The study presented in this thesis is an attempt towards a better understanding of the coupled lateral-torsional response of buildings subject to seismic ground motion. Some of the problems identified in the past studies are thoroughly investigated and some new areas of study are explored. Some of these problems encountered in the literature include (a) the existence of several definitions of uncoupled torsional to lateral frequency ratio (b) an arbitrary selection of structural parameters in a parametric analysis resulting in a physically inadmissible structure and (c) the effect of nonlinearity. Because of the simplified models with either eccentricity in one direction or the ground motion applied in only one direction, the effects of a bi-directional loading have not been investigated in detail. These effects may include the relative differences in the amplitude or phase components of the individual accelerograms and their orientation with respect to the building. The phase properties of accelerograms are of particular interest and these have not received much attention in the past. Using analytical methods such as Chasle's[16] and Gerschgorin's[39] theorems, the equation of motion of a bi-eccentric system is derived and all of the existing problems regarding the definition of structural parameters and their bounds are studied in depth. To facilitate nonlinear parametric study, a paraboloid non-linear elastic stiffness model is proposed. Fourier spectral methods are used to study the frequency domain characteristics of the accelerogram pair. The difference in phase and amplitude of the component frequencies in each direction are studied for their effects on the response. For phase difference, cross-correlation function is used as a comparative statistical indicator. USA earthquake records obtained from US National Geophysical Data Centre are grouped into four soil types and the analysis is performed for each group in order to explore the soil-dependency of the aforementioned effects on the response. Computer programs are written in FORTRAN for both parametric and numerical model analyses. The latter can handle any number and orientation of columns with the assumed nonlinear stiffness properties. Newmark's and Runge-Kutta methods of numerical integration with adaptive step size control have been used to calculate parametric and the hysteretic responses of the system. The response to harmonic ground acceleration is used as a preliminary investigation into the response to actual accelerogram frequency components. The study has developed relationships for different definitions of the uncoupled torsional to lateral frequency ratio. Detailed derivation of the Equation of Motion has clarified the confusion that produced different definitions in the past studies. Graphical descriptions of the admissibility bounds on system parameters are produced. The variation in the response quantities is studied for a range of amplitude and phase contents of the applied ground acceleration. The difference in phase and amplitude in x and y ground accelerations have been found to affect the response quite significantly. More generally, the relationship of these differences to the torsional mode amplification has been observed. The effects of structural frequency and eccentricity parameters are also studied. Graphs showing the relationship between, the angle of incidence of the accelerogram with respect to the principal axis of the building, and the phase difference in the accelerogram pair, have been produced. The proposed analysis involving the bi-directional ground acceleration on a bi-eccentric system is an improvement on the current methods employed in design practice. Further work is, however, required before simplified design recommendations can be made and some proposals for future research are given at the end of this thesis.

The delayed matching‐to‐sample (DMTS) procedure involves the insertion of a delay between the offset of a sample stimulus and the onset of an array of comparison stimuli; one of which is designated as the “correct” match for the sample on each trial. The procedure has served as the base preparation in which the effects of environmental variables on short‐term remembering and is, in many ways, responsible for a refined understanding of the phenomenon. Despite its utility, however, there are a few problems with the DMTS procedure – first, the procedure doesn’t adjust for individual differences and second, the conventional dependent measure, percent of correct trials, is not as sensitive as one might like. The titrating-delay matching to sample (TDMTS) procedure is a variant of the DMTS procedure in which the delays between sample and comparison are adjusted as a function of the subject’s performance. Stable measures of adjusted delay are not only sensitive measures of the performance of interest but they are also automatically tuned to differences across individuals. The study reported here continues our efforts to understand the dynamics of the TDMTS procedure so that it can be used to ask important questions related to short‐term remembering.

One of two project reports: The other part is designated as Part A / <p> A fundamental and important part of nuclear reactor development and analysis today is the study of neutronics following a breach in the primary heat transport circuit. In the past, much of this analysis has concentrated on the calculation of the thermalhydraulic changes which occur following a loss of coolant accident and the effects these subsequently have on neutron kinetics. The purpose of this present study is to examine the influence of neutronic parameters on the size and shape of power pulses which result from loss of coolant accidents. The parameters studied are shutdown system delay times, shutoff rod drop curves, and fuel burnup distribution. </p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (MEngr)

Structural health monitoring (SHM) systems is a relatively new discipline, studying the structural condition of buildings and other constructions. Current SHM systems are either wired or wireless, with a relatively high cost and low accuracy. This thesis exploits a blend of digital signal processing methodologies, for structural health monitoring (SHM) and develops a wireless SHM system in order to provide a low cost implementation yet reliable and robust. Existing technologies of wired and wireless sensor network platforms with high sensitivity accelerometers are combined, in order to create a system for monitoring the structural characteristics of buildings very economically and functionally, so that it can be easily implemented at low cost in buildings. Well-known and established statistical time series methods are applied to SHM data collected from real concrete structures subjected to earthquake excitation and their strong and weak points are investigated. The necessity to combine parametric and non-parametric approaches is justified and to this direction novel and improved digital signal processing techniques and indexes are applied to vibration data recordings, in order to eliminate noise and reveal structural properties and characteristics of the buildings under study, that deteriorate due to environmental, seismic or anthropogenic impact. A characteristic and potential harming specific case study is presented, where consequences to structures due to a strong earthquake of magnitude 6.4 M are investigated. Furthermore, is introduced a seismic influence profile of the buildings under study related to the seismic sources that exist in the broad region of study.

The research work in this dissertation focuses on turbulent air jet heat transfer for commercial cooking applications. As a part of this study, convective heat transfer coefficient and its interdependency with various key parameters is analyzed for single nozzle turbulent jet impingement. Air is used as the working fluid impinging on the flat surface. A thorough investigation of velocity and temperature distributions is performed by varying nozzle velocity and height over diameter ratio (H/D). Nusselt number and Turbulent Energy are presented for the impingement surface. It was found that for H/D ratios ranging between 6 and 8, nozzle velocities over 20 m/s provide a large percentage increase in heat transfer. Single nozzle jet impingement is followed by study of turbulent multi-jet impingement. Along with parameters mentioned above, spacing over diameter ratio (S/D) is varied. Convective heat transfer coefficient, average impingement surface temperature and heat transfer rate are calculated over the impingement surface. It was found that higher S/D ratios result in higher local heat transfer coefficient values near stagnation point. However, increased spacing between the neighboring jets results in reduced coverage of the impingement surface lowering the average heat transfer. Lower H/D ratios result in higher heat transfer coefficient peaks. The peaks for all three nozzles are more uniform for H/D ratios between 6 and 8. For a fixed nozzle velocity, heat transfer coefficient values are directly proportional to nozzle diameter. For a fixed H/D and S/D ratio, heat transfer rate and average impingement surface temperature increases as the nozzle velocity increases until it reaches a limiting value. Further increase in nozzle velocity causes drop in heat transfer rate due to ingress of large amounts of cold ambient air in the control volume. The final part of this dissertation focuses on case study of conveyor oven. Lessons learned from analysis of single and multi-jet impingement are implemented in the case study. A systematic approach is used to arrive to an optimal configuration of the oven. As compared to starting configuration, for optimized configuration the improvement in average heat transfer coefficient was 22.7%, improvement in average surface heat flux was 24.7% and improvement in leakage air mass flow rate was 59.1%.

The field of statistical research in weather allows for the application of old and new methods, some of which may describe relationships between certain variables better such as temperatures and pressure. The objective of this study was to apply a variety of traditional and novel statistical methods to analyze data from the National Data Buoy Center, which records among other variables barometric pressure, atmospheric temperature, water temperature and dew point temperature. The analysis included attempts to better describe and model the data as well as to make estimations for certain variables. The following statistical methods were utilized: linear regression, non-response analysis, residual analysis, descriptive statistics, parametric analysis, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, autocorrelation, normal approximation for the binomial, and chi-squared test of independence. Of the more significant results, one was establishing the Johnson SB as the best fitting parametric distribution for a group of pressures and another was finding that there was high autocorrelation in atmospheric temperature and pressure for small lags. This topic remains conducive to future research, and such endeavors may strengthen the field of applied statistics and improve our understanding of various weather entities.

Creating an accurate hurricane location forecasting model is of the utmost importance because of the safety measures that need to occur in the days and hours leading up to a storm's landfall. Hurricanes can be incredibly deadly and costly, but if people are given adequate warning, many lives can be spared. This thesis seeks to develop an accurate model for predicting storm location based on previous location, previous wind speed, and previous pressure. The models are developed using hurricane data from 1980-2009.

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