No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Surfactant formulations consisting of surfactant, alkali, polymer, and electrolyte have been developed using well defined screening processes established through experimentation in labs around the world. Due to recent advances in chemical enhanced oil recovery, surfactants can be used to extend the life of mature reservoirs with increasingly diverse conditions. High temperatures, complex geochemistry, or high clay content can provide significant challenges when developing formulations for chemical flooding. Through careful selection and screening of surfactants and chemicals, oil recovery of greater than 90% can be achieved in laboratory corefloods despite these difficulties. The objective of this research was to determine the ideal surfactant formulation using a sulfate surfactant for a reservoir with high clay content at 85 ºC. Advances in our laboratory have shown sulfate surfactants to be stable under specific conditions at elevated temperature. In addition, new methods of synthesizing surfactants have yielded a vast array of structures and iterations of novel surfactants to test for EOR applicability. Experiments contained within include surfactant screening both with and without the presence of crude oil and evaluation of polymer and microemulsion viscosity. From these results, a series of corefloods were performed in Berea and reservoir corefloods that yielded oil recovery of 90% and above with low surfactant retention. / text

Magnesium sheet alloys, such as wrought AZ31, have material properties that make them an attractive option for use in automotive and aircraft components. However, the low ductility of magnesium alloys at room temperature necessitates the use of high-temperature forming to manufacture complex components. Finite-element-method (FEM) simulations can assist in determining the optimum processing parameters for high-temperature forming, but only if an accurate material constitutive model is used. New material constitutive models describing the deformation behavior of AZ31 sheet at 450°C are proposed. These models account for both active deformation mechanisms at this temperature: grain-boundary-sliding creep and five-power dislocation-climb creep. Phenomena affecting these deformation mechanisms, such as material anisotropy and grain growth, are also investigated. This physics-based approach represents an improvement over previous material models, which require nonphysical parameters and can only predict forming for a limited range of conditions. Tensile tests are conducted to obtain data used in fitting constitutive models. New models are used in FEM simulations of both tensile tests and biaxial gas-pressure bulge tests. Simulation results are compared to experimental data for validation and determination of model accuracy. / text

Not available / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

No description available.

No description available.

Bismuth-Strontium-Calcium-Copper-Oxide (BSCCO) compounds are an important family of compounds that have one of the highest transition temperatures among all high-temperature superconductors. The compound is known to exist in three distinct phases, commonly referred to as the 2201, 2212 and 2223 phases. Of these three phases, the 2212 and 2223 phases are the most important, as their transition temperature is higher than the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. It is desirable to produce the compound in thin film form, as the bulk samples are normally polycrystalline. This thesis compares thin films produced by two techniques for depositing BSCCO in order to understand the effect of various processing parameters on the final quality of the thin films. Thin films were grown by flash evaporation at Texas A&M University, and by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) at the University of Wollongong, Australia. The latter of these techniques is widely used for growing thin films of various compounds. Single-phase 2212 films were grown on a MgO substrate using the pulsed laser deposition technique from commercially available 2212 powder. The effect of annealing on the thin films was also studied.