Aviation industry has a crucial impact on society on the grounds that it offers wider social and economic benefits. The demand of transportation is increasing and it is expected that the worldwide fleet of aircraft and rotorcraft will increase accordingly. This growth will introduce an increased environmental impact which can be controlled with the introduction and the implementation of new and greener technologies which can provide both a reduced carbon foot-print and increased efficiency. Therefore, the simulation of new designs with tools that can capture the flow physics accurately is crucial, on the grounds that an accurate simulation could provide novel designs and new ways in order to design from scratch new vehicles as well as providing a better appreciation of the physics that are involved. This work has a central aim to propose a methodology which combines CFD simulations and the method of performance mapping. It focuses on the application of a ducted tail rotor which can offer significant performance benefits compared to a conventional tail rotor. The developed methodology was tested against the results of an in-house rotorcraft comprehensive code and provided a reasonable qualitative correlation. In principle, this methodology can work for all helicopter flight phases such as hover, climb, cruise, descend but due to the complexity of the investigations, together with the lack of experimental data that can be used to refine the CFD model, only the hover and forward flight were considered. Although CFD studies of a ducted tail rotor currently exist in the literature (though scarce), this work can be considered, to the best knowledge of the author as a first attempt in investigating the performance of the configuration, from low to high forward flight speed, by combining CFD and performance mapping.

Aviation industry has a crucial impact on society on the grounds that it offers wider social and economic benefits. The demand of transportation is increasing and it is expected that the worldwide fleet of aircraft and rotorcraft will increase accordingly. This growth will introduce an increased environmental impact which can be controlled with the introduction and the implementation of new and greener technologies which can provide both a reduced carbon foot-print and increased efficiency. Therefore, the simulation of new designs with tools that can capture the flow physics accurately is crucial, on the grounds that an accurate simulation could provide novel designs and new ways in order to design from scratch new vehicles as well as providing a better appreciation of the physics that are involved. This work has a central aim to propose a methodology which combines CFD simulations and the method of performance mapping. It focuses on the application of a ducted tail rotor which can offer significant performance benefits compared to a conventional tail rotor. The developed methodology was tested against the results of an in-house rotorcraft comprehensive code and provided a reasonable qualitative correlation. In principle, this methodology can work for all helicopter flight phases such as hover, climb, cruise, descend but due to the complexity of the investigations, together with the lack of experimental data that can be used to refine the CFD model, only the hover and forward flight were considered. Although CFD studies of a ducted tail rotor currently exist in the literature (though scarce), this work can be considered, to the best knowledge of the author as a first attempt in investigating the performance of the configuration, from low to high forward flight speed, by combining CFD and performance mapping.

<div>In the U.S., unitary residential air conditioners are rated using standard AHRI 210/240 that is inadequate to credit equipment with advanced controls and variable-speed components since the ratings are based on results of steady-state laboratory tests. Contrarily, a load-based testing and rating approach is presented in this work that can capture equipment performance with its integrated controls and thermostat responses that is more representative of the field. In this approach, representative building sensible and latent loads are emulated in a psychrometric test facility at different indoor and outdoor test conditions utilizing a virtual building model. The indoor test room conditions are continuously adjusted to emulate the dynamic response of the virtual building to the test equipment sensible and latent cooling rates and the equipment dynamic response is measured. Meanwhile, the inlet temperatures to the test equipment thermostat are independently controlled to track the same virtual building response using a thermostat environment emulator that encloses the test thermostat, that provides typical flow conditions and of which the design and control are presented in this work. Climate-specific cooling seasonal performance ratings can be determined by propagating load-based test results through a temperature-bin method to estimate a seasonal coefficient of performance (SCOP). In addition, a next-generation rating approach is developed that extends load-based testing for performance mapping, such that the SCOP can be obtained using building simulations that incorporate specific building types, climates and an equipment-specific performance map. </div><div> </div><div>In this work, the proposed approaches were implemented to test and rate a variable-speed residential heat pump operating in cooling mode. Trained with results from only 12 load-based test intervals carried out using the test equipment, a quasi-steady-state mapping model was able to map the equipment performance across almost the entire operating envelope within $\pm10\%$ errors and the $R^2$ values were very close to 1. Using the identified performance map, the next-generation SCOP was obtained based on an annual simulation deployed in EnergyPlus, where the map was coupled to a typical single-family building in Albuquerque,NM. Compared to the temperature-bin-based rating, this simulation-based rating is able to comprehensively and appropriately reflect equipment annual field performance associated with a specific building type and climate, as the rating is extended from automated laboratory load-based testing and performance mapping.</div>

The Indian IT industry has grown at an impressive rate during the last decade. India's own competitive advantage in the software business is well known: cost-effectiveness, world-class quality, high reliability, and rapid delivery, all of it powered by state-of-the-art technologies. Software has penetrated different spheres of the Indian economy, namely Indian corporate sector, government and public sector units. Over the last decade, one of the sectors, which have felt the "heat" of software intrusion, has been the financial service. Indian banking industry, today is in the midst of an IT revolution. A combination of regulatory and competitive reasons have led to increasing importance of total banking automation in the Indian Banking Industry. The present level of computerization in Public Sector Banks is a result of these initiatives. RBI has also gone ahead in creating of nation wide and localized networks for integration of the entire financial system. The Software Packages for Banking Applications in India had their beginnings in the middle of 80s, when the Banks spurred on by RBI and the Rangarajan Committee Report, started computerizing the branches in a limited manner. A few software companies in the country have developed banking software products and most of the banks have adopted them. These products enable all the banks to automate their operations at the branches and corporate offices. The software companies develop 60% of the software in the company itself, which involves the development of modules, and the remaining 40% is done in the customer's site. This 40% is customization of the software. The success of these banking software products in the banks can be measured by studying the market share of the individual products, revenues earned by these products by the respective companies. The success of these products depends on the satisfaction of the users, using the software. To measure their satisfaction and arrive at those products that are performing well in terms of User satisfaction, the following objectives were designed in the present study. The objectives are: 1. To understand the attributes of the banking software products that are relevant to user/customer satisfaction. 2. To understand the user's perception of the above attributes. 3. To derive the key factors of user/customer satisfaction. 4. To develop an Importance-Performance map for the attributes of the software. Based on the literature review and the discussions held with the software professionals and bank employees, we identified few relevant variables like Implementation, Maintainability, Reliability, Security, User's Performance and Output which fall under the software related variables and variables like Vendor's meeting User's needs, Vendor's mktg skill, User involvement, Training and support, and Service falling under the vendor related variables. A structured questionnaire was developed based on these variables using a 5-pt likert scale and this instrument was checked for its construct and content validity and also Reliability by conducting Factor analysis and Computing Cronbach's alpha respectively on a small sample in the Pilot study. The questionnaire was modified and the final instrument was used for the main study. This questionnaire was administered on a sample of 141 in the main study. The collected data were subjected to Factor Analysis to arrive at the key factors of User satisfaction for banking software products. We obtained seven factors User's Performance, Output, and Vendor's Marketing skill, Implementation, Ease of Use, Security and Maintainability. The second part of the study plot an Importance -Performance Map for all the products on all variables which gives us the best performer. Since this was subjective analysis, we conducted ONE-WAY ANOVA on the data to arrive at the best performer. However, ANOVA could give only the top performer, but we were not able to identify the second best product. We computed the weighted scores for each of these products by giving weights to the variables and multiplying with the performance scores. The comparison of the total weighted scores of all the four products considered in the study helped us in ranking the products based on their performance. We obtained that Product 3 was on top followed by Product 4 and Product 1 and last was product 2. Based on these analyses we suggested the following to the software vendors: 1. The key factors identified in the study should be given the highest priority while developing and testing the software for conformance with the specifications. 2. Product 2 must be improved on variables like output by making the report generation more flexible and maintainability should be made easier by making additions more flexible without any errors. 3. Vendors of Product 1 and 2 should provide better user manuals using simple language and also train the bank employees in using the software, by involving employees during customization in a more informal way. 4. Vendor's of Product 3 and 4 should maintain the quality of their existing products respectively and try to improve them.