Engineering Commons^™

Runway Operations Management: Models, Enhancements, And Decomposition Techniques, Farbod Farhadi

Doctoral Dissertations

Air traffic loads have been on the rise over the last several decades and are expected to double, and possibly triple in some regions, over the coming decade. With the advent of larger aircraft and ever-increasing air traffic loads, aviation authorities are continually pressured to examine capacity expansions and to adopt better strategies for capacity utilization. However, this growth in air traffic volumes has not been accompanied by adequate capacity expansions in the air transport infrastructure. It is, therefore, predicted that flight delays costing multi-billion dollars will continue to negatively impact airline companies and consumers. In airport operations management, runways …

Generation Scheduling For Power Systems With Demand Response And A High Penetration Of Wind Energy, Guodong Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

With renewable energy sources and demand response programs expanding in many power systems, traditional unit commitment and economic dispatch approaches are inadequate. The power system is changing to one where there is control with uncertainty for both generation and load. Alternative power system scheduling methods capable of aggregating the uncertainty of wind power and demand response, while maintaining reliable and economic performance are investigated in this work. The research addresses four aspects of these changes.

First, a probabilistic method is proposed to maintain uniform system reliability level in the hour-ahead economic dispatch by quantifying different levels of required spinning reserve. …

Multi-Cycle Boiling Water Reactor Fuel Cycle Optimization, Keith Everette Ottinger

Doctoral Dissertations

A multi-cycle nuclear fuel cycle optimization code, BWROPT (Boiling Water Reactor OPTimization), has been developed. BWROPT uses the Parallel Simulated Annealing (PSA) algorithm to solve the coupled out-of-core and in-core optimization problems. There are two depletion methods used for the in-core optimization: the Haling depletion and a Control Rod Pattern (CRP) search. The result of this optimization is the optimum new fuel inventory and the core loading pattern for the first cycle considered in the optimization. Several changes were made to the optimization algorithm with respect to other nuclear fuel cycle optimization codes that use PSA. Instead of using constant …

Probabilistic Engineering Analysis And Design Under Time-Dependent Uncertainty, Zhen Hu

Doctoral Dissertations

"Time-dependent uncertainties, such as time-variant stochastic loadings and random deterioration of material properties, are inherent in engineering applications. Not considering these uncertainties in the design process may result in catastrophic failures after the designed products are put into operation. Although significant progress has been made in probabilistic engineering design, quantifying and mitigating the effects of time-dependent uncertainty is still challenging. This dissertation aims to help build high reliability into products under time-dependent uncertainty by addressing two research issues. The first one is to efficiently and accurately predict the time-dependent reliability while the second one is to effectively design the time-dependent …

Optimization In Microgrid Design And Energy Management, Tu Anh Nguyen

Doctoral Dissertations

"The dissertation is composed of three papers, which cover microgrid systems performance characterization, optimal sizing for energy storage system and stochastic optimization of microgrid operation. In the first paper, a complete Photovoltaic-Vanadium Redox Battery (VRB) microgrid is characterized holistically. The analysis is based on a prototype system installation deployed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, USA. In the second paper, the optimal sizing of power and energy ratings for a VRB system in isolated and grid-connected microgrids is proposed. An analytical method is developed to solve the problem based on a per-day cost model in which the operating cost is obtained …