Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Model To Predict Concentrations And Uncertainty For Mercury Species In Lakes, Ashley Hendricks

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

To increase understanding of mercury cycling, a seasonal mass balance model was developed to predict mercury concentrations in lakes and fish. Results indicate that seasonality in mercury cycling is significant and is important for a northern latitude lake. Models, when validated, have the potential to be used as an alternative to measurements; models are relatively inexpensive and are not as time intensive. Previously published mercury models have neglected to perform a thorough validation. Model validation allows for regulators to be able to make more informed, confident decisions when using models in water quality management. It is critical to quantify uncertainty; …

Evaporation Of A Sessile Droplet On A Slope, Mitch Timm

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

We theoretically examine the drying of a stationary liquid droplet on an inclined surface. Both analytical and numerical approaches are considered, while assuming that the evaporation results from a purely diffusive transport of the liquid vapor and that the contact line is a pinned circle. For the purposes of our analytical calculations, we suppose that the effect of gravity relative to the surface tension is weak, i.e. the Bond number (Bo) is small. Then, we express the shape of the drop and the vapor concentration field as perturbation expansions in terms of Bo. When the Bond number is zero, the …

Wildfire Emissions In The Context Of Global Change And The Implications For Mercury Pollution, Aditya Kumar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wildfires are episodic disturbances that exert a significant influence on the Earth system. They emit substantial amounts of atmospheric pollutants, which can impact atmospheric chemistry/composition and the Earth’s climate at the global and regional scales. This work presents a collection of studies aimed at better estimating wildfire emissions of atmospheric pollutants, quantifying their impacts on remote ecosystems and determining the implications of 2000s-2050s global environmental change (land use/land cover, climate) for wildfire emissions following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A1B socioeconomic scenario.

A global fire emissions model is developed to compile global wildfire emission inventories for major atmospheric …

Pseudo-Companion Matrices For Polynomial Systems, Melinda Kleczynski

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Roots of a scalar polynomial in one variable are frequently found by computing the eigenvalues of the standard companion matrix. In this exploratory work, we introduce the pseudo-companion matrix for finding roots of multivariable polynomial systems. In some cases, a perturbation of the polynomial system is used for the matrix construction, yielding approximate roots of the original polynomial system. The coordinates of the roots, or their approximations, are obtained from the eigenvectors of this matrix. In this thesis, we describe the process of constructing the pseudo-companion matrix and computing the polynomial roots using illustrative examples.

High Accuracy Methods And Regularization Techniques For Fluid Flows And Fluid-Fluid Interaction, Mustafa Aggul

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation contains several approaches to resolve irregularity issues of CFD problems, including a decoupling of non-linearly coupled fluid-fluid interaction, due to high Reynolds number. New models present not only regularize the linear systems but also produce high accurate solutions both in space and time. To achieve this goal, methods solve a computationally attractive artificial viscosity approximation of the target problem, and then utilize a correction approach to make it high order accurate. This way, they all allow the usage of legacy code | a frequent requirement in the simulation of fluid flows in complex geometries. In addition, they all …