Historical land use and changes in climate have altered fire behavior and severity in fire-prone ecosystems of western North America. A variety of fuels treatments are used to abate fire hazard, restore ecosystem processes, and increase forest resilience. Mechanical fuels treatments are increasingly used to alter forest structure and fuel continuity due to impediments to the use of prescribed fire. An increasingly common fuels treatment is mechanical mastication. Mastication does not remove fuels, but instead rearranges live and dead vertical woody fuels into a compacted layer on the forest floor. While mastication reduces potential fire intensity, these compacted fuels are flammable and capable of causing tree mortality and other negative ecological consequences when they burn in prescribed fires or wildfires. A current knowledge gap is quantitative information about the rate at which masticated fuels decompose and the rate at which vegetation reestablishes within sites previously masticated. Using 25 sites across northern California and southern Oregon, this thesis examines how masticated fuels change over time. Results from this study demonstrate that the majority of mass lost from masticated fuel beds occurred in the 1 and 10-hour woody fuel classes. Because surface fire behavior is driven by these fine fuels, these findings are valuable to the planning and retreatment of masticated fuels treatments and the corresponding fire suppression efforts in masticated sites. In combination with masticated wood surface fuels, shrubs and small trees play an important role in fire behavior, acting as ladder fuels that exacerbate surface fire behavior and threaten to ignite residual trees. A lack of understanding of how woody vegetation recovers following masticated fuel treatments gives rise to questions and challenges regarding treatment longevity. In this study, species with the ability to resprout tended to recover more quickly than obligate seeding species. Residual conifer saplings or trees that establish in masticated fuelbeds also recovered rapidly, reducing the efficacy of fuels treatments. Future implementation of masticated fuels treatments should consider both woody fuel decomposition and the corresponding recovery of shrubs and small trees to maximize treatment longevity. / Master of Science

For any crankcase scavenged two-stroke engine, the fuel dynamics is not easily predicted. This is due to the fact that the fuel has to pass the crankcase volume before it enters the combustion chamber. This thesis is about the development of a model for fuel dynamics in the crankcase of a small crankcase scavenged two-stroke engine that gives realistic dynamic behavior. The crankcase model developed in this thesis has two parts. One part is a model for wall wetting and the other part is a model for concentration of evaporated fuel in the crankcase. Wall wetting is a phenomenon where fuel is accumulated in fuel films on the crankcase walls. The wall wetting model has two parameters that have to be tuned. One is for the fraction of fuel from the carburetor that is not directly evaporated and one parameter is for the evaporation time of the fuel film. The thesis treats tuning of these parameters by running the model with input data from measurements. Since not all input data are possible to measure, models for these inputs are also needed. Hence, development of simple models for air flows, fuel flow, gas mixing in the exhaust and the behavior of the λ-probe used for measurements are also treated in this thesis. The parameter estimation for the crankcase model made in this thesis results in parameters that corresponds to constant fraction of fuel from the carburetor that evaporates directly and a wall wetting evaporation rate that increases with increasing engine speed. The parameter estimation is made with measurements at normal operation and three specific engine speeds. The validity of the model is limited to these speeds and does not apply during engine heat-up. The model is run and compared to validation data at some different operation conditions. The model predicts dynamic behavior well, but has a bias in terms of mean level of the output λ. Since this mean value depends on the relation between input air and fuel flow, this bias is probably an effect of inaccuracy in the simple models developed for these flows. / För alla tvåtaktsmotorer med bränslematning genom vevhuset är bränsledynamiken svårpredikterad. Detta beror på att bränslet måste passera vevhusvolymen innan det når förbränningskammaren. Denna uppsats handlar om utveckling av en modell som ger realistisk dynamik för bränslet i tvåtaktsmotorers vevhus. Vevhusmodellen i denna uppsats har två delar. Den ena delen är en modell för bränslefilm på motorväggar och den andra delen är en modell för koncentration av förångat bränsle i vevhusvolymen. Bränslefilmsmodellen har två parametrar som måste trimmas. Den ena är andelen bränsle från förgasaren som inte förångas direkt och den andra är tidsåtgången för förångning av bränslefilmen. Uppsatsen behandlar trimning av dessa parametrar genom körning av modellen med indata från mätningar. Eftersom inte all indata kan mätas behövs även modeller för dessa. Därför behandlar uppsatsen även utveckling av enkla modeller för luftflöde, bränsleflöde, gasblandning i avgasvolymen och beteende hos den för mätningar använda λ-sonden. Parameterestimeringen för vevhusmodellen som är gjord i denna uppsats resulterar i parametrar som svarar mot konstant andel av bränslet från förgasaren som förångas direkt och en förångningshastighet för bränslefilmen som ökar med ökande motorhastighet. Parameterestimeringen är gjord med mätdata från normal körning vid tre olika motorhastigheter. Giltigheten för modellen är begränsad till dessa hastigheter och kan inte appliceras på körning av motorn vid kallstart. Modellen är körd och jämförd med valideringsdata från olika körfall. Modellen förutser dynamiska beteenden väl, men har ett systematiskt fel gällande medelvärdet på λ. Eftersom detta medelvärde beror på förhållandet mellan luftflöde och bränsleflöde in i vevhuset är sannolikt detta systematiska fel en effekt av osäkerhet i de enkla modeller som utvecklats för dessa flöden.

<p> Three symbiotic systems are considered. These include the possibility of coupling the tritium production in a fission reactor with the fertile conversion in a fusion blanket. Equations for the fuel dynamics, power output, efficiency and costs of a symbiotic, selfcontained power station are developed and evaluated for a specific, 1500 MWe fission reactor operating on a thorium cycle and some fusion parameters. It is concluded that a system using the tritium produced in a fission reactor has lower costs and increased power output when compared to an alternate system. </p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (MEngr)

Fires occur in most forest reserves in Ghana. However, there is a limited understanding of the fires and their behaviour in the different ecological zones. Therefore, this research was to analyze the spatial and temporal distribution of fires, examine the driving factors, direct and underlying causes and impacts of the fires, determine and compare the fuel dynamics to predict fire behaviour and estimate the effects of fire on carbon stocks in different ecological zones of Ghana. The research used different methodologies including questionnaires, fire records, satellite fire data from MODIS (2001 to 2015) (first approach) and field experiment (second approach). A total of 304 respondents was sampled for eight communities, two communities each around the moist and dry semi-deciduous forest, upland evergreen forest and savanna. The spatial distribution of fire showed a trend along the forest boundaries, open vegetation, degraded areas, human settlements, shrubs, farms, rivers and roads. The temporal trend was significant in the dry forest (435 hotspots), followed by the savanna (229 hotspots), moist forest (76 hotspots) and the least in the evergreen forest (5 hotspots). The fires were observed from August, October to May with the dry forest having the longest seasonality. Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday were the peak days of the detected fire hotspots in the dry, moist and savanna respectively. Most of the fires in the different ecological zones peaked from 13 to 14 pm. The results of the research also revealed that the fires were driven primarily by socioeconomic factors which were supported by environmental, type of vegetation and cultural factors. In all the ecological zones, fires were originating from humans. The study pointed out three categories of human-caused fires through activity (farming), non-activity (carelessness or negligence) and others (unknown causes). The major underlying causes of fire mentioned were the inadequate management of the forest and weak compliance and enforcement of forest laws. All these fires have resulted in several impacts in the various ecological zones. Concerning the fuel dynamics, the total downed woody fuel load in the evergreen forest was found to be higher (228 and 208.4 tonnes per hectare). The litter and duff density (112.2 kilogram per cubic meter) in unburned area and loading (6.3 and 13.5 tonnes per hectare) for both burned and unburned area respectively were significantly greater in the moist forest. Also, the dry forest showed 2.4 tonnes per hectare of herbaceous loading in the burned area. However, fires were predicted to be severe in the savanna regarding the surface rate of spread, flame length and fireline intensity, but with low reaction intensity and heat per unit area. The total amount of aboveground tree carbon, aboveground non-tree and belowground root for both burned and the unburned area varied under the different ecological zones. The highest was seen in the moist forest with the emission of 294 tonnes of carbon per hectare accounting for 82% losses. This research has brought out the current situation of fire in the various ecological zones for the implementation of necessary actions for the future.