Digital Commons Network^™

Investigation Of Knock In Gaseous Fuels In The Presence Of Diluents, Roshan Ashok Rodrigues

Masters Theses

Recent energy security and environmental concerns have prompted growing interest into utilization of alternative fuels such as, natural gas and landfill gas. These gaseous fuels contain significant amount of diluents in the fuel composition, such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, water vapor and other trace gases, which vary by geographical location. Successful engine operation is limited by a phenomenon called "knock", which occurs due to auto-ignition of the end gas ahead of the flame front, and therefore, needs to be investigated with the utilization of these gaseous fuels.

The present contribution discusses the experimental set-up, procedure and results of the investigation …

Selection Of Attractor Sounds For An Audio-Based Navigation System For The Visually Impaired, Brad Salisbury

Masters Theses

Research in to human hearing has been very ‘laboratory’ oriented in the sense that the test environments do not replicate most ‘real world’ situations [J.C. Middlebrooks and D.M. Green, Ann. Rev. of Psychology, 42, 135-159 (1991)]. While very useful information is gained from these types of tests, it is difficult to see how ‘real world’ situations affect sound source localization, recognition, and navigation (walking/way finding) performance. Such information is especially important to people who are visually impaired and dependent on prior knowledge of the environment or audio cues for travel. The research reported here was conducted during the development of …

Landfill Gas As A Fuel For Ic Engine Operations, Guruprasath Narayanan

Masters Theses

An alternative fuel research facility was developed to study different alternative gaseous fuels like Landfill gases and Biogases and their mixtures with hydrogen as a fuel in a single cylinder spark ignition engine. Landfill gas was used as a fuel and the optimum process parameters such as compression ratio, spark timing and equivalence ratio were identified and reported.

Hydrogen enhanced combustion of landfill gas was studied and it was found that the addition of small amounts of hydrogen in the land fill gas has improved the combustion characteristics of the fuel and the performance of the spark ignition engine in …

Numerical Simulations On Machining Of Silicon Carbide, Jerry Jacob

Masters Theses

Experiments were conducted to determine the critical depth of cut for machining of single crystal silicon carbide through Single Point Diamond Turning (SPDT) and fly-cutting, and of CVD coated Silicon Carbide through scratching. The ductile nature of these nominally hard and brittle materials is believed to be the result of a high pressure phase transformation, which generates a plastic zone of material that behaves in a metallic manner. The SPDT experiments have shown chip formation similar to that in metal machining. This metallic behavior is the basis for using AdvantEdge, metal machining simulation software, for comparison to experimental results. The …

Analytical Modeling And Simulation Of An Auv With Five Control Surfaces, John Tomasi

Masters Theses

This research describes the dynamic modeling and numerical simulation of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) with five hydrodynamic control surfaces, necessary for the development of an autopilot algorithm, based solely upon analytical methodologies. The purpose of this research was to demonstrate the ability to develop a low. order approximation of the dynamics and control characteristics of an underwater vehicle that is complete enough to validate a specific design before physical construction begins; therefore, allowing for a more cost effective virtual design, test, and evaluation process. The AUV model developed in this study takes into consideration inertia, hydrostatic forces, hydrodynamic forces, …

Computational Simulation Of Turbulent Forced Convection Flow Over A Horizontal Plate Heater In A Rectangular Channel, Bhagavathi Perumal Natarajan

Masters Theses

The phenomenon of turbulent forced convection in the entry region of a rectangular duct was investigated computationally using commercial CFD software, FLUENT. The Standard k-ε turbulence model from FLUENT was used to model turbulence in the 20mm high x 30mm wide cross-sectional rectangular duct. The operating fluid used for the three-dimensional CFD study was water at an inlet temperature of 90° C, with the velocities ranging from 0.5 m/s to 2 m/s, at 1 atm pressure. A constant heat flux was applied to the base of the rectangular channel with the other flow walls insulated. The heat flux ranged from …