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Full-Text Articles in Engineering Physics

Analysis And Optimization Of The Scheffler Solar Concentrator, Simone Alberti Dec 2014

Analysis And Optimization Of The Scheffler Solar Concentrator, Simone Alberti

Master's Theses

The Scheffler reflector is a new solar concentrator design which maintains a fixed focus while only having a single axis tracking mechanism. This design makes the construction and operation of high temperature solar concentrators accessible to developing nations. In this project, I wrote computer simulation codes to better understand the dynamics and the effect of deformation or deviations from ideal conditions in order to define necessary manufacturing and operational tolerances. These tools and knowledge drove the prototyping of new reflector concepts by myself and other students on my team. A fiberglass prototype was able to drive the cost of a …


Agent-Based Modeling Of Emergency Building Evacuation, Vi Q. Ha May 2012

Agent-Based Modeling Of Emergency Building Evacuation, Vi Q. Ha

Master's Theses

Panic during emergency building evacuation can cause crowd stampede, resulting in serious injuries and casualties. Agent-based methods have been successfully employed to investigate the collective human behavior during emergency evacuation in cases where the configurational space is extremely simple - usually one rectangular room - but not in evacuations of multi-room or multi-floor buildings. This implies that the effect of the complexity of building architecture on the collective behavior of the agents during evacuation has not been fully investigated. Here, we employ a system of self-moving particles whose motion is governed by the social-force model to investigate the effect of …