Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Simulation Of Active Control Of Asymmetric Flows Around Slender Pointed Forebodies, Hazem Sharaf El-Din

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

At high angles of attack, the flowfield over slender forebodies becomes asymmetric with substantial side force, which may exceed the available control capability. The unsteady compressible Navier-Stokes equations are used to investigate the effectiveness of different active control methods to alleviate and possibly eliminate the flow asymmetry and the subsequent side force. Although the research work focuses on active control methods, a passive control method has been investigated. The implicit, Roe flux-difference splitting, finite volume scheme is used for the numerical computations. Both locally-conical and three-dimensional solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations are obtained.

The asymmetric flow over five-degree semi-apex angle …

Biofeedback Gait Training Auditory Vs. Visual Techniques, Timothy D. Hiemenz

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Training lower extremity amputees to walk normally is quite a difficult task. Amputees must wear a prosthesis so they can walk at all. This allows them some mobility, but their walking pattern may be unnatural. If their gait is temporally asymmetric, they need to exert more energy to move about. This research was initiated to help lower extremity amputees to walk more efficiently using biofeedback gait training. Two types of feedback were developed and tested to determine which method gave the most understandable feedback, validating its use in a clinical setting.

A normal gait cycle uses the lower limbs to …

The Current Voltage Characteristics Of Electron Beam Controlled Thin Film Diamond Switches, Christopher Anthony Molina

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The dark current of natural diamond thin films and the induced current due to electron-beam irradiation was measured up to a range of 7000Ncm'. The contact material was aluminum, annealed and unannealed. Switching experiments were performed with electron energies ranging from 70keV to 172keV. The switching results obtained are strongly dependent on the biasing polarity, incident electron energy, and whether the contact is blocking or Ohmic in nature. A simple model which takes traps into consideration allows us to explain the various switching responses. The range of electrons which define, in part, the switch mode was measured for one sample …

Defining Locally Shared Memory Constructs For Special Purpose Parallel Architectures, David J. Nielsen

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Locally shared memory systems offer significant advantages over other parallel processing systems for specific classes of problems. Locally shared memory systems tend to be easier to program because explicit passing of messages is not necessary. The goal in defining a locally shared memory system is to allow only a small number of processors access to any single memory. If this goal is met, locally shared memory systems provide an architecture which is relatively simple to implement.

To make shared memory architectures attractive to designers of special purpose parallel architectures, the architectures must be scalable. To be scalable, the number of …

Diamond Thin Film Sensors For Hypersonic Flow Studies, Bhaskar Kumar Bulusu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Conventional metal film sensors can measure flow instabilities of the order of 60 kHz. The turbulence fluctuations in the hypersonic regime are of the order of 200- 400 kHz. To measure these fluctuations, sensors with an enhanced frequency response are required. Therefore, it is required to identify the parameters to enhance the frequency response. These include parameters such as the temperature sensitivity, the resistivity, the thermal conductivity, the diffusivity, specific heat capacity and the geometric size and shape of the film and the substrate. A selection of materials was then carried out to maximize the frequency response. Diamond was identified …

Derivative Absorption Spectroscopy With Tunable Laser Diodes, Andrew D. Jackson

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Derivative Absorption Spectroscopy using tunable diode lasers provides a non­ intrusive, sensitive, and convenient method for monitoring gaseous characteristics such as concentration, temperature, and flow velocity. In addition, the specie type can be identified, and if the equation of state is known, pressure may be deduced.

This technique was used on molecular oxygen, in which the rovibronic transitions of the A-band ( b ¹ ∑_g ⁺ ← X ³ ∑g ^- ; v^II = O, v^I = O) were probed. Phase sensitive detection with a lock-in amplifier provides the flexibility to examine lineshape derivatives; several such derivative …

Dynamic Task Scheduling For The Atamm Multicomputer Operating System Using Embedded Firmware On Microcontrollers, Sudhir Sastry

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A dynamic task scheduling strategy for the distributed processing of large grain dataflow algorithms using embedded firmware on an ATAMM testbed consisting of interconnected microcontrollers is presented in this thesis. The ODU/NASA developed Algorithm to Architecture Mapping Model, ATAMM, uses marked graph models to specify data and control flow for the execution of iterative, deterministic large grain dataflow algorithms in a multicomputing environment. The testbed consists of a bank of four 68HC11 microcontrollers that communicate over a token bus. The token bus arbitration scheme used is contention free and well suited for real-time computing applications. The execution of data flow …

Flow Simulations About Steady-Complex And Unsteady Moving Configurations Using Structured-Overlapped And Unstructured Grids, James Charles Newman Iii

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The limiting factor in simulating flows past realistic configurations of interest has been the discretization of the physical domain on which the governing equations of fluid flow may be solved. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, many Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) methodologies that are based on different grid generation and domain decomposition techniques have been developed. However, due to the costs involved and expertise required, very few comparative studies between these methods have been performed. In the present work, the two CFD methodologies which show the most promise for treating complex three-dimensional configurations as well as unsteady moving boundary …

Unsteady Flow Simulations About Moving Boundary Configurations Using Dynamic Domain Decomposition Techniques, Guan-Wei Yen

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A computational method is developed to solve the coupled governing equations of an unsteady flowfield and those of rigid-body dynamics in six degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF). This method is capable of simulating the unsteady flowfields around multiple component configurations with at least one of the components in relative motion with respect to the others. Two of the important phenomena that such analyses can help us to understand are the unsteady aerodynamic interference and the boundary-induced component of such a flowfield. By hybridizing two dynamic domain decomposition techniques, the grid generation task is simplified, the computer memory requirement is reduced, and the governing …

Multigrid Acceleration Of Time-Dependent Solutions Of Navier-Stokes Equations, Sarafa Oladele Ibraheem

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Recent progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics is encouraging scientists to look at fine details of flow physics of problems in which natural unsteady phenomena have hitherto been neglected. The acceleration methods that have proven very successful in steady state computations can be explored for time dependent computations. In this work, an efficient multigrid methods is developed to solve the time-dependent Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. The Beam-Warming ADI method is used as the base algorithm for time stepping calculations. Application of the developed algorithm proved very efficient in selected steady and unsteady test problems. For instance, the inherent unsteadiness present in …

Materials Recovery Facilities In The United States Virgin Islands: A Regional Facilities Location Model Study, Lloyd O. Prince Jr.

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Continental municipalities have derived many benefits from the economies of scale associated with a regional approach to facilities location and management planning. Centralized solid waste processing facilities is an example. Island communities, however, surrounded by miles of ocean, are constrained to a fragmented approach to the facilities location solution. This research was conducted to determine if the regional paradigm suggested in the literature is applicable to a set of island communities connected by an ocean transportation infrastructure. A linear programming (LP) model, constraints and data requirements were developed and applied to a network of islands. A series of hypothetical material …