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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Assessment Of Passive Fire Protection On Steel-Girder Bridges, Michael Davidson Dec 2012

Assessment Of Passive Fire Protection On Steel-Girder Bridges, Michael Davidson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Bridges in the US are severely damaged or suffer collapse from fires at significant rates, even when compared to other hazards such as earthquakes. Fire-induced bridge collapses are perpetuated by the general lack of installed fire protection systems. Therefore, new materials and applications are needed to mitigate structural damage that can be caused to civil infrastructure by severe fires. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to further the development of new fire protection applications in transportation structures. Specifically, the investigation centers on the development of new applications in passive fire protection materials, within the context of shielding steel-girder bridges …


Hybrid Nanostructures For Artificial Machine Olfaction, Landon Joseph Oakes May 2012

Hybrid Nanostructures For Artificial Machine Olfaction, Landon Joseph Oakes

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The detection of low level concentrations of particles in a gaseous environment is of importance to many fields, especially Homeland Security. The ability to identify ppb concentrations of explosives and their degradation products can aid in the detection of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), ammunition dumps, or hidden explosives. One method of accomplishing this task is through the use of an array of chemiresistors in an electronic nose device. For this study, chemiresistors were constructed using 3-D silica nanospring mats with a contiguous film of ZnO nanocrystals and ZnO nanocrystals decorated by metallic nanoparticles. Samples with an average grain size of …