Engineering Commons^™

Effects Of Drilling Small Diameter Exhaust Shafts In A Gassy Longwall Operation, Tim Coleman, William Maloney

U.S. Mine Ventilation Symposium

As the title indicates, this paper deals with the ventilation of a gassy longwall mine through the use of small diameter exhaust shafts. Extensive background information is provided to show the evolution of the mine's ventilation system to correspond with changes in longwall mining techniques, particularly increases in face width. A description of the blind drilled shaft techniques, which proved to be the most economical ventilation choice for US Steel No. 50 Mine, is also included.

Shock Waves Generated In The Presence Of Barriers In Gas Explosions, Baiquan Lin, Shining Zhou

U.S. Mine Ventilation Symposium

This paper examines conditions that generates shock waves in a gas explosion through experiment. The result shows that the presence of barrier and thin film, which is similar to air door and stopping in underground coal mines, is very important for the generation of shock waves in a gas explosion. When there are physical barriers, the speed of transmission would be very fast and shock waves will result in the process; when the film is destroyed in gas explosion, shock waves will also appear which would result in an increase in explosion power. Therefore, in order to weaken the gas …

Successive Galerkin Approximation Of A Nonlinear Optimal Attitude Control, Timothy Mclain, Randal W. Beard, Johnathan Lawton

Faculty Publications

This paper presents the application of the successive Galerkin approximation (SGA) to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation to obtain solutions of the optimal attitude control problem. Galerkin's method approximates the value function by a truncated Galerkin series expansion. To do so, a truncated Galerkin basis set is formed. A sufficient number of functions must be included in this Galerkin basis set in order to guarantee that the solution will be a stabilizing control. By increasing the size of the Galerkin basis the quality of the approximation is improved at the cost of rapid growth in the computation load of the SGA. A …

Acuta Enews June 1999, Vol.28, No. 6

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Winners Announced in Student Papers Contest

Conference Offers Many Choices

Dues Notices Mailed

Does It Make Sense?

Board Report

Share Your Expertise

DC at a Glance

Positions Available

Welcome New Members

A Five-Year Development Plan For The California Aviation Database, H.-S. Jacob Tsao

Faculty Publications

The California Aviation Database (CAvD) project was suggested by Caltrans Aeronautics Program to fulfill a need of the planners involved in aviation system planning and programming activities to locate and access aviation data and information in an efficient and comprehensive way. CAvD is being implemented in the form of an Internet website and is currently intended as a five-year project. However, the development can be accelerated, and the duration will depend on the available resources. CAvD is a joint project between the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Its primary …

Introduction: The Challenge Of Risk Communication In A Democratic Society, Richard C. Rich, Robert J. Griffin, Sharon M. Friedman

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The symposium editors review key issues concerning the relationship between risk communication and public participation.

Flight Physician - June, 1999, Civil Aviation Medical Association

Browse all Civil Aviation Medical Association Newsletters

A sixteen page newsletter of the Civil Aviation Medical Association. The newsletter provided news about civil aviation medicine and information related to the organization.

Decision Making Under Interval Probabilities, Ronald R. Yager, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

If we know the probabilities p(1),...,p(n) of different situations s1,...,sn, then we can choose a decision Ai for which the expected benefit C(i)=p(1)*c(i,1)+...+p(n)*c(i,n) takes the largest possible value, where c(i,j) denotes the benefit of decision Ai in situation sj. In many real life situations, however, we do not know the exact values of the probabilities p(j); we only know the intervals [p-(j),p+(j)] of possible values of these probabilities. In order to make decisions under such interval probabilities, we would like to generalize the notion of expected benefits to interval probabilities. In this paper, we show that natural requirements lead to …

Fuzzy/Probability ~ Fractal/Smooth, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich, Berlin Wu

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Many applications of probability theory are based on the assumption that, as the number of cases increase, the relative frequency of cases with a certain property tends to a number - probability that this property is true. L. Zadeh has shown that in many real-life situations, the frequency oscillates and does not converge at all. It is very difficult to describe such situations by using methods from traditional probability theory. Fuzzy logic is not based on any convergence assumptions and therefore, provides a natural description of such situations. However, a natural next question arises: how can we describe this oscillating …

Crosstalk And Image Uniformity In Passive Matrix Polymer Led Displays, David Braun, J. Rowe, G. Yu

Electrical Engineering

Passive matrix displays based on polymer and organic light-emitting diodes suffer from crosstalk, when the emission of light from one pixel depends on the operation of another pixel. We use circuit simulation in order to explain the causes of crosstalk and to quantify the consequences. This work analyzes how crosstalk arises from electrode resistance, pixel leakage current, and the location of faulty pixels. All factors influence both image uniformity and the power consumption of the display.

Possible Explanations Of Phase Transitions In Highway Traffic, C.F. Daganzo, M.J. Cassidy, Robert L. Bertini

Civil and Environmental Engineering

It is shown that all the phase transitions in and out of freely flowing traffic reported earlier for a German site could be caused by bottlenecks, as are all the transitions observed at two other sites examined here. The evidence suggests that bottlenecks cause these transitions in a predictable way, and does not suggest that stoppages (jams) appear spontaneously in free flow traffic for no apparent reason. It is also shown that many of the complicated instability phenomena observed at all locations can be explained qualitatively in terms of a simple Markovian theory specific to traffic that does not necessarily …

Multi-Resolution Techniques In The Rules-Based Intelligent Control Systems: A Universal Approximation Result, Yeung Yam, Hung T. Nguyen, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Intelligent control is a very successful method of transforming expert knowledge of control rules (formulated in terms of natural language, like "small") into a precise control strategy. It has led to many spectacular applications, ranging from appliances to automatic subway control to super-precise temperature control on a Space Shuttle mission.

It is known that fuzzy control is a universal approximator, i.e., that it can approximate every possible control strategy within an arbitrary accuracy. One of the main problems of fuzzy control is that the number of rules which are necessary to represent a given control strategy with a given accuracy, …

Multi-Resolution Methods In Non-Destructive Testing Of Aerospace Structures And In Medicine, Roberto Osegueda, Yohans Mendoza, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

A fault in an aerospace structure can lead to catastrophic consequences; therefore, it is extremely important to test these structures regularly. Thorough testing of a huge aerospace structures results in a large amount of data, and processing this data takes a lot of time. To decrease the processing time, we use a "multi-resolution" technique, in which we first separate the data into data corresponding to different vibration modes, and then combine these data together. There are many possible ways to transform each mode's data into the probability of a fault, and many possible way of combining these mode-based probabilities; different …

User Evaluation Of Prototype Pv Equipment For Disasters, Florida Solar Energy Center, William Young

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods and tornados, can happen at any time, destroying homes and businesses. One such disaster, Hurricane Andrew, devastated South Florida in 1992, leaving several hundred thousand people homeless. Many people were without electrical service, functional water and sewage systems, communications and medical services for days and weeks in the aftermath of the storm. Emergency management teams, the military, and countless public and private organizations staged a massive relief effort.

In response to the Hurricane Andrew disaster, the staff at the Florida Solar Energy Center, with assistance from Sandia National Laboratories, transported PV-powered equipment to Miami …

Program Plan For Photovoltaic Buildings In Florida, Florida Solar Energy Center, Gerard Ventre

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This document outlines plans developed by the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) to support photovoltaic (PV) building applications in the State through the next decade. Implementation of the plan will be a collaborative effort among the Florida Energy Office (FEO) of the Department of Community Affairs, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), the photovoltaic industry, nine end-user groups, and FSEC.

Installing Photovoltaic Systems: A Question And Answer Guide For Solar Electric Systems, Florida Solar Energy Center, Fsec Photovoltaic Division

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This Question and Answer Guide for Solar Electric Systems addresses general considerations about photovoltaics (PV) technology and requirements for installing photovoltaic power systems, including building-integrated applications. Contained in this guide are commonly asked questions about the technology, and responses based on current state-of-the-art equipment and industry design practice.

Recommendations For Maximizing Battery Life In Photovoltaic Systems: A Review Of The Lessons Learned, Florida Solar Energy Center, James Dunlop

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report contains notes, observations and recommendations about the use of batteries in small stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) systems. The conclusions of this work are based on the results of more than a decade's worth of battery testing at the Florida Solar Energy Center and related work with Sandia National Laboratories, the PV industry and user groups. The most critical findings were the relationship between battery state-of-charge and battery life and the importance of an adequate PV array-to-load ratio.

High-Tensile Wire Or Cable Tobacco Field Curing Structure, George A. Duncan

Agricultural Engineering Extension Publications

Producers are rapidly adopting field curing structures, and several variations in construction methods and materials exist to achieve low cost or low maintenance and long life. One of the construction methods, pioneered by a producer and now being used by others in the state, uses high-tensile wire strands or cable to support the tobacco sticks.

Intellicranes – A Neural Network-Based Crane Selection System, André T. Mund

Masters Theses

Due to the central role of cranes in construction operations, specialists in the construction industries have cooperated in the development of structured methods and software for crane selection. Most of these software tools are for crane model selection and query the user for the type of crane to be used. Although research produced some fuzzy logic and expert system-based methods for crane type selection, no integrated systems that handle both crane selection phases are available.

IntelliCranes, a prototype integrated crane selection tool, assists in both crane type and crane model selection based on a set of inputs describing the construction …

Wright State University College Of Engineering And Computer Science Bits And Pcs Newsletter, Volume 15, Number 6, June 1999, College Of Engineering And Computer Science, Wright State University

BITs and PCs Newsletter

An eight page newsletter created by the Wright State University College of Engineering and Computer Science that addresses the current affairs of the college.

Timed Safety Automata And Logic Conformance, Frank C. D. Young

Theses and Dissertations

Timed Logic Conformance (TLC) is used to verify the behavioral and timing properties of detailed digital circuits against abstract circuit specifications when both are modeled as Timed Safety Automata (TSA) with real-valued clocks. TLC is a bisimulation-style partial order relationship defined over TSA state space. In contrast to timed simulation, Calculus of Timed Refinement, and time-abstracted bisimulation, TLC defines when one system is an acceptable implementation of another by asymmetric action-matching requirements for specification inputs and implementation outputs. TLC intuitively and pragmatically supports writing abstract specifications and verifying them against implementations. TLC scales up by substituting verified specifications for implementations …

Detection Of Changes In Lung Tissue Properties With Multiple-Indicator Dilution, David L. Roerig, Said H. Audi, John H. Linehan, Gary S. Krenz, S. B. Ahlf, W. Lin, Christopher A. Dawson

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

We evaluated the potential utility of a group of indicators, each of which targets a particular tissue property, as indicators in the multiple-indicator dilution method to detect and to identify abnormalities in lung tissue properties resulting from lung injury models. We measured the pulmonary venous outflow concentration vs. time curves of [¹⁴C]diazepam, ³HOH, [¹⁴C]phenylethylamine, and a vascular reference indicator following their bolus injection into the pulmonary artery of isolated perfused rabbit lungs under different experimental conditions, resulting in changes in the lung tissue composition. The conditions included granulomatous inflammation, induced by the intravenous injection of …

Closely Supervised Reactive Control Of An Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle, Roy G. Glassco

Theses and Dissertations

Closely Supervised Reactive Control is an alternative control method for uninhabited aerial vehicles that incorporates some of the benefits of both manual and autonomous operations. Utilizing an onboard camera, an operator can control a UAV by manually choosing desired targets. The flight path of the uninhabited vehicle is determined autonomously from the camera gimbal angles. The operator of the payload (i.e. camera), has close supervision of the aircraft. The aircraft, using an onboard computer, is given autonomous control to alter flight path to fly towards a target and at a specified range, loiter over the target. In the basic mode …

Wind Tunnel Investigation Of Joined Wing Configurations, Jennifer Corneille

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Force Research Laboratory's Munitions Directorate is looking to extend the range of its small smart bomb. One proposed idea is to retrofit the bombs with a wing kit, particularly a joined wing configuration. A typical joined wing configuration is one where the wings are positioned in such a way that they form a diamond in both plan and front views. The purpose of this study is to conduct low speed wind tunnel testing of the joined wing configuration to help determine if the joined wing is more beneficial than a single wing configuration. Configurations with differing sweep angles …

A Performance Analysis Of A Low Earth Orbit Satellite System, Korkut A. Ercakar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a performance analysis of the TELEDESIC® Low Earth Orbit Satellite System. It analyzes the system's performance to meet the real-time communications constraints with a full satellite constellation. Computer simulation results are the sources to evaluate delays associated with packets transmitted from source to destination earth stations. The simulation is run at low, medium and high loading levels with two different, uniform and non-uniform, traffic distributions. The evaluated results are end-to-end packet delays and packet rejection rate. The results show that the TELEDESIC® satellite system network is capable of meeting the real-time communication requirements with delay values much …

Parallel Digital Signal Processing On A Network Of Personal Computers Case Study: Space-Time Adaptive Processing, Fernando Silva

Theses and Dissertations

Network based parallel computing using personal computers is currently a popular choice for concurrent scientific computing. This work evaluates the capabilities and the performance of the AFIT Bimodal Cluster (ABC); a heterogeneous cluster of PCs connected by switched fast Ethernet and using MPICH 1.1 for interprocess communication for parallel digital signal processing using Space Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) as the case study. The MITRE RT_STAP Benchmark version 1.1 is ported and executed on the ABC, as well as on a cluster of six Sun SPARC workstations connected by a Myrinet network (the AFIT NOW), and on a IBM SP for …

Bistatic Radar Cross Section (Rcs) Characterization Of Complex Objects, Robert L. Eigel Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

This research addresses some phenomenological aspects of bistatic scattering from a complex object with an emphasis on specular, shadowing, dihedral, and cavity effects. Five targets are investigated for their simplicity and ability to highlight certain scattering phenomena. Direct measurements of scattered electromagnetic energy and simulation data is gathered for a frequency bandwidth of 6-18 GHz. Both ray tracing and scattering center approaches are used to describe the bistatic mechanisms. An appraisal of the effectiveness and utility of the monostatic-to-bistatic equivalence theorems (Kell's and Crispin's) and several commercial scattering prediction codes is also accomplished. Simulation data is generated from two different …

Media Coverage Of Epa's Draft Dioxin Reassessment Report, Sharon M. Friedman, Megan A. Fitzpatrick, Brenda P. Egolf

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Using content analysis, the authors examine the utility of news media in democratic decision making.

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Curved Layer Lom Process For Monolithic Ceramics And Ceramic Matrix Composites, Donald A. Klosterman, Richard P. Chartoff, Nora R. Osborne, George A. Graves, Allan Lightman, Gyoowan Han, Akos Bezewredi, Stan Rodrigues, Sung Pak, Gary Kalmanovich, Leon Dodin, Song Tu

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

A novel rapid prototyping technology incorporating a curved layer building style was developed. The new process, based on Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM), was designed for efficient fabrication of curved layer structures made from ceramics and fiber reinforced composites. A new LOM machine was created, referred to as Curved Layer LOM. This new machine uses ceramic tapes and fiber prepregs as feedstocks and fabricates curved structures on a curved-layer by curved-layer basis. The output of the process is a three dimensional "green" ceramic that is capable of being processed to a seamless, fully dense ceramic using traditional techniques. A detailed description …