Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Investigating Solutions To Wind Washing Issues In 2-Story Florida Homes; Phase 1, Florida Solar Energy Center, Charles Withers, Jr.

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Wind washing has been identified as a potentially significant issue regarding energy, demand, comfort, and humidity in some two-story Florida homes. In its most common configuration, wind washing occurs when attic spaces over first-floor portions of the home abut the second story, and the floor cavity of the second story is open to that attic space. Wind blowing into attic vents can push hot attic air into the inter-story floor cavity, bypassing the typical thermal boundaries of the building and introducing considerable heat into the house. Wind washing can also occur when there is little or no attic involved, where …

Nightcool: Nocturnal Radiation Cooling Concept, Long Term Performance Evaluation, Florida Solar Energy Center, John Sherwin

FSEC Energy Research Center®

An experimental evaluation has been conducted on a building-integrated night sky cooling system designed to substantially reduce space cooling needs in homes in North American climates. The system uses a sealed attic covered by a highly conductive metal roof (a roof integrated radiator) which is selectively linked by air flow to the main zone with the attic zone to provide cooling - largely during nighttime hours. Available house mass is used to store sensible cooling. The system's capability for solar dehumidification with minimal electricity input is demonstrated with long-term performance data taken over 2007 - 2009. A year-long study period …

Final Report: Space Coast Clean Cities Coalition Programmatic Support, Florida Solar Energy Center, William Young

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This Final Report summarizes the work performed by the Florida Solar Energy Center for U.S. Department of Energy for the National Clean Cities Program to reduce emissions and energy consumption of transportation vehicles. This report describes the activities and events of Florida Space Coast Clean Cities Coalition encompassing a nine county area in east central Florida. FSEC administers the Coalition and support the Coalition Board of Directors with meetings, workshop, reports, mailing list, membership, activities, questionnaires, fuel pricing, alternative vehicle and infrastructure deployment.

Developing G-Rim And Participants Tests For Specific Commercial Programs For The Florida Natural Gas Association, Florida Solar Energy Center, Richard Raustad

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The Florida Solar Energy Center performed an economic assessment for 7 common commercial appliances. This assessment calculates the gas rate impact measure and participants test score for selecting natural gas equipment over comparable electric equipment over a 20-year period. This type of analysis provides an indication whether or not the specific appliance program favors the end use customer and/or the utility company as economic beneficiaries. Given the project assumptions, all natural gas equipment types, with the exception of the pool heat pump water heater, show measures greater than 1 indicating that the natural gas appliance will have lower life-cycle costs …

Developing Natural Gas Cost Escalation Rates For The Associated Gas Distributors Of Florida, Florida Solar Energy Center, Richard Raustad

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) created a spreadsheet tool used to calculate the fuel escalation rates for electricity and natural gas for the previous 5-year and 10-year periods. These escalation rates are calculated at the local, State, and national level for both residential and commercial customers. The previous 5-year and 10-year general inflation rate as determined by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index are also included. These calculations are made in accordance with rules established by the Florida Building Commission pursuant to rule 9B-13.0071, Cost Effectiveness of Amendments to Energy Code.

Evaluation Of Alternatives For Florida's 2010 Energy Code Update For Residential Buildings, Florida Solar Energy Center, Philip W. Fairey

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report provides results of analysis of the Florida Energy Code (FEC) with respect to requirements of Florida House Bill 7135. The analysis uses Florida's performance-based code compliance software, EnergyGauge® USA, to conduct detailed analysis of H.B 7135 requirements to significantly increase the efficiency of new homes over time. First, results of an analysis of the long-term, year 2019 requirement for a 50% increase in new home energy efficiency are presented. Next, the 2009 edition of the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is analyzed with respect to the H.B. 7135 dual requirements that the 2009 IECC become the foundation code …

Clean Cities Annual Operating Plan 2009: Florida Space Coast Clean Cities Coalition, Florida Solar Energy Center, William Young

FSEC Energy Research Center®

In March, 1997, the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) joined the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities program to form the Florida Space Coast Clean Cities Coalition in East Central Florida. Space Coast Coalition now consists of 10 counties, as the State is divided into eight Clean Cities regions. Florida Solar Energy Center is located in Cocoa in the approximate center of the coalition area. On October 1, 1999, the expanded Florida Space Coast Clean Cities Coalition was designated and authorized as the 75th Clean Cities Coalition. The Florida Space Coast Clean Cities Coalition is a 501-3c non-profit corporation …

Comparison Of The Energygauge Usa And Beopt Building Energy Simulation Programs, Florida Solar Energy Center, Danny Parker

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Two hourly energy simulation software, BEopt and Energy Gauge USA, were compared to ensure accuracy and evaluate agreement on the impact of various energy efficiency improvements. Within the Building America program, these software aid design teams working toward the U.S. Department of Energy's goal to make Zero Energy Homes economically viable by 2025. Builders use the software to achieve the extensive energy savings (70%-80%) from various measures before adding solar electric power generation. The study found that in general, BEopt and EnergyGauge USA agree fairly well on the impact of energy efficiency improvements, while identifying several discrepancies that need further …

Geographic Variation In Potential Of Residential Solar Hot Water System Performance In The United States, Florida Solar Energy Center, Camilo Gil

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This paper describes an assessment of residential solar water heater performance around the continental United States. We performed annual simulations using an hourly simulation model (EGUSA) for 212 TMY3 weather locations around the nation. The annual simulations show how standard hot water energy use for electric and gas systems vary geographically (kWh and therms) as well as the potential energy savings from solar water heaters. A key finding is that the energy necessary for water heating varies by 2:1 around the U.S. with implications for solar water heating system design and sizing. Our results provide information on expected water heater …

Preliminary Report On Integration Of Florida's Code Energy Efficiencies Using The 2009 Iecc As The Foundation Code, Florida Solar Energy Center, Philip W. Fairey

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The Florida Building Commission is in the initial phase of it triennial revision of the Florida Building Code. The Florida Building Code has included specific energy provisions since its inception in 2001. Those provisions are the Florida Energy Code (FEC), which was initiated in 1979. In 2008, the Florida legislature enacted HB 7135, requiring the 2010 FEC to provide 20% energy savings compared with the 2007 FEC. HB 7135 also requires that the energy provisions of the Florida Building Code use the 2009 IECC as the foundation and that the IECC shall be modified to maintain the efficiencies of the …

Puerto Rico - Pv Training Program Study - Final Report, Florida Solar Energy Center, William Young

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This Final Report summarizes the work preformed on the program entitled "Puerto Rico PV Training Program Study" for the period April 14, 2008 to June 30, 2009. The program was a contract effort between Mech-Tech College, Caguas, Puerto Rico and the Florida Solar Energy Center/University of Central Florida, Cocoa, Florida. Mech-Tech College was interested in learning about and applying renewable energy technologies and providing college level courses for the future workforce of a renewable energy industry in Puerto Rico. This report documents the activities of Florida Solar Energy Center to assist Mech-Tech College in the design, development and implementation of …

Analysis Of The Energy Star Reference Home Concept As Proposed For Epa's 2011 National Program Requirements, Florida Solar Energy Center, Philip W. Fairey

FSEC Energy Research Center®

Using EnergyGauge® USA v.2.8.02, the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) has conducted an analysis of EPA’s proposed ENERGY STAR Reference Design Home specification. A single-story, 2344 ft², slab-on-grade, 3-bedroom, frame home is evaluated in each of the seven contiguous U.S. climate zones. The ENERGY STAR Reference Design Home was evaluated using three metrics: 1) EPS’s threshold qualifying HERS Index (including the Size Adjustment Factor – 0.984 for this home), 2) the 2006 IECC Standard Reference Design and 3) the 2009 IECC Standard Reference Design. Evaluations using the IECC Standard Reference Design were computed using source energy, where the source energy …

Top 10 Checklist - Energy-Efficient Buildings For The Southern United States, Florida Solar Energy Center, James Cummings

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The following Top Ten Checklist provides recommendations for creating energy efficient commercial buildings in areas with hot and humid summers. Commercial and institutional buildings vary greatly, from one to another, in size, use, and type of construction. For purposes of this Top Ten Checklist we are assuming a medium-sized (20,000 to 50,000 ft²) office building located in areas with hot and humid summers. The issues that are raised here may equally apply to schools, churches, theaters, and some retail buildings.

Effectiveness Of Florida's Residential Energy Code: 1979-2009 (Revision Of 1979-2007 Report), Florida Solar Energy Center, Philip W. Fairey

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The 2007 Florida Legislature authorized the Florida Building Commission (FBC) and Department of Community Affairs (DCA) to evaluate cost effectiveness of energy conservation measures including appliance efficiencies that could be implemented through the Florida Energy Code for certain buildings. Additionally, Governor Crist's Executive Order #07-127 requires the Secretary of DCA to convene the Florida Building Commission for the purposes of revising the Florida Energy Code for Building Construction to increase the energy performance of new construction in Florida by at least 15% from the 2007 Energy Code. The Commission should consider incorporating standards for appliances and standard lighting in the …

Interim Report On Iso Tc163 Working Group 3, Florida Solar Energy Center, Philip W. Fairey

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report covers the initial year efforts of the International Standards Organization (ISO) to develop international standards for rating the energy performance of buildings. The author of this report is a participant in this effort. This report summarizes the activities of the ISO Working Group charged with development of these standards and makes recommendations to the sponsors for future U.S. involvement in this ISO effort.

Energy Efficiency Cost-Effectiveness Tests For Residential Energy Code Update Processes, Florida Solar Energy Center, Philip W. Fairey

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The 2008 Florida Energy Act directed the Florida Building Commission (FBC) to develop an administrative rule for determining the cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency updates to the Florida Building Code. This report addresses the economics of building energy efficiency, standard economic cost-effectiveness indicators that could be used for code update purposes and makes specific recommendations on economic assessment standards to be included in the cost-effectiveness test administrative rule.

Gulf Coast High Performance Affordable Housing Demonstration Project, Florida Solar Energy Center, Janet Mcilvaine

FSEC Energy Research Center®

In 2007 and 2008, the Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership worked with five partners in region of the Gulf Coast recovering from Hurricane Katrina. The High Performance Affordable Housing Demonstration Home was conceived to give builders in the region a cost-effective model of high performance to emulate. This report summarizes the status of work with the five partners, including the proposed energy efficiency package to reach the goal of 30% whole house energy source savings calculated under the 2008 Building America Benchmarking Procedure, standard construction practices, and implementation challenges. Four Demonstration houses were completed in 2008. Three met the 30% …

Preliminary Performance Evaluation Of A Near Zero Energy Home In Gainesville, Florida, Florida Solar Energy Center, Danny Parker

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The U.S. Department of Energy's Building America (BA) program is working to increase the energy efficiency of new and existing homes while increasing comfort, and durability and reducing resource use. As part of this program we pursue opportunities to research highly efficient homes with the goal of understanding what works, what doesn't work, and the most economic ways to reach very high efficiency targets. The program aims to create cost neutral zero energy homes by 2020. In pursuit of this goal, this home and other research homes around the country designed to approach or achieve the zero energy goal are …

Preliminary Performance Evaluation Of A Near Zero Energy Home In Callaway, Florida, Florida Solar Energy Center, Eric Martin

FSEC Energy Research Center®

The U.S. Department of Energy's Building America (BA) program is working to increase the energy efficiency of new and existing homes while increasing comfort, and durability and reducing resource use. As part of this program we pursue opportunities to research highly efficient homes with the goal of understanding what works, what doesn't work, and the most economic ways to reach very high efficiency targets. The program aims to create cost neutral zero energy homes by 2020. In pursuit of this goal, this home and other research homes around the country designed to approach or achieve the zero energy goal are …

Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership, Annual Report - Budget Period 3, 02/01/08-12/31/0, Florida Solar Energy Center, Subrato Chandra

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This annual report summarizes the work conducted by the Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership (www.baihp.org) for the period 2/1/08 to 12/31/08. BAIHP is led by the Florida Solar Energy Center of the University of Central Florida. In partnership with over 50 factory and site builders, work was performed in two main areas: research and technical assistance.

In the research area we continued laboratory and field testing of interior duct systems to document their expected energy savings of about 20% in heating and cooling. Worked with Building Science Corp. to test an innovative air-conditioner with an extra dehumidification coil in the …

Percolation Study Of Nano-Composite Conductivity Using Monte Carlo Simulationpercolation, Jing Bai

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Monte Carlo model is developed for predicting electrical conductivity of carbon nanofiber composite materials. The conductive nanofibers are models as both 2D and 3D network of finite sites that are randomly distributed. The percolation behavior of the network is studied using the Monte Carlo method, which leads to the determination of the percolation threshold. The effect of the nanofiber aspect ratio on the critical nanofiber volume rate is investigated in the current model, each of the nanofibers needs five independent geometrical parameters (i.e., three coordinates in space and two orientation angles) for its identification. There are three controlling parameters …

Robust Estimation And Adaptive Guidance For Multiple Uavs' Cooperation, Randal Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, an innovative cooperative navigation method is proposed for multiple Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) based on online target position measurements. These noisy position measurement signals are used to estimate the target's velocity for non-maneuvering targets or the target's velocity and acceleration for maneuvering targets. The estimator's tracking capability is physically constrained due to the target's kinematic limitations and therefore is potentially improvable by designing a higher performance estimator. An H-infinity filter is implemented to increase the robustness of the estimation accuracy. The performance of the robust estimator is compared to a Kalman filter and the results illustrate more …

Structural Analysis And Active Vibration Control Of Tetraform Space Frame For Use In Micro-Scale Machining, Kevin Knipe

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research thesis aims to achieve the structural analysis and active vibration damping of the Tetraform machining structure. The Tetraform is a space frame made up of four equilateral triangles with spherical masses at the four vertices. This frame was originally developed for grinding of optical lenses and is now being adapted for use in micro-precision milling. The Tetraform is beneficial to the milling process due to its exceptionally high dynamic stiffness characteristics, which increases the machining stability and allows for higher material removal rates and accuracy. However, there are still some modes of vibration that are critical to the …

Tertiary Creep Damage Modeling Of A Transversely Isotropic Ni-Based Superalloy, Calvin Stewart

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anisotropic tertiary creep damage formulations have become an increasingly important prediction technique for high temperature components due to drives in the gas turbine industry for increased combustion chamber exit pressures, temperature, and the use of anisotropic materials such as metal matrix composites and directionally-solidified (DS) Ni-base superalloys. Typically, isotropic creep damage formulations are implemented for simple cases involving a uniaxial state of stress; however, these formulations can be further developed for multiaxial states of stress where materials are found to exhibit induced anisotropy. In addition, anisotropic materials necessitate a fully-developed creep strain tensor. This thesis describes the development of a …

Study Of Film Cooling Effectiveness: Conical, Trenched And Asymmetrical Shaped Holes, Humberto Zuniga

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Film cooling is a technique whereby air from the compressor stage of a gas turbine engine is diverted for cooling purposes to parts, such as the turbine stage, that operate at very high temperatures. Cooling arrangements include impingement jets, finned, ribbed and turbulated channels, and rows of film cooling holes, all of which over the years have become progressively more complex. This costly, but necessary complexity is a result of the industry's push to run engines at increasingly higher turbine inlet temperatures. Higher temperatures mean higher efficiency, but they also mean that the turbine first stage operates hundreds of degrees …

Flow Visualization In Microfluidic Expansion And Mixing, Ehsan Yakhshi-Tafti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Micro particle image velocimetry (microPIV) is a non-intrusive tool for visualizing flow in micron-scale conduits. Using this investigative instrument, two experimental studies were performed to understand flow behaviors in microfluidic channels - a sudden expansion step flow and laminar velocity profile variation in diffusion driven mixing. First, flow in a backward facing step feature (1:5 expansion ratio) in a microchannel was taken as the subject of microPIV flow visualization. The onset and development of a recirculation flow was studied as a function of flow rate. This flow pattern was further used to investigate two major parameters affecting microPIV measurements; the …

Study Of The Hydrodynamics Of Droplet Impingement On A Dry Surface Using Lattice Boltzmann Method, Xin Gu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this work, a two-phase lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) approach is implemented to investigate the hydrodynamic behavior of a single droplet impingement on a dry surface. LBM is a recently developed powerful technique to compute a wide range of fluid flow problems, especially in applications involving interfacial dynamics and complex geometries. Instead of solving the non-linear Navier-Stokes equations, which are complicated partial differential equations, LBM solves a set of discretized linear equations, which are easy to implement and parallelize. The fundamental idea of LBM is to recover the macroscopic properties of the fluid which obeys Navier-Stokes equations, by using simplified …

Characterization Of A Hydrogen-Based Synthetic Fuel In A Shock Tube, Troy Flaherty

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Shock-tube experiments were performed with syngas mixtures near atmospheric pressure with varying equivalence ratios behind reflected shock waves. Pressure and hydroxyl radical (OH*) emission traces were recorded and used to calculate ignition delay time for a single mixture at equivalence ratios of [phi ]=0.4, 0.7, 1.0, and 2.0 over a range of temperatures from 913-1803 K. The syngas mixture was tested at full concentration as well as with 98% dilution in Argon. The full concentration mixtures were used to compare ignition delay time measurements with the theoretical calculations obtained through the use of chemical kinetics modeling using the Davis et …

Characterization Of An Inline Row Impingement Channel For Turbine Blade Cooling Applications, Mark Ricklick

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Gas turbines have become an intricate part of today's society. Besides powering practically all 200,000+ passenger aircraft in use today, they are also a predominate form of power generation when coupled with a generator. The fact that they are highly efficient, and capable of large power to weight ratios, makes gas turbines an ideal solution for many power requirement issues faced today. Designers have even been able to develop small, micro-turbines capable of producing efficient portable power. Part of the turbine's success is the fact that their efficiency levels have continuously risen since their introduction in the early 1800's. Along …

Numerical Study Of Encapsulated Phase Change Material (Epcm) Slurry Flow In Microchannels, Sarada Kuravi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heat transfer and flow characteristics of phase change material slurry flow in microchannels with constant heat flux at the base were investigated. The phase change process was included in the energy equation using the effective specific heat method. A parametric study was conducted numerically by varying the base fluid type, particle concentration, particle size, channel dimensions, inlet temperature, base heat flux and melting range of PCM. The particle distribution inside the microchannels was simulated using the diffusive flux model and its effect on the overall thermal performance of microchannels was investigated. Experimental investigation was conducted in microchannels of 101 [micro]m …