Engineering Commons^™

Development And Experimental Validation Of An Underwater Manipulator Hydrodynamic Model, Timothy W. Mclain, Stephen M. Rock

Faculty Publications

Hydrodynamic forces can be large and hence have a significant effect on the dynamic performance of underwater manipulation systems. this paper investigates these forces for a cylindrical single-link arm undergoing motions that are characteristics of a robotic manipulator. Based on flow visualization, theoretical analysis, and experimental measurements, a new model is developed that describes these forces. This model differs from previous models in that the drag and added-mass coefficients are state-dependent functions that depend on the distance traveled by the arm. A factor of four improvement in accuracy is demonstrated over standard constant-coefficient models.

Reactions Of Oxygen And Nitric Oxide In A Microhollow Electrode Discharge, Joseph L. Desormeaux Jr.

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Microhollow electrode discharges have been developed and researched in the Physical Electronics Research Institute Laboratories. This discharge typically operates in direct current mode. Microhollow electrode discharges are non-thermal discharges that produce electrons with energies greater than 10 electron volts. Passing gas mixtures through non-equilibrium discharges invokes excitation or dissociation of gas molecules.

The scope of my research was to study the effect of the discharge on the chemistry of two gases, oxygen and nitric oxide in nitrogen mixture. Initial experiments were performed in an effort to produce ozone near atmospheric pressure. This seemed possible since the discharge has a high-energy …

The Solution Of Hypersingular Integral Equations With Applications In Acoustics And Fracture Mechanics, Richard S. St. John

Mathematics & Statistics Theses & Dissertations

The numerical solution of two classes of hypersingular integral equations is addressed. Both classes are integral equations of the first kind, and are hypersingular due to a kernel containing a Hadamard singularity. The convergence of a Galerkin method and a collocation method is discussed and computationally efficient algorithms are developed for each class of hypersingular integral equation.

Interest in these classes of hypersingular integral equations is due to their occurrence in many physical applications. In particular, investigations into the scattering of acoustic waves by moving objects and the study of dynamic Griffith crack problems has necessitated a computationally efficient technique …

Vortex Wake And Exhaust Plume Interaction, Including Ground Effect, Ihab Gaber Adam

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Computational modeling and studies of the near-field wake-vortex turbulent flows, far-field turbulent wake-vortex/exhaust-plume interaction for subsonic and High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) airplane, and wake-vortex/exhaust-plume interaction with the ground are carried out. The three-dimensional, compressible Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are solved using the implicit, upwind, Roe-flux-differencing, finite-volume scheme. The turbulence models of Baldwin and Lomax, one-equation model of Spalart and Allmaras and two-equation shear stress transport model of Menter are implemented with the RANS solver for turbulent-flow modeling.

For the near-field study, computations are carried out on a fine grid for a rectangular wing with a NACA-0012 airfoil section and …

A Two Dimensional Distributed Hydrological Model For Infiltrating Watersheds With Channel Networks, Donald Lee Currey

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A numerical model named Old Dominion Watershed Simulation Model (ODWSM) is developed for simulating the rainfall/runoff process that occurs over watersheds. ODWSM's computational modules include the capability to simulate two-dimensional overland flow, spatially varied infiltration and depression storage, interception and channel flow for irregular and looped networks.

Overland flow computation is performed by writing the two-dimensional kinematic wave equations in an implicit finite difference form. Computational speed is gained by using an upwind differencing scheme and solving the equations in the direction of flow. This solution method allows for the calculation of infiltration and depression storage to include rainfall, current …

Approximate Analytical Relationships For Linear Optimal Aeroelastic Flight Control Laws, Ayman Hamdy Kassem

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation introduces new methods to uncover functional relationships between design parameters of a contemporary control design technique and the resulting closed-loop properties. Three new methods are developed for generating such relationships through analytical expressions: the Direct Eigen-Based Technique, the Order of Magnitude Technique, and the Cost Function Imbedding Technique. Efforts concentrated on the linear-quadratic state-feedback control-design technique applied to an aeroelastic flight control task. For this specific application, simple and accurate analytical expressions for the closed-loop eigenvalues and zeros in terms of basic parameters such as stability and control derivatives, structural vibration damping and natural frequency, and cost function …

Trends Of Microcomputer Technology In Developing Countries, With More Focus On Tanzanian Experiences: Achievements And Problems, Satoki Mahenge

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Trends of microcomputer technology in developing countries, including Tanzanian. is like a 'mixed bag' of achievement and problems. Although rhe technology has been available for many years in developed world, developing countries are responding to it differently due to differences in political and economic policies. Some countries have acrimonious policies on the technology, some not. There are countries which utilize fully the technology in work places and others are still at dilemma on the importation of the technology due to what is 'claimed to be a weak economy in the presence Of many other pressing needs'. Other countries seem to …

Experimental Study Of Rural Brick Burning In Iringa And Mbeya Regions, E Mushi

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

In this paper results are presented Of a study conducted between June and December 1997. on nine brick firing kilns in Iringa and Mbeya. The locations for rhe study were Mahenje and Iloniba in Mbeya Region and Igumbilo in Iringa region. Three kilns were investigated in each location. For each kiln the process was followed from the laying Of the bricks into a kiln to the opening Of thc kiln for renu)val Of the bricks in preparation for the selling. Different weights and tenperatures were Taken a,' different times. Firing wet bricks results in consumption of 33.63 % of the …

Design Considerations For A Three-Phase Fluidized-Bed Bioreactor, S Manyele

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

The design Of a three-phase fluidized bed bioreactor using novel biomass support for industrial wastewater treatment is reported in this paper. A column of 0.20 m diameter with variable height up to 6.60 m equipped with a foam breaker tank was designed, commissioned and operated. A novel biomass support, KMTR support, has been used Separate gas and liquid feeding systems were designed to facilitate proper bioreactor operation. A flat distriburor plate with 4 mm holes- diameter was desined A study on the hydrodynamic properties of the three-phase fluidized bed bioreactor revealed high values of bed expansion and air hold-ups. Purification …

Kiln Design And Fuel Wood Consumption In Fish Smoking, E Mushi

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

In this paper. a load flow solution for the Medium Voltage (MY) three-phase radial distribution in delta-delta (A — A) connected network supplying different line topologies such as three phase, phase to phase and single-wire earth return (SWER) networks is presented. The general voltage related network equations are developed using Kirchhoff's voltage and current laws. Development ofa solution to the loadflow analysis applying the developed general voltage related network equations is proposed in order to evaluate the network voltage profile. Various numbers of arrays are developed for the identification of the network under study. The proposed method is a new …

Development And Evaluation Of A New Soil Erosion- Productivity Index Model (Sepim), Metthew Mulengera

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

A soil erosion-productivity model which considers rhe effect of soil water storage Capacity. crop evapotranspiration, soil chemical and physical properties inrporrantfor Crop growth has been developed. The model is shown to give good predictions and it promises to be an improvement over the former productivity Index (PI). It also promises to give more reliable results than the currently used /nodels which consider only soil water storage capacity and crop e ' 'apotransp iration.

Use Of Dissolved Oxygen Concentration Probes In Biological Wastewater Treatment Plants, S Manyele

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

A study on use Of dissolved oxygen probes (DOP) for measurement Of oxygen concentration in warer and wastewater treatment is presented. The principles Of operation, design considerations and selection criteria for Two types of probes, viz. galvanic and polarographic, are discussed Use of polarographic probes in n rhree-phase fluidized bed bioreactor and in laboratory experiments is presented and discussed. The effect of airflow rate and treatment time on dissolved oxygen concentration was found to be significant. It was found that polarographic probes are important equipment in determining the pollution of the industrial effluents. Finally, the use of the DOC probes …

Fabrication Guidelines For Cold Bending (1998, Republished 2022), R. L. Brockenbrough & Associates, Inc.

American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) Specifications, Standards, Manuals and Research Reports (1946 - present)

To avoid cracking plates during cold bending, it is necessary to adopt a suitable minimum inside bend radius, which typically varies with plate thickness and grade. However, because of the addition of new plate grades over the years, it was suspected that current limits may not have been developed on a consistent basis. Therefore, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) initiated a program to develop rational limits in 1998. This study was made to review information obtained in recent tests and develop suggested fabrication guidelines.

Preparing An Assessment Plan At San Jose State University, Michael Jennings, Thalia Anagnos

Faculty Publications

The College of Engineering at San Jose State University is scheduled for an accreditation visit in Fall 1999 and has decided to seek reaccreditation under the ABET 2000 criteria. An assessment implementation project has been active for the past two years within the College; with primary objectives of refining missions for programs, defining program outcome objectives, determining which components to assess, and developing appropriate metrics and methods. Longer term objectives of this project are to establish a continuous quality improvement philosophy in the College and to provide information for the ABET accreditation review.This paper is an evaluation of the status …

Promoting Excellence In Education With An Outstanding Student Instructor Award Program, Jennifer Kadlowec, Justin Shriver, Trevor S. Harding, Charles Choi

Materials Engineering

The ASEE Student Chapter at the University of Michigan in conjunction with the College of Engineering has developed and organized an annual Outstanding Student Instructor Award in recognition of excellence in engineering education. The award not only acknowledges the outstanding contributions of the individuals selected for the award, but also coincides with the ASEE’s goals of promoting excellence in engineering education and attracting new members. The paper outlines the planning procedures developed since the inception of the award in 1994 and provides suggestions and insights for other ASEE Student Chapters to create and organize such an award.

Optimization Of Network Signal Timing, Xiao-Hua Yu, Allen R. Stubberud

Electrical Engineering

A typical urban traffic network is a complicated large-scale stochastic system which consists of many interconnected signalized traffic intersections. This paper develops a decentralized real-time adaptive control strategy for the traffic networks based on Markov decision theory. Computer simulation results of this new approach on a five intersection traffic network indicate significant improvement over the traditional fully actuated control algorithm.

Minutes Of The June 23, 1998 Meeting Of The Friends Of The Tractor Test Museum, Tractor Museum

Lester F. Larsen Tractor Museum: Planning and Development Documents

Updated Membership Listing Foundation Budget Ageless Iron Article

Comparative Summer Attic Thermal Performance Of Six Roof Constructions, Florida Solar Energy Center, Danny Parker

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) has measured summer attic thermal performance of six roofs at a heavily instrumented test site, the Flexible Roof Facility (FRF). The FRF is a 1,152 square foot (107 m2) building with six roof adjacent test cells which are heavily insulated from each other. Some 233 channels of data were obtained; this includes twenty temperature measurements per cell, extensive meteorological conditions, surface and tower wind speeds and attic humidity and roof surface moisture accumulation. The data were collected over the ASHRAE definition of summer (June - September) to compare cooling season thermal of roofing systems. Six …

Representations, Approximations, And Algorithms For Mathematical Speech Processing, Laura R. Suzuki

Theses and Dissertations

Representing speech signals such that specific characteristics of speech are included is essential in many Air Force and DoD signal processing applications. A mathematical construct called a frame is presented which captures the important time-varying characteristic of speech. Roughly speaking, frames generalize the idea of an orthogonal basis in a Hilbert space, Specific spaces applicable to speech are L₂(R) and the Hardy spaces H_p(D) for p> 1 where D is the unit disk in the complex plane. Results are given for representations in the Hardy spaces involving Carleson's inequalities (and its extensions), …

Needs Assessment: Photovoltaics In Disasters, Florida Solar Energy Center, William Young

FSEC Energy Research Center®

In recent years, solar energy has been used sporadically for disaster relief. Disaster relief organizations knew very little about photovoltaics; therefore, the technology was not included in their plans or operations. Likewise, the photovoltaic (PV) industry has not been directly involved on disaster teams, and did not aggressively pursue associated markets.

However, the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) recently completed an energy needs assessment of disaster response, recovery and mitigation activities. The study found that PV is best suited for specialized or dedicated applications that need to operate for long periods of time. This paper …

Near-Field Source Localization Using Music With Polynomial Rooting, Hsien-Sen Hung, Shun-Hsyung Chang, Chien-Hsing Wu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

In this paper, the bearing, elevation, and range estimation of near-field narrow-band sources from data observed across an array of sensors is considered. For high-resolution source localization, the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm is modified and extended to its 3-D version by accounting for spherical curvature and spreading factor in the array manifold. However, the simultaneous estimation of bearing, elevation, and range from 3-D MUSIC spectrum requires exhaustive multidimensional search. As to alleviate computational load, an alternative algorithm is proposed. The proposed algorithm involves search in the range domain combined with polynomial rooting, which replaces the search in the azimuth-elevation …

Frequency Selection Of Wake Flow Behind A Naca 0012 Wing, Han-Wen Lee, Rong-Fung Huang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The oscillating flow modes, frequency selection, and response of periodic frequency to change of characteristic flow modes behind a NACA 0012 wing model are studied experimentally. The functional relationships of the dominant mechanisms in limiting ranges of Reynolds number are justified analytically. The oscillating instabilities in wake region possess four characteristic modes: laminar, subcritical, transitional, and supercritical. In viscous effect dominated regime of laminar mode, Strouhal number is inversely proportional to Reynolds number. In inertial effect or pressure gradient dominated regime of supercritical mode, Strouhal remains constant. In regime between limiting cases, Strouhal number increases nonlinearly with Reynolds number and …

Investigation Of Longitudinal Elastic Wave At Right-Angle Joint Of Two Rods, Ming-Te Liang, Chiou-Jenn Chen

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The right-angle welded joint is usefully and frequently used in the welded type for the steel structures. The present study is focused on the longitudinal elastic waves propagating through the right-angle welded joint of two rods. One uses the theory and numerical calculation to identify the consequence of the problems of reflection and transmission. The present study indicates that the incident longitudinal elastic waves are almost reflected in the horizontal rod while the values of 3% of the generated pulse are transmitted in the vertical rod.

Routing And Broadcasting Algorithms For The Root-Folded Petersen Etworks, Ming-Bo Lin, Grene-Eu Jan

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Petersen networks have been proposed as the alternatives for interconnecting highly parallel computers. The main advantages of Petersen networks are: regular topology, high scalability, and smaller diameters. In this paper, we propose a new node naming scheme for Petersen networks. Based on this scheme, two Petersen graph related networks, called root-folded Petersen network in type-I and type-II, are constructed. Furthermore, both O(1ogio N) routing and broadcasting algorithms for the proposed networks are developed, where N is the number of nodes.

The Estimation Of Direction-Of-Arrivals Of Wideb And Sources By Signal Subspace Focusing Approach, Lena Chang, Chung-Fan Twu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

A novel signal subspace focusing (SSF) approach for the wideband array processing is proposed in this paper. The method is based on the transformation of the signal subspaces by using focusing matrices. The focusing matrix is designed to align the signal subspaces for different frequencies in the bandwidth of the sources, and is constructed without the preliminary angle estimation. Hence, the SSF can avoid the inherent sensitivity to focusing error. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the SSF in the estimation of the direction-of-arrivals (DOAs) of wideband sources.

Complete Solution Of The Five-Position Synthesis For Spherical Four-Bar Mechanisms, Chen-Chou Lin

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The objective of this paper is to synthesis spherical four-bar motion and path generators using continuation method (homotopy method). Using continuation method, we may obtain a complete set of the solutions to the problems, and provide mechanism designers with all possible choices which meet the kinematic specifications. In contrast to other local numerical schemes such as Newton method and Powell method which are sensitive to initial guess, continuation method is a global convergence method that guarantee to find all solutions to the equations. In this paper, the problems with four and five precision points will be formulated, solved, and compared …

Analysis Of The Pivot Point For A Turning Ship, Ching-Yaw Tzeng

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

An approximate method based on the steady state linearized sway-yaw equations is proposed to estimate the pivot point of a turning ship. The location of the pivot point is directly related to the ratio of the "sway-rudder" and "yaw-rudder" gain coefficients. which can be readily computed from six linear hydrodynamic coefficients. Hence, estimation of the pivot point for a ship at the design stage is made possible with minimum hydrodynamic coefficients information required. Numerical results indicate that based on the proposed method, the estimated pivot point position for a turning ship correlates well with the solution obtained from a full …

A Unified Approach For The Robust Spr Property Of A Parametric Uncertainty System, Chih-Yung Cheng, Chao-Fong Chang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

In this paper, we adopt a unified approach based on the concept of value set to analyze the robust strict positive real (SPR) property of uncertain systems with interval, affine linear or multilinear uncertainty structures.

A Study Of Along Wind Speed Power Spectrum For Taiwan Area, Jing-Jong Jang, Yu-Lin Lee

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The Purpose of this paper is to formulate the wind speed power spectrum by time history data of strong wind speed in Taiwan area. By utilizing random vibration theory and statistical regression analysis, a systematic analysis and discussions of along wind turbulence effects for wind speed power spectrum is performed. This study includes the time history data collection of along wind speed for typhoon in Taiwan and the regression analysis of wind speed spectral formulas. The strong wind speed data was first transformed from time domain to frequency domain. Then, the statistical analysis methods were applied for spectrum formulation and …

Robust Multiple Constrained State Feedback Controller Design With Minimum Auxiliary Entropy For Linear Discrete Systems, Wen-Jer Chang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

Existence of a state feedback controller with minimized auxiliary entropy design problem will be explained in this paper. This state feedback controller will achieve multiple performance constraints for linear discrete systems. These constraints include individual state variance constraints. H.. norm constraints and regional pole assignment constraints. By achieving the previous three requirements, the state feedback controller can then be solved through use of the singular value decomposition (SVD) techniques and the theory of generalized inverses. An example will be provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present methodology.