Engineering Commons^™

High Temperature Heat Exchanger Project: Quarterly Progress Report October 1, 2004 Through December 31, 2004, Anthony Hechanova

Publications (NSTD)

UNLV hosted an NHI Systems Interface Meeting on Dec. 16 and a UNLVRF HTHX Kickoff Meeting on Dec. 17. The purpose of the meetings was to coordinate the FY05 research and development effort of the UNLV Research Foundation portion of the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative among the DOE, national program technical directors and the UNLVRF collaborators. Collaborators also had the opportunity to discuss their research program plan and update their progress. It was decided that these type of collaboration meetings were very useful and they will be held quarterly at the various collaborator sites. The next meeting will be in March …

Dec 2004, Tractor Museum

Lester F. Larsen Tractor Museum: Planning and Development Documents

Introductions Treasurer's Report Curator's Report

Validation Of Energygauge® Usa Using The Hers Bestest, Florida Solar Energy Center, Philip Fairey

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report presents results from the testing and validation of the EnergyGauge USA home energy rating software conducted using the HERS BESTEST procedures. The results show that EnergyGauge USA is an excellent and verifiable simulation program that is capable of meeting all national requirements for home energy rating software tools.

Cold Climate Case Study; High Efficiency North Dakota Twin Homes, Florida Solar Energy Center, David Chasar

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The Eastern Dakota Housing Alliance has completed 8 of 20 planned multi-family and single-family dwellings on Selkirk Circle in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Four twin-home (duplex) units were completed in March of 2003 (Phase I) and four more identical units were completed in February of 2004 (Phase II). Four additional units (Phase III) are due for completion by mid-summer, 2004. Design assistance and performance testing were provided by the Building America Industrialized Housing Project with the goal of achieving up to 50% energy savings over the 1993 Model Energy Code.

To approach this level of savings, various envelope and equipment …

Thermodynamic Analysis Of Separation Systems, Yaşar Demirel

Papers in Thermal Mechanics

Separation systems mainly involve interfacial mass and heat transfer as well as mixing. Distillation is a major separation system by means of heat supplied from a higher temperature level at the reboiler and rejected in the condenser at a lower temperature level. Therefore, it resembles a heat engine producing a separation work with a rather low efficiency. Lost work (energy) in separation systems is due to irreversible processes of heat, mass transfer, and mixing, and is directly related to entropy production according to the Gouy-Stodola principle. In many separation systems of absorption, desorption, extraction, and membrane separation, the major irreversibility …

Pre-Impact Lower Extremity Posture And Brake Pedal Force Predict Foot And Ankle Forces During An Automobile Collision, Elizabeth C. Hardin, Anne Su, Antonie J. Van Den Bogert

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Background: The purpose of this study was to determine how a driver’s foot and ankle forces during a frontal vehicle collision depend on initial lower extremity posture and brake pedal force. Method of Approach: A 2D musculoskeletal model with seven segments and six right-side muscle groups was used. A simulation of a three-second braking task found 3647 sets of muscle activation levels that resulted in stable braking postures with realistic pedal force. These activation patterns were then used in impact simulations where vehicle deceleration was applied and driver movements and foot and ankle forces were simulated. Peak rearfoot ground reaction …

Measurement Of Handle Forces For Crimping Connectors And Cutting Cable In The Electric Power Industry, Richard W. Marklin, Lia Lazuardi, Jeremy R. Wilzbacher

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Overhead and underground line work in the electric power industry is physically very strenuous and can expose workers to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), particularly in the upper extremity. Crimping compression connectors—such as sleeve connectors and lugs—and cutting cables are two of the most frequent tasks that line workers perform. Line workers at many utilities in the US crimp connectors and cut cable with long-handled manual tools. However, the actual magnitude of the forces applied to the handles of these tools is not known. The objectives of this laboratory study were to measure the forces applied to the handles of a manual …

Cooling Load Reduction And Air Conditioner Design In A 19th Century Florida House Museum, Florida Solar Energy Center, David Chasar

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Restoration plans at the H.S. Williams house included the installation of a space conditioning system. This contract report details how building envelope construction and air conditioner design were optimized as a system. Many aspects of the effort lent themselves to maintaining important "character-defining" features of the building including the resurrection of passive cooling attributes like light colored exterior paint and operable storm shutters. In addition, outside air infiltration was measured on the Williams house and six other balloon-frame homes to document this often significant cooling load component.

A Study Of Gas Holdup Properties Of Selected Non-Newtonian Simulants, Milena Abarca

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) needs a design basis to properly design a PJM and ventilation systems for the Waste Treatment Plant vessels. In order to meet DOE's needs for proper ventilation and PJM design technologies, Florida International University's Hemispheric Center for Environmental Technology (FIU-HCET) has studied the properties for gas holdup in selected non Newtonian fluids with physicochemical properties comparable to nuclear waste.

The primary purpose of this research was to study the holdup properties of selected non - Newtonian simulants and quantify the level of gas holdup in selected simulants using continuous argon injection in five gallons …

Lead-Free Solder Joint Reliability – State Of The Art And Perspectives, Jianbiao Pan, Jyhwen Wang, David M. Shaddock

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

There is an increasing demand in replacing tin-lead (Sn/Pb) solders with lead-free solders in the electronics industry due to health and environmental concern. The European Union recently passed a law to ban the use of lead in electronic products. The ban will go into effect in July of 2006. The Japanese electronics industry has worked to eliminate lead from consumer electronic products for several years. Although currently there are no specific regulations banning lead in electronics devices in the United States, many companies and consortiums are working on lead-free solder initiatives including Intel, Motorola, Agilent Technologies, General Electric, Boeing, NEMI …

Coordination Variables And Consensus Building In Multiple Vehicle Systems, Tim Mclain

Faculty Publications

Much of the research focus in the cooperative control community has been on formation control problems. This focus may be due to the fact that the group control problem can be reduced to well-established single-agent control problems by employing a leader-follower type control strategy. For example, single-agent path planning and trajectory generation techniques can be employed for the leader, and conventional trajectory tracking strategies can be employed for the followers. Indeed, formation control problems are much like linear systems theory: we search where the light is the brightest. It can be argued that formation control problems are the simplest type …

Edge-Cracked Orthotropic Bimaterial Butt Joint Under Antiplane Singularity, Xiangfa Wu, Yuris A. Dzenis, Emrah Gokdag

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Faculty Publications

Explicit elastic solutions are given for an edge-cracked orthotropic bimaterial butt joint under antiplane singularity of a screw dislocation and a line-force. During the procedure, conformal mapping and known dislocation solution are utilized for constructing the fundamental solution to the present problem. Stress intensity factor (SIF) and energy release rate (ERR) of the edge-cracked butt joint are given in closed-form. In limiting cases, results provided in this work cover those in literature.

Screw Dislocation Interacting With Interfacial Edge-Cracks In Piezoelectric Bimaterial Strips, Xiangfa Wu, Yuris A. Dzenis, Bradley D. Rinschen

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Faculty Publications

This paper is concerned with the interaction between an interfacial edge-crack and a screw dislocation under out-of-plane mechanical and in-plane electric loading in a piezoelectric bimaterial strip. In addition to a discontinuous electric potential across the slip plane, the dislocation is subjected to a line-force and a line-charge at the core. Under the framework of linear piezoelectricity, the out-of-plane displacement and in-plane electric potentials are constructed in closed-form by means of conformal mapping technique and the known solution for screw dislocation in cracked piezoelectric bimaterial. The intensity factors (IFs) and energy release rate (ERR) are derived explicitly.

Exergy Use In Bioenergetics, Yaşar Demirel

Papers in Analytical Chemistry

Every developed and adapted biological system extracts useful energy from outside, converts, stores it, and uses for muscular contraction, substrate transport, protein synthesis, and other energy utilizing processes. This energy management in a living cell is called the bioenergetics, and the useful energy is the exergy, which is destroyed in every irreversible process because of the entropy production. The converted exergy is the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) produced through the oxidative phosphorylation coupled to respiration in which the exergy originates from oxidation of reducing equivalents of nutrients. A living cell uses the ATP for all the energy demanding activities; it has …

Work In Progress: Combining Concept Inventories With Rapid Feedback To Enhance Learning, John Chen, Jennifer Kadlowec, Dexter Whittinghill

Mechanical Engineering

In this project our goal is to adapt the Concept Inventory for frequent classroom use, and to implement it in a system to provide rapid feedback to students of their understanding of key concepts being presented. The feedback system acts as the focal point and catalyst to encourage students, working in pairs, to assist each other in correcting misconceptions or deepening each other’s understanding of the topic at hand. Furthermore, the system allows the professor to assess the students’ level of comprehension (or misconception) in a just-in-time fashion, and thus guides his or her pacing and coverage of the material. …

Method And Apparatus For Removal Of Minute Particles From A Surface Using Thermophoresis To Prevent Particle Redeposition, Susan Davis Allen

Mechanical Engineering - Daytona Beach

A method and apparatus for removing minute particles from a surface of a sample are provided that prevent redeposition of the particles onto the surface. By combining thermophoresis with laser assisted particle removal (LAPR), the methods and apparatus remove minute particles (for example, micrometer and nanometer sizes) and assure that they will not redeposit.

Oct 2004, Tractor Museum

Lester F. Larsen Tractor Museum: Planning and Development Documents

Old Trusty Show New Paint Scheme History of Ag Engineering Department

Almost Global Asymptotic Formation Stabilization Using Navigation Functions, Amit Kumar, Herbert G. Tanner

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a navigation function through which a group of mobile agents can be coordinated to achieve a particular formation, both in terms of shape and orientation, while avoiding collisions between themselves and with obstacles in the environment. Convergence is global and complete, subject to the constraints of the navigation function methodology. Algebraic graph theoretic properties associated with the interconnection graph are shown to affect the shape of the navigation function. The approach is centralized but the potential function is constructed in a way that facilitates complete decentralization. The strategy presented will also serve as a point of reference and …

Modeling, Fabrication, And Optimization Of Niobium Cavities Phase Iii: Quarterly Report, Robert A. Schill Jr., Mohamed Trabia

Transmutation Sciences Materials (TRP)

This quarterly report provides an update to the last phase of the Modeling, Fabrication, and Optimization of Niobium Cavities. Designing the experimental setup of secondary electron emission was well underway in early summer of 2003 when funding was made available for this portion the study. By March 2004, many of the components of the experimental study reached UNLV with some assembly accomplished. The first secondary electron emission (SEE) measurement was made from the surface of a Faraday cup in September 2004. At a particular beam energy, the current measured with the Faraday cup and electrometer changed sign over a range …

Solvent And Method For Extraction Of Triglyceride Rich Oil, Shubhender Kapila, Paul Ki-Souk Nam, V. J. Flanigan

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

The present invention relates to a solvent for use in extracting oil from an oil bearing material, such as soybeans, with the solvent resulting in the selective extraction of a triglyceride rich oil, which contains 95% or greater triglycerides and non-polar constituents, with the solvent comprised of a hydrocarbon, preferably hexane, and a fluorocarbon, so that the solvent has a viscosity less than 2.6 centipoise and a polarity of less than 0.1. The present invention also relates to a method of using the solvent to extract the triglyceride rich oil, with the method including preferably extracting the oil at a …

Japanese R&D On Large-Scale Co2 Capture, Takahisa Yokoyama

Separations Technology VI: New Perspectives on Very Large-Scale Operations

The Special Report on Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage was recently accepted by IPCC (1). In the context of optimization and integration of CO2 capture and sequestration, CO2 capture is a particularly important step. This paper presents a broad overview of key issues of CO2 capture technologies in the Japanese R&D, focusing on their application to large-scale power plants.

Work Flow Policy And Within-Worker And Between-Workers Variability In Performance, Kenneth Howard Doerr, Tali Freed, Terence R. Mitchell, Chester A. Schriesheim, Xiaohua Zhou

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Work flow policies are shown to induce a change in average between-workers variability (worker heterogeneity) and within-worker variability in performance times. In a laboratory experiment, the authors measured the levels of worker heterogeneity and within-worker variability under an individual performance condition, a work sharing condition, and a fixed assignment condition. The work sharing policy increased the levels of worker heterogeneity and worker variability, whereas the fixed assignment policy decreased them. These effects, along with work flow policy main effects on mean performance times and variability are examined. This article represents an initial step in understanding effects that may be important …

In-Drift Natural Convection And Condensation, Stephen W. Webb, Phillip Rogers, John Del Mar, Darrell Svalstad, Cliff Howard, Ernest Hardin, Bechtel Saic Company, Llc

Publications (YM)

The Yucca Mountain repository configuration consists of waste packages stored inside of underground tunnels, or drifts. The waste packages generate heat due to radioactive decay, and moisture flows into and out of the drifts in liquid and vapor form. Heat and mass transfer within the drifts, including interaction with the surrounding rock, are potentially important processes for the performance of the repository. The present report documents models for in-drift heat and mass transfer during the post-closure period. Pre-closure, or ventilated, conditions are documented in a separate report (BSC 2004 [DIRS 169862]).

Lean Energy Analysis: Identifying, Discovering And Tracking Energy Savings Potential, J. Kelly Kissock, John Seryak

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Energy in manufacturing facilities is used for direct production of goods, space conditioning, and general facility support such as lighting. This paper presents a methodology, called lean energy analysis, LEA, for graphically and statistically analyzing plant energy use in terms of these major end uses.

The LEA methodology uses as few as 60 easily obtainable data points. Multivariable change-point models of electricity and natural gas use as functions of outdoor air temperature and production data are developed. The statistical models are used to subdivide plant energy use into facility, space-conditioning and production-related components.

These breakdowns suggest the savings potential from …

Science For Stewardship: Multidisciplinary Research On Uss Arizona, Matthew A. Russell, Larry E. Murphy, Donald L. Johnson, Timothy J. Foecke, Pamela J. Morris, Raphy Mitchell

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

The National Park Service’s Submerged Resources Center and USS Arizona Memorial are conducting and coordinating research directed at understanding the nature and rate of natural processes affecting the deterioration of the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The USS Arizona Preservation Project is designed to be multi-year, interdisciplinary and cumulative, with each element contributing to developing an overall management strategy designed to minimize environmental hazard from fuel oil release and provide the basic research required to make informed management decisions for long-term preservation. The primary project focus is toward acquiring requisite data for understanding the complex corrosion and deterioration processes …

2004 (Fall) Ensi Informer Magazine, Morehead State University. Engineering Sciences Department

ENSI Informer Magazine Archive

The ENSI Informer Magazine published in the fall of 2004.

The Non-Destructive And Nano-Microstructural Characterization Of Thermal-Barrier Coatings, Y. H. Sohn, B. Jayaraj, S. Laxman, B. Franke, J. W. Byeon, Anette M. Karlsson

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The durability of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) plays an important role in the service reliability and maintainability of hot-section components in advanced turbine engines for aerospace and utility applications. Photostimulated luminescence spectroscopy (PSLS) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) are being concurrently developed as complimentary nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques for quality control and liferemain assessment of TBCs. This paper discusses recent achievements in understanding the residual stress, phase constituents, and electrochemical resistance (or capacitance) of TBC constituents—with an emphasis on the thermally grown oxide. Results from NDE by PSLS and EIS are correlated to the nano- and microstructural development of TBCs.

Multi-D Cfd Modeling Of Free-Piston Stirling Convertor At Nasa Grc, Scott D. Wilson, Rodger W. Dyson, Roy C. Tew, Mounir B. Ibrahim

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

A high efficiency Stirling Radioisotope Generator (SRG) is being developed for possible use in long duration space science missions. NASA s advanced technology goals for next generation Stirling convertors include increasing the Carnot efficiency and percent of Carnot efficiency. To help achieve these goals, a multidimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code is being developed to numerically model unsteady fluid flow and heat transfer phenomena of the oscillating working gas inside Stirling convertors. Simulations of the Stirling convertors for the SRG will help characterize the thermodynamic losses resulting from fluid flow and heat transfer between the working gas and solid walls. …

Sagittal Plane Biomechanics Cannot Injure The Acl During Sidestep Cutting, Scott G. Mclean, Xuemei Huang, Anne Su, Antonie J. Van Den Bogert

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Background. Knee joint sagittal plane forces are a proposed mechanism of anterior cruciate ligament injury during sport movements such as sidestep cutting. Ligament force magnitudes for these movements however, remain unknown. The need to examine injury-causing events suggests elucidation via model-based investigations is possible. Using this approach, the current study determined whether sagittal plane knee loading during sidestep cutting could in isolation injure the anterior cruciate ligament.

Methods. Experiments were performed on subject-specific forward dynamic musculoskeletal models, generated from data obtained from 10 male and 10 female athletes. Models were optimized to simulate subject-specific cutting movements. Random perturbations …

Admittance Selection For Force-Guided Assembly Of Polygonal Parts Despite Friction, Shuguang Huang, Joseph M. Schimmels

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

An important issue in the development of force guidance assembly strategies is the specification of an appropriate admittance control law. This paper identifies conditions to be satisfied when selecting the appropriate admittance to achieve force-guided assembly of polygonal parts for multipoint contact with friction. These conditions restrict the admittance behavior for each of the various one-point and two-point contact cases and ensure that the motion that results from contact reduces part misalignment for each case. We show that, for bounded friction and part misalignments, if the identified conditions are satisfied for a finite number of contact configurations and friction coefficients, …