Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Engineering Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Structural Condition Assessment Of Prestressed Concrete Transit Guideways, Robert Zachary Shmerling Jan 2005

Structural Condition Assessment Of Prestressed Concrete Transit Guideways, Robert Zachary Shmerling

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective condition assessment is essential to make better decisions for safety and serviceability of existing civil infrastructure systems. This study explores the condition of an existing transit guideway system that has been in service for thirty-five years. The structural system is composed of six-span continuous prestressed concrete bridge segments. The overall transit system incorporates a number of continuous bridges which share common design details, geometries, and loading conditions. The original analysis is based on certain simplifying assumptions such as rigid behavior over supports and simplified tendon/concrete/steel plate interaction. The current objective is to conduct a representative study for a more …


High Voltage Bias Testing And Degradation Analysis Of Photovoltaic Modules, Vinaykumar Hadagali Jan 2005

High Voltage Bias Testing And Degradation Analysis Of Photovoltaic Modules, Vinaykumar Hadagali

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis mainly focuses on two important aspects of the photovoltaic modules. The first aspect addressed the high voltage bias testing and data and degradation analysis of high voltage biased thin film photovoltaic modules. The second aspect addressed the issues of reliability and durability of crystalline silicon module. Grid-connected photovoltaic systems must withstand high voltage bias in addition to harsh environmental conditions such as intermittent solar irradiance, high humidity, heat and wind. a-Si:H thin-film photovoltaic modules with earlier generation SnO2:F transparent conducting oxide (TCO) on the front glass installed on the FSEC High Voltage Test Bed were monitored since December …


Modeling And Simulation Of Long Term Degradation And Lifetime Of Deep-Submicron Mos Device And Circuit, Zhi Cui Jan 2005

Modeling And Simulation Of Long Term Degradation And Lifetime Of Deep-Submicron Mos Device And Circuit, Zhi Cui

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Long-term hot-carrier induced degradation of MOS devices has become more severe as the device size continues to scale down to submicron range. In our work, a simple yet effective method has been developed to provide the degradation laws with a better predictability. The method can be easily augmented into any of the existing degradation laws without requiring additional algorithm. With more accurate extrapolation method, we present a direct and accurate approach to modeling empirically the 0.18-ìm MOS reliability, which can predict the MOS lifetime as a function of drain voltage and channel length. With the further study on physical mechanism …


Study Of Oxide Breakdown, Hot Carrier And Nbti Effects On Mos Device And Circuit Reliability, Yi Liu Jan 2005

Study Of Oxide Breakdown, Hot Carrier And Nbti Effects On Mos Device And Circuit Reliability, Yi Liu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As CMOS device sizes shrink, the channel electric field becomes higher and the hot carrier (HC) effect becomes more significant. When the oxide is scaled down to less than 3 nm, gate oxide breakdown (BD) often takes place. As a result, oxide trapping and interface generation cause long term performance drift and related reliability problems in devices and circuits. The RF front-end circuits include low noise amplifier (LNA), local oscillator (LO) and mixer. It is desirable for a LNA to achieve high gain with low noise figure, a LO to generate low noise signal with sufficient output power, wide tuning …