Master of Science / Department of Architectural Engineering / Kimberly Waggle Kramer / Main lateral force resisting systems (MLFRS) in timber buildings consist of two components: diaphragms and shear walls. Diaphragms are used to collect the shear induced by the lateral force at each of the levels. The shear is transferred from the diaphragms to the shear walls via plywood sheathing and connections. The shear walls transfer shear to the sill plate via plywood sheathing and then into the foundation via anchors. Two approaches for designing shear wall are: the segmented shear wall approach and the perforated shear wall approach. The segmented shear wall approach uses only full height segments to resist shear; each individual segment must be designed to resist the shear and overturning force induced by the lateral load. The perforated shear wall approach uses both full height segments and segments around openings to resist shear; the wall as a whole is used to resist shear and overturning forces induced by the lateral load. This report examines one-, two-, and three-story timber buildings located in three different wind regions: a) 115 mph, b) 140 mph, and c) 160 mph. This report presents the design process for the MLFRS components and a comparison of the designs for each of the buildings. The purpose of this report is to determine how the design changes depending on the magnitude of the lateral load, the height of the building, and the approach used to design the shear walls.

Master of Science / Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering / Naiqian Zhang / Permittivity, displayed when a dielectric material is exposed to an electric field, is a useful property for measuring impurities in a dielectric medium. These impurities often have a dipole moment different from the pure material, and the dipoles align through polarization and impede electric current. By measuring the resulting impedance in a known geometry, the permittivity can be determined. Four permittivity sensors were utilized to measure contaminants that are associated with biofuels, specifically glycerol, ethanol, and ammonia. These sensors were based around either stainless steel or aluminum plates to ensure durability and reliability. By connecting each of these sensors to a signal generating control box, the gain and phase can be measured at 609 frequencies, from 10 kHz up to 120 MHz. Data from each of the three contaminants were run through a method for detection. Measurements for ambient air and air with the contaminants were compared with a statistical analysis. Glycerol, ethanol, and ammonia each had significantly different measurements in the gain and phase data at a unique set of frequencies. Using a neural network analysis for detection resulted in a 95.8%, 93.9%, and 97.1% success rate for detecting glycerol, ethanol, and ammonia, respectively. For ethanol and ammonia, where multiple concentrations were measured, regression methods were used to relate the frequency response data to the contaminant concentration. Stepwise regression, wavelet transformation followed by stepwise regression, partial least squares regression, and neural network regression were the four methods used to establish these relationships. Several regressions over-fit the data, showing coefficient of determination (R[superscript]2) values of 1.000 for training data, yet very low R[superscript]2 values for validation data. However, the best R[superscript]2 values of all the regressions were 1.000 and 0.996 for the training and validation data, respectively, from measuring ammonia.

Master of Science / Department of Civil Engineering / Hayder A. Rasheed / Fiber reinforced polymer has recently become a popular replacement for steel rebar, used to reinforce concrete. Therefore much research is taking place to help develop and propose methods for best approximating the response of FRP reinforced members, to make them comparable to steel reinforced members. With this popularity comes multiple approaches to FRP deflection calculations. However, this study is significant, because it investigates the cracking moment equation adopted by ACI 318, in conjunction with state of the art deflection calculation methods. Specifically this research compares four deflection calculation methods. The first approach is proposed by Bischoff and implemented by ACI 440 in its latest revision. The second deflection calculation method is proposed by Rasheed et al. The third calculation is also suggested by Bischoff, as it is specific to four point bending. The fourth calculation method is proposed by this specific research and seeks to find a median between both the Bischoff and Rasheed equations. This fourth technique will be referred to as the Rasheed-Jacobs method, proposed to create a more conservative and relevant method for investigating the effect of cracking moment on the deflection calculations. This research was done with the help of Dr. Shawn Gross, and the database he had previously built through his investigation on FRP reinforced beams. Gross’s database shows results for 106 samples tested using the actual experimental cracking moment as well as the ultimate moment capacity values. Of these 106 samples, 56 independent samples were used to investigate three different moment levels of 0.333Mn, 0.400Mn, and 0.467Mn. From this research, Gross’s database was used to calculate the cracking moment of FRP reinforced beams based on ACI 318-08. A program was developed that uses the Gross database samples to calculate the cracking moment and deflection with the Rasheed, Bischoff, and Bischoff2 models as well as the new Rasheed-Jacobs model. This program calculates the Rasheed-Jacobs results, and then graphs the findings against the deflection values from the Rasheed, Bischoff, Bischoff2 models. These graphs showed very similar patterns amongst all four models, with the Rasheed-Jacobs results mainly falling on the more conservative side. However, when looking at the predicted deflection verse the Gross experimental deflection, the best results came from the 0.467Mn moment level, which shows consistent correlation while the lower moment levels are being less predictable using the cracking moment based on the ACI equation. It can reasonably be said that the 0.467Mn shows the best correlation between the four methods and the experimental results, because it is farther away from the actual nominal cracking moment of the FRP reinforced concrete beams.

Multijunction solar cells made from a combination of CQDs of differing sizes and thus bandgaps are a promising means by which to increase the energy harvested from the Sun’s broad spectrum. In this dissertation, we first report the systematic engineering of 1.6 eV PbS CQD solar cells, optimal as the front cell responsible for visible wavelength harvesting in tandem photovoltaics. We rationally optimize each of the device’s collecting electrodes—the heterointerface with electron accepting TiO2 and the deep-work-function hole-collecting MoO3 for ohmic contact—for maximum efficiency. Room-temperature processing enables flexible substrates, and permits tandem solar cells that integrate a small-bandgap back cell atop a low thermal-budget larger-bandgap front cell. We report an electrode strategy that enables a depleted heterojunction CQD PV device to be fabricated entirely at room temperature. We develop a two-layer donor-supply electrode (DSE) in which a highly doped, shallow work function layer supplies a high density of free electrons to an ultrathin TiO2 layer via charge-transfer doping. Using the DSE we build all-room-temperature-processed small-bandgap (1 eV) colloidal quantum dot solar cells suitable for use as the back junction in tandem solar cells. We further report in this work the first efficient CQD tandem solar cells. We use a graded recombination layer (GRL) to provide a progression of work functions from the hole-accepting electrode in the bottom cell to the electron-accepting electrode in the top cell. The recombination layers must allow the hole current from one cell to recombine, with high efficiency and low voltage loss, with the electron current from the next cell. We conclude our dissertation by presenting the generalized conditions for design of efficient graded recombination layer solar devices. We demonstrate a family of new GRL designs experimentally and highlight the benefits of the progression of dopings and work functions in the interlayers.

The three wave mixing process was modeled in GaAs:AlGaAs superlattices using two new modeling tools that were developed in the course of this work: A 2D beam propagation tool for optimizing quasi-phase matching gratings, and a 1D iterative beam propagation tool for determining the output powers and threshold of optical parametric oscillators of arbitrary geometries. The 2D tool predicts close to 80% enhancement of conversion e ciency by phase matching near 800 nm compared to 775 nm, which was the originally designed operation wavelength. The model also predicts resonant behaviour for an abrupt grating pro le. The 1D tool was used to determine the threshold conditions for para- metric oscillation for di erent geometries. The performances of di erent phase matching approaches in AlGaAs were quantitatively compared. The model also indicated the need for pulsed operation to achieve reasonably low threshold powers in AlGaAs waveguides.

The three wave mixing process was modeled in GaAs:AlGaAs superlattices using two new modeling tools that were developed in the course of this work: A 2D beam propagation tool for optimizing quasi-phase matching gratings, and a 1D iterative beam propagation tool for determining the output powers and threshold of optical parametric oscillators of arbitrary geometries. The 2D tool predicts close to 80% enhancement of conversion e ciency by phase matching near 800 nm compared to 775 nm, which was the originally designed operation wavelength. The model also predicts resonant behaviour for an abrupt grating pro le. The 1D tool was used to determine the threshold conditions for para- metric oscillation for di erent geometries. The performances of di erent phase matching approaches in AlGaAs were quantitatively compared. The model also indicated the need for pulsed operation to achieve reasonably low threshold powers in AlGaAs waveguides.

Die-stacking is a new technology that allows multiple integrated circuits to be stacked on top of each other while connected with a high-bandwidth and high-speed interconnect. In particular, die-stacking can be useful in boosting the effective bandwidth and speed of DRAM systems. Die-stacked DRAM caches have recently emerged as one of the top applications of die-stacking. They provide higher capacity than their SRAM counterparts and are faster than offchip DRAMs. In addition, DRAM caches can provide almost eight times the bandwidth of off-chip DRAMs. They, however, come with their own challenges. Since they are only twice as fast as main memory, they considerably increase latency for misses and incur significant energy overhead for remote lookups in snoop-based multi-socket systems. In this thesis, we present a Dual-Grain Filter for avoiding unnecessary accesses to the DRAM cache at reduced hardware cost and we compare it to recent works on die-stacked DRAM caches.

Die-stacking is a new technology that allows multiple integrated circuits to be stacked on top of each other while connected with a high-bandwidth and high-speed interconnect. In particular, die-stacking can be useful in boosting the effective bandwidth and speed of DRAM systems. Die-stacked DRAM caches have recently emerged as one of the top applications of die-stacking. They provide higher capacity than their SRAM counterparts and are faster than offchip DRAMs. In addition, DRAM caches can provide almost eight times the bandwidth of off-chip DRAMs. They, however, come with their own challenges. Since they are only twice as fast as main memory, they considerably increase latency for misses and incur significant energy overhead for remote lookups in snoop-based multi-socket systems. In this thesis, we present a Dual-Grain Filter for avoiding unnecessary accesses to the DRAM cache at reduced hardware cost and we compare it to recent works on die-stacked DRAM caches.

Recovery is a time-consuming and computationally expensive operation. If an attacker can affect heavily-shared objects on the machine, then many other processes and files can be compromised from accessing them. This would greatly increase the recovery effort. Since intrusions start with a network connection, we argue that the integrity of heavily-shared objects should be protected from the network, in order to minimize the recovery effort. We discuss our prototype Rosie, which is designed with incident response and post-intrusion recovery in mind. Rosie predicts how heavily-shared each file or process is, based on the previous system activities observed. Rosie enforces appropriate mandatory access control and uses techniques such as sandboxing, in order to protect heavily-shared objects’ integrity. Rosie provides an important recovery guarantee that the maximum number of files need to be recovered is at most equal to the dependency threshold, a value that can be adjusted by a system administrator.

Multijunction solar cells made from a combination of CQDs of differing sizes and thus bandgaps are a promising means by which to increase the energy harvested from the Sun’s broad spectrum. In this dissertation, we first report the systematic engineering of 1.6 eV PbS CQD solar cells, optimal as the front cell responsible for visible wavelength harvesting in tandem photovoltaics. We rationally optimize each of the device’s collecting electrodes—the heterointerface with electron accepting TiO2 and the deep-work-function hole-collecting MoO3 for ohmic contact—for maximum efficiency. Room-temperature processing enables flexible substrates, and permits tandem solar cells that integrate a small-bandgap back cell atop a low thermal-budget larger-bandgap front cell. We report an electrode strategy that enables a depleted heterojunction CQD PV device to be fabricated entirely at room temperature. We develop a two-layer donor-supply electrode (DSE) in which a highly doped, shallow work function layer supplies a high density of free electrons to an ultrathin TiO2 layer via charge-transfer doping. Using the DSE we build all-room-temperature-processed small-bandgap (1 eV) colloidal quantum dot solar cells suitable for use as the back junction in tandem solar cells. We further report in this work the first efficient CQD tandem solar cells. We use a graded recombination layer (GRL) to provide a progression of work functions from the hole-accepting electrode in the bottom cell to the electron-accepting electrode in the top cell. The recombination layers must allow the hole current from one cell to recombine, with high efficiency and low voltage loss, with the electron current from the next cell. We conclude our dissertation by presenting the generalized conditions for design of efficient graded recombination layer solar devices. We demonstrate a family of new GRL designs experimentally and highlight the benefits of the progression of dopings and work functions in the interlayers.