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Vortex Tilting And The Enhancement Of Spanwise Flow In Flapping Wing Flight, Spencer Frank Dec 2011

Vortex Tilting And The Enhancement Of Spanwise Flow In Flapping Wing Flight, Spencer Frank

HIM 1990-2015

In summary the tilting mechanism helps to explain the overall flow structure and the stability of the leading edge vortex.; The leading edge vortex has been identified as the most critical flow structure for producing lift in flapping wing flight. Its stability depends on the transport of the entrained vorticity into the wake via spanwise flow. This study proposes a hypothesis for the generation and enhancement of spanwise flow based on the chordwise vorticity that results from the tilting of the leading edge vortex and trailing edge vortex. We investigate this phenomenon using dynamically scaled robotic model wings. Two different …


Investigation On Interactions Of Unsteady Wakes And Film Cooling On An Annular Endwall, Matthew J. Golsen Dec 2011

Investigation On Interactions Of Unsteady Wakes And Film Cooling On An Annular Endwall, Matthew J. Golsen

HIM 1990-2015

In recent decades, greater interest in the effect of rotational wakes on gas turbine film cooling applications has produced increasing numbers of studies on these unsteady phenomena. Wakes are primarily shed from upstream components such as transition duct walls, stator vanes, and rotors. Studies have shown that in areas of unsteady flow, the best performing parameters in conventional steady investigations may not be the best for unsteady applications. One common method of modeling the unsteady wake interaction in subsonic flows is the use of spoke wheel type wake generators using cylindrical rods to produce the velocity detriment and local increase …


Context-Driven Agents In Computer Supported Cooperative Works, Brian D. Lichtman Dec 2011

Context-Driven Agents In Computer Supported Cooperative Works, Brian D. Lichtman

HIM 1990-2015

This thesis describes a research project that investigates the level of contextualization needed to successfully build context-driven agents that can manage a cooperative project. Many times in industry, collaborators in a large project may be located vast distances from each other. It is for this reason that management of such projects can often be difficult. The purpose of this research is to design an agent that can take on the role of a project manager (PM) to assist the human project manager. Specifically, this thesis looks to give such project management agents full situational awareness. It is hypothesized that only …


An Experimental And Numerical Study Of Secondary Flows And Film Cooling Effectiveness In A Transonic Cascade, James C. Kullberg May 2011

An Experimental And Numerical Study Of Secondary Flows And Film Cooling Effectiveness In A Transonic Cascade, James C. Kullberg

HIM 1990-2015

Experimental tests on a transonic annular rig are time-consuming and expensive, so it is desirable to use experimental results to validate a computational model which can then be used to extract much more information. The purpose of this work is to create a numerical model that can be used to simulate many different scenarios and then to apply these results to experimental data.; In the modern world, gas turbines are widely used in aircraft propulsion and electricity generation. These applications represent a massive use of energy worldwide, so even a very small increase in efficiency would have a significant beneficial …


Assessing The Viability Of Sol-Gel Nimgo Films For Solar Blind Detection, Amber Scheurer May 2011

Assessing The Viability Of Sol-Gel Nimgo Films For Solar Blind Detection, Amber Scheurer

HIM 1990-2015

Wide bandgap semiconductors have been broadly investigated for their potential to detect and emit high energy ultraviolet (UV) photons. Advancements in deep UV optoelectronic materials would enable the efficient and affordable realization of many medical, industrial and consumer UV optical devices. The traditional growth method, vacuum deposition, is an extremely complicated and expensive process. Sol-gel processing dramatically simplifies facility requirements and can be scaled to industrial size. The work presented here involves a novel study of the ternary wide bandgap material Ni1-xMgxO. Films were developed by sol-gel spin coating for investigation of material and electrical properties. This method produced films …


Decolorization Of An Azo And Anthraquinone Textile Dye By A Mixture Of Living And Non-Living Trametes Versicolor Fungus, Christine M. Dykstra May 2011

Decolorization Of An Azo And Anthraquinone Textile Dye By A Mixture Of Living And Non-Living Trametes Versicolor Fungus, Christine M. Dykstra

HIM 1990-2015

Wastewater from the textile industry is difficult to treat effectively due to the prevalent use and wide variety of synthetic dyes that are resistant to conventional treatment methods. White-rot fungi, such as Trametes versicolor, have been found to be effective in decolorizing many of these synthetic dyes and current research is focusing on their application to wastewater treatment. Although numerous studies have been conducted on the ability of both living and nonliving Trametes versicolor to separately decolorize textile dyes, no studies were found to have investigated the use of a mixture of live and dead fungus for decolorization. This study …


Integration Of Communication Constraints Into Physiocomimetic Swarms Via Placement Of Location Based Virtual Particles, Joshua J. Haley May 2011

Integration Of Communication Constraints Into Physiocomimetic Swarms Via Placement Of Location Based Virtual Particles, Joshua J. Haley

HIM 1990-2015

This thesis describes a change to the Physiocomimetics Robotic Swarm Control framework that implements communication constraints into swarm behavior. These constraints are necessary to successfully implement theoretical applications in the real world. We describe the basic background of swarm robotics, the Physiocomimetics framework and methods that have attempted to implement communications constraints into robotic swarms. The Framework is changed by the inclusion of different virtual particles at a global and local scale that only cause a force on swarm elements if those elements are disconnected from a swarm network. The global particles introduced are a point of known connectivity and …


Heat Transfer And Friction Augmentation In A Narrow Rectangular Duct With Symmetrical And Non-Symmetrical Wedge-Shaped Turbulators, Michelle Valentino Jan 2011

Heat Transfer And Friction Augmentation In A Narrow Rectangular Duct With Symmetrical And Non-Symmetrical Wedge-Shaped Turbulators, Michelle Valentino

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The need for cleaner and more fuel efficient means to produce electricity is growing steadily. Advancements in cooling technologies contribute to the improvements in turbine efficiency and are used for gas turbines and for power generation in automotive, aviation, as well as in naval applications, and many more. Studies introducing turbulators on walls of internal cooling channels, which can be applied to hot gas components and in recuperative heat exchangers, have been reviewed for their ability to promote heat transfer in the channel while observing pressure loss caused by adding the features. Several types of turbulators have been studied; ribs, …


Integration Of High-Q Filters With Highly Efficient Antennas, Yazid Yusuf Jan 2011

Integration Of High-Q Filters With Highly Efficient Antennas, Yazid Yusuf

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The integration of high-quality (Q)-factor 3-D filters with highly efficient antennas is addressed in this dissertation. Integration of filters and antennas into inseparable units eliminates the transitions between the otherwise separate structures resulting in more compact and efficient systems. The compact, highly efficient integrated 3-D filter/antenna systems, enabled by the techniques developed herein, allow for the realization of integrated RF front ends with significantly- reduced form factors. Integration of cavity filters with slot antennas in a single planar substrate is first demonstrated. Due to the high Q factor of cavity resonators, the efficiency of the integrated filter/antenna system is found …


Techniques For Boosting The Performance In Content-Based Image Retrieval Systems, Ning Yu Jan 2011

Techniques For Boosting The Performance In Content-Based Image Retrieval Systems, Ning Yu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Content-Based Image Retrieval has been an active research area for decades. In a CBIR system, one or more images are used as query to search for similar images. The similarity is measured on the low level features, such as color, shape, edge, texture. First, each image is processed and visual features are extract. Therefore each image becomes a point in the feature space. Then, if two images are close to each other in the feature space, they are considered similar. That is, the k nearest neighbors are considered the most similar images to the query image. In this K-Nearest Neighbor …


Design Of The Layout Of A Manufacturing Facility With A Closed Loop Conveyor With Shortcuts Using Queueing Theory And Genetic Algorithms, Vernet Michael Lasrado Jan 2011

Design Of The Layout Of A Manufacturing Facility With A Closed Loop Conveyor With Shortcuts Using Queueing Theory And Genetic Algorithms, Vernet Michael Lasrado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With the ongoing technology battles and price wars in today's competitive economy, every company is looking for an advantage over its peers. A particular choice of facility layout can have a significant impact on the ability of a company to maintain lower operational expenses under uncertain economic conditions. It is known that systems with less congestion have lower operational costs. Traditionally, manufacturing facility layout problem methods aim at minimizing the total distance traveled, the material handling cost, or the time in the system (based on distance traveled at a specific speed). The proposed methodology solves the looped layout design problem …


Imaging Long-Range Orientational Order In Monolayers Of Amphiphilic Molecules With Scanning Probe Force Microscope And Liquid Crystal Optical Amplification, Wenlang Liang Jan 2011

Imaging Long-Range Orientational Order In Monolayers Of Amphiphilic Molecules With Scanning Probe Force Microscope And Liquid Crystal Optical Amplification, Wenlang Liang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Monolayers of amphiphilic molecules at interface provide a unique system for understanding the thermodynamic and rheological properties of quasi two-dimensional systems. They are also an excellent model accessible for studying cell membranes. The feature of longrange organization of molecular tilt azimuth in monolayers at the air/water interface is one of the most interesting findings over the past two decades, which leads to the formation rich and defined textures. By observing the changes in these textures, the transitions between tilted monolayer phases can be detected. We study the boojum and stripe textures formed in the liquid-condensed phase of pentadecanoic acid (PDA) …


Environmental Study Of Solid Waste Collection, Mousa Awad Maimoun Jan 2011

Environmental Study Of Solid Waste Collection, Mousa Awad Maimoun

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The growing municipal solid waste generation rates have necessitated more efficient, optimized waste collection facilities. The majority of the US collection fleet is composed of diesel-fueled vehicles which contribute significant atmospheric emissions including greenhouse gases. In order to reduce emissions to the atmosphere, more collection agencies are investigating alternative fuel technologies such as natural gas, biofuels (bio-gas and bio-diesel), and hybrid electric technology. This research is an in-depth environmental analysis of potential alternative fuel technologies for waste collection vehicles. This study will evaluate the use of alternative fuels by waste collection vehicles. Lifecycle emissions, cost, fuel and energy consumption were …


Analysis Of Behaviors In Crowd Videos, Ramin Mehran Jan 2011

Analysis Of Behaviors In Crowd Videos, Ramin Mehran

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we address the problem of discovery and representation of group activity of humans and objects in a variety of scenarios, commonly encountered in vision applications. The overarching goal is to devise a discriminative representation of human motion in social settings, which captures a wide variety of human activities observable in video sequences. Such motion emerges from the collective behavior of individuals and their interactions and is a significant source of information typically employed for applications such as event detection, behavior recognition, and activity recognition. We present new representations of human group motion for static cameras, and propose …


Fatigue Lifetime Approximation Based On Quantitative Microstructural Analysis For Air Plasma Sprayed Thermal Barrier Coatings, Carmen Bargraser Jan 2011

Fatigue Lifetime Approximation Based On Quantitative Microstructural Analysis For Air Plasma Sprayed Thermal Barrier Coatings, Carmen Bargraser

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The durability of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) affects the life of the hot section engine components on which they are applied. Fatigue is the general failure mechanism for such components and is responsible for most unexpected failures; therefore it is desirable to develop lifetime approximation models to ensure reliability and durability. In this study, we first examined the microstructural degradation of air plasma sprayed ZrO2-8wt.%Y2O3 TBCs with a low-pressure plasma sprayed CoNiCrAlY bond coat on an IN 738LC superalloy substrate. The durability of TBCs were assessed through furnace thermal cyclic tests carried out in air at 1100°C with a 1-, …


Ultra High Density Spectral Beam Combining By Thermal Tuning Of Volume Bragg Gratings In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass, Derrek Drachenberg Jan 2011

Ultra High Density Spectral Beam Combining By Thermal Tuning Of Volume Bragg Gratings In Photo-Thermo-Refractive Glass, Derrek Drachenberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High power lasers with diffraction limited beam quality are desired for many applications in defense and manufacturing. A lot of applications require laser beams at the 100 kW power level along with divergence close to the diffraction limit. The figure of merit for a beam used in such applications should be radiance which determines the laser power delivered to a remote target. One of the primary limiting factors is thermal distortion of a laser beam caused by excessive heat generated in the laser media. Combination of multiple laser beams is usually considered as a method to mitigate these limitations. Spectral …


Enhancing Cnt-Composites With Raman Spectroscopy, Gregory J. Freihofer Jan 2011

Enhancing Cnt-Composites With Raman Spectroscopy, Gregory J. Freihofer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) have been the subject of intense research for their potential to improve a variety of material properties when developed as nano-composites. This research aims to address the challenges that limit the ability to transfer the outstanding nano-scale properties of CNTs to bulk nano-composites through Raman characterization. These studies relate the vibrational modes to microstructural characterization of CNT composites including stress, interface behavior, and defects. The formulation of a new fitting procedure using the pseudo-Voigt function is presented and shown to minimize the uncertainty of characteristics within the Raman G and D doublet. Methods for optimization of manufacturing …


Theoretical Study Of Beam Transformations By Volume Diffraction, Sergiy V. Mokhov Jan 2011

Theoretical Study Of Beam Transformations By Volume Diffraction, Sergiy V. Mokhov

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Laser beams can be manipulated by volume diffractive elements in addition to conventional optical elements like mirrors, lenses, and beam splitters. Conventional optical elements can be described by applying the basic laws of reflection and refraction at the surfaces of the elements. Even diffraction by surface gratings utilizes relatively simple mathematics. This is to be contrasted with the volume diffraction, which requires coupled wave theory in the slowly varying envelope approximation (SVEA) to obtain accurate results. Efficient spatially distributed diffraction of laser beams is possible due to the high coherence of laser light, and it occurs at specific resonant Bragg …


Improving Throughput And Predictability Of High-Volume Business Processes Through Embedded Modeling, Joseph S. Dekeyrel Jan 2011

Improving Throughput And Predictability Of High-Volume Business Processes Through Embedded Modeling, Joseph S. Dekeyrel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Being faster is good. Being predictable is better. A faithful model of a system, loaded to reflect the system's current state, can then be used to look into the future and predict performance. Building faithful models of processes with high degrees of uncertainty can be very challenging, especially where this uncertainty exists in terms of processing times, queuing behavior and re-work rates. Within the context of an electronic, multi-tiered workflow management system (WFMS) the author builds such a model to endogenously quote due dates. A WFMS that manages business objects can be recast as a flexible flow shop in which …


Effects Of Thermo-Mechanical Loading From In-Situ Studies Of Eb-Pvd Thermal Barrier Coatings, Melan N. Jansz Jan 2011

Effects Of Thermo-Mechanical Loading From In-Situ Studies Of Eb-Pvd Thermal Barrier Coatings, Melan N. Jansz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The thermo-mechanical effects on the strain evolution within an EB-PVD thermal barrier coating (TBC) is presented in this work using in-situ characterization. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction at sector 1-ID at the Argonne National Laboratory provided both qualitative and quantitative in-situ data on the strain evolution under a thermal cycle with mechanical loading. The results show that at a critical combination of temperature and load, the stress in the thermally grown oxide (TGO) layer in the TBC reaches a tensile region. These significant findings enhance existing literature showing purely compressive strains within the TGO where mechanical loads have been neglected. The results …


Measurements In Air-Water Bubbly Flow Through A Vertical Narrow High-Aspect Ratio Channel, Benjamin R. Patrick Jan 2011

Measurements In Air-Water Bubbly Flow Through A Vertical Narrow High-Aspect Ratio Channel, Benjamin R. Patrick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two-Phase bubbly flows are encountered in a wide range of industrial applications, particularly where phase changes occur as seen in high performance heat exchangers and boiling reactors for power generation. These flows have been extensively studied in channels with circular geometries using air-water flows, though little data exists for flows through narrow rectangular channels. Measurements in thin geometries are particularly challenging since large bubbles bridge the gap, and it is difficult to compare point measurements with photographic techniques. The objective of this study is to explore the abilities of hot-film anemometry and high speed photography for taking measurements in a …


Characterization Of The Nonlinear Refractive Index Of Carbon Disulfide Over An Extended Spectral And Temporal Range, Marcus Seidel Jan 2011

Characterization Of The Nonlinear Refractive Index Of Carbon Disulfide Over An Extended Spectral And Temporal Range, Marcus Seidel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intensity dependent refractive index change of a medium is frequently described in terms of the product n₂ · I where n₂ is the nonlinear refractive index and I the light intensity. The nonlinear refractive index is often treated as constant which is a reasonable assumption if the light interacts only with bound electrons. In the case of carbon disulfide (CS₂) however, nuclear motions contribute to n₂. These motions occur on the sub picosecond time scale and thus become especially relevant for ultrashort laser pulses. The neat liquid CS₂ is studied because it exhibits a large nonlinear refractive index in …


Effect Of Rib Aspect Ratio On Heat Transfer And Friction In Rectangular Channels, Lucky Vo Tran Jan 2011

Effect Of Rib Aspect Ratio On Heat Transfer And Friction In Rectangular Channels, Lucky Vo Tran

HIM 1990-2015

The heat transfer and friction augmentation in the fully developed portion of a 2:1 aspect ratio rectangular channel with orthogonal ribs at channel Reynolds numbers of 20,000, 30,000, and 40,000 is studied both experimentally and computationally. Ribs are applied to the two opposite wide walls. The rib aspect ratio is varied systematically at 1, 3, and 5, with a constant rib height and constant rib pitch (rib-pitch-to-rib-height ratio of 10). The purpose of the study is to extend the knowledge of the performance of rectangular channels with ribs to include high aspect ratio ribs. The experimental investigation is performed using …


Patterns Of Motion: Discovery And Generalized Representation, Imran Saleemi Jan 2011

Patterns Of Motion: Discovery And Generalized Representation, Imran Saleemi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we address the problem of discovery and representation of motion patterns in a variety of scenarios, commonly encountered in vision applications. The overarching goal is to devise a generic representation, that captures any kind of object motion observable in video sequences. Such motion is a significant source of information typically employed for diverse applications such as tracking, anomaly detection, and action and event recognition. We present statistical frameworks for representation of motion characteristics of objects, learned from tracks or optical flow, for static as well as moving cameras, and propose algorithms for their application to a variety …


Resource Banking An Energy-Efficient, Run-Time Adaptive Processor Design Technique, Jacob Staples Jan 2011

Resource Banking An Energy-Efficient, Run-Time Adaptive Processor Design Technique, Jacob Staples

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

From the earliest and simplest scalar computation engines to modern superscalar out-oforder processors, the evolution of computational machinery during the past century has largely been driven by a single goal: performance. In today’s world of cheap, billion-plus transistor count processors and with an exploding market in mobile computing, a design landscape has emerged where energy efficiency, arguably more than any other single metric, determines the viability of a processor for a given application. The historical emphasis on performance has left modern processors bloated and over provisioned for everyday tasks in the hope that during computationally intensive periods some performance improvement …


Exploiting Opponent Modeling For Learning In Multi-Agent Adversarial Games, Kennard R. Laviers Jan 2011

Exploiting Opponent Modeling For Learning In Multi-Agent Adversarial Games, Kennard R. Laviers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An issue with learning effective policies in multi-agent adversarial games is that the size of the search space can be prohibitively large when the actions of both teammates and opponents are considered simultaneously. Opponent modeling, predicting an opponent’s actions in advance of execution, is one approach for selecting actions in adversarial settings, but it is often performed in an ad hoc way. In this dissertation, we introduce several methods for using opponent modeling, in the form of predictions about the players’ physical movements, to learn team policies. To explore the problem of decision-making in multi-agent adversarial scenarios, we use our …


Perceptual Image Quality Of Launch Vehicle Imaging Telescopes, Joshua K. Lentz Jan 2011

Perceptual Image Quality Of Launch Vehicle Imaging Telescopes, Joshua K. Lentz

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A large fleet (in the hundreds) of high quality telescopes are used for tracking and imaging of launch vehicles during ascent from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center. A maintenance tool has been development for use with these telescopes. The tool requires rankings of telescope condition in terms of the ability to generate useful imagery. It is thus a case of ranking telescope conditions on the basis of the perceptual image quality of their imagery. Perceptual image quality metrics that are well-correlated to observer opinions of image quality have been available for several decades. However, these are …


Feature Pruning For Action Recognition In Complex Environment, Adarsh Nagaraja Jan 2011

Feature Pruning For Action Recognition In Complex Environment, Adarsh Nagaraja

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A significant number of action recognition research efforts use spatio-temporal interest point detectors for feature extraction. Although the extracted features provide useful information for recognizing actions, a significant number of them contain irrelevant motion and background clutter. In many cases, the extracted features are included as is in the classification pipeline, and sophisticated noise removal techniques are subsequently used to alleviate their effect on classification. We introduce a new action database, created from the Weizmann database, that reveals a significant weakness in systems based on popular cuboid descriptors. Experiments show that introducing complex backgrounds, stationary or dynamic, into the video …


Impurity And Interdiffusion In The Magnesium-Aluminum System, Sarah Tiffany Brennan Jan 2011

Impurity And Interdiffusion In The Magnesium-Aluminum System, Sarah Tiffany Brennan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Magnesium alloys offer a base of lightweight engineering materials for electronic, military and transportation applications where weight reduction is crucial for higher efficiency. Understanding fundamental diffusion behavior in Mg alloys elicits better materials properties through the optimization of processing techniques and heat treatments, whose material responses are affected by diffusion. The main objective of this study is to provide a clear, comprehensive description of the diffusion behavior in the technically important magnesium-aluminum binary metallic system. In this study, diffusion in the Mg-Al system was observed through solid diffusion couples and thin film specimens in the temperature range of 673-523K. The …


Mechanical Characterization And Numerical Simulation Of A Light-Weight Aluminum A359 Metal-Matrix Composite, James P. Demarco Jan 2011

Mechanical Characterization And Numerical Simulation Of A Light-Weight Aluminum A359 Metal-Matrix Composite, James P. Demarco

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Aluminum metal-matrix composites (MMCs) are well positioned to replace steel in numerous manufactured structural components, due to their high strength-to-weight and stiffness ratios. For example, research is currently being conducted in the use of such materials in the construction of tank entry doors, which are currently made of steel and are dangerously heavy for military personnel to lift and close. However, the manufacture of aluminum MMCs is inefficient in many cases due to the loss of material through edge cracking during the hot rolling process which is applied to reduce thick billets of as-cast material to usable sheets. In the …