Applied Mechanics Commons^™

Value Of Flow Measurement Accuracy In Hydropower Plants With Short Converging Intakes, Mark Herbert Christian

Doctoral Dissertations

This report documents research undertaken to determine the value of flow measurement accuracy in hydropower plants with short converging intakes. The motivation was to provide a suite of tools and best practices to streamline flow measurement sensor modeling in any type of hydropower plant. The Lower Granite Lock and Dam hydroplant was leveraged in development of the analysis tool. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of Lower Granite Unit 4 provided necessary information about the hydraulic structures distribution through the unit. Two different CFD models were created. The first was done using the as-built plans; the second was created through modifications …

Development Of An Excel® Rocket Simulator For Application In Middle School, High-School, And University Stem Education, Melvin Lee Hortman

All Master's Theses

Water rocket activities are one of the most popular STEM activities used in primary, secondary, and higher education yet are void of engineering, though engineering is heavily implied in the STEM acronym. This study investigated the amount of engineering present in water rocket activities, and options for emphasizing engineering more in water rocket activities using an open-platform flight simulator for use by educators to enable students to predict flight parameters of a water rocket they designed, and test those predictions against experimental data. The simulator was constructed in Excel® with many functions, but the function validated in this study was …

Development Of A Dynamic Cfd Model For Offshore Oscillating Water Columns With Non-Linear Interactions, Ken O'Connell

Theses

This thesis focuses on the development of a state of the art modelling technique for offshore Oscillating Water Column (OWC) type Wave Energy Converters (WEC) using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Current literature indicates a limited amount of work has been completed on studying these devices containing non-linear time dependent flow phenomenon. Initially, a 2D Numerical Wave Tank (NWT) is studied to reduce discretisation error in order to reproduce accurately propagating waves. Further development into a 3D domain permits the geometrical requirements of an OWC type spar buoy to be included.

In parallel, a single Degree of Freedom (DOF) model is …

Nfpa Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge, Ean H. Dickerhoof

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Every year the National Fluid Power Association hosts a Fluid Powered Vehicle Challenge, this exposes students from universities all around the United States to the power and possibilities of hydraulics. This year the University of Akron’s team of engineers set out to design a bicycle that would be competitive and innovative in all aspects of the competition. In order to accomplish this, the designed bicycle must excel in three categories of competition; a sprint race, an endurance race, and an efficiency challenge.

To accomplish this task the University of Akron’s team of engineers used a lightweight bicycle frame with many …