their potential applicability in energy-efficient buildings and low power display systems, including reflective type smart windows/mirrors and wearable-flexible devices. In the past decades, electrochromic technologies with different device structures and materials have been proposed. The idea of employing a simple device structure with a durable, cost effective electrolyte is crucial to designing and manufacturing high-performance ECDs. With this idea in mind, this thesis describes the various efforts to develop a simple ECD comprising of a composite single active layer gel electrolyte, sandwiched between two transparent conducting electrodes, lasting over 10,000 cycles …

Automated Wound Segmentation And Dimension Measurement Using Rgb-D Image, Chih-Yun Pai

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Accurate pressure ulcer (PrU) measurement is critical in assessing the effectiveness of PrU treatment. The traditional measurement process is manual, subjective, and requires frequent contact with the wound. The manual measurement relies on human observation which makes the measurement inconsistent, and the frequent contact with the wound increases risk of contamination or infection. The purpose of this research was to develop an automatic Pressure Ulcer Monitoring System (PrUMS) using a depth camera to provide automated, non-contact wound measurement. In this dissertation, 1) a wound segmentation with traditional machine learning method, which combines the color classification using K-Nearest Neighbors and the …

Data-Driven Studies On Social Networks: Privacy And Simulation, Yasanka Sameera Horawalavithana

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social media datasets are fundamental to understanding a variety of phenomena, such as epidemics, adoption of behavior, crowd management, and political uprisings. At the same time, many such datasets capturing computer-mediated social interactions are recorded nowadays by individual researchers or by organizations. However, while the need for real social graphs and the supply of such datasets are well established, the flow of data from data owners to researchers is significantly hampered by privacy risks: even when humans’ identities are removed, or data is anonymized to some extent, studies have proven repeatedly that re-identifying anonymized user identities (i.e., de-anonymization) is doable …

Adaptive Network Slicing In Fog Ran For Iot With Heterogeneous Latency And Computing Requirements: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach, Almuthanna Nassar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In view of the recent advances in Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the emerging new breed of smart city applications and intelligent vehicular systems driven by artificial intelligence, fog radio access network (F-RAN) has been recently introduced for the next generation wireless communications. The capability of F-RAN has emerged to overcome the latency limitations of cloud-RAN (C-RAN) and assure the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of the ultra-reliable-low-latency-communication (URLLC) for IoT applications. To this end, fog nodes (FNs) are equipped with computing, signal processing and storage capabilities to extend the inherent operations and services of the cloud to the edge. However, …

Sensible/Latent Hybrid Thermal Energy Storage For The Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Brayton Cycle, Kelly Osterman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mitigating the effects of climate change will require rapid deployment of a carbon-free electricity system that includes all available forms of zero-carbon energy. Both renewables and nuclear show great promise, but both come with drawbacks. Power production from wind and solar is limited to times when their respective resources are available, while nuclear is limited in its ability to adjust its output according to the ever-varying demand for electricity. Additionally, the systems must be affordable. One way to reduce the cost of thermal power plants (concentrated solar power and nuclear) is to use new power cycles, such as the supercritical …

An Automated Framework For Connected Speech Evaluation Of Neurodegenerative Disease: A Case Study In Parkinson's Disease, Sai Bharadwaj Appakaya

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Neurodegenerative diseases affect millions of people around the world. The progressive degeneration worsens the symptoms, heavily impacting the quality of life of the patients as well as the caregivers. Speech production is one of the physiological processes affected by neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Speech is the most basic form of communication, and the effect of neurodegeneration degrades speech production, thereby reducing social interaction and mental well-being. PD is the second most common neurodegenerative disease affecting speech production in 90% of the diagnosed individuals. Speech analysis methods for PD in clinical methods …

Efficient Hardware Constructions For Error Detection Of Post-Quantum Cryptographic Schemes, Alvaro Cintas Canto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quantum computers are presumed to be able to break nearly all public-key encryption algorithms used today. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started the process of soliciting and standardizing one or more quantum computer resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms in late 2017. It is estimated that the current and last phase of the standardization process will last till 2022-2024. Among those candidates, code-based and multivariate-based cryptography are a promising solution for thwarting attacks based on quantum computers. Nevertheless, although code-based and multivariate-based cryptography, e.g., McEliece, Niederreiter, and Luov cryptosystems, have good error correction capabilities, research has shown their hardware …

Strategies In Botnet Detection And Privacy Preserving Machine Learning, Di Zhuang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peer-to-peer (P2P) botnets have become one of the major threats in network security for serving as the infrastructure that responsible for various of cyber-crimes. Though a few existing work claimed to detect traditional botnets effectively, the problem of detecting P2P botnets involves more challenges. In this dissertation, we present two P2P botnet detection systems, PeerHunter and Enhanced PeerHunter. PeerHunter starts from a P2P hosts detection component. Then, it uses mutual contacts as the main feature to cluster bots into communities. Finally, it uses community behavior analysis to detect potential botnet communities and further identify bot candidates. Enhanced PeerHunter is an …

Fabrication And Characterization Methods Of Self-Cleaning Coatings For Solar Panels Application, Mohammed Khaleel M Alhussain

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transparent self-cleaning coatings with superhydrophobic and superhydrophilic behavior are of great interest in a wide range of industrial applications such as automotive, solar panels, windows, and optical devices. Each has its uses, properties, and characteristics. For the use of these coatings on solar panels, certain features are important in maintaining the efficiency of the panels in different weather conditions and reducing the operation and maintenance cost, such as self-cleaning, high transparency, antifouling, anti-fogging, and anti-icing. Herein, we have investigated the fabrication of self-cleaning coatings using two simple methods and ways to improve their characteristics. In the first method, a hydrophobic …

An Investigation Of Cross-Links On Crystallization And Degradation In A Novel, Photocross-Linkable Poly (Lactic Acid) System, Nicholas Baksh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Polymeric molecular structure consists of repeating units bonded together. Mechanicalproperties can be altered without affecting chemical makeup by altering the number of these units. Small molecules can be introduced and/or polymers can be modified to form bonds between molecular chains. Cross-linking, as this is called, also introduces mechanical variation with minimal effects on chemical composition. Lastly, polymer chains reorient themselves in response to intermolecular forces. This temperature dependent response is known as crystallization. Although chemistry is unaltered, mechanical properties can depend highly on the percent of the sample that is crystallized.

Cross-linking is known to enhance the mechanical properties of …