Neste trabalho estudam-se os efeitos dependentes do tempo em vigas de concreto pré-moldado, protendidas ou não, com concretagem posterior formando um conjunto de seção composta com lajes alveolares, usual em pavimentos de edifícios, e ocasionando um estabelecimento da continuidade com ligação semi-rígida. Os esforços de restrição causados pelos efeitos de retração e fluência dos diversos concretos envolvidos e possível relaxação das cordoalhas de protensão nos extremos dessas vigas acarretam uma redistribuição de esforços função do tempo, causando deslocamentos axiais e rotações no elemento. Esta análise é feita utilizando a programação em elementos finitos CONS, própria para análise não-linear de estruturas em concreto construídas evolutivamente, aplicada a modelos representativos. O programa CONS apresentou bastante precisão na avaliação dos efeitos do tempo respaldado por estudos experimentais. Com base no estudo de dois modelos representativos de concreto pré-moldado foi observado que: a) os momentos de restrição acarretaram modificações sensíveis na região da ligação influenciando na fissuração da peça e no valor final de momento fletor, com alterações de até 80% para a viga de concreto armado, e inversão do sinal para a viga de concreto protendido; b) em comparação com as demais, as deformações axiais tiveram uma maior influência dos efeitos do tempo chegando a acréscimos posteriores à imposição do último carregamento de até 90% para a viga de concreto protendido; c) a retração diferencial entre concretos de idades distintas originou tensões de tração consideráveis em especial na região da interface. / In this research, time-dependent effects in precast concrete beams, prestressed or not, with posterior concreting resulting in a structure of a composite cross section with hollow core slabs, usual in buildings floors, and made continuous with semi-rigid connection are studied. The restraint stresses caused by the effects of the shrinkage and creep of the various concretes involved and possible relaxation of the prestressed tendons in the extremities of these beams imply in a rearrangement of time-dependent stresses, leading to axial deflection and rotations in the element. This analysis is made using the finite element based program CONS for non-linear analysis of progressively assembled concrete structures, applied in representative samples. CONS presented great accuracy in the evaluation of time effects supported by experimental studies. Based on a study of two precast concrete structures examples, it was observed that: a) the restraint stresses lead to sensible modifications in the connection, influencing on the cracking of the piece and in the final bending moment with changes of 80% for the reinforced concrete sample, and sign inversion for the prestressed one; b) In comparison among the others, the axial deformation had a greater influence in time effects in the samples analyzed, with increases after the last load of 90% in the prestressed example; c) the differential shrinkage between concretes of different ages has generated great tensile stresses, specially on the interface.

A utilização de concreto projetado como suporte de túneis é uma prática amplamente difundida no mundo inteiro. Este tipo material possui a característica de começar a agir estruturalmente desde pequenas idades. Apesar disso, os correntes processos de dimensionamento de suportes negligenciam o desenvolvimento de suas propriedades com o tempo, em acoplamento aos efeitos tridimensionais da região onde se localiza a frente de escavação. O presente trabalho tem a finalidade de relatar os procedimentos utilizados na análise da influência de alguns parâmetros da interação maciço - suporte, sobre os esforços solicitantes finais do suporte de um túnel, tanto para o caso de concreto projetado, com suas propriedades dependentes do tempo, quanto para materiais com propriedades constantes. São elaboradas soluções adimensionais para o problema da quantificação de esforços solicitantes de compressão e flexão no suporte. A maioria das simulações realizadas para atingir essa meta foi conduzida com auxílio de técnicas de processamento paralelo. / Shotcrete has been more and more used worldwide for tunnel support. This kind of material has the characteristics of starting to act structurally since early ages. Nevertheless, the current processes of support design neglect the development of its properties after some time in connection to the 3D effects of the region where the face of the tunnel is located. The present work relates the procedures adopted in analyzing the influence of some ground-support interaction parameters on the support structure internal forces of a tunnel, not only when shotcrete is used, with its time-dependent properties, but for materials with constant properties as well. Dimensionless solutions are developed for the support thrust and bending moments quantification problem. Most of the numerical simulations performed to reach this purpose were carried out by means of parallel processing techniques.

Generalized estimating equations (GEE) are popularly utilized for the marginal analysis of longitudinal data. In order to obtain consistent regression parameter estimates, these estimating equations must be unbiased. However, when certain types of time-dependent covariates are presented, these equations can be biased unless an independence working correlation structure is employed. Moreover, in this case regression parameter estimation can be very inefficient because not all valid moment conditions are incorporated within the corresponding estimating equations. Therefore, approaches using the generalized method of moments or quadratic inference functions have been proposed for utilizing all valid moment conditions. However, we have found that such methods will not always provide valid inference and can also be improved upon in terms of finite-sample regression parameter estimation. Therefore, we propose a modified GEE approach and a selection method that will both ensure the validity of inference and improve regression parameter estimation. In addition, these modified approaches assume the data analyst knows the type of time-dependent covariate, although this likely is not the case in practice. Whereas hypothesis testing has been used to determine covariate type, we propose a novel strategy to select a working covariate type in order to avoid potentially high type II error rates with these hypothesis testing procedures. Parameter estimates resulting from our proposed method are consistent and have overall improved mean squared error relative to hypothesis testing approaches. Finally, for some real-world examples the use of mean regression models may be sensitive to skewness and outliers in the data. Therefore, we extend our approaches from their use with marginal quantile regression to modeling the conditional quantiles of the response variable. Existing and proposed methods are compared in simulation studies and application examples.

Das Ionisierungsverhalten kleiner Moleküle (insbesondere H2 und NH3) in intensiven, ultrakurzen Laserfeldern wird theoretisch untersucht. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt dabei auf dem Einfluss der Kerndynamik. Zunächst wird das Ionisierungsverhalten des H2-Moleküls bei eingefrorener Kernschwingung untersucht. Bereits im Rahmen dieser Näherung kann im Mehrphotonenregime ein zuvor beobachteter Zusammenbruch der Näherung im Gleichgewichtsabstand festgehaltener Kerne erklärt werden. Weiterhin wird der Übergang vom Mehrphotonen zum quasistatischen Ionisierungsregime für 800-nm-Laserfelder untersucht. Eine neuartige Methode zur Beschreibung der korrelierten Schwingungs- und Elektronendynamik des H2-Moleküls (7D) wird entwickelt. Mit dieser Methode wird schließlich der Einfluss der Kernbewegung während des Laserfeldes auf das Ionisierungsverhalten untersucht. Es wird ein sichtbarer Einfluss auf den zuvor diskutierten Zusammenbruch der Näherung festgehaltener Kerne beobachtet. Dies gilt ebenfalls für einen vor kurzem experimentell beobachteten Isotopeneffekt in der Ionisierung der Moleküle H2 vs. D2 untersucht. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird das Ionisierungsverhalten des NH3-Moleküls untersucht. Die Möglichkeit, die Kerngeometrieabhängigkeit zur Erzeugung und Messung von Schwingungswellenpaketen im neutralen NH3-Molekül mittels Lochfraß auszunutzen, wird untersucht. Das erwartete Schwingungsverhalten und die dafür optimalen Laserparameter werden aufgezeigt. Zusätzlich wird die Möglichkeit des Filmens eines tunnelnden Kernwellenpakets im Doppelmuldenpotential entlang der Schwingungskoordinate untersucht. In der Tat sollte die Verwendung extrem kurzer Laserfelder das Drehen eines Echtzeit-Filmes dieses quantenmechanischen Tunnelprozesses ermöglichen. Abschließend werden die Winkelabhängigkeit der Ionisierungswahrscheinlichkeit von NH3 (ähnelt Orbitalgeometrie) sowie elliptisch polarisierte Laserfelder untersucht. / The ionization behavior of small molecules (especially H2 and NH3) exposed to intense, ultrashort laser fields is investigated theoretically. The focus lies on the influence of nuclear dynamics on this ionization behavior. The ionization behavior of the H2 molecule is first examined within the frozen-nuclei approximation. A previously reported pronounced breakdown of the fixed-nuclei approximation can be explained already within this level of approximation. Furthermore, the transition from the multiphoton to the quasistatic ionization regime is studied for 800 nm laser pulses. A novel approach for the correlated description of the electronic-vibrational motion of the H2 molecule (7D) is developed. The influence of vibrational dynamics during the laser field on the ionization behavior is investigated using this method. A pronounced difference on the previously discussed breakdown of the fixed-nuclei approximation is observed. The vibrational dynamics also lead to a notable change for a recently experimentally observed isotope effect in the ionization of the molecular isotopes H2 vs. D2. The ionization behavior of the NH3 molecule is studied in the second part of this thesis. The possibility to exploit the geometry dependence of the ionization yield in order to create and measure vibrational wave packets in the neutral NH3 molecule via Lochfraß is explored. The expected vibrational dynamics and the optimal laser parameters to observe this effect are demonstrated. Furthermore, the possibility to shoot a "movie" of a tunneling wave packet in the double-well potential along the vibrational coordinate is investigated. Indeed, extremely short laser fields should allow creating a real-time movie of the quantum-mechanical tunneling process. Finally, the orientation dependence of the ionization yield of the NH3 molecule (reflecting the orbital shape) and elliptically polarized laser fields are studied.

Thesis (M.Sc. (Pharmacology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

Thesis (M.Sc. (Pharmacology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

<p>This thesis reports the results of a twofold study on the recently proposed phenomenon of &lsquo / stellar pulsations&rsquo / in young brown dwarfs by the seminal study of Palla and Baraffe (2005) (PB05, thereafter). The PB05 study presents results of a non-adiabatic linear stability analysis showing that young brown dwarfs should become pulsationally unstable during the deuterium burning phase of their evolution.</p>

Infectious disease models with switching are constructed and investigated in detail. Modelling infectious diseases as switched systems, which are systems that combine continuous dynamics with discrete logic, allows for the use of methods from switched systems theory. These methods are used to analyze the stability and long-term behaviour of the proposed switched epidemiological models. Switching is first incorporated into epidemiological models by assuming the contact rate to be time-dependent and better approximated by a piecewise constant. Epidemiological models with switched incidence rates are also investigated. Threshold criteria are established that are sufficient for the eradication of the disease, and, hence, the stability of the disease-free solution. In the case of an endemic disease, some criteria are developed that establish the persistence of the disease. Lyapunov function techniques, as well as techniques for stability of impulsive or non-impulsive switched systems with both stable and unstable modes are used. These methods are first applied to switched epidemiological models which are intrinsically one-dimensional. Multi-dimensional disease models with switching are then investigated in detail. An important part of studying epidemiology is to construct control strategies in order to eradicate a disease, which would otherwise be persistent. Hence, the application of controls schemes to switched epidemiological models are investigated. Finally, epidemiological models with switched general nonlinear incidence rates are considered. Simulations are given throughout to illustrate our results, as well as to make some conjectures. Some conclusions are made and future directions are given.

Infectious disease models with switching are constructed and investigated in detail. Modelling infectious diseases as switched systems, which are systems that combine continuous dynamics with discrete logic, allows for the use of methods from switched systems theory. These methods are used to analyze the stability and long-term behaviour of the proposed switched epidemiological models. Switching is first incorporated into epidemiological models by assuming the contact rate to be time-dependent and better approximated by a piecewise constant. Epidemiological models with switched incidence rates are also investigated. Threshold criteria are established that are sufficient for the eradication of the disease, and, hence, the stability of the disease-free solution. In the case of an endemic disease, some criteria are developed that establish the persistence of the disease. Lyapunov function techniques, as well as techniques for stability of impulsive or non-impulsive switched systems with both stable and unstable modes are used. These methods are first applied to switched epidemiological models which are intrinsically one-dimensional. Multi-dimensional disease models with switching are then investigated in detail. An important part of studying epidemiology is to construct control strategies in order to eradicate a disease, which would otherwise be persistent. Hence, the application of controls schemes to switched epidemiological models are investigated. Finally, epidemiological models with switched general nonlinear incidence rates are considered. Simulations are given throughout to illustrate our results, as well as to make some conjectures. Some conclusions are made and future directions are given.

Nuclear spinodal instabilities are investigated in non-relativistic and relativistic stochastic mean-field approaches for charge asymmetric and charge symmetric nuclear matter. Quantum statistical effect on the growth of instabilities are calculated in non-relativistic approach. Due to quantal effects, in both symmetric and asymmetric matter, dominant unstable modes shift towards longer wavelengths and modes with wave numbers larger than the Fermi momentum are strongly suppressed. As a result of quantum statistical effects, in particular at lower temperatures, amplitude of density fluctuations grows larger than those calculated in semi-classical approximation. Relativistic calculations in the semi-classical limit are compared with the results of non-relativistic calculations based on Skyrme-type effective interactions under similar conditions. A qualitative difference appears in the unstable response of the system: the system exhibits most unstable behavior at higher baryon densities around $rho_{B}=0.4 rho_{0}$ in the relativistic approach while most unstable behavior occurs at lower baryon densities around $rho_{B}=0.2 rho_{0}$ in the non-relativistic calculations.