Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1993. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [113]-121).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Kansas, Chemistry, 1960. / "March 1960." "Chemistry - General (TID-4500, 15th ed.)." eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: p. 175-178.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Mechanical Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.) -- Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: Teflon ablation; pulsed plasma thrusters; numerical analysis; PPT; depolymerization. Includes bibliographical references (p.102-105).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 355-359). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The NASA Langley Research Center hypersonic wind tunnels serve a vital role in the field of hypersonics in both helping validate CFD predictions and producing experimental results. These tunnels have been heavily utilized for decades by numerous planetary missions, such as MSL and Orion, commercial and academic partnerships, such as Sierra Space and the University of Maryland, and flight projects such as Artemis and LOFTID. The data acquisition method used in these tunnels is thermography, primarily phosphor and infrared. Image data are not collected during model injection, resulting in a data gap in the time-history of temperature. Historically, an approximate method has been used to obtain heating data with the data gap, but a new, higher-fidelity method has been developed that patches the data gap and performs integral heat transfer analysis on the temperature data, directly solving the heat equation and avoiding unnecessary assumptions. This method has been shown to model the surface heating much more accurately, agree with computational predictions better than the current method, and be an overall more robust method that collapses to a constant film coefficient value much more quickly. The culmination of these aspects results in a method that is a significant improvement over the approximate method and increases the fidelity of the heating results obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center hypersonic wind tunnels. / Master of Science / A new heat transfer analysis method that reduces image data taken of wind tunnel models in the NASA Langley Research Center hypersonic wind tunnels has been developed as a higher-fidelity successor to the existing approximate method. This new method patches the data gap that occurs during injection due to the fact that no images are taken of the model until it reaches the centerline of the tunnel. Then, this method performs integral heat transfer analysis on the image temperature data, directly solving the heat equation and avoiding unnecessary assumptions. This method has been shown to model the surface heating better, agree with computational predictions better, and be a more robust method that obtains a film coefficient value more quickly. This method is shown to be a significant improvement over the approximate method.

The localization of modes of nearly periodic structures causes a concentration of energy in one part of the mode shape. It occurs for a disordered structure with weakly coupled subsystems. The forced excitation of localized modes may affect the maximum response amplitude of the system. Two nearly periodic structures are analyzed herein: a two span beam and a pair of coupled pendula. Results show that the sensitivity of the forced response to the degree of localization depends on a combination of the symmetry of the mode which is excited and the phase difference between the forces acting on each substructure. These results attempt to explain the range of contrasting conclusions of previous research on the effects of forced response on mistuned structures. Furthermore, a theoretical explanation of the results is given in terms of transfer admittance. A probabilistic analysis of the free and forced response of a nearly periodic structure is shown to be useful in the design of such structures which are sensitive to the degree of localization. The second moment method is used in the analysis with results verified by Monte Carlo simulation. The probabilities of localization and failure are calculated given the statistics of the system parameters, and the localization and failure tolerances respectively. / Master of Science

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

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-183). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.