This paper will investigate the development of a landing footprint for a re-entry vehicle. Vehicles can re-enter the atmosphere with a range of orientations, velocities and flight path angles. The central question is whether a vehicle with any combination of these states can be brought to an acceptable landing condition at a particular landing site and with a particular landing speed. To aide in this investigation several models must be implemented, including that of the atmosphere, the vehicles, the Earth, and the aerodynamics. A detailed analysis of the aerodynamic model will be treated, and the equations of motion subject to these aerodynamic laws will then be compared to results from existing atmospheric reentry software. The principles of optimization will then be employed to generate the footprint of landable states, based on maximum and minimum possible downrange distances, for two vehicle concepts.

In this thesis, a general pseudospectral formulation for a class of Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problems is consructed. It is shown that almost all, regular or singular, Sturm-Liouville eigenvalue problems in the Schr&ouml / dinger form may be transformed into a more tractable form. This tractable form will be called here a weighted equation of hypergeometric type with a perturbation (WEHTP) since the non-weighted and unperturbed part of it is known as the equation of hypergeometric type (EHT). It is well known that the EHT has polynomial solutions which form a basis for the Hilbert space of square integrable functions. Pseudospectral methods based on this natural expansion basis are constructed to approximate the eigenvalues of WEHTP, and hence the energy eigenvalues of the Schr&ouml / dinger equation. Exemplary computations are performed to support the convergence numerically.

In this thesis, a survey on pseudospectral methods for differential equations is presented. Properties of the classical orthogonal polynomials required in this context are reviewed. Differentiation matrices corresponding to Jacobi, Laguerre,and Hermite cases are constructed. A fairly detailed investigation is made for the Hermite spectral methods, which is applied to the Schr&ouml / dinger eigenvalue equation with several potentials. A discussion of the numerical results and comparison with other methods are then introduced to deduce the effciency of the method.

Extensions to k-Wave toolbox used for ultrasound modelling are described. Aim of extensions is to reduce time and space complexity by presenting alternative representations of tissues and transducers in simulation. This project clarifies basic principles and features of k-Wave, describes design of new representations and finally describes implementation of the suggested extensions.

No description available.

Turbulent boundary layers approximating those found on the NASA Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) thermal protection system during atmospheric reentry from the International Space Station have been studied by direct numerical simulation, with the ultimate goal of reducing aerothermodynamic heating prediction uncertainty. Simulations were performed using a new, well-verified, openly available Fourier/B-spline pseudospectral code called Suzerain equipped with a ``slow growth'' spatiotemporal homogenization approximation recently developed by Topalian et al. A first study aimed to reduce turbulence-driven heating prediction uncertainty by providing high-quality data suitable for calibrating Reynolds-averaged Navier--Stokes turbulence models to address the atypical boundary layer characteristics found in such reentry problems. The two data sets generated were Ma[approximate symbol] 0.9 and 1.15 homogenized boundary layers possessing Re[subscript theta, approximate symbol] 382 and 531, respectively. Edge-to-wall temperature ratios, T[subscript e]/T[subscript w], were close to 4.15 and wall blowing velocities, v[subscript w, superscript plus symbol]= v[subscript w]/u[subscript tau], were about 8 x 10-3 . The favorable pressure gradients had Pohlhausen parameters between 25 and 42. Skin frictions coefficients around 6 x10-3 and Nusselt numbers under 22 were observed. Near-wall vorticity fluctuations show qualitatively different profiles than observed by Spalart (J. Fluid Mech. 187 (1988)) or Guarini et al. (J. Fluid Mech. 414 (2000)). Small or negative displacement effects are evident. Uncertainty estimates and Favre-averaged equation budgets are provided. A second study aimed to reduce transition-driven uncertainty by determining where on the thermal protection system surface the boundary layer could sustain turbulence. Local boundary layer conditions were extracted from a laminar flow solution over the MPCV which included the bow shock, aerothermochemistry, heat shield surface curvature, and ablation. That information, as a function of leeward distance from the stagnation point, was approximated by Re[subscript theta], Ma[subscript e], [mathematical equation], v[subscript w, superscript plus sign], and T[subscript e]/T[subscript w] along with perfect gas assumptions. Homogenized turbulent boundary layers were initialized at those local conditions and evolved until either stationarity, implying the conditions could sustain turbulence, or relaminarization, implying the conditions could not. Fully turbulent fields relaminarized subject to conditions 4.134 m and 3.199 m leeward of the stagnation point. However, different initial conditions produced long-lived fluctuations at leeward position 2.299 m. Locations more than 1.389 m leeward of the stagnation point are predicted to sustain turbulence in this scenario. / text