A Physics doctoral project seeks to reduce the uncertainty of inaccurate visual bridge inspections by producing a remote sensor program to determine and monitor the changes in health of a specified bridge. The Eastern Parkway Bridge was determined...
Bi-stable buckled MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) diaphragms have a myriad of uses in the MEMS field for their large out-of-plane deflections. Buckling is a phenomenon brought upon by a compressive stress. Diaphragms are large aspect ratio,...
Aortic Valve Bypass surgery has found renewed interest to researchers due to its application in high-risk patients with severe aortic stenosis. This therapy consists of construction of a conduit containing a bioprosthetic or mechanical valve from...
Wind power has the potential to provide access to electricity to areas lacking the resources to create industrial power plants, as well as supplement residential energy supplies. The low resource investment and ease of installation make it ideal...
Symmetric piezoresistive microcantilever beams have been demonstrated in previous research to be capable of sensing the presence of surrounding gas. This occurs as the damping effect of the gas changes the beam resonance behavior. Device...
In the electronic and microfabrication industry, die separation is one of the most critical steps in producing an undamaged, stand-alone micro-scale device. For silicon based devices, it is the predominant step governing resistance to die failure...
This work presents a novel comprehensive effort to understand the fluid dynamics within orbiting dishes and the effects of the resulting oscillating fluid flow on shear and endothelial cellular responses within the dishes. It is well documented...
Simplified modeling generates a great deal of interest in the area of crashworthiness analysis. Modeling methods used to create simplified computer models for crashworthiness have been well developed. In advanced simplified models, researchers...
Wind energy provides an attractive power source as an alternative to fossil fuels because it is abundant, clean, and produces no harmful emissions. To extract more energy from the wind we need to increase the wind turbine size. However, the...
The Knudsen pump works on the principle of thermal transpiration. As a result of requiring a thermal gradient, channel hydraulic diameter smaller than the mean free path of the gas being pumped, and having no moving parts, the Knudsen pump features...
Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) are devices to convert wind energy into electricity. Unlike horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) where the main rotor shaft is set horizontally, VAWTs use vertical rotor shaft. Unlike HAWTs, VAWTs can be...
Blood flow--Measurement; Magnetic resonance imaging
Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) is a progressive atherosclerotic disorder which
is defined as any pathologic process obstructing the blood flow of the arteries supplying
the lower extremities. Moderate stenoses mayor may not be...
Cardiology--Research--Methodology; Microfluidics--Equipment and supplies
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States and accounts for nearly 1,372,000 deaths each year. In addition, ~81 million Americans suffer from some form of CVD. Understanding the molecular basis of various...
The application of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) has captivated the curiosity of today's experts due to the escalating potential in the field of electronic detection of biomolecules. Their extreme environmental sensitivity and small size make them ideal...
Residential buildings account for a large portion of total energy consumption in the United States. Residential energy usage can be dramatically reduced by improving the efficiency of building envelope systems. One such method is to incorporate...
Several technical and economic obstacles currently hamper the industrial development of ethanol from biomass. One of the key bottlenecks is the slow kinetics of the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose, and the subsequent rate reduction as the...
Over the last 15 years, researchers have explored the use of piezoresistive microcantilevers/resonators as gas sensors because of their relative ease in fabrication, low production cost, and their ability to detect changes in mass or surface stress...
This thesis is based on work done as part of a bigger project supported by Naval Research Laboratories (NRL). A MOSIS fabricated micro hotplate is simulated using the CAD software CoventorWare. There are three different sized hotplates in one die;...
No current microfabrication technique exists for producing room-temperature, high-precision, point-to-point polymer nanofibers in three dimensions. Producing rounded structures in a third dimension is particularly difficult to accomplish with...
Orbital shakers are commonly used in the cell culture industry due to their ease of use, but the fluid dynamics of this system have not been extensively modeled as the system is difficult to quantify analytically. It is desirable to understand how...
