Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of A Stochastic Model For Performance Characterization Of A Pv/Vrb Microgrid, Kayla M. Speidel

Masters Theses

"Photovoltaic (PV) Microgrids have been proven to be a useful technology in providing an environmentally friendly source of energy when compared to the use of fossil fuels. Accurately characterizing the performance of a microgrid system would ensure that the system is appropriately sized to meet electrical loads without a heavy reliance on diesel generators. A microgrid that is sized properly will reduce the cost of diesel fuel, while also reducing the risk of wasting money on an oversized system. A deterministic model which was created to characterize the performance of PV microgrids based on percent of time generator running was …

3d Numerical Modelling Of Micropiles Interaction With Soil & Rock, Audai Kamal Theinat

Masters Theses

"A 5-span bridge along the Foothills Parkway of the Great Smoky Mountains, TN, was recently completed. Two out of the four piers were instrumented to measure the load transfer in the foundations. The foundations consisted of twenty 10-inch micropiles under the pile cap for each pier. Strain gages were installed and monitored at the different stages of construction. The objective of this research is to examine the interaction between the ground and micropiles using the field data performance and numerical modelling. The 3D computer model consists of the micropile foundation within the steep rock bedding planes and overburden soils. The …

Generation And Validation Of Optimal Topologies For Solid Freeform Fabrication, Purnajyoti Bhaumik

Masters Theses

"The study of fabricating topologically optimized parts is presented hereafter. The mapping of topology optimization results for Standard Tessellation Language (STL) writing would enable the solid freeform fabrication of lightweight mechanisms. Aerospace leaders such as NASA, Boeing, Airbus, European Aeronautic Defense And Space Company (EADS), and GE Aero invest in topology optimization research for the production of lightweight materials. Certain concepts such as microstructural homogenization, discretization, and mapping are reviewed and presented in the context of topology optimization. Future biomedical applications of solid freeform fabrication such as organ printing stand to save millions of lives through the robust development of …

The Dynamic Behavior Of A Solid State Transformer (Sst) During Recloser Operation In Distribution Systems, Fahd Amin Hariri

Masters Theses

"Electrical power systems are continuously facing increasing electrical power demand in the last years to meet the requirements of modern life style. In order to satisfy such needs electricity authorities are taking appropriate measures to enhance the performance of power networks. One of the solutions to meet the customer's demands for energy was the trend to use the renewable energy. The increasing use of renewable energy and other distributed generation sources made the electrical grid more complex. Many researches have been carried out to find out solutions to overcome this complexity. One of these researches -- which was on a …

Freeze-Form Extrusion Fabrication Of Boron Carbide, Aaron Scott Thornton

Masters Theses

"Boron carbide is a safe, alternative to beryllium as a material for aerospace structures since it is also light-weight and exhibits high strength. This paper discusses a study of the Freeze-form Extrusion Fabrication (FEF) process to fabricate parts from boron carbide. Process parameters and hardware were modified to fabricate boron carbide specimens free of printed defects. Four-point bending tests were performed to measure the flexural strength of fabricated specimens. Observations of the presence of voids caused by ice crystals in fabricated parts led to further development and characterization of the boron carbide paste used with the FEF process. Additives were …

Common Path Pessimism Removal In Static Timing Analysis, Chunyu Wang

Masters Theses

"Static timing analysis is a key process to guarantee timing closure for modern IC designs. However, additional pessimism can significantly increase the difficulty to achieve timing closure. Common path pessimism removal (CPPR) is a prevalent step to achieve accurate timing signoff. To speed up the existing exhaustive exploration on all paths in a design, this thesis introduces a fast multi-threading timing analysis for removing common path pessimism based on block-based static timing analysis. Experimental results show that the proposed method has faster runtime in removing excess pessimism from clock paths."--Abstract, page iii.

Detecting Diesel Particulate Matter Using Real Time Monitoring Under The Influence Of An Exhaust Fan System, Yasir Helal Alghamdi

Masters Theses

"Diesel Particulate Matter (DPM) is a complex mixture of diesel exhaust gas that consists of carbon, ash, metallic abrasion particles, sulfates and silicates. The diesel soot particle includes a solid core made of elemental carbon, and organic carbon compound attached to the surface of the soot particle. The main source of DPM is diesel exhaust gas. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have determined that DPM is the source of most of the emissions of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, oxide of nitrogen, and hydrocarbons in underground coal, metal and non metal …

Utilizing Learning Style Preferences And Quality Function Deployment For Curriculum Development, Julie M. Ezzell

Masters Theses

"Workplace requirements continually evolve to keep pace with the developing global market. To meet ever increasing standards, educational institutions have been investigating methods to prepare students for their future employment. Course modifications should be carefully considered to meet the requirements of all stakeholders, including those of the students. The objective of this research was to provide students with an overall better learning experience that tailors the teaching methods to his/her individual learning preferences. To meet this objective, a comprehensive survey was provided to an undergraduate course in quality. The survey documented the student's individuality when learning and made note of …

Synthesis Of Different Sizes & Functions Nanoparticles, Jiaming Geng

Masters Theses

"Nanogels, whose size range from 1 to 100nm, have been interested in many research areas: cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, catalysts, photochemistry, and in optical switches or sensors. In Petroleum Engineering area, nanogels can be used as conformance control agent and emulsion stabilizer. And after grafting functional groups or hybrid, nanogels can be used as tracer for the visual modeling.

Though nanoparticles have been studied for more than 20 years, few of them are about nanogels. In the thesis, stirring rate, surfactant type and concentration were found have a large impact on the synthesis of nanogels. And cationic nanogels have salt and acid …

Space-Based Relative Multitarget Tracking, Keith Allen Legrand

Masters Theses

"Access to space has expanded dramatically over the past decade. The growing popularity of small satellites, specifically cubesats, and the following launch initiatives have resulted in exponentially growing launch numbers into low Earth orbit. This growing congestion in space has punctuated the need for local space monitoring and autonomous satellite inspection. This work describes the development of a framework for monitoring local space and tracking multiple objects concurrently in a satellite's neighborhood. The development of this multitarget tracking systems has produced collateral developments in numerical methods, relative orbital mechanics, and initial relative orbit determination.

This work belongs to a class …

Multi-Objective Optimal Dispatch Of Distributed Energy Resources, Ayomide Longe

Masters Theses

"This thesis is composed of two papers which investigate the optimal dispatch for distributed energy resources. In the first paper, an economic dispatch problem for a community microgrid is studied. In this microgrid, each agent pursues an economic dispatch for its personal resources. In addition, each agent is capable of trading electricity with other agents through a local energy market. In this paper, a simple market structure is introduced as a framework for energy trades in a small community microgrid such as the Solar Village. It was found that both sellers and buyers benefited by participating in this market. In …

A Sentence-Based Image Search Engine, Weizhi Meng

Masters Theses

"Nowadays people are more interested in searching the relevant images directly through search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, these image search engines have dedicated extensive research effort to the problem of keyword-based image retrieval. However, the most widely used keyword-based image search engine Google is reported to have a precision of only 39%. And all of these systems have limitation in creating sentence-based queries for images.

This thesis studies a practical image search scenario, where many people feel annoyed by using only keywords to find images for their ideas of speech or presentation through trial and error. This thesis …

Design And Implementation Of A Broker For Cloud Additive Manufacturing Services, Venkata Prashant Modekurthy

Masters Theses

"The growing number of cloud Additive Manufacturing (AM) services, offered by different providers over the Internet, makes it challenging for consumers to compare these cloud AM services to select a service of their choice. In addition, it is even more challenging for consumers to compare these cloud AM services against their personal preferences. This is because, consumers personal preferences on multiple service attributes such as price, material, accuracy, and schedule, should be considered for cloud AM service selection. The decentralized nature of these cloud AM services coupled by the need to consider consumers personal preferences during cloud AM service selection, …

Detection And Cancellation Of Sinusoidal Fading Power Variation In Wireless Communication Systems, Sushruth Sastry

Masters Theses

"Fading channel estimation in wireless communication systems depends on an expected model for fading and any assumptions made about the channel itself. The bit error rate (BER) performance of the communication system is affected by how closely these assumptions made in designing the estimation technique match the deployment environment. Any unforeseen disturbances or hindrances in the environment deteriorate the BER performance of the system when the estimation system is not designed to combat such disturbances. To deal with such unforeseen obstacles, additional mathematical models can be proposed to model such disturbances and then the estimation techniques can either be reinforced …

Advanced Sustainable Concrete Materials For Infrastructure Applications, Kaylea Ann Smith

Masters Theses

"This study was performed to examine the effects of cement replaced by high volumes of Class C fly-ash on durability characteristics of concrete up to 120 days. Specifically, this study investigates possibility of amending American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) to allow High Volume Fly-ash (HVFA) concrete to cure until later ages prior to testing instead of 28 days. Five mix designs were compared with varying fly-ash percentages from 0 to 70% (by total cementitious mass). No other additives were present in any of the five mix designs. Water-to-cementitious ratio (w/cm) and total cementitious material remained constant as 0.40 …

Freeform Extrusion Fabrication Of Titanium Fiber Reinforced 13-93 Bioactive Glass Scaffolds, Albin Thomas

Masters Theses

"Although implants made with bioactive glass have shown promising results for bone repair, their application in repairing load-bearing long bones is limited due to their poor mechanical properties as compared to human bones. This thesis study is on freeform extrusion fabrication of silicate based 13-93 bioactive glass scaffolds reinforced with titanium fibers. A composite paste was prepared with 13-93 bioactive glass filled with titanium fibers (~16 µm in diameter and aspect ratio of ~250) having 0.1 to 0.4 vol. % of the bioactive glass scaffold. This paste was then filled into a syringe manually, and then extruded through a nozzle …

A Subband Kalman Filter For Echo Cancellation, Rakesh Vijayakumar

Masters Theses

"This thesis involves the implementation of a Kalman filter for the application of echo cancellation. This particular Kalman filter is implemented in the frequency domain, in subbands, so as to make it faster and of lesser calculational complexity for real time applications. To evaluate the functioning of this subband Kalman filter, comparison of the performance of the subband Kalman filter is done with respect to the original time domain Kalman filter, and also with other subband adaptive filters for echo cancellation such as the NLMS filter. Additionally, since background noise affects the working of any adaptive filter, the newly developed …

Shear-Friction Of Sand-Lightweight Clay And Slate Aggregate Concretes With Varied Reinforcement Ratios, Samantha Lynn Wermager

Masters Theses

"This thesis focuses on the structural properties of sand-lightweight aggregate concrete in terms of shear transfer strength at cold-joint interfaces. This type of interface is common for precast concrete connections which are typically designed using the shear-friction concept. This testing program was meant to expand the shear-friction database and evaluate the appropriateness of current shear-friction design provisions with respect to sand-lightweight concrete. This study builds on the work done by Shaw (2013) who studied lightweight expanded shale aggregate concrete. The current study included thirty-two push-off specimens constructed from sand-lightweight concrete with a target compressive strength of 5,000 psi. Either expanded …

Estimation Of Tip-Sample Force In Tapping Mode Atomic Force Microscopy Using Neural-Network And Repetitive Control Approaches, Alireza Toghraee

Masters Theses

"Atomic Force Microscopy is one of the most powerful tools for imaging, measuring and manipulating materials at nanometer scale. Among different modes of AFM, tapping mode, in which the oscillating tip touches the sample periodically, is most common mode. During the tip approach and retract, the tip interacts with sample and experiences different force regimes. This tip-sample interaction force contains information about the sample topology, material properties and tip geometry. However, quantitative measurement of the time-varying tip-sample interaction forcing function is challenging in the tapping mode because of the combined dynamic complexities of the cantilever and nonlinear complexity of the …

Paleogeographic And Paleoenvironmental Evolution Of Lacustrine And Fluvial Upper Triassic Zhangjiatan Shale Sequence, Ordos Basin, China, Qiuwan Yu

Masters Theses

"Detailed sequence stratigraphic and depositional systems analyses can effectively delineate factors and processes controlling deposition of fine-grained lacustrine sediments. Upper Triassic Zhangjiatan (ZJT) Shale Bed and adjacent strata in Ordos foreland basin was used as an example. A new depositional sequence model shows that the maximum regressive shoreline was more landward than that at the lowest lake-level. The study area is on the ramp margin, covering 100x90 km². Thin sections, cores and well-logs of 80 wells are used to calibrate log signatures, document lithofacies, and interpret depositional facies in a sequence stratigraphic context. The entire sequence thickens from …

Factors Affecting The Heat Transfer During The Dip Testing Of Potential Third Generation Advanced High Strength Steels, Kramer Michael Pursell

Masters Theses

"A dip tester was designed and built at Missouri University of Science and Technology to test the effects of the primary alloying elements (Mn, Si, and Al) of Fe-Mn-Al-Si-C type 3rd generation advanced high strength steel (AHSS) alloys, dipping superheat, and dipping speed on the heat transfer during rapid solidification. The difficulties associated with casting 3rd generation AHSS were compiled as well to serve as a best-practices guide. An extensive list of potential 3rd generation AHSS alloys was developed and tested, and the effects of various dip testing parameters were examined.

Manganese was found to increase the heat flux by …

Aerial Vehicle Trajectory Design For Spatio-Temporal Task Satisfaction And Aggregation Based On Utility Metric, Amarender Reddy Mekala

Masters Theses

"Flight trajectories are mainly designed in order to make sure that the aerial vehicle reaches the destination point from the start point. In addition to that, the flight path is designed in such a way that the flight avoids dangerous zones and the maneuvers required for the path are practically feasible for the flight.

This thesis focuses on the aerial vehicle trajectory generation passing through a set of pre-defined way points while satisfying the task points sent by the ground base station in between the way points. Each specified waypoint is reached exactly at the specified location and time. Intermediate …

In Vitro Study Of Wound-Healing Capabilities Of Bioactive Glass Fibers Under Various Culture Conditions, Sisi Chen

Masters Theses

"Bioactive borate glass has been recognized to have both hard and soft tissue repair and regeneration capabilities through stimulating both osteogenesis and angiogenesis. However, the underlying physiological and cellular mechanism behind this function remains unclear. In this study, in vitro dynamic flow modules were designed to mimic the micro-environment near the vascular depletion and hyperplasia area in wound-healing regions, and were used to investigate the biocompatibility and functionality of borate glass nano-/micro-fibers. Glass-cell interactions were investigated either by dosing fibers to the upstream of or co-cultured with cells, and two types of borate glasses (with or without CuO/ZnO doped were …

Damage Detection Through Acoustic Emission Of Fracture Processes In Concrete Masonry Units, John Alexander Cain

Masters Theses

"Masonry structures are vulnerable to earthquakes; their brittleness and discontinuous formation make them susceptible to collapse. In the event of an emergency, this could be detrimental and perhaps fatal. The area of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is focused on understanding the behavior of structures for the sake of safety and predicting their longevity. One applicable technique to monitor this behavior is Acoustic Emission (AE). Acoustic Emissions are transient elastic waves released as microcracks nucleate from stress intensities, coalesce into cracks and then accumulate as damage. AE monitoring is a favorable method because it is capable of detecting cracking from within …

Development Of Two Color Imaging Pyrometer For Studying Thermal History Of Laser Metal Deposition, Niroop Matta

Masters Theses

"The laser aided manufacturing process is a process in which parts are built by adding material into the melt pool created by a laser. This process involves a complex thermal history which is important in determining the quality of the parts built. The objective of this study is to develop a high resolution two color imaging pyrometer which can measure the temperature of an object without the dependence of spectral emissivity of the material at an economical price. An 8.8 MP CMOS sensor is used as an imaging sensor. The visible spectrum of light is used for temperature measurement. The …

Thomas Bold's Chancery Reports, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

Thomas Bold was born in 1695, the son of William Bold of St. Bride's Parish, London. He entered Westminster School in 1708 and Christ Church, Oxford, on 23 June 1713. Bold received his B.A. in 1718 and an M.A. in 1721. He was admitted as a law student at the Middle Temple on 15 June 1711 and called to the bar on 31 May 1717. He was admitted ad eundem at Lincoln's Inn on 23 November 1717.

Jan2015, Robert Kelly

Robert Kelly Manuscripts

From January 2015 Robert Kelly Archive

King John, Magna Carta And The Origins Of English Legal Rights, Paul M. Pruitt Jr.

Articles

No abstract provided.

Disrupting Education Federalism, Kimberly J. Robinson

Law Faculty Publications

The ongoing expansion of federal influence over education in the United States provides a particularly salient time to consider how education federalism should be structured to achieve the nation's education goals. One ofthe nation's unfulfilled and yet essential education goals is to ensure that all students receive equal access to an excellent education. A variety of scholars and, most recently, the federal Equity and Excellence Commission have offered proposals for advancing this goal. By building on this growing momentum for reform,I argue that disrupting the nation's longstanding approach to education federalism-which I define as the balance of power between federal, …

Publicity Rules For Public Trusts, Allison Anna Tait

Law Faculty Publications

That museums are public trusts is a truism in academic discourse and industry discussion. What various commentators mean when they speak about museums as public trusts, however, is less clear. This Article untangles and analyzes the various meanings of "'public trust" and how these meanings translate into regulatory systems. I propose that two predominant meanings-the public resource and trust law meanings-jointly constitute the definition of a public trust, and that each meaning has a consequent regulatory framework. These definitional and regulatory frameworks coexist without conflict in most contexts. In the context of deaccessioning,however, they collide.

Deaccessioning-the practice of a museum …