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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Minimization Of Collateral Damage In Airdrops And Airstrikes, Steven P. Dillenburger Sep 2012

Minimization Of Collateral Damage In Airdrops And Airstrikes, Steven P. Dillenburger

Theses and Dissertations

Collateral damage presents a significant risk during air drops and airstrikes, risking citizens' lives and property, straining the relationship between the United States Air Force and host nations. This dissertation presents a methodology to determine the optimal location for making supply airdrops in order to minimize collateral damage while maintaining a high likelihood of successful recovery. A series of non-linear optimization algorithms is presented along with their relative success in finding the optimal location in the airdrop problem. Additionally, we present a quick algorithm for accurately creating the Pareto frontier in the multi-objective airstrike problem. We demonstrate the effect of …


Ballistic Flash Characterization: Penetration And Back-Face Flash, Michael J. Koslow Mar 2012

Ballistic Flash Characterization: Penetration And Back-Face Flash, Michael J. Koslow

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force is extremely concerned with the safety of its people, especially those who are flying aircraft. Aircrew members flying combat missions are concerned with the chance that a fragment from an exploding threat device may penetrate into the airframe to possibly ignite a fire onboard the aircraft. One concern for vulnerability revolves around a flash that may occur when a projectile strikes and penetrates an aircraft's fuselage. When certain fired rounds strike the airframe, they break into fragments called spall. Spall and other fragmentation from an impact often gain enough thermal energy to oxidize the materials involved. This …


A Spatial Risk Analysis Of Oil Refineries Within The United States, Zachary L. Schiff Mar 2012

A Spatial Risk Analysis Of Oil Refineries Within The United States, Zachary L. Schiff

Theses and Dissertations

A risk analysis methodology is necessary to manage the potential effects of oil refinery outages to the increasingly connected, interdependent critical infrastructure of the United States. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the lack of a critical infrastructure risk mitigation strategy was identified as an area for improvement. In both the 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, cascading failures occurred due to the interdependencies among infrastructures and their spatial relationships. Furthermore, the U.S. military is dependent on oil refining capability and a major shortage could potentially have devastating effects on mission accomplishment. As a result, a need has emerged to better …


Analysis Of Kc-46 Live-Fire Risk Mitigation Program Testing, Chad N. Chamberlain Mar 2012

Analysis Of Kc-46 Live-Fire Risk Mitigation Program Testing, Chad N. Chamberlain

Theses and Dissertations

Increased emphasis from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) over the past few years to include statistical rigor in all testing has brought an augmented look at testing across the Department of Defense. This thesis examines the methodology currently used in live fire testing, particularly in the case of risk mitigation of the KC-46 dry-bay fire test program. The thesis addresses gaps within the methodology and analyzes the results of a statistically rigorous test. The research furthers work on modeling the characterization of ballistic impact flash by validating concurrent models and characterizing the errors prone to these models …


Agent Based Modeling And Simulation Framework For Supply Chain Risk Management, Tiffany J. Harper Feb 2012

Agent Based Modeling And Simulation Framework For Supply Chain Risk Management, Tiffany J. Harper

Theses and Dissertations

This research develops a flexible agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) framework for supply chain risk management with significant enhancements to standard ABMS methods and supply chain risk modeling. Our framework starts with the use of software agents to gather and process input data for use in our simulation model. For our simulation model, we extend an existing mathematical framework for discrete event simulation (DES) to ABMS and then implement the concepts of variable resolution modeling from the DES domain to ABMS and provide further guidelines for aggregation and disaggregation of supply chain models. Existing supply chain risk management research focuses …