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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1201

Mechanisms for stakeholder analysis and engagement in mobility management projects : A case study of Sustainable Travel in Umeå Region, Sweden

Prodan, Diana Mihaela, Vega Fanjul, Eduardo January 2012 (has links)
The current study investigates the mechanisms employed for analyzing and engaging stakeholders through the planning and implementation phases of the mobility management project Sustainable Travel in Umeå Region (Sweden). In alignment with researchers' epistemological and ontological assumptions, an abductive approach and the case study strategy were selected. The qualitative data collected through conducting interviews with the five project team members and through examining project's documentation were analyzed using the pattern matching technique and leading to the findings presented in detail in Chapter 4 and discussed in Chapter 5. The core finding of the study is a model of the use of mechanisms through the planning and implementation phases of a MM project. The planning phase of the project coincides with the stakeholders' analysis process, thus identifying, classifying, characterizing and a very complex process of designing the engagement strategy for citizens, which includes also deciding and starting implementing the strategy for organizations. The correspondent analysis and engagement mechanisms, developed by the project stakeholders‟ scholars for each of these stages, are mostly unwittingly used by the project team. Once the engagement strategy for citizens is decided, the implementation phase is initiated. The implementation phase is characterized by a blend between MM mechanisms and classic stakeholders' engagement mechanisms, which are constantly reassessed through project's lifecycle. In addition, the main challenges emerged in the process of stakeholders' engagement in this project are discussed, concluding that the lack of alignment between some of the regulations coming from the national and supranational level and the project's aim, combined with communication issues and the unwillingness of the targeted organization to interfere in the personal lives of their employees, are the elements that most endanger the success of the stakeholders' engagement process and implicitly of the MM project.
1202

Design and analysis of a compact two phase cooling system for a laptop computer

Ali, Adya Alisha 13 July 2004 (has links)
Technological advancement, as well as consumer demands, has motivated the miniaturization of electronic/mechanical systems and increase of device power and performance. The notebook computer is not an exception, and innovative thermal management solutions must be employed to compensate for the increased heat dissipation in the space-constrained enclosures. The majority of current cooling systems in laptop computers rely on heat pipes attached to a remote heat exchanger with micro-fans providing forced convection to reject heat to the ambient, however this technique can not accommodate the increasing heat fluxes in the confined laptop enclosure. In this study, a two-phase closed loop cooling system is designed and tested for a laptop computer. The cooling system consists of an evaporator structure containing boiling structures connected to a compact condenser with mini fans providing external forced convection. A pump is also incorporated to assist the return of the condensate back to the evaporator. The cooling system is characterized by a parametric study which determines the effects of volume fill ratio of coolant, initial system pressure, and pump flow rate on the thermal performance of the closed loop. Experimental data shows the optimum parametric values which can dissipate 25 W of chip power with a chip temperature maintained at 95C. Numerical analysis provides additional data to further enhance the heat dissipation from the external air-cooled side of the condenser by studying the effects of ventilation and air flow rate across the system. Thermal management of mobile systems must be considered during the early design phases, and this research shows the feasibility of implementing of a two-phase cooling system to dissipate 25 W in a laptop computer.
1203

Sub-grid Combustion Modeling for Compressible Two-Phase Flows

Sankaran, Vaidyanathan 24 November 2003 (has links)
A generic formulation for modeling the sub-grid combustion in compressible, high Reynolds number, two-phase, reacting flows has been developed and validated. A sub-grid mixing/combustion model called Linear Eddy Mixing (LEM) model has been extended to compressible flows and used inside the framework of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) in this LES-LEM approach. The LES-LEM approach is based on the proposition that the basic mechanistic distinction between the convective and the molecular effects should be preserved for accurate prediction of the complex flow-fields such as those encountered in many combustion systems. In LES-LEM, all the physical processes such as molecular diffusion, small and large scale turbulent convection and chemical reaction are modeled separately but concurrently at their respective time scales. This multi-scale phenomena is solved using a two-scale numerical approach, wherein molecular diffusion, small scale turbulent convection and chemical reaction are grouped as small scale processes and the convection at the (LES grid) resolved scales are deemed as the large scale processes. Small-scale processes are solved using a hybrid finite-difference Monte-carlo type approach in a one-dimensional domain. Large-scale advection on the three-dimensional LES grid is modeled in a Lagrangian manner that conserves mass. Liquid droplets (represented by computational parcels) are tracked using the Lagrangian approach wherein the Newton's equation of motion for the discrete particles are integrated explicitly in the Eulerian gas field. Drag effects due to the droplets on the gas phase and the heat transfer between the gas and the liquid phase are explicitly included. Thus, full coupling is achieved between the two phases in the simulation. Validation of the compressible LES-LEM approach is conducted by simulating the flow-field in an operational General Electric Power Systems' combustor (LM6000). The results predicted using the proposed approach compares well with the experiments and a conventional (G-equation) thin-flame model. Particle tracking algorithms used in the present study are validated by simulating droplet laden temporal mixing layers. Comparison of the energy growth in the fundamental and sub-harmonic mode in the presence and absence of the droplets shows excellent agreement with spectral DNS. Finally, to test the ability of the present two-phase LES-LEM in simulating partially premixed combustion, a LES of freely propagating partially premixed flame in a droplet-laden isotropic turbulent field is conducted. LES-LEM along with the spray models correctly captures the flame structure in the partially premixed flames. It was found that most of the fuel droplets completely vaporize before reaching the flame, and hence provides a continuous supply of reactants, which results in an intense reaction zone similar to a premixed flame. Some of the droplets that did not evaporate completely, traverse through the flame and vaporize suddenly in the post flame zone. Due to the strong spatial variation of equivalence ratio a broad flame similar to a premixed flame is realized. Triple flame structure are also observed in the flow-field due to the equivalence ratio fluctuations.
1204

Distribution and sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs) in Er-Jen River

Lin, Chien-ming 22 July 2011 (has links)
In this study our purposes were to investigate the spatial distribution and seasonal variation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the dissolved and particulate phase of PAHs in Er-Jen River. In addition, the potential sources of PAHs in Er-Jen River were investigated not only by finger printing, but also principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). ¡@¡@Concentrations of dissolved and particulate PAHs ranged from 13.8 to 516 ng/L and from 4.05 to 55.9 ng/L, respectively. In March (dry season), concentrations of dissolved and particulate PAHs ranged from 38.3 to 186 ng/L and from 4.05 to 25.9 ng/L, respectively. In addition, concentrations of dissolved and particulate PAHs ranged from 32.3 to 82.8 ng/L and from 14.8 to 85.3 ng/L, respectively in September (wet season). The highest total PAH concentration in this area was found in Station Er-3 which is located on a tributary of Er-Jen River. Total PAH concentrations in wet season were higher than those found in dry season for all stations in Er-Jen River, except for station Er-3, which suggesting that different geography might be the reason. ¡@¡@Results from correlation analysis indicated that distributions of PAH concentrations for particulate phase in Er-Jen River correlated well with flow rate, suspended solid concentrations and salinity. Total PAH concentration of station Er-2, which was located at the downstream Er-Jen River, was highly correlated with salinity; while total PAH concentrations in other stations were mainly affected by flow rate, suspended solid concentrations and some potential sources of pollution. Results from PCA, HCA and finger printing all indicated the origins of PAHs were complex sources in the study area, including pyrogenic, petrogenic and diagenetic/biogenic origins. The origins of PAHs in dissolved phase were mainly from both pyrogenic and petrogenic sources; while those in particulate phase were mainly from pyrogenic sources. In addition, the pyrogenic origins in both dissolved and particulate phase were mostly from liquid fuel combustion. In wet season, howerer, diagenetic/biogenic origins were also found in particulate phase at the sampling sites of Er-Jen River. ¡@¡@The annual total PAH fluxes of Er-Jen River were estimated to be 23.1 kg For dissolved phase, the average daily fluxes in dry and wet season were 5.9 g/day and 65.8 g/day, respectively, with an annual mean fluxe of 11.3 kg/year. For particulate phase, the mean daily fluxes in dry and wet season were 0.8 g/day and 76.2 g/day, respectively, with an annual mean flux of 11.8 kg/year. In general, the total PAH fluxes in wet season were higher than dry season. The total annual PAH fluxes in Er-Jen River were generally less than those reported worldwide, and comparable to those in San Francisco River in USA, but higher than those in Le Havre River in France.
1205

Investigation of Supported Lipid Bilayers and Detergent Resistant Membranes by Atomic Force Microscopy

Chen, Shiau-Chian 27 July 2011 (has links)
Supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) are unique model systems for biological membranes. SLBs can be formed by fusing liposomes on solid substrates, which can be characterized by a variety of surface analytical techniques, such as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction, Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM), etc. In this study we used AFM to investigate the dynamic process of the formation of SLBs from liposomes in solutions containing metal ions and phase separation between different lipids as a function of temperature. Divalent cations, Ni2+ in particular, was found to be critical to the deposition of bilayers. Lipid rafts are plasma membrane microdomains rich in sphingolipid and cholesterol forming a liquid ordered phase surrounded by a liquid disordered phase. Lipid rafts are insoluble in cold non-ionic detergents, also called Detergent Resistant Membranes (DRMs). The interaction behaviors between detergent (Triton X-100) and mixed bilayers (DOPC/DPPC and DOPC/SpM) were studied by AFM. The way lipid bilayers were solubilized by Triton X-100 was quite different below and above its critical micelle concentration (CMC), and the SpM domains were found to be resistant to detergent extraction in the cold.
1206

Optimization of contrast and signal homogeneity for high resolution 3D MRI of human brain at 1.5 Tesla

Wu, Shi-jia 03 September 2011 (has links)
The inhomogeneous B1 field at higher main fields (B0) becomes more serious, leading to unsatisfactory MR image quality. To improve the signal homogeneity of routinely used T1-weighted image, usually acquired by a well-known sequence, Magnetization Prepared Rapid Acquisition Gradient Echo (MPRAGE), a new pulse sequence, Magnetization Prepared 2 Rapid Acquisition Gradient Echoes (MP2RAGE), was proposed in 2009. This technique acquires two sets of high-resolution three- dimentional images at different inversion times after a series of inversion pulses. After any of two simple calculations of the raw images (Ratio or MP2RAGE reconstruction), the output volume was obtained with dramatically reduced spatial inhomogenuity of MR signal. In this study, the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) optimation at 3 T was implemented independently to reproduce the previous results of other group. After that, the simulation of scanning parameters was done to optimize CNR of brain tissue at 1.5 T according to different encoding methods, different pulse sequences, and different reconstruction algorithms. Phantom and human experiments were carried on a 1.5 T scanner for further validation. The results of phantom experiment showed that both MP2RAGE and Ratio reconstructions can achiever better B1 homogeneity than MPRAGE, even with the vendor-equipped correction packages, SCIC and PURE. In addition, the agreement was made between simulation and in-vivo imaging that MP2RAGE provides higher CNR than Ratio when centric encoding also outduels linear encoding.
1207

Design and analysis of a phase mask for mutifocusing

Guo, Jian-You 07 September 2011 (has links)
The image quality will degrade if the misfocusing problem occurs in the imaging system. This paper is aimed to design and analyze a phase mask for mutifocusing problem. Depth of field is the range to get a clear image. As the lens can only gather the light in a fixed range. Image will be more blurred when it is more from this range. In 1995 Dowski and Cathey proposed the wave-front coding to increase the system's depth of field so that the image will less susceptible to blur due to the mutifocusing problem. A treatment with a mask before the lens can extend the depth of field. In this paper, we extend to multi-levels phase mask. The simulation results show that multi-level phase mask has a better performance than the two-level phase mask.
1208

Design of Phase-Controlled Rectifier for LED Street Lamps

Lin, Wen-Chih 13 August 2012 (has links)
A high efficiency driver is designed for light emitting diode (LED) street lamps in the thesis. The main power conversion circuit employs a phase-controlled rectifier to convert the power from the ac mains of 110/220 V, 60 Hz directly into a dc source, providing the required output current for the street lamps formed by arrayed high brightness white LEDs. The phase-controlled rectifier of the LED driver circuit can be a conventional semi-converter or a rectifier with symmetrical phase control, which makes use of thyristors and power transistors, respectively, to regulate the LED current by means of adjusting the conduction angles in a cycle of the ac line. The phase-controlled rectifiers may exclude the use the bulky electrolyte capacitor with acceptable variation in the chromaticity and the color temperature. Operating at the low frequency, the phase-controlled rectifiers can avoid the problems of electromagnetic interference caused by high-frequency switching and adopt low cost power switches. Furthermore, a relatively high power factor can be achieved when the line source voltage varies within a small allowable range. The research is targeted to a design of a 200 W LED street lamp. To facilitate the changes of the control functions and circuit parameters, the control circuit is realized with a microcontroller. In addition, over-voltage/current protections can be included easily. Experimental results demonstrate that the phase-controlled rectifiers with appropriately designated circuit parameters can approach a power factor of 0.92 and a circuit efficiency of 93% at the rated output.
1209

The free surface deformation affected by a two-dimensional thermocapillary flow

Su, Heng-yi 27 August 2012 (has links)
This project is to explore the manufacturing and processing of laser or electron beam, formed on the surface morphology after curing and processing parts, such as surfacefilled, depression, or the formation of ripples; These reactions will directly affect the surface heat treatment and welding quality of thefinished product This study to consider the mass, momentum and energy equations, the introduction of theinterface and boundary conditions to simulate the real process In order to promote quality stability, and a large amount of production capacity and reduce costs, we must understand the institutions of the reaction In this thesis, the phase field method (Phase-field method) (Two-phase flow) two-phase flow simulation of metal surface by a concentrated source of heat melt the transient heat flow behavior
1210

The study of fast-response and polarization independent diffraction grating by using blue phase liquid crystals

Lin, Shun-Mao 27 August 2012 (has links)
In this study, the phase grating was investigated by using electro-optical characteristics of blue phase liquid crystals(BPLCs) such as fast-response and optically isotropic etc. The BPLC units was affected by distribution of periodically electric field and then changed the cubic structure into others, when applying voltage in etched electrode of grating pattern. A linearly polarized light is incident upon the sample and experience the periodic difference of index, and diffraction effect was generated. In order to find out the best conditions of these liquid crystals device, we discussed different factor such as angle of linearly polarized light, operating temperature of grating, cooling rate and electrode structure.

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