Digital Commons Network^™

Surrogate Optimization Model For An Integrated Regenerative Methanol Transcritical Cycle, Yili Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In order to reduce the cost ($) per megawatts hour (MWh) of electrical energy generated by a nuclear power cycle with a novel small modular reactor (SMR), a new SMR-based nuclear power cycle with Methanol as working fluid was designed. It was built virtually with the Python & Coolprop software based on all components’ physical properties, and it is therefore called the physics-based model. The physics-based model would require seven user-defined values as input for the seven free design parameters, respectively. The physics-based model outcomes include LCOE (the cost per megawatts hour of electrical energy generated by the …

Sonic Boom Loudness Reduction Through Localized Supersonic Aircraft Equivalent-Area Changes, Troy A. Abraham

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) titled “Adaptive Aerostructures for Revolutionary Civil Supersonic Transportation” looks to study the feasibility of distributed structural adaptivity on a supersonic aircraft for maintaining acceptable en-route sonic boom loudness during overland flight. The ULI includes a team of industry and university partners that are working together to develop and implement the systems necessary to accomplish this goal.

The Utah State University Aerolab is a member of this ULI team and has been tasked with developing and using low-fidelity supersonic aerodynamic and sonic boom predictions tools to rapidly study the effects of localized geometry changes on …

Deep Learning And Optimization In Visual Target Tracking, Mohammadreza Javanmardi

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Visual tracking is the process of estimating states of a moving object in a dynamic frame sequence. It has been considered as one of the most paramount and challenging topics in computer vision. Although numerous tracking methods have been introduced, developing a robust algorithm that can handle different challenges still remains unsolved. In this dissertation, we introduce four different trackers and evaluate their performance in terms of tracking accuracy on challenging frame sequences. Each of these trackers aims to address the drawbacks of their peers. The first developed method is called a structured multi-task multi-view tracking (SMTMVT) method, which exploits …