Engineering Commons^™

Energy Savings And Peak Demand Reduction Of A Seer 21 Heat Pump Vs. A Seer 13 Heat Pump With Attic And Indoor Duct Systems - December 2011, Florida Solar Energy Center, James Cummings

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Experiments were run in an unoccupied 1600 ft2 house, the Manufactured Housing (MH Lab) at the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), to evaluate the delivered performance as well as the relative performance of a SEER 21 variable capacity heat pump versus a SEER 13 heat pump. The performance was evaluated with two different duct systems: a standard attic duct system and an indoor duct system located in a dropped-ceiling space.

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

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

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 …

Green Residential Stormwater Management Demonstration: An Integrated Stormwater Management And Graywater System To Reduce The Quantity And Improve The Quality Of Residential Water Discharges, Post Co Data Analysis, Ni-Bin Chang, Martin Wanielista, Manoj Chopra, Mike Hardin, Matthew Allen Goolsby

BMP Trains Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Nitrogen Transport And Transformation Beneath Stormwater Retention Basins In Karst Areas And Effectiveness Of Stormwater Best Management Practices For Reducing Nitrate Leaching To Ground Water In Marion County, Florida, Stormwater Academy

BMP Trains Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Florida Solar Atlas, Florida Solar Energy Center, Charles Cromer

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The direct beam and direct global solar resource values for any geographical location in Florida were found by using actual data taken at the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) for 2010 and correlating those values against clearness values derived from NOAA geostationary satellite data. Using the correlations developed, eleven years of satellite data (2000 - 2010) were used to provide expected monthly average solar resource values for any location in Florida. These values as provided in watts per meter square per day, were matched to colors with the lowest values of the full range of average values representing the deepest …

New Construction Builders Challenge: Sealed Attic And High Efficiency Hvac In Central Florida: A Year In Review Monitored Prototypes - Springwater Homes, Florida Solar Energy Center, Carlos Colon

FSEC Energy Research Center®

In 2010 the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), with funding from the Building America program, was involved with a new Builders Challenge builder located in Rockledge, Florida -- Springwater Homes (see figure 1). The newly constructed home in March 2010, features a sealed attic with R-27 roof deck insulation (shown in figure 2). Selection of the HVAC system, an important aspect to achieve high efficiency levels in buildings, ended with one of the highest residential equipment systems available in the U.S., the Nutone IQ Drive (SEER 21). The house was confirmed with a HERS index of 53 using the EnergyGauge …

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

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 …

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

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 …

Arra Advanced Weatherization Training Center - Quarterly Report (January 2011-March 2011), Florida Solar Energy Center, Neil Moyer

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The 1st quarter of 2011 was the beginning of procurement for the training center. Two pieces of equipment, the insulation blowing machine and infrared cameras, were put out for quotes. Both have been selected and purchase orders created.

Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership (Baihp Ii)Final Report Budget Periods 1-5, April 1, 2006 - November 30, 2010, Florida Solar Energy Center, Robert Abernethy

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report summarizes the work conducted by the Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership (BAIHP - www.baihp.org) during the final budget period (BP5) of our contract, January 1, 2010 to November 30, 2010. Highlights from the four previous budget periods are included for context.

BAIHP is led by the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) of the University of Central Florida. With over 50 Industry Partners including factory and site builders, work in BP5 was performed in six tasks areas:

• Task 1: Building America System Research Management, Documentation and Technical Support
• Task 2A: Stage G1A: Integrated Solutions for Specific Climate Regions
• Task …

Short-Term Curtailment Of Hvac Loads - Executive Summary, Florida Solar Energy Center, Lixing Gu

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Rapidly increasing requirements placed on utilities to reduce peak loads has led to utility customer incentives to shift peak demand to non-peak times or reduce peak loads when notified by the utility that the grid is close to capacity. This study investigates methods used to reduce building demand during a fixed time window near a utilities on-peak period. The window was chosen to be 5-9 A.M. in winter and 2-5 P.M. in summer.The most common methods for reducing building peak demand were reviewed and categorized by their usefulness and wide-spread availability. These strategies were reductions in lighting power density, global …

Arra Advanced Weatherization Training Center - Quarterly Report (September 2010-December 2010), Florida Solar Energy Center, Neil Moyer

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The 4th quarter of 2010 was the initialization of the contract with DOE. During this time period, there were two major events that occurred. First, representatives from UCF-FSEC attended the three day Atlanta Weatherization Training Center Grantee Training Workshop with DOE representatives and the various organizations that were awarded funding. Secondly, the project management plan (PMP) was finalized and submitted to the Project Manager.

Modeling Human Group Behavior In Virtual Worlds, Fahad Shah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Virtual worlds and massively-multiplayer online games are rich sources of information about large-scale teams and groups, offering the tantalizing possibility of harvesting data about group formation, social networks, and network evolution. They provide new outlets for human social interaction that differ from both face-to-face interactions and non-physically-embodied social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. We aim to study group dynamics in these virtual worlds by collecting and analyzing public conversational patterns of users grouped in close physical proximity. To do this, we created a set of tools for monitoring, partitioning, and analyzing unstructured conversations between changing groups of participants …

Process-Dependent Microstructure And Severe Plastic Deformation In Sicp?? Reinforced Aluminum Metal Matrix Composites, Catalina Uribe-Restrepo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Discontinuously reinforced MMCs with optimized microstructure are sought after for exceptional high strain rate behavior. The microstructure evolution of a stir-cast A359 aluminum composite reinforced with 30 vol.% SiCp after isothermal anneal, successive hot-rolling, and high strain rate deformation has been investigated. Quantitative microstructural analysis was carried out for the as-cast, annealed (470°C, 538°C and 570°C) and successively hot rolled specimens (64, 75, 88, and 96% rolling reductions). Selected composites were also examined after high strain rate deformation. X-ray diffraction, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy were employed for microstructural characterization. The strength and ductility of the …

Cfd Analysis Of A Uni-Directional Impulse Turbine For Wave Energy Conversion, Carlos Alberto Velez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ocean energy research has grown in popularity in the past decade and has produced various designs for wave energy extraction. This thesis focuses on the performance analysis of a uni-directional impulse turbine for wave energy conversion. Uni-directional impulse turbines can produce uni-directional rotation in bi-directional flow, which makes it ideal for wave energy extraction as the motion of ocean waves are inherently bi-directional. This impulse turbine is currently in use in four of the world’s Oscillating Wave Columns (OWC). Current research to date has documented the performance of the turbine but little research has been completed to understand the flow …

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, …

Effective Task Transfer Through Indirect Encoding, Phillip Verbancsics

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An important goal for machine learning is to transfer knowledge between tasks. For example, learning to play RoboCup Keepaway should contribute to learning the full game of RoboCup soccer. Often approaches to task transfer focus on transforming the original representation to fit the new task. Such representational transformations are necessary because the target task often requires new state information that was not included in the original representation. In RoboCup Keepaway, changing from the 3 vs. 2 variant of the task to 4 vs. 3 adds state information for each of the new players. In contrast, this dissertation explores the idea …

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

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

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

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

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 …

Harmony Oriented Architecture, Kyle A. Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents Harmony Oriented Architecture: a novel architectural paradigm that applies the principles of Harmony Oriented Programming to the architecture of scalable and evolvable distributed systems. It is motivated by research on Ultra Large Scale systems that has revealed inherent limitations in human ability to design large-scale software systems that can only be overcome through radical alternatives to traditional object-oriented software engineering practice that simplifies the construction of highly scalable and evolvable system. HOP eschews encapsulation and information hiding, the core principles of objectoriented design, in favor of exposure and information sharing through a spatial abstraction. This helps to …

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 …

The Implications Of Virtual Environments In Digital Forensic Investigations, Farrah M. Patterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research paper discusses the role of virtual environments in digital forensic investigations. With virtual environments becoming more prevalent as an analysis tool in digital forensic investigations, it’s becoming more important for digital forensic investigators to understand the limitation and strengths of virtual machines. The study aims to expose limitations within commercial closed source virtual machines and open source virtual machines. The study provides a brief overview of history digital forensic investigations and virtual environments, and concludes with an experiment with four common open and closed source virtual machines; the effects of the virtual machines on the host machine as …

Evaluation And Modeling Of The Safety Of Open Road Tolling System, Muamer Ali Abuzwidah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this thesis is to examine the traffic safety impact of upgrading Toll Plazas (TP) to Open Road Tolling (ORT). The ORT could enhance safety but could also pose some traffic safety concerns at Toll plazas. Crashes from eight years were investigated by evaluating the crash data before and after the implementation of the ORT. The study was conducted by using two approaches: 1) a simple before and after study and with a comparison group; 2) a modeling effort to help understand the relationship between the crash frequency and several important factors and circumstances such as injury severity, …