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Aug22
Mechanical Engineering MS Thesis Defense by Mr. Adeel Ahmed
Mechanical Engineering MS Thesis Defense by Mr. Adeel Ahmed DATE: August 22, 2018 TIME: 2:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. LOCATION: Textile Building, Room 101E TOPIC: Computational Fluid Dynamics of Vertical Axis Hydrokinetic Turbine with Sinusoidal Leading-Edge Blades ABSTRACT: Among the various devices developed to extract energy from tidal and wind energies, the vertical-axis turbines (VATs) and horizontal-axis turbines (HATs) are one of the dominant technologies. In addition, VATs are considered advantageous over HATs in certain regions, for example, canals and estuaries. While the blade section of VATs continues to command considerable research for turbine efficiency, the humpback whale tubercles have also been explored recently as one of the means to enhance the lift-to-drag ratio using wavy leading-edge blades. Published work on static airfoils and VATs yield mixed results, which are favorable or adverse, depending on flow conditions, airfoil shape and leading-edge waviness, and VAT solidity and tip-speed ratio (TSR). In this research, the effect of sinusoidal leading-edge blades on turbine performance is explored numerically using an ultra-high solidity (36.67%) hydrokinetic VAT whose blade section is comprised of a cambered NACA 633-018 airfoil. The study focuses on VAT performance characterization as a function of TSR, amplitude and wavelength of leading-edge blade. To this aim, COMSOL Multiphysics solver is used as a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package to model the flow through a VAT with either straight or sinusoidal blades. The CFD model is based on single-phase and incompressible fluid, unsteady flow, segregated, implicit and second-order scheme in time and space, along with the turbulence model. The turbulent model, meshing scheme, mesh independence, and boundary conditions are evaluated collectively by validating numerical results of VAT coefficient of performance with experimental data using a two-dimensional configuration. The numerical study of straight leading-edge blade is extended in three dimensions, with appropriate boundary conditions, and validated experimentally. It also sets the stage for three-dimensional numerical simulation of a VAT whose leading-edge blades are sinusoidal, over a wide range of wavelengths and amplitudes. The results show that at the same TSR, the VAT's coefficient of performance with a wavy-edge blade dropped by approximately 40% in comparison to a VAT with straight-edge blade. KEYWORD: Sinusoidal leading edge; Vertical axis turbine; NACA 633-018; COMSOL Multiphysics; Meshing schemes; Turbulent models; Frozen rotor. ADVISOR: Dr. Raymond Laoulache, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Interim Associate Dean, College of Engineering, UMass Dartmouth COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Dr. Amit Tandon, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UMass Dartmouth Dr. Geoffrey W. Cowles, Associate Professor, Department of Fisheries Oceanography / SMAST, UMass Dartmouth Open to the public. All MNE students are encouraged to attend. For more information, please contact Dr. Raymond Laoulache (rlaoulache@umassd.edu, 508-999-8540). Thank you, Sue Cunha, Administrative Assistant scunha@umassd.edu 508-999-8492
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Aug27
Oral Comprehensive Exam for Doctoral Candidacy By: Patrick R. DaSilva
Topic: EMBEDDED SYSTEMS SECURITY Location: Lester W. Cory Conference Room, Science & Engineering Building (SENG), Room 213A ABSTRACT: The ubiquitous presence of embedded devices coupled with their low processing power and finite energy creates unique challenges in the security of embedded systems. The saying “you're only as strong as your weakest link†is no exception to embedded systems. Critical infrastructures such as Manufacturing and Energy are only as secure as their most vulnerable component and currently that's the embedded system. Embedded systems don't require human interaction and often run without any human feedback. Operating in such a fashion dictates the need for trustworthy execution of embedded system functions. Embedded Systems Security is an offset of Computer and Network Security, but given the unique application and computing requirements of embedded systems, traditional solutions aren't able to provide relief from cyber attacks targeted at embedded devices. Software attacks targeted at exploiting software vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflow, cause violations in the control flow of an executing embedded program. Software based control flow integrity solutions are available for embedded processors, but come with a run-time overhead inconducive to a real-time environment. Hardware-based control flow violation detectors have been researched and tested, but still lack the means to recover from control flow attacks and provide meaningful data for post cyber-incident analysis. Proposed is a hardware-based system on a chip (SoC) solution to protect low end embedded processors from control flow attacks. The solution provides a new and novel end to end protection combination of detection, response, recovery, and tamper evident techniques against control flow violations. Implementation, validation, and testing will be carried out with a modified open source AVR Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) soft-core on a Xilinx 7 series Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). With a focus on real-time response, area overhead will be calculated for different levels of protection provided to the AVR core to aid future users in design trade-off decisions. NOTE: All ECE Graduate Students are ENCOURAGED to attend. All interested parties are invited to attend. Open to the public. Advisor: Dr. Paul J. Fortier Committee Members: Dr. Hong Liu and Dr. Honggang Wang, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMass Dartmouth; Dr. Benjamin R. Viall, Visiting Lecturer, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMass Dartmouth; Dr. Joseph R. Gabriel, Department Chief Engineer, Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) *For further information, please contact Dr. Paul J. Fortier at 508.999.8544, or via email at pfortier@umassd.edu.
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Aug27
Mechanical Engineering MS Thesis Defense by Mr. Aakash M. Sathe
Mechanical Engineering MS Thesis Defense by Mr. Aakash M. Sathe DATE: August 27, 2018 TIME: 2:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. LOCATION: Textile Building, Room 101E TOPIC: Optimizing Basal Insulin Delivery Using Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm and PID Control of Artificial Pancreas ABSTRACT: With a rise in the number of patients being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, there is a pressing need to develop insulin therapies to treat this chronic disease. Studies have shown that failure to maintain blood glucose levels can have long term negative consequences on a person's health. Extensive research aimed at designing controllers and optimizing insulin delivery methods has been conducted. With the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approving the use of simulation models for in-silico trials, efforts are being made to develop models that can describe the insulin-glucose dynamics effectively. The majority of Type I Diabetes patients rely on insulin pumps that have proven to be very efficient in the treatment of diabetes. However, these devices still involve some degree of human intervention making them prone to errors. This research proposes the use of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the basal insulin delivery and a PID controller to maintain glucose levels within acceptable limits for patients suffering from Type 1 Diabetes. The goal of the algorithm and the controller proposed in this research is to mimic the function of a pancreas in achieving ideal glucose profile. The PSO algorithm is designed to account for variations in the physiological parameters of patients. The PID controlled closed loop system is subjected to a series of robustness tests to evaluate its effectiveness in the face of external disturbances. The gains of the PID controller are tuned using the optimization algorithm and its performance is compared with that of a manually tuned controller. Simulation results show that the PSO algorithm is effective in optimizing insulin delivery and a properly tuned PID controller can be used to correct variations of glucose profile resulting from external disturbances. It is suggested that a PSO optimized basal insulin delivery profile couple with PID controlled corrective bolus input can result in effective treatment of Type 1 Diabetes. ADVISOR: Dr. Tesfay Meressi, Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, UMass Dartmouth COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Dr. Wenzhen Huang, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, UMass Dartmouth Dr. Soheil Sibdari, Associate Professor, Decision & Information Sciences, UMass Dartmouth Open to the public. All MNE students are encouraged to attend. For more information, please contact Dr. Tesfay Meressi (tmeressi@umassd.edu, 508-999-8542) Thank you, Sue Cunha, Administrative Assistant Mechanical Engineering Department scunha@umassd.edu 508-999-8492
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Aug31
ORAL COMPREHENSIVE EXAM FOR DOCTORAL CANDIDACY BY: Guilin Zhao
TOPIC: COMPETING FAILURE AND PROPAGATION TIME ANALYSIS FOR DYNAMIC INTERNET OF THINGS SYSTEMS LOCATION: Lester W. Cory Conference Room, Science & Engineering Building (SENG), Room 213A ABSTRACT: The Internet of Things (IoT) has developed rapidly with the aim to improve the quality of modern life. Despite its considerable benefits, the IoT poses many design challenges among which assessing the reliability of an IoT system is critical for assuring the success rate of IoT service delivery. As a cyber-physical system consisting of both physical and communication subsystems, an IoT system exhibit various dependent and dynamic behaviors that complicate its reliability modeling and analysis significantly. In particular, functional dependence (FDEP) exists in the IoT system, where the failure of one component (trigger) causes other components (dependent components) to become isolated (inaccessible or unusable). If such an isolation effect takes place with a certain probability, it is called the probabilistic functional dependence (PDEP) behavior. The FDEP or PDEP behavior can cause deterministic or probabilistic competitions in the time domain between failure isolation and failure propagation effects, making system reliability analysis challenging. Existing works addressing such competing failure effects mostly assume that any failure propagation originating from a component instantaneously takes effect, which is often not true in real-world scenarios. Moreover, the existing works have assumed non-cascading FDEP/PDEP, where each system component can be a trigger or a dependent component, but not both. However, in practical systems with hierarchical configurations, cascading FDEP/PDEP can take place where a component can play a dual role as both a trigger and a dependent component simultaneously. Such a component causes correlations among different FDEP/PDEP groups, further complicating the IoT system reliability analysis. Besides competing failures with random propagation time and cascading effects, phased-mission and standby sparing behaviors are also modeled. Combinatorial methodologies are proposed for the reliability analysis of IoT systems subject to those complex behaviors. The suggested methodologies are flexible without limitation on distribution types of component lifetime, failure propagation time, or failure isolation factors. Case studies on smart home systems are presented to demonstrate applications of the proposed methods and effects of different parameters on the reliability of IoT systems. NOTE: All ECE Graduate Students are ENCOURAGED to attend. All interested parties are invited to attend. Open to the public. Advisor: Dr. Liudong Xing Committee Members: Dr. Lance Fiondella and Dr. Honggang Wang, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMass Dartmouth; Dr. Suprasad Amari, Senior Principal Engineer, BAE Systems *For further information, please contact Dr. Liudong Xing at 508.999.8883, or via email at lxing@umassd.edu.
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Sep1
Academic year commences
The academic year begins.
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Sep4
Convocation
Convocation is a ceremony that celebrates the beginning of the academic year and welcomes our new students to campus.
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Sep4
ECE Master of Science Thesis Defense By: Joseph Michael Collins
Topic: Environmental Monitoring Of Harmful Agrochemicals Via Future Microelectromechanical (Mems) Fabrication Location: Lester W. Cory Conference Room, Science & Engineering Building (SENG), Room 213A Abstract: Harmful agrochemicals are exterminating ecosystems. Beekeepers across the United States lost forty-four percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning April 2015 to April 2016, according to the latest preliminary results of an annual nationwide survey [1]. Fertilizers, pesticides, and feed supplements widely used within commercial agriculture are under investigation. Honey bees are being exposed to high levels of pesticides used in crops. Organophosphates are among the most toxic pesticides to bees and have been persistently causing paralysis and death. Pesticides are absorbed and transported throughout plants during pollination causing chronic exposure of sub lethal doses. Monitoring and reporting pesticides in the environment will provide insight in protecting its inhabitants. Fabrication of microelectromechanical devices (MEMS) are the solution; composed of microfabricated mechanical and electrical parts. MEMS devices are ideal due to their micro footprint and enhanced performance on a miniature scale. Research and detection systems in this thesis provide the backbone for future MEMS, chemical analysis, and monitoring solutions for the declining fatality rate of insects due to these chemicals, specifically honey bees. Note: All ECE Graduate Students are ENCOURAGED to attend. All interested parties are invited to attend. Open to the public. Advisor: Paul J. Fortier Committee Members: Dr. Hong Liu, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering; and Dr. Qinguo Fan, Department of Bioengineering *For further information, please contact Dr. Paul J. Fortier at 508.999.8544, or via email at pfortier@umassd.edu.
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Sep5
First Day of Classes
Fall 2017 classes begin today.
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Sep12
Last day to Add, Drop, or Audit
Today is the last day to add/drop a class. Today is the last day to audit a class. Students taking online or continuing education courses please consult the University Extension withdrawal and refund policy. http://www.umassd.edu/extension/tuitionandfees/withdrawalandrefundpolicy/
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Oct8
Columbus Day Holiday - no classes
Columbus Day, no classes today.
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Oct9
Last day to file Pass/Fail
Today is the last day to file Pass/Fail.
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Oct10
Follow Monday's class schedule
Follow Monday's schedule.
