Long field-life systems are those for which operational, as opposed to capital, expenditures dominate the life time cost of the system. In established product categories, operational experience and historical maintenance data allows engineers to make informed decisions influencing maintenance during the early design stages when design changes are at their...
Government regulation is an established policy tool for inducing technological innovation in a market. For example, many environmental regulations prescribe performance requirements that industry complies with by innovating aspects of the product design. These design innovations might include updated components, new functionality, or a revised product architecture. However, the effect...
Aperiodic structures cause significant challenges to subtractive manufacturing methods due to the common features such as inaccessible voids within the structure. Additive man- ufacturing presents an appealing alternative for this purpose. The aim of this research is to test analysis heuristics for validity through application to periodic structures. First, a...
Modern engineered systems are increasingly integrated into society, decentralized, and interconnected. However, scale and complexity create unique challenges in system design, such as emergent behavior and unintended consequences. This work investigates the structural characteristics of robustness in complex engineered systems by identifying patterns of under-recognized vulnerabilities at various levels of...
Silicon photonics has become the most promising platform for future large-scale optical interconnect and optical computing systems due to its inherent CMOS compatibility, which brings exclusive advantages in bandwidth density, energy efficiency, and cost effectiveness. Parallel optical interconnects based on photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have the capacity to meet the...
This dissertation focuses on the application of diatom frustules, the biosilica shell of an algae possessing physical and photonic properties capable of enhancing optical signals, for the enhancement of optical sensing. In this work, we incorporate diatom frustules into biosensors for signal enhancement and improved target molecule detection. The potential...
This dissertation focuses on extending the application scope of surface enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy to gas sensing. The method we propose is incorporating plasmonic nanostructures with nano-composite material, metalorganic framework, which can selectively preconcentrate certain gas molecules into the nanopores. The preconcentrating property is first demonstrated by applying metal-organic framework...
With the rapid growth of worldwide internet traffic in data centers and clouds, silicon photonics has been utilized to provide enormous data bandwidth and outstanding energy efficiency over electronics. Computing servers and storage servers that are connected by communication links are relying more on optical rather than electrical means mainly...
To design engineering systems that have improved reliability, it is important to understand what kind of system faults they will be susceptible to. Mitigation strategies are important to ensuring the performance of these engineering systems. Understanding how the modularity of complex engineering systems affects the risk of devastating failures such...
Design is a process of decision making. Organizations that are dedicated to systematic support of the design process tend to have higher profit margins. Further, studies of system development have shown that early-stage design mistakes have a large impact on incurred costs. Therefore, it is critical to identify methods to...