Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Cross-Flow, Staggered-Tube Heat Exchanger Analysis For High Enthalpy Flows, Gary L. Hammock

Masters Theses

Cross flow heat exchangers are a fairly common apparatus employed throughout many industrial processes. For these types of systems, correlations have been extensively developed. However, there have been no correlations done for very high enthalpy flows as produced by Arnold Engineering Development Center’s (AEDC) H2 facility. The H2 facility uses a direct current electric arc to heat air which is then expanded through a converging-diverging nozzle to impart a supersonic velocity to the air. This high enthalpy, high temperature air must be cooled downstream by the use of a cross flow heat exchanger.

It is of interest to evaluate the …

Capstone Design: Energy Efficient Windows Triple Pane Window Analysis, Michael S. Kee, Drew Ryan Hughes, Amanda Michele Lee, Michael Mcmillan, Jake Eric Plewa

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Computational Investigations Of Characteristic Performance Improvements For Subkilogram Laser Micropropulsion, Richard Joel Thompson

Masters Theses

Experimental investigations have evaluated the feasibility of using laser-driven plasma microthrusters for small-thrust, high-specific-impulse space maneuvers, particularly for micro- and nanosatellite missions. Recent work made use of the Mach2 hydromagnetics code for the construction of an adequate computational model of the micro-thruster opera- tion. This thesis expounds on this previous work by extending the computational modeling capabilities, allowing for the determination of plasma plume properties and characteristic performance assessment of the microthruster; this allows for further computational investi- gation of the performance improvements achieved by new design considerations. Two par- ticular design changes are implemented and measured: (i) the simulation …

A Shooting Algorithm For Complex Immunodominance Control Problems, Xiaopeng Zhao, R Yang, M Zhang

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering

Although T cells are able to recognize a wide variety of target peptides, they are often strongly focused on a few of the peptides and leave the rest of them unattended. This phenomenon of strongly biased immune response is known as immunodominance. Mathematically, an immunodominance problem can be formulated using optimal control principles as a two-point boundary-value problem. The solution of this problem is challenging especially when the control variables are bounded. In this work, we develop a numerical algorithm based on the shooting technique for bounded optimal control problems. The algorithm is applied to a group of immunodominance problems. …

Robust-Adaptive Magnetic Bearing Control Of Flexible Matrix Composite Rotorcraft Driveline, Hans August Desmidt, Kon-Well Wang, Edward Smith

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering

Recent studies demonstrate that a key advantage of Flexible Matrix Composite (FMC) shaft technology is the ability to accommodate misalignments without need for segmenting or flexible couplings as required by conventional alloy and graphite/epoxy composite shafts. While this is indeed a very promising technology for rotorcraft driveshafts, the high damping loss-factor and thermal stiffness and damping sensitivities of the urethane matrix, makes FMC shafting more prone to self-heating and whirl instabilities. Furthermore, the relatively low bending stiffness and critical speeds of FMC shafts makes imbalance vibration a significant challenge to supercritical operation. To address these issues and advance the state-of-the-art, …