Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Uncertainty In Optical Particulate Counting Sensors, Jared Todd Blanchard

Undergraduate Honors Theses

To mitigate the health problems and environmental damage caused by the burning of biomass in homes across the developing world, there is an international effort to design clean burning cookstoves that burn with greater efficiency and emit fewer harmful substances. An important tool for gauging the effectiveness of these alternate stoves is the optical particulate counting (OPC) sensor, which comes in many varieties. To facilitate comparison between measurements from different models, a mathematical model and uncertainty analysis method for OPC’s have been developed. These may be applied to any light-scattering OPC. In addition, a low-cost physical system was developed to …

Energy Models Of The Txaire Houses, Tajudeen Amadu Annafi

Mechanical Engineering Theses

Model calibration is important as its functions improve building models. A calibrated model of the TxAIRE Houses #1 and #2 have been developed using the OpenStudio software. The model was developed and calibrated with data of the year 2014 but can be used predict electricity consumption of any year.

An actual meteorological year (AMY) weather file was also created for the houses which was used for calibration. The data used to develop this weather file were measured on-site which improved the accuracy of the model. It was found that an error difference of -1.0 % and -4.2 % occurred between …