Leonard M. Lye

Memorial University of Newfoundland · Department of Civil Engineering

This paper describes the development of a Fuel Cell (FC) system model, which incorporates an optimization approach based on statistical Design of Experiment (DoE) methodology. DoE provides a very efficient method to obtain a model for the studied multivariable FC system. The optimization process, as well as an empirical parametric model, is present...

This book provides 64 case studies from over 55 journals covering the major topics of DOE.

Asphalt binder research papers characterized by X-ray diffraction are reviewed. The Xray results reveal the aromaticity and crystallite size parameters of asphaltene in asphalt binders as reported in the research literature. The research data is discussed in terms of asphalt molecular structure on a length scale, methodology, and petroleum oil fiel...

Oil fingerprinting is a crucial technology to trace the sources and behaviors of spilled oil. The use of dispersants enhances the stay of dispersed oil in a water column and changes the important properties of spilled oil. In case of fingerprinting of dispersed oil driven by dispersants, the fate and behaviors of biomarkers may be affected by the a...

Cobalt (Co) adsorption onto saline soil was investigated in this study. The effect of pH, interaction time, and initial concentration of Co on adsorption were evaluated empirically to screen the appropriate operating conditions. Three biosurfactant products (i.e., surfactin, trehalose lipids, rhamnolipid) each at two concentrations (1 and 2 critica...

This study evaluated the applicability of eight types of biomarkers namely, adamantanes, diamantanes, sesquiterpanes, steranes, terpanes, TA-steranes, MA-steranes, and alkylated PAHs, to characterize chemically dispersed oil (CDO) after the 60-day weathering. The stability of diagnostic ratios of the selected biomarkers was evaluated and summarized...

–Graduate engineering programs at Memorial University’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science are not accredited and as such there is no information available on non-technical professional skills development. These skills are essential for successful entry into the Canadian engineering community. To assess the current graduate program, an asse...

Penman's equation for the estimation of evaporation from measured climatic variables is the most well-known and considered to be the most accurate method for open water evaporation. It is based on a weighted combination of evaporation estimated using energy balance and aerodynamic methods. However, usage of Penman's equation is not straightforward....

The feasibility of using enzyme activities for indicating the state of marine fish waste composting was examined in this study and the evolution of the composting process for a 60 days period was evaluated. Results indicated that stable and mature fish waste compost has been generated. During the composting process, oxidoreductase enzyme (dehydroge...

To understand the water balance and other environmental impacts under climate change condition, hydrological models are used to simulate the hydrological cycle and predict future scenarios by using general circulation models (GCMs) outputs. Due to the mismatch of the spatial resolution, different downscaling techniques are usually applied to GCMs o...

A design of experiment (DOE) based methodology was adopted in this study to investigate the effects of multiple factors and their interactions on the performance of a municipal solid waste (MSW) composting process. The impact of four factors, carbon/nitrogen ratio (C/N), moisture content (MC), type of bulking agent (BA) and aeration rate (AR) on th...

Time series data such as monthly stream flows can be modelled using time series methods and then used to simulate or forecast flows for short term planning. Two methods of time series modelling were reviewed and compared: the well-known auto regressive moving average (ARMA) method and the state-space time-series (SSTS) method. ARMA has been used in...

The L-moments based index flood method was successfully applied to regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) for the Island of Newfoundland in 2001 using data up to 1998. This paper, however, considered both Labrador and the Island of Newfoundland using the L-Moments index-flood method with flood data up to 2013. For Labrador, homogeneity test showe...

The Arctic is a recent focal point of the marine and offshore industries. Winterization is required for safe and efficient operations in these harsh cold environments. A riskbased approach to winterization was recently proposed to provide a quantitative way of determining the need for winterization and its appropriate level. To further validate and...

The Arctic is a recent focal point of the marine and offshore industries. Winterization is required for safe and efficient operations in these harsh cold environments. A riskbased approach to winterization was recently proposed to provide a quantitative way of determining the need for winterization and its appropriate level. To further validate and...

The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FEAS) at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) offer 17 unique programs to over 500 graduate students. In addition to providing financial support, office space, courses, and supervision to students, FEAS has developed an interconnected series of programs, seminars, and workshops to help graduate s...

Graduate student teaching assistant (TA) training is a one-day intensive program at Memorial University’s Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science that introduces new graduate students to the roles and responsibilities of being an effective TA. This program uses online tools, case studies and theory discussions to orient new TA's to teaching and...

Teaching the design and analysis of multi-factored experiments to engineers is not an easy task and any help that makes the process of teaching and learning those skills in a way that is hands-on, engaging, and memorable is always welcomed. In this paper, iPhone/iPad apps for simulating multi-factor processes that have been developed specifically f...

Rare events often result in large impacts and are hard to predict. Risk analysis of such events is a challenging task because there are few directly relevant data to form a basis for probabilistic risk assessment. Due to the scarcity of data, the probability estimation of a rare event often uses precursor data. Precursor-based methods have been wid...

Further to the studies presented by Sayeed et al. (OMAE2014-23489), response surface models have been improved by including the effects of sinkage and trim to the vertical plane motions of planing hull in head sea. This was achieved by including longitudinal center of gravity (LCG) as an additional factor to the existing model and change in LCG eve...

The Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FEAS) at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) offer 17 unique programs to over 500 graduate students. In addition to providing financial support, office space, courses, and supervision to students, FEAS has developed an interconnected series of programs, seminars, and workshops to help graduate s...

The Arctic is a recent focal point of the marine and offshore industries. Winterization is required for safe and efficient operations in these harsh cold environments. A risk‐based approach to winterization was recently proposed to provide a quantitative way of determining the need for winterization and its appropriate level. To further validate an...

A detailed study of the sorption of Ni2+ and Co2+ from simulated wastewater on saprist peat is presented. The significantly decomposed peat possessed a strong sorptive capacity that was maintained over a wide range of pH. With a metal concentration range of 50 to 200 mg/L, pH range of 3 to 10, peat dose of 2 to 40 g/L, and contact time of 12 to 24...

Background Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) has one of the highest waste disposal rates in Canada and it has 200 small communities without access to central composting facilities. During Municipal solid waste (MSW) composting, the selection of bulking agents is critical. Bench-scale composting systems plus locally available bulking agents are thus de...

The demand for oil and gas worldwide has generated increasing interest in the exploration and development of hydrocarbon basins in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. Natural conditions of these regions, e.g., extremely low temperature and ice, may add extra challenges to offshore oil and gas (OOG) operations. Traffic in ice-infested waters may expo...

Over the past eight decades the ice-infested Northern Sea Route (NSR) has been steadily developed although historically it has been of little interest to commercial shipping companies. However, the shorter routes, more open waters, and the increasing demand for shipping have caused shipping companies to reconsider shipping along these routes. The N...

Time series data such as monthly stream flows can be modelled using time series methods and then used to forecast flows for short term planning. Two methods of time series modelling were reviewed and compared; the well-known autoregressive moving average (ARMA) method and the State-Space Time-Series (SSTS) method. ARMA has been used in hydrology to...

Both short-and long-term dependence of the peak flow series of 90 Canadian rivers were analyzed two decades ago. It showed that although short-term dependence was practically absent for most of the flow series, significant long-term dependence was present for a large number of rivers tested. With 20 or more years of additional data available today,...

Teaching the design and analysis of multi-factored experiments to engineers is not an easy task and any help that makes the process of teaching and learning those skills in a way that is hands-on, engaging, and memorable is always welcomed. In this paper, iPhone/iPad apps for simulating multi-factor processes that have been developed specifically f...

A non-linear mathematical model, Planing Hull Motion Program (PHMP) has been developed based on strip theory to predict the heave and pitch motions of planing hull at high speed in head seas. PHMP has been validated against published model test data. For various combinations of design parameters, PHMP can predict the heave and pitch motions and bow...

A non-linear mathematical model, Planing Hull Motion Program (PHMP) has been developed based on strip theory to predict the heave and pitch motions of planing hull at high speed in head seas. PHMP has been validated against published model test data. For various combinations of design parameters, PHMP can predict the heave and pitch motions and bow...

Understanding the persistence in land surface processes, such as that in the deep subsurface moisture storage, has great implications for seasonal weather prediction over a drainage basin. The Canadian Prairies is a region of intense and recurrent drought outbreaks with myriad negative impacts on the regional ecosystem as well as on all sectors of...

Because the oil and gas industry has an increasing interest in the hydrocarbon exploration and development in the Arctic regions, it becomes important to design exploration and production facilities that suit the cold and harsh operating conditions. In addition to well-established minimum class requirements for hull strengthening, winterization sho...

As the oil and gas industry has an increasing interest in the hydrocarbon exploration and development in the Arctic regions, it becomes important to design exploration and production facilities that suit the cold and harsh operating conditions. In addition to well-established minimum class requirements for hull strengthening, winterization should b...

Because the oil and gas industry has an increasing interest in the hydrocarbon exploration and development in the Arctic regions, it becomes important to design exploration and production facilities that suit the cold and harsh operating conditions. In addition to well-established minimum class requirements for hull strengthening, winterization sho...

Due to a scarcity of data, the estimate of the frequency of a rare event is a consistently challenging problem in probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). However, the use of precursor data has been shown to help in obtaining more accurate estimates. Moreover, the use of hyper-priors to represent prior parameters in the hierarchical Bayesian approach (...

Traditional concrete mixture proportioning methods, which are usually based on a trial and error process, do not objectively provide the best setting of components to meet several performance criteria, simultaneously. Furthermore, the methods do not provide a mean to obtain prediction equations for the various performance criteria which can be subs...

A flow duration curve (FDC) has been described as one of the most informative methods of displaying the complete range of river discharges from low flows to flood events. It displays the percentage (probability) of time streamflow is exceeded. This paper presents a method to estimate FDCs for ungauged catchments in the province of Newfoundland and...

In a water distribution network, it is essential to maintain the desirable nodal pressures at various points in the network. Maximum and minimum nodal pressures in the network are considered as two of the most important design criteria in water distribution modelling. These two criteria mainly depend on the pump generated head or reservoir height i...

In this paper regression models are developed for predicting water temperature and the concentration of dissolved oxygen in rivers monitored by the Newfoundland and Labrador Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring (RTWQM) network. The developed models can be used to predict mean, maximum and minimum water temperatures and dissolved oxygen at the monthly...

Traditional concrete mixture proportioning methods, which are usually based on a trial and error process, do not objectively provide the best setting of components to meet several performance criteria, simultaneously. Furthermore, the methods do not provide means to obtain prediction equations for the various performance criteria which can be subse...

A flow duration curve (FDC) has been described as one of the most informative methods of displaying the complete range of river discharges from low flows to flood events. It displays the percentage (probability) of time streamflow is exceeded. This paper presents a method to estimate FDCs for ungauged catchments in the province of Newfoundland and...

Recent IACS Polar Rules have been shifted to limit state design and contain plastic limit state capacity for single frame under uniform loading and symmetric longitudinal boundary conditions (assuming that all frames behave similarly). However, in case of ice loading (which is non-symmetric), symmetric boundary condition does not accurately represe...

Starting 2014, engineering programs in Canada will be evaluated by CEAB based on twelve Graduate Attributes and institutions must demonstrate that their graduates possess these attributes at the time of graduation. One of these attributes is “Investigations” which is defined by CEAB as “an ability to conduct investigations of complex problems by me...

Starting 2014, engineering programs in Canada will be evaluated by CEAB based on twelve Graduate Attributes and institutions must demonstrate that their graduates possess these attributes at the time of graduation. One of these attributes is "Investigations" which is defined by CEAB as "an ability to conduct investigations of complex problems by me...

In the development of a subsea well, one key phase is the lowering of the Xmas tree (XT) from a semi-submersible drill rig to the wellhead on the seafloor. A typical operation involves multiple steps and finite element analysis (FEA) is widely used to model and analyze the operation. The results would help to determine acceptable weather windows. C...

Kinematic synthesis of a parallel manipulator refers to the systematic determination of the optimum geometry that maximizes a set of kinematic performance characteristics. Essentially, this is an optimization problem where the objective function is composed of certain kinematic performance metrics that encapsulate specific requirements. Additional...

To provide a better understanding of the water balance in the Deer River watershed of the Hudson Bay lowlands, the Semi-distributed Land Use-based Runoff Process hydrological model was applied to simulate the runoff over a 20 year period. The purpose of this study is to develop an approach to examine the sensitivity of the ten parameters and their...

General Circulation Models (GCMs) are commonly used to simulate future climate conditions in climate change studies. However the resolution from these models is too coarse for river basin scale studies. As such the results from these models need to be downscaled appropriately for use at the basin scale. Well known downscaling models include various...

This paper presents the results of a regional low flow frequency analysis for Labrador, Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. This study is the first regional low flow frequency analysis conducted in this region. The regional frequency analysis was based on the L-moments approach applied to annual minimum flows from 12 stream flow gauging sites wi...

Recent IACS Polar Rules have been shifted to limit state design and contain plastic limit state capacity for single frame under uniform loading and symmetric longitudinal boundary conditions (assuming that all frames behave similarly). However, in case of ice loading (which is non-symmetric), symmetric boundary condition does not accurately represe...

A real-time water quality monitoring (RTWQM) network was established in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador in late 2001. The network has changed the way river health is assessed in the province and a great deal has been learned in recent years about using this innovation in resource management. This paper summarizes three new developments ca...

In this paper, the temporal scaling behaviour of floods is analysed using the functional box counting procedure. The probability of exceeding a threshold is then related to the scale of measurement (time intervals) giving a family of such curves at various thresholds. The results for the longest daily flow records (107 years) of the Yichan Station...

This paper describes a new approach to teaching first year design at Memorial University. Students are introduced to engineering design using the product realization process (PRP) as a platform. The course integrates the business, engineering design, and prototyping functions of the PRP. The just-in-time structured delivery of background tools and...

Over the last few decades, the idea that the engineering profession should have a significant input to engineering education has taken a stronghold throughout the world. This is still true today. At Memorial University of Newfoundland, professional contacts were deliberately built into the undergraduate program when it was developed in 1969. First,...

Most engineers do not have adequate training on how to deal with the design and analysis of multi-factored experiments. Yet, both ABET and CEAB clearly state that an engineering graduate should be able to conduct, analyse, and interpret the results of such experiments. It is now recognized that the factorial approach is the correct and scientific a...

As water resources are directly dependent on climatic variables, they have the potential to be strongly impacted by climate change with wide-ranging consequences for human societies and ecosystems. Therefore, water resource studies should consider the possible effects of climate change. In this paper, the development of predicted regional climatic...

As water resources are directly dependent on climatic variables, they have the potential to be strongly impacted by climate change with wide-ranging consequences for human societies and ecosystems. Therefore, water resource studies should consider the possible effects of climate change. In this paper, the development of predicted regional climatic...

This paper reports on the findings of a co