Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-45). / Although vibration absorbers have been employed in mechanical equipment mounting for over 100 years, they have only recently been used for isolating large-scale structures such as bridges and buildings. Their applications range from acoustic to seismic isolation of structures. Virtually any vibration magnitude can be prevented from degrading the performance of a structure. This thesis is intended to provide a practical introduction to the design and suitability of vibration isolators for various environments. It contains a discussion of the past, present and future of vibration isolation associated with buildings. Analysis and design examples are provided to illustrate the design methodology. / by Errol Laub. / M.Eng.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 119-123). / Water banking is a proven water management strategy that facilitates the voluntary temporary reallocation of water from willing sellers to willing buyers. In exchange for compensation, farmers (sellers) may choose to allow their irrigation water to be reallocated to cities, towns, industries, and tourist hotels (buyers) that are in need. We have studied the application of water banking concepts to the water management of the island of Cyprus. The Republic of Cyprus is currently facing significant water scarcity problems. Water banking is a new idea in the area. We propose that an emergency drought water bank encourages farmers to become part of the solution to the water problems on the island. The Cypriot government is currently turning to desalination of seawater to meet its water supply needs. This process offers a reliable but very expensive source of water. The water from the most recent desalination contract will cost the government more than CY£ 61 million in total over the next ten years, assuming that the price of oil does not rise. In order to minimize the cost of water resources development, we propose forward-thinking policies such as water banking to reduce the need for additional desalination plants. This thesis details the goals, structure, and operational strategy for a water bank in Cyprus. We recommend that the Government seriously consider the immediate application of water banking. A small-scale pilot project in a single irrigation district would allow the concept to be validated in the field. Water banking holds great promise as a means of helping to provide Cyprus with the water it needs for continued growth and prosperity. / by Benjamin Gaffney & Manal Hatem-Moussallem. / M.Eng.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 59-60). / Over the last twenty years the transportation industry has undergone a dramatic shift into container operations. The advantages of this mode of transportation are numerous, especially for the ocean carriers. The use of containers adds a high degree of versatility to their ships and increases the utilization of the vessels by means of a remarkable decrease in the loading and unloading operations time. However, the introduction of the containers adds, as well, a considerable investment cost to an industry that was already very capital intensive. The pressure of the high cost investment in equipment in addition to a remarkable competition in the sector forces every player in the industry to try to obtain the maximum efficiency in the utilization of its assets. Global trade is not in general balanced, and so the demand for containers at the different ports of the world varies greatly. As a result of this unbalanced situation, empty containers must be reallocated from mainly importing areas to those at which the overall outflow of freight is larger than the inflow. Managing the container inventory and the container reallocation, subject to the particular requirements of the industry and the present and future demand is known as the Container Allocation Problem. The purpose of this thesis is the development of a model for this problem so as to maximize the profit to be obtained from the management of a shipping line container inventory. The container avocation problem is modeled by the user of a large-scale, multi-stage stochastic network formulation that incorporates the uncertainty factor in the demand side of the problem. This network formulation captures the space-time dynamics of the reallocation process while using an objective function that minimizes the cost of the container operations in the long run. A continuous rolling horizon to limit the number of nodes in the network is used in the modeling of this system so as to make this problem tractable. Finally, a solution algorithm for this problem is proposed. The algorithm decomposes the initial non-linear network formulation into an iteration of successive linear approximations that can be solved via a classical linear programming method. / by Ricardo Balzola. / M.Eng.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. / Three forces drive the information economy: competition, customers, and change. Supply chain integration seeks to achieve optimal performance of the supply chain as a whole by finding the appropriate balance of "focused" excellence and process coordination. Successfully overcoming the corporate silos of the industrial age requires a focus on process, systems integration, and supply chain collaboration. New models of electronic commerce were often not economically feasible before the widespread deployment of the internet, but they fundamentally rely on the same principles of marketing and supply chain integration that govern the pre-internet business world. Intelligent agents, real-time personalized marketing, and online catalogs all rely on a solid relational database model. These business models have been successfully measured by analyzing their impact on Return on Assets and cost reduction. Recent implementations of technology such as the Extensible Markup Language (XML) hold much promise. Using XML as a communication standard, and with a strong process focus, the RosettaNet organization and other leading companies arc demonstrating that the key clements of a successful business model in an internet economy are process-oriented supply chain integration and customer-focused electronic commerce. / by Jason B. Slibeck. / M.Eng.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-106). / This thesis summarizes the history of lunar soil exploration through the Surveyor and Apollo programs, 1966 - 1972. Our current knowledge of the physical and engineering properties of the lunar regolith is derived mainly from measurements made on bulk and core samples returned to earth, as well as trenching, penetration and simple geophysical experiments performed during the five successful Apollo missions to the moon. Most of this data corresponds to material in the upper 1 to 3 m of the lunar surface. Lunar regolith is comprised of a mixture of basalt, impact melt glasses, breccias and agglutinate particles, and is derived from processes related to surface impacts and volcanic activity. The soil itself has a particle size distribution that resembles a well graded silty sand with angular particles and often containing a significant fraction of crushable (hollow) glass spheroids and agglutinates. The soil typically has a specific gravity of 3.1 and is found at an average porosity of approximately 45 - 50 %. The material has both cohesive and frictional components of shear strength, the former presumed to be related to electro-static forces between particles. Recent Space Exploration Initiatives have motivated the development of simulants that replicate quite closely the average properties of lunar regolith. These materials provide the basis for future lunar and Martian exploration and construction priorities. / by Javen S. Figueroa. / M.Eng.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 48-52). / The Republic of Cyprus is currently suffering from severe drought conditions. This is not uncommon to Cyprus, as they frequently experience three to four year droughts every decade. They are currently in the middle of their fourth year of drought. Some Cypriots believe that the main reason for water shortages is due only to low levels of rainfall (average rainfall in Cyprus is 500 mm per year, and less than 400 mm per year is considered a drought year). It is not disputed that this is part of the problem. However, my belief, along with many Cypriots is that the biggest part of the problem is one of water allocation. Agriculture in Cyprus contributes approximately 5% to the GDP, yet consumes 75% of available water in Cyprus. The remainder of water is left for the sector of the economy that produces the remaining 95% of the GDP, of which municipal, industrial and tourist uses are of greatest importance. One may ask why this is so. According to some Cypriots, it is because Cypriot farmers are thought to be a politically influential group, and that they farm more as a way of life, rather than to earn a living directly. Others discount this "way of life" theory. What is important, however is that farming is using a lot of water and is contributing very little to the GDP of Cyprus. For example, Citrus crops grown within the Southern Conveyor System (a large network of water conveyance pipes stretching for over 100 km in the southern part of the island) (see Figure 3, page 16) uses approximately 21% of all available water available in Cyprus, and without Government subsidies would not show profitability. Although there may be some aesthetic value in citrus groves one must ask if it is economically and environmentally justified to continue farming citrus. To do so means building seawater desalination plants that contribute 5.0 to 6.0 kg of CO 2, a greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere per m3 of water produced by desalination, along with the cost of the water nearing one US dollar per m3 . Desalination is a painful solution to Cyprus' water shortage that could be otherwise be addressed with a proper water allocation scheme. / by Mark P. Batho. / M.Eng.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69). / Waste stabilization ponds are reviewed as a means to treat wastewater. Processes involved in the three main types of waste stabilization ponds are also reviewed. Empirically derived design guidelines are used to propose a design for a series of lagoons to follow a chemically enhanced primary treatment stage in the city of Tatui, Brazil. An existing dynamic "bio-geo-chemical" waste stabilization pond model is reviewed and modified. The modified model is used to fit data from the anaerobic lagoon of a wastewater treatment facility in Riviera de Sao Lorenco. The model is also fit onto aerated lagoon data from the As-Samra treatment station in Amman, Jordan. Both models fit the data well, characterizing pond behavior satisfactorily. The models are then used to predict effluent quality for two different designs for the treatment of wastewater in Tatui. The model for the aerated lagoon is showed to be insufficient, due to the lack of appropriate data. Recommendations are proposed to improve the model with the available data. The anaerobic/facultative pond model, when used in the predictive mode, prompted a redesign of the proposed anaerobic lagoon for Tatui. / by Frédéric Chagnon. / M.Eng.

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-97). / Many companies see how new strategies and technologies can enable more efficient and adaptive supply chains-but they struggle to understand how these technologies overlay with existing processes and personnel issues both during and after implementation. This thesis investigates the concept of a simulated environment where multiple constituents whether they are different parts of a company's organization or different companies within a supply chain-can come together to design and experiment with new supply chain structures. The thesis explores the argument that the supply chain can be simulated, and evaluates different approaches to developing such a simulation that would allow low-risk experimentation and accelerated learning for supply chain managers. The thesis begins with an executive summary that provides a high level treatment of the challenges and recommendations associated with supply chain simulation, then proceeds to present a definition of the elaborate interrelationships between companies, technologies and business processes that collectively shape an industry's supply chain. This is followed by a discussion of complexity theory and general simulation techniques that could be applicable to the development of a software simulation environment in this area. Then, a review of efforts to date to simulate management of the supply chain, including approach, resources required, and eventual results is followed by a recommendation and justification of the thesis' approach to supply chain simulation. Finally, operating methods are presented for development and management of the learning and decision-making processes required to best utilize the software. The conclusion of the thesis is that because of the emergence of new technologies, the supply chain can be simulated for practical experimentation and learning. It is apparent that significant supply chain performance improvement can be identified and quantified through simulation. The thesis recommends using agent-based modeling, specifically a software package called Swarm, as the software environment. The software should be supported by operating methods that can maximize its capabilities while encouraging the likelihood of adoption of solutions identified. / by Christopher Michael Taylor Holt. / M.Eng.

Thesis: Ph. D. in Transportation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2018 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-158). / This thesis develops a new model of the energy requirements of personal vehicle travel and uses it to evaluate tools to decarbonize the transport sector. Energy use and carbon emissions from transportation are spread across millions of miles of roadways and hundreds of millions of travelers. This diversity of travel patterns makes it challenging to catalogue and predict those quantities and difficult to characterize the mechanisms that drive them. However, a better understanding of transport energy use patterns is needed to find options for reducing personal vehicle energy requirements and greenhouse gas emissions. Existing research on transportation and climate policy often represents energy use in a fundamentally simplified manner. Some research does not account for the effect of usage patterns on technology performance, missing variation in technology impacts across context of use. / Other research informs technology modeling with a simplified picture of travel patterns, missing contexts in which technologies will be used. The research in this thesis adds new insight by assessing technology performance based on a comprehensive picture of travel patterns. This better captures both how travel patterns determine technology performance and how technology performance constrains achievable transformations to the transport sector. It combines high-resolution driving data with comprehensive travel patterns from household travel surveys or a transport network simulation, integrating data at multiple scales to avoid simplifications that mask relationships between technology use, technology performance, and systemwide carbon intensity. The central finding of this thesis is that retaining heterogeneity in travel behavior and technology performance allows us to better understand barriers to and strategies for transport decarbonization that will be missed with simpler methods. / Specifically, this thesis addresses electric vehicle range limitations, finding that they provide a constraint on transport electrification that is relatively limited and consistent across locations. This research also reveals interactions between electric vehicle charging and the electricity grid and uncovers how to better align electricity demand and supply under high solar photovoltaics penetration. This understanding will help inform targeted technological development and policies as well as help identify risks and unintended consequences in a transition to a low-carbon transportation system. / by Zachary A. Needell. / Ph. D. in Transportation / Ph.D.inTransportation Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2019 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 44-46). / This thesis addresses current shortcomings in the post-disaster housing response from a structural engineering perspective, proposing a new methodology to approach a multi-design standardized solution. Known environmental loading taken from building codes is analyzed over the entire United States to create a data-set that describes the distinct loading conditions of each region. Loads are clustered into grouping that suggest a single housing typology could address the structural need of the group. Additional non-structural data is added in consideration of performance-driven design metrics that are not structural by nature. To prove viability of the methodology, a case study was implemented to propose a structural design for a selected cluster of regions. Performance-based design was implemented through parametric modeling tools considering multiple objectives including structural weight, transportation logistics, interior thermal comfort, and off-grid utilities. The exercise demonstrated that the cluster analysis serves as a practicable tool for intelligently informed standardized housing design. / by Courtney P. Stephen. / S.M. / S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering