<p>This Degree Project has been done at Växjö University, department of bioenergy technology and discusses the released thermal power in wood pellets. The purpose of the project is to investigate if two new types of wood biofuels (pellets) are more or less reactive than the pellets previously investigated at Växjö University. To measure the released thermal power, an isothermal calorimeter with eight channels has been used. To see how the microbial activity is influenced, the pellets have been stored under various conditions with focus on temperature and metal.</p>

This thesis presents an electrical model of two pairs of interconnects of the ATLAS Phase-1 Upgrade Hadronic Endcap Front End Crate prototype baseplane. Stripline transmission lines of the baseplane are modeled using Keysight Technologies' Electromagnetic Professional's (EMPro) 3D electromagnetic simulation (Finite Element Method) and the connectors are modeled using built-in models in Keysight Technologies' Advanced Design System (ADS). The model is compared in both the time and frequency domain to measured Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) traces and S-parameters. The S-parameters of the model are found to be within 5% of the measured S-parameters for transmission and reflection, and range from 25% below to 100% above for forward and backward crosstalk. To make comparisons with measurements, the cables used to connect the prototype HEC baseplane to the measurement system had to be included in the model. Plots of the S-parameters of a model without these cables are presented for one pair of interconnects for which the crosstalk is expected to be the higher than most other interconnects of the baseplane. / Graduate / 0605 / 0798 / rdporter@uvic.ca

The position reconstruction performance of the Electromagnetic Endcap Calorimeter (EMEC) is assessed in terms of its response to electrons. The electromagnetic and hadronic endcap calorimeter modules of the ATLAS detector are exposed to beams of electrons, pions, and muons in the energy range 6 GeV ≤ E ≤ 200 GeV at several impact positions in the pseudo-rapidity 1.6 ≤ |η| ≤ 1.8 in a beam test at CERN. The EMEC is a lead-liquid argon sampling calorimeter with a unique accordion structure designed to provide complete hermiticity and excellent energy and position resolution, the attribute on which several physics measurements envisioned at the LHC will depend. Unlike the real ATLAS situation, the beam test setup used a non-pointing geometry in η due to the experimental constraints. Hence, the position resolution of the EMEC is evaluated in the φ direction only and found to be at least as good as σφ = (4.36 ± 0.10)/ √E (12.64 ± 0.82) / E (0.00 ± 0.10) in milliradians.

Read-out channels in the liquid argon (LAr) calorimeter of the ATLAS detector are susceptible to various kinds of faults, which can impair the selection of events made by the trigger system. General-purpose software tools have been developed for dealing with problematic calorimeter channels. In order to give High-Level Trigger (HLT) algorithms robustness against detector problems, these tools have been applied in the HLT calorimeter data preparation code to mask problematic channels in the LAr calorimeter. Timing measurements and optimizations have been conducted to assess and minimize the impact of these operations on the execution speed of HLT algorithms. The efficacy of the bad-channel masking has been demonstrated using cosmic-ray data.

The position reconstruction performance of the Electromagnetic Endcap Calorimeter (EMEC) is assessed in terms of its response to electrons. The electromagnetic and hadronic endcap calorimeter modules of the ATLAS detector are exposed to beams of electrons, pions, and muons in the energy range 6 GeV ≤ E ≤ 200 GeV at several impact positions in the pseudo-rapidity 1.6 ≤ |η| ≤ 1.8 in a beam test at CERN. The EMEC is a lead-liquid argon sampling calorimeter with a unique accordion structure designed to provide complete hermiticity and excellent energy and position resolution, the attribute on which several physics measurements envisioned at the LHC will depend. Unlike the real ATLAS situation, the beam test setup used a non-pointing geometry in η due to the experimental constraints. Hence, the position resolution of the EMEC is evaluated in the φ direction only and found to be at least as good as σφ = (4.36 ± 0.10)/ √E (12.64 ± 0.82) / E (0.00 ± 0.10) in milliradians.

In the high energy environment of the Large Hadron Collider, there is a finite probability for the longitudinal tail of the hadronic shower represented by a jet to leak out of the calorimeter, commonly referred to as longitudinal hadronic shower leakage, or jet 'punchthrough'. This thesis prescribes a method for identifying such 'punch-through' jets via the use of muon activity found behind a jet in the ATLAS muon spectrometer, finding an occurrence rate of up to 18% in the worst affected regions. 'Punch-through' jets were found to degrade the measured jet energy scale by up to 30%, and jet energy resolution by a factor of 3. A correction to remove these effects was developed in Monte Carlo and validated in data, with associated systematic uncertainties derived. The correction was found to negate the degradation of the measured jet energy scale, improving the jet energy resolution by up to 10% in the worst affected regions, and up to 1.6% overall. The correction was integrated into the final 2012 ATLAS jet energy calibration scheme as the fifth step of the Global Sequential corrections. The prescription developed in this thesis to derive the correction is currently being used by ATLAS in Run II of the Large Hadron Collider.

An electron-positron linear collider is an option for future large particle accelerator projects. Such a collider would focus on precision tests of the Higgs boson properties. This thesis describes three studies related to the optimisation of highly granular calorimeters and one study on the sensitivity of Higgs couplings at CLIC. Photon reconstruction algorithms were developed for highly granular calorimeters of a future linear collider detector. A sophisticated pattern recognition algorithm was implemented, which uses the topological properties of electromagnetic showers to identify photon candidates and separate them from nearby particles. It performs clustering of the energy deposits in the detector, followed by topological characterisation of the clusters, with the results being considered by a multivariate likelihood analysis. This algorithm leads to a significant improvement in the reconstruction of both single photons and multiple photons in high energy jets compared to previous reconstruction software. The reconstruction and classification of tau lepton decay products was studied. Utilising highly granular calorimeters, the high resolution of energy and invariant mass of the tau decay products enabled a high classification rate. A hypothesis test was performed for expected decay final states. A multivariate analysis was trained to classify decay final states with a machine learning method. The performance of tau decay classification is used for the electromagnetic calorimeter optimisation at the ILC or CLIC. A proof-of-principle analysis using the correlation between the polarisations of the tau pair from a boson decay as a signature to differentiate the Higgs boson from the Z boson is presented. Sensitivity of Higgs couplings at CLIC was studied using the double Higgs production process. Algorithms were developed for signal event selection. The event selection relies on the jet reconstruction and the flavour tagging. A multivariate analysis is performed to select signal events. An attempt at extracting Higgs trilinear self-coupling and quartic coupling was conducted.

Title: Monte Carlo Simulations of the Tile Calorimeter and Measurement of the Z → ττ Cross Section with the ATLAS Detector Author: Mgr. Jana Nováková Department: Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics (IPNP) Supervisor: RNDr. Tomáš Davídek, PhD., IPNP Supervisor's e-mail address: davidek@ipnp.troja.mff.cuni.cz Abstract: The Monte Carlo simulations of the Tile calorimeter in the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, especially the electronic noise and multiple interactions (co-called pile-up), are discussed in the thesis. A good agreement in the cell energy distribution between data and Monte Carlo simulations is found. The cross section measurement of Z → ττ events with the ττ invariant mass between 66 and 116 GeV with the ATLAS experiment is described in the next part of the thesis. Data samples collected during 2011 corresponding to the integrated luminosity of 1.34 - 1.55 fb−1 are used for the analysis. The measurements are performed in three different final states depending on the decay mode of the τ leptons. The measurement in the channel with one τ lepton decaying leptonically into the electron + neutrinos (schematically τ → e + νe + ντ ) and the other one hadronically (schematically τ → hadrons + ντ ), especially the calculation of the nominal cross section and the evaluation of the systematic...

Epoxy resin is an important engineering material in many industries such as electronics, automotive, aerospace, etc not only because it is an excellent adhesive but also because the materials based on it provide outstanding mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. Epoxy resin has been proved to be an excellent matrix material for the nanocomposites when including another phase such as inorganic nanofillers. The properties of a nanocomposite material, in general, are a hybrid between the properties of matrix material and the nanofillers. In this sense, the thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties of a nanocomposite may be affected by the corresponding properties of matrix material. When the sonication is used to disperse the nanofillers in the polymer matrix, with the dispersal of the nanofillers, there comes some modification in the matrix as well and it finally affects the properties of nanocomposites. In this regard, we attempted to study the thermal, mechanical, and dynamic properties of EPON 862 epoxy resin where ultrasonic processing was taken as the effect causing variable. Uncured epoxy was subjected to thermal behavior studies before and after ultrasonic treatment and the cured epoxies with amine hardener EPICURE 3223 (diethylenetriamine) after sonications were tested for mechanical and dynamic properties. We monitored the ultrasonic processing effect in fictive temperature, enthalpy, and specific heat capacity using differential scanning calorimetry. Fictive temperature decreased whereas enthalpy and specific heat capacity were found to increase with the increased ultrasonic processing time. Cured epoxy rectangular solid strips were used to study the mechanical and dynamic properties. Flexural strength at 3% strain value measured with Dillon universal testing machine under 3-point bending method was found to degrade with the ultrasonic processing. The storage modulus and damping properties were studied for the two samples sonicated for 60 minutes and 120 minutes. Our study showed that the 60 minutes sonicated sample has higher damping or loss modulus than 120 minutes sonicated sample.

Este trabalho apresenta a metodologia empregada para desenvolvimento e utilização de um equipamento para medir valores de emissividade hemisférica. O referido equipamento permite efetuar simultaneamente medidas de emissividade através do método calorimétrico e do método radiométrico. O calorímetro mede o fluxo de calor entre duas superfícies paralelas e horizontais, onde a superfície superior é aquecida por uma fonte de corrente elétrica de alta estabilidade. As temperaturas das duas superfícies são determinadas quando o sistema atinge o equilíbrio térmico. A superfície aquecida é protegida por uma guarda térmica fazendo com que toda a potência elétrica seja dissipada à superfície inferior, que por sua vez é refrigerada com um sistema que utiliza pastilhas Peltier. O fluxo de calor é medido e seu valor é utilizado em uma equação onde as emissividades de ambas as superfícies são participantes. O radiômetro utiliza sensores detectores térmicos que convertem em sinal elétrico o efeito de aquecimento decorrente da incidência deste fluxo de calor radiante entre as duas superfícies. A partir de experimentos com superfícies de emissividades conhecidas, parâmetros fixos do equipamento foram determinados estando o mesmo apto a medir superfícies com valores de emissividade desconhecidos. O trabalho analisa também os erros experimentais intrínsecos do instrumento. / This work presents the methodology used for development and use of an equipment to measure values of hemispherical emissivity. The equipment allows to make emissivity measurements simultaneously through the calorimetric method and of the radiometric method. The calorimeter measures the heat transfer between two parallel and horizontal surfaces, where the superior surface is heated up by a source of electric current of high sustainability. The temperatures of the two surfaces are determined when the system reaches the thermal equilibrium. The heated surface is protected by a thermal guard, wich makes all the eletrical power to be dissipated towards the inferior surface that is cooled by a Peltier system. The heat flux is measured and its value is used in an equation where the emissividades of both surfaces are important. The radiometer uses thermal detectors that convert in electric sign, the heating effect due to the incidence of this radiant heat flux between the two surfaces. Starting from experiments with surfaces of known emissivity, fixed parameters of the equipment were determined being the same capable to measure surfaces with unknown emissivity values. The work also analyzes the experimental intrinsic errors of the apparratus.