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Pages
- Title
- AN ASSESSMENT OF HEAT PUMP APPLICATION AT WATER TREATMENT FACILITIES-THAT USE SURFACE WATER
- Creator
- Yan, Wenpeng
- Date
- 2012-07-17, 2012-07
- Description
-
Energy-efficient heat pumps have been applied in the United States and other regions of the world for decades. Geothermal heat pumps have been...
Show moreEnergy-efficient heat pumps have been applied in the United States and other regions of the world for decades. Geothermal heat pumps have been used, but their application is not wide spread due to the high cost of drilling and installing a ground loop. An alternative choice for space conditioning at municipal water utilities is a surface water source heat pump. Because treated surface water is readily available and it exists in a relatively narrow temperature range it could be useful heat transfer fluid. In this project the economic benefits and greenhouse gas emissions of a heat pump system for a building in NE Illinois are analyzed. Heating and cooling requirements for a hypothetical a 1000 m2 space at a drinking water treatment plant are considered. The analysis includes initial, operating and maintenance costs as well as greenhouse gas emissions, between a heat pump system and a conventional natural gas furnace and air-conditioner. The cost savings in this project for the heat pump system were from $39900 to $41511 over the life cycle of the system depending on the different efficiency level of the heat pump system. Surprisingly the initial cost of the standard efficiency heat pump system is lower than the conventional NGAC system. There is no need to take time to make up the additional initial cost. Surface water heat pumps operating at different efficiency level produce less greenhouse gas than the conventional NGAC system. The CO2 emission reduction could be as high as 73%.
M.S. in Environmental Engineering, July 2012
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- Title
- Using Mitsimlab to Generate Dynamic Traffic for NS2 Simulation of Vanet
- Creator
- Diao, Zhaoshi
- Date
- 2011-04-25, 2011-05
- Description
-
The vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has attracted a lot of attentions due to their interesting and promising functionalities including...
Show moreThe vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has attracted a lot of attentions due to their interesting and promising functionalities including vehicular safety, traffic congestion avoidance, and location based services. However, using a real VANET to do these researches costs too much. Simulation of VANET is useful and could solve this problem well. Nevertheless, many simulations of VANET base on simple road networks and relatively simple mobility models. Based on this road networks and mobility models, consequently, the results of simulation of VANET would be impractical and inaccurate. Therefore, MITSIMLAB which is a simulation of transportation system developed by Massachusetts Institution of Technology Intelligent Transportation System Program is introduced. In MITSIMLAB, a real world road network could be generated. Moreover, the mobility models in MITSIMLAB are more practical. However, MITSIMLAB is a simulation of transportation system. It cannot be used to simulate the VANET directly, while NS2 could simulate VANET properly. NS2 is an open sourced and free software, and it is widely used and successfully simulates plenty of situations in the wireless environment. It could well simulate the communication protocols and applications of VANET. But it cannot generate road network and mobility models to simulate a practical traffic by itself. As a result, it is important to incorporate MITSIMLAB by using its practical road network and mobility models with NS2. In the thesis, a method about how to translate the output file of MITSIMLAB into the format of NS2 would be proposed. In addition, a road network based on IIT main campus is generated by using MITSIMLAB. After translating it into the format usable by NS2, a VANET based on the map of IIT main campus and practical mobility models could be simulated.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, May 2011
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- Title
- IMPROVED DYNAMIC CONTRAST ENHANCED MR IMAGING WITH AN APPLICATION TO PROSTATE CANCER LOCALIZATION
- Creator
- Afshar, Niloufar Totonchi
- Date
- 2011-07, 2011-07
- Description
-
Prostate cancer is one of the most frequently detected cancers and a leading cause of death for men in the United States. Fortunately, chances...
Show moreProstate cancer is one of the most frequently detected cancers and a leading cause of death for men in the United States. Fortunately, chances of successful treatment significantly improve when prostate cancer is diagnosed at an early stage. An accurate and reliable imaging technique that can localize tumors is very valuable for example in guiding needle biopsy, therapy, as well as surgery. Current imaging techniques such as ultrasound provide unsatisfactory result for tumor localization. Therefore, Multispectral Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) emerged as an alternative method of imaging for prostate cancer. An important part of multispectral MRI is Dynamic contrast enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI). Traditionally, a compartmental model is used with DCE-MRI to estimate parametric images. However these images are usually very noisy. Therefore, we propose to use directly the series of DCE-MRI for tumor localization instead of the pharmacokinetic parameters which are derived from DCE MR images through a compartmental model. As a second contribution, we have developed new features in addition to traditional parameters based on different characteristic of tumor and normal pixels. These new features are standard deviation and the energy of the first half of the spectrum divided by the energy of the second half of the spectrum based on an analysis of TACs for tumor and normal pixels. We use quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods to demonstrate that employing DCE-MRI directly as features and our proposed features result in an improvement in terms of tumor localization performance.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, July 2011
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- Title
- CHANGES OF BACTERIAL SPECIES AND HEME PROTEIN OCCURRENCE IN ACTIVATED SLUDGE COMMUNITIES CULTURED IN THE LABORATORY
- Creator
- Wang, Xiaomeng
- Date
- 2016, 2016-05
- Description
-
An activated sludge sample that had originally been collected from an aeration tank of the Stickney wastewater treatment plant in Chicago, and...
Show moreAn activated sludge sample that had originally been collected from an aeration tank of the Stickney wastewater treatment plant in Chicago, and had previously been cultured at low dissolved oxygen (DO) for 48 weekly passages was used as starting material for continuation of the low DO acclimation. The culture was continued at low dissolved oxygen in synthetic wastewater for 25 additional weekly passages to study what would happen to the activated sludge if the low DO continued. In order to do that, some important data were measured during the culture, including the specific oxygen uptake rates (SOUR) which could reflect the ability of oxygen utilization, 16S rDNA information which could tell the community diversity of sludge, and the dominant species genome data which suggested what really happened to the sludge and some reasons. The results showed that SOUR decreased modestly during the course of low DO adaptation, which was contrary to the results of the previous study. There were significant changes in community structure with respect to bacterial species during the first fifteen additional passages. Species known to produce both flavohemoglobins (FHbs) and truncated hemoglobins (trHbs) were common at all passages tested, although the dominant species were totally different from passage to passage. Specifically, during the course of the experiment, the frequency of cells encoding an FHb decreased substantially, from 84% to 50%, while the percentage of cells encoding a trHb decreased slightly from 84% to 78%. The overall content in the culture of heme b (the heme type found in bacterial hemoglobins) decreased, however, during continuation of the low DO conditions. So it is indicated that the oxygen utilization ability of the activated sludge does not increase all the time.
M.S. in Biology, May 2016
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- Title
- A study of the effects produced on Portland cement by the addition of various percentages of hydrated lime
- Creator
- Knuepfer, Claude Albert, Hook, Leonard Doolittle
- Date
- 2009, 1915
- Publisher
- Armour Institute of Technology
- Description
-
http://www.archive.org/details/studyofeffectspr00knue
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaf 99
- Title
- SUSTAINABLE NEW CITY VAN, TURKEY
- Creator
- Dursun, Kevser Pinar
- Date
- 2013, 2013-07
- Description
-
While the negative effects of rapid urbanization is threatening cities and the environment, being more conscientious about the current...
Show moreWhile the negative effects of rapid urbanization is threatening cities and the environment, being more conscientious about the current problems and future expansions of the cities and developing new visions and strategies for new cities is crucial. In this proposal, the aim is to develop a prototype of a sustainable new city in Turkey. Design area is called Carpanak, at the east shore of Lake Van. It is in the north of Van, the biggest city in the Eastern Anatolia district of Turkey. Eastern Anatolia is a mountainous district with a severe climate. The region is less developed than the other regions in every aspect. Severe climate and lack of job opportunities caused outmigration from this region to big cities or onshore regions with more developed industries. A city with sufficient infrastructure, efficient energy solutions, green areas, well-designed transportation, economic viability, and open social structure will help reverse the migration and rescue Eastern Anatolia from being abandoned. It is hoped that the design decisions, ideas, and the research can be applied as an outline to other underdeveloped areas in Turkey.
M.S. in Architecture, July 2013
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- Title
- Incubator for Small Business Manufacturing
- Creator
- Victor, Jimeniz
- Date
- 2010-07-29
- Title
- The thermal conductivity of various forms of tile and their value as fireproofing materials
- Creator
- Anderson, S. W., Chamberlin, J. F.
- Date
- 2009, 1915
- Publisher
- Armour Institute of Technology
- Description
-
http://www.archive.org/details/thermalconductiv00ande
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology
- Title
- The study of an air washer
- Creator
- Armspach, Otto W., Haines, E. Wilfred
- Date
- 2009, 1917
- Publisher
- Armour Institute of Technology
- Description
-
http://www.archive.org/details/studyofairwasher00arms
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology
- Title
- DOES NUTRITION KNOWLEDGE MODERATE THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN PERFECTIONISM AND EATING DISORDER SYMPTOMATOLOGY?
- Creator
- Schwartz, Natalie
- Date
- 2017, 2017-05
- Description
-
The trait of perfectionism is a psychological factor linked with the development of disordered eating, though the relation is unclear with...
Show moreThe trait of perfectionism is a psychological factor linked with the development of disordered eating, though the relation is unclear with some studies pointing to perfectionism as a predictor of eating disorder symptoms, while other studies have failed to find a statistically significant association. These discrepant findings suggest a need for understanding other factors that could be impacting the association. Research has suggested that individuals with eating disorders perform better than controls on knowledge of sources of nutrients and that while individuals with eating disorders spend more time reading about nutrition, this knowledge tends to be selective and skewed towards the aspects that maintain the eating disorder. The current study aimed to investigate the role of nutrition knowledge as a factor that may significantly influence the association between perfectionism and disordered eating attitudes. College women (N=122) completed several questionnaires related to disordered eating, nutrition knowledge, and perfectionism. The main research questions were: 1) whether perfectionism was related to disordered eating attitudes, 2) whether nutrition knowledge was related to disordered eating attitudes, and 3) whether nutrition knowledge moderated the relation between perfectionism and disordered eating attitudes. Results supported a positive association between perfectionism and disordered eating attitudes, in line with previous research. Despite a non-significant association between nutrition knowledge and disordered eating attitudes, there was found to be trend level significance (p<.07) for one moderation model. Specifically, the model assessing overall body dissatisfaction accounted for 33.34% of the variance, with a significant main effect for the level of perfectionism,suggesting the greater the degree of perfectionism traits, the greater the level of body dissatisfaction. While more research is needed to further develop an understanding of the link between perfectionism and disordered eating, nutrition knowledge is one possible avenue to explore in order to develop more effective prevention and intervention efforts.
M.S. in Psychology, May 2017
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- Title
- POWER ELECTRONIC INTERFACE FOR AN OFF-GRID SOLAR POWERED ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM
- Creator
- Mao, Yanwen
- Date
- 2012-10-17, 2012-12
- Description
-
There are about 1.5 billion people in the world with no access to electricity. Of these, a significant number of people live in rural parts of...
Show moreThere are about 1.5 billion people in the world with no access to electricity. Of these, a significant number of people live in rural parts of Africa and Asia. It is very inconvenient and unhealthy for them to work or study at night with the poor light from a candle or kerosene lamp. Additionally, since they do not have a continuous or predictable supply of power, it can be significantly difficult for them to use modern electronic devices such as cell phones, computers or sometimes even basic amenities such as lights and fans. For such situations, an energy storage system powered by solar energy can be a good solution, while being environmentally friendly and easy to use. In this thesis, the design and analysis of an off-grid solar powered energy storage system is presented. It consists of a solar panel, battery pack, control circuit, bidirectional DC/DC converter, and inverter. Operation of this system can be described in terms of two modes. In the daytime, the solar panel absorbs energy from sun light; the DC/DC converter boosts the voltage to a certain value and charges the battery pack. During the nighttime, the battery pack provides energy to the circuit; the DC/DC converter boosts voltage level and the inverter inverts DC voltage to single phase AC voltage; this output of 110V AC voltage can charge cell phones, run an energy save lamp, a fan, or even power a laptop. Details of the design process, system operation, components used in the system, simulation and experimental results are explained in the thesis. The main contribution of the thesis is the development of a new off-grid solar powered energy storage system control strategy that can store solar energy in the battery and provide regular 110V AC xii voltage output to the load when needed; additionally, the implementation of the concept along with testing on an experimental set-up is discussed.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, December 2012
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- Title
- B-SPLINE BASED ROBUST FORMULATION IN TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION
- Creator
- Gu, Yu
- Date
- 2014, 2014-12
- Description
-
In this thesis, we extend the B-spline based density representation to robust topology optimization. The B-spline based representation has...
Show moreIn this thesis, we extend the B-spline based density representation to robust topology optimization. The B-spline based representation has been shown to have the ability of preventing checker-boards. With separate analysis and design mesh, the B-spline based filter is also competitive on computation storage compared with usual density filter. However, the current B-spline based representation is not robust where gray transitions exist. The recent proposed robust formulation highlights the manufacturability that simulates under- or over- etching designs compared with intermediate design. The robustness is demonstrated through three test cases. The minimum length control for quadratic B-splines is analytically derived with respect to knot span size and threshold. Our study about the characteristics of rectangular domain of B-spline based representation, shows that the optimized designs are comparable to those by density filter.
M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, December 2014
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- Title
- Transmission efficiencies of belting
- Creator
- Marks, Robert Edward
- Date
- 2009, 1919
- Publisher
- Armour Institute of Technology
- Description
-
http://www.archive.org/details/transmissioneffi00mark
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology; Bibliography: leaf 29
- Title
- SUSTAINABLE, CONTROLLED, REACTION SYNTHESIS OF METALLIC WIRES AND STRIPS
- Creator
- Chen, Xin
- Date
- 2014, 2014-05
- Description
-
The main purpose of this work is to investigate bi and tri-metallic metal com- binations as initiators which require an ability to have a self...
Show moreThe main purpose of this work is to investigate bi and tri-metallic metal com- binations as initiators which require an ability to have a self-sustaining exothermic reaction. Through the reaction, the initiator should achieve a temperature in excess of 500 C when in contact with a thermally conducting surface. Also the initiator must be in the form of a exible wire or strip of the order of one millimeter radius. There are four phases in my MS research project. First was identifying the potential candidate compounds for exothermic reaction. During this phase, I wrote a program using Mathematicar (Appendix A) to calculate the adiabatic temperature resulting from the reaction of di erent binary or ternary elemental combinations. The calculation took into account the speci c heats and any enthalpies of transformation occurring between room temperature and the adiabatic temperature. Based on the results of this program several suitable compositions were selected from three hun- dred candidates. The second phase was determining a methodology to manufacture selfCpropagating thin strips or wires. We attempted several methods including plate rolling, wire twisting, mechanical coating, chemical coating, and powder metallurgy. We successfully obtained self-propagating thin metal strips and wires using powder metallurgy methods. In the third phase, a transparent reaction box was constructed in order to provide a protective atmosphere (Ar gas) and connect to a data acqui- sition system to obtain the reaction temperature, initiation temperature and video materials of reactions. In the last phase, the reacted samples were characterized using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Backscattered Electron detector (BSE), X-ray Di raction (XRD), Di erential scanning calorimeter (DSC), etc.
M.S. in Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering, May 2014
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- Title
- Greenweb
- Creator
- Thomas, Boerman
- Date
- 2010-07-29
- Title
- CONSTITUTIVE BEHAVIOR AND MODELING OF AL-CU ALLOY SYSTEMS
- Creator
- Turkkan, Omer Anil
- Date
- 2013-05-07, 2013-05
- Description
-
High speed deformation events such as caused by projectile penetration, fragment impact and shock/blast loading are of great importance in...
Show moreHigh speed deformation events such as caused by projectile penetration, fragment impact and shock/blast loading are of great importance in designing materials and structures for army applications. In these events, materials are subjected to large strains, high strain rates and rapid increase in temperature due to thermoplastic heating. In such severe conditions, overall performance is determined by the evolution of flow stress, failure initiation and propagation, and commonly in the form of adiabatic shear banding. Some of 2XXX series aluminum-copper (Al-Cu) alloys are recognized for their decent ballistic properties, and therefore they have been used as an armor material for lightweight U.S. Army vehicles. Most recently, an Al-Cu-Mg-Mn-Ag alloy labeled as Al 2139-T8 has been developed and is evaluated by the U.S. Army Research Labs. because of its better ballistic properties and higher strength than its predecessors. The underlying microstructure is believed to be the key element for this superior performance. The goal of this study is to explore the effect of composition and microstructural features on overall dynamic material behavior by examining mechanical and deformation behavior of different Al-Cu material systems. Starting from the pure single crystal and polycrystalline Al structures, and adding a different element to chemical composition in each step (i.e., Cu, Mg, Mn, Ag), mechanical response of these different systems has been investigated. For all alloy systems with the exception of single crystal Al, mechanical tests have been performed at room and elevated temperatures covering quasi-static ( to ) and dynamic ( to strain rate regimes. xiv Shear-compression specimens promoting localized shear deformation have been used to explore tendency of each one of these materials to failure by adiabatic shear banding. In addition to phenomenological Johnson-Cook Model (JCM), physics based Zerrilli-Armstrong and Mechanical Threshold Models have been studied to model the constitutive response of Al-Cu alloys over a wide range of strain rates and temperatures.. An improved ZA model has been developed to better capture the trends in experimental data.
M.S. in MECHANICAL, MATERIALS, AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING, May 2013
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- Title
- Wagner single phase induction motor
- Creator
- Ash, H. J., Croskey, Philip
- Date
- 2009, 1905
- Publisher
- Armour Institute of Technology
- Description
-
http://www.archive.org/details/wagnersinglephas00ashh
Thesis (B.S.)--Armour Institute of Technology
- Title
- Biophilic Calumet
- Creator
- Meder, Robert
- Date
- 2010-07-29
- Title
- SITE-DIRECTED MUTAGENESIS STUDY OF VITREOSCILLA HEMOGLOBIN-THE ROLE OF TYROSINE (B10) AND PROLINE (E8) IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE LIGAND-BINDING SITE
- Creator
- Zhang, Yifan
- Date
- 2015, 2015-05
- Description
-
Vitreoscilla is a genus of Gram-negative aerobic bacterium which has the capability to synthesis a soluble, homodimertic hemoglobin,...
Show moreVitreoscilla is a genus of Gram-negative aerobic bacterium which has the capability to synthesis a soluble, homodimertic hemoglobin, Vitreoscilla hemoglobin (VHb). The Vitreoscilla hemoglobin was the first bacterial hemoglobin discovered, and has a wide range of biological and biotechnological applications. The distal site is one of the hot spots in VHb studies because of its unique structure. The Tyrosine residue at B10 and its hydrogen bonded Proline at E8 were considered as the ligand binding functional sites in distal space of VHb according to the previous study. In this study, two single mutated and one double mutated Vitreoscilla hemoglobin at position B10 and E8 were constructed and purified. In the two single mutants, the Tyr at B10 and the Pro at E8 were mutated to Ala. In the double mutant, both of the sites were mutated to Ala. The CO di↵erence spectrum data of the mutants indicate that the ligand binding ability of the Vitreoscilla hemoglobin was not neutralized by the mutations at ProE8 and TyrB10. Circular dichroism spectrum data of the mutants is similar to the wild type Vitreoscilla hemoglobin, which means the globin secondary structure is conserved. However the micro-environment in the distal sites is changed: the IR spectrum of the carbonyl stretch bond red-shifted in the CO bound VHb double mutant. A molecular dynamic simulation was introduced in the study to o↵er some guidance for future research plans. The simulation results showed that the B10 and E8 residue mutated to Ala might reduce the flexibility of the D-region, because of the more completed C and E helix. The volume of cavity where the heme group inserts changes significantly in various mutant models, which may provide a rough explanation of the change in carbonyl stretch bond IR spectrum. Additionally, an interesting conformation of Gln E7 was found in the simulation of double mutant model.
M.S. in Biology, May 2015
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- Title
- MIN- AREA RETIMING UNDER WIRE-DELAY MODEL
- Creator
- Luo, Tianchen
- Date
- 2011-05-09, 2011-05
- Description
-
Retiming is a powerful optimization technique for synchronize sequential circuits that relocates delay unit without changing the circuit’s...
Show moreRetiming is a powerful optimization technique for synchronize sequential circuits that relocates delay unit without changing the circuit’s input-output functionality. Wire delay is significant and can no longer be ignored in deep sub-micrometer technologies. Existing algorithms solve the problem of min-area and min-period either optimal or heuristically without taking wire delay into consideration. However, those techniques cannot be applied directly to circuit with wire delay. Recent work solved the min-period problem under wire delay model. This paper proposes an algorithm that solves the problem of min-area wire retiming under fixed clock period optimally and efficiently.
M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, May 2011
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