3854 research outputs found
Sort by
Proof of Concept for Durable and Sustainable Small- Scale Energy Production on Native American Reservations
No full textThe Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is the home of the Oglala Lakota people. The reservation covers two of the poorest counties in the United States with an average household income of $8,000 and 89% unemployment rate. Rampant poverty among the Oglala Lakota prevents investments in reliable infrastructure for the community as a whole, and individual poverty prevents families from securing access to electricity from the FEMA housing where they live. The scope of this project is to investigate the concept of small- scale sustainable energy production on the Pine Ridge reservation through assessment of a self-constructed wind turbine to be approachable, affordable, versatile, efficient, and durable. For each of these criteria, a prototype and two retail wind turbines were evaluated and compared to identify the best possible solutions to address the problem of energy reliability.
The landscape and climate on the reservation contributed to pursuing wind energy on the reservation. Investigation of vertical and horizontal axis turbines led to the development of a working prototype. The prototype, a homemade vertical axis wind turbine, was constructed from scrap and locally available materials to similar size and specifications as two retail turbines. In order to evaluate the prototype, an experiment was developed with the use of a testing rig built onto a farm wagon. The testing apparatus featured an anemometer capable of measuring wind and gust speed, and the rig was designed to elevate, orient, and measure the output of three turbines. A test conducted by measuring voltage and current output from each turbine determined the plausibility of small wind turbines to produce power. The experiment disproved the reported manufacturer energy output for the retail wind turbines and established the horizontal axis turbine style as more efficient than vertical axis type turbines. The constructed vertical axis prototype had a comparable output to the retail VAWT, both with a lower variation and magnitude when compared to the HAWT.
Affordability for a home-built wind turbine was evaluated by directly comparing the cost of retail turbines compared to the cost of materials needed to build a turbine from scrap. Subjective comparisons for Durability, Approachability, and Versatility were conducted between the retail and prototype turbines using weighted tables. The result confirmed that wind turbines are a plausible, scalable solution to energy reliability and could be produced using simple fabrication and assembly methods
2/10/2021: Course Change Form IME 412
No full textThis course is being updated to include topics on intelligent manufacturing, AI, and other Industry 4.0 concepts
2/17/2021: Course Change Form CS 425/625
No full textThe field of parallel programming has changed dramatically over the last decade. Parallel processing used to be dedicated to the fields of high performance computing and super computers. Today parallel processing is ubiquitous. It is in everything from cell phones, graphics processors for gaming, and machine learning. This course change addresses the new elements of the field and also provides a graduate course to be used for electives in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science and Engineering related MS programs
2/17/2021: Course Change Form CS 651
No full textThe change or pre-req from CS 641 Foundations in Data Science to CS 601 Programing Methods for Data Science or BS in CS or Equivalent recognizes that the real content needed for 651 is strong programming skills, rather than the knowledge in 641. The new pre-req parallels the pre-req for the undergraduate version CS 351 which has CS 102 as its pre-req
1/1/2021: Course Change Form BUSN 331
No full textThe change in the prerequisite for the Financial Management (BUSN-331) course will require students to take Financial Accounting (BUSN-221). Given that the Financial Accounting is a required course for the Business Minor and the course prepares students of understand the language of business, replacement of Managerial Accounting with Financial Accounting will better prepare students to manage any organization