The effect of primary air distribution on emissions from a natural gas water heater

<p> This work is primarily motivated by the hope that Silicon (Si) can be utilized in Lithium (Li) ion batteries to enable an order of magnitude capacity increase if Li-Si systems can be better understood. In order to create a valuable tool that could be used to study a wide range of problem, pertinent physical models were implemented in an extended finite element method (XFEM) framework written in c++. One of the major contribution of this work goes to the battery modeling community, by generalizing several existing electrochemical-mechanical models which use a small deformation approximations so they can accommodate finite deformation. A general theory which can be used to guide the development of new finite element models is presented in detail. This work also contributes new finite element modeling tools with novel predictive capabilities to the battery modeling community, which will hopefully facilitate the design and optimization of next generation battery micro-structures. Studies within demonstrate that small deformation approximation models can produce incorrect predictions about the behavior of Li-Si systems, supporting the case for using finite deformation models. The developed tools are used to demonstrate that arbitrary geometries can easily be simulated on a the same fixed grid, facilitating automated geometry studies including parameter sweeping and topology optimization. </p>