Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Mohammad H. Hosni / Byron W. Jones / In 2010, over 786 million passengers flew on commercial flights in the United States according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (2011). With the average flight length over 1300 miles for domestic flights, this amounts to billions of hours spent aboard airliners by passengers each year. During these flights, diseases and other harmful contaminates, some malicious, can spread throughout aircraft cabins, harming passengers. Aircraft ventilation systems are designed to remove these harmful contaminates as quickly as possible to minimize spread in cabin air. Disruptions to the design airflow pattern can hinder the effectiveness of contamination removal efforts. A common form of this airflow disruption is longitudinal air movement through cabin aisles. To examine the effect of contaminate transport down aircraft aisles by a moving body, a motorized beverage cart is past by a contamination source as it traverses the length of the cabin aisle. An experimental study is performed in a mockup Boeing 767 cabin section consisting of eleven rows with seven seats per row. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) tracer gas is injected at a constant flow rate at a location of interest until concentrations in the cabin reach steady state. Ventilation equipment and flow rates representative of an actual aircraft are used for all experiments. Seats in the mockup are occupied by thermal manikins to simulate passenger heat load. A motorized beverage cart traverses the length of the cabin aisle passing by the injection location. The concentrations of tracer gas displaced by the cart are measured at locations throughout the cabin. Comparing these measurements to baseline readings taken with no cart movement, a map of the degree to which contaminant transport is affected by the beverage cart is calculated. The cabin mockup is supplied by 100% outdoor air through actual Boeing supply ductwork and linear diffusers along the cabin length above the aisles. The CO2 level is measured in the inlet air, measurement locations in the cabin, and exhaust air using nondispersive infrared (NDIR) sensors. Measured results are reported for all (54) seat locations downstream of the cart traverse/injection location for an injection location near the rear of the cabin. Analogous measurements are also conducted examining the effect of variations in cart speed and modified injection location. It was found the beverage cart movement had an effect of up to a 35% increase in tracer gas concentration relative to the local steady state concentration for several seat locations adjacent to the aisle. This increased concentration continued for only a few minutes in all cases, but was generally less than the steady state exposure one row closer to the injection location. Moving in the lateral direction away from the aisle, the variance in tracer gas concentration due to the cart movement diminished quickly. The significance of increased concentration for such short periods of time in comparison to the length of actual commercial flights may require further biological analysis. The data showed general tracer gas concentration increases due to cart movement in a small section of the cabin mockup which could warrant further analysis, but increases were generally insignificant when considering entire flight contamination exposure levels.

Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Mohammad H. Hosni / Byron W. Jones / The 2015 Airline Traffic Data released by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS 2016), shows that the commercial flights serving the United States carried an all-time high of 895.5 million passengers in 2015, which represents an approximate 5 % increase in number of passengers from 2014. There is a potential for disease and/or contaminants spreading throughout the airliner cabin raising health risks for passengers and crewmembers onboard flight. In order to limit health risks caused by spread of disease and/or contaminants, it is necessary to understand the various factors affecting the airliner cabin environment. Ventilation effectiveness is one such factor investigated in this study. In addition, experiments were conducted using tracer gas to study the dispersion of tracer gas inside an airliner cabin. Experimental investigations were carried out inside a wide body, eleven-row Boeing 767 mockup cabin and a narrow body, five-row Boeing 737 mockup cabin. The Boeing 767 mockup cabin was constructed with actual aircraft components for air distribution to represent a real aircraft cabin, while the Boeing 737 mockup cabin is a fuselage section from an actual Boeing 737 aircraft. Thermal manikins occupied each seat of both the cabins to simulate thermal load from an average seated person. Four sets of experiments were conducted to evaluate the ventilation effectiveness and dispersion of tracer gas inside the aircraft cabin mockups. The first set of experiments investigated the ventilation effectiveness in a Boeing 767 mockup cabin. The second set of experiments determined the ventilation effectiveness at various heights and locations in a Boeing 737 mockup cabin. The third set of experiments focused on the study of dispersion of tracer gas inside a Boeing 737 mockup cabin with ventilation air. The last set of experiments aimed to study the dispersion of tracer gas inside a Boeing 737 mockup cabin with no ventilation air. The ventilation effectiveness studies were performed by using Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) as a tracer gas and applying the tracer gas decay method. The conclusion for the first set of experiments was that air is efficiently and uniformly supplied to all seat locations inside the Boeing 767 mockup cabin with no clear patterns with respect to seat locations, i.e. window versus center versus aisle observed. From the second set of experiments, it was concluded that the ventilation effectiveness is uniform throughout the Boeing 737 mockup cabin irrespective of seat locations and elevations from cabin floor. In order to determine the spread of disease and/or contaminants, a mixture of CO₂ and Helium (He) was used as a tracer gas. Tracer gas was released from particular locations inside the cabin to simulate gaseous contaminants released by a passenger and sampled at various locations throughout the cabin. The third set of experiments revealed that transport of tracer gas inside an aircraft cabin depends on the source location as well as on the relative distance of the sampling point from the source. Dispersion of tracer gas in the longitudinal direction was also observed inside the cabin. From the fourth set of experiments, it was concluded that even in the absence of ventilation air, considerable dispersion of tracer gas occurred in both the longitudinal and lateral directions.

Combustion emissions from aviation operations contribute significantly to climate change and air pollution. Accordingly, there is increasing interest in advancing battery-powered propulsion for aviation applications to reduce emissions. As batteries continue to improve, it is essential to recognize breakthroughs in battery specific energy in the context of air transport vehicles. Most electric aircraft designs and programs have focused on small aircraft because of restrictive battery performance. This work presents a feasibility assessment for an all-electric airliner based on an Airbus A220-100 with turbofan engines replaced by electric motors and propellers. The analysis compares the performance characteristics of the electric airliner to the A220-100 and establishes several configurations with varying battery pack-specific energy. The short-term electric airliner could replace conventional aircraft on very short, high-density missions. In contrast, the long-term electric airliner requires significant battery technology improvements that are not currently foreseen. The alternative long-term electric airliner could complete half of the A220-100’s missions, but the necessary specific energy value is also not anticipated shortly. All-electric airliners would significantly impact manufacturing, operations, costs, and emissions but are commercially infeasible with current battery technology. Additional development of more advanced battery technology is required to increase the specific energy of battery packs, enhance battery safety and reliability, and develop lighter high-power electric motors.

The events of September 11, 2001, seemed to many to presage the end of the skyscraper as an urban form. Some 15 years later, the skyscraper is more prevalent than ever before, owing to its unique advantages over other building forms in an urban, environmental, and sociological context. Skyscrapers are rising ever higher, pushing the limits of architecture and engineering. In 2001 there were 23 buildings over 1,000 feet in height. As of this writing there are 173 buildings over 1,000 feet completed or under construction, with 300 more in various phases of proposal. Despite their enormous initial cost in both capital and energy, the skyscraper maximizes the use of constricted urban space and provides enormous opportunities for technological and sociological innovation which, despite more that 100 years of skyscraper construction, are only just beginning to be realized. This thesis will explore a number of as-yet unrealized possibilities for skyscraper development to prognosticate and articulate future typologies designed to address increasing problems of energy efficiency, population density and disaster preparedness. As the human population grows, and more people move to the cities, larger and larger buildings will be necessary to house them at densities sufficient to ensure energy efficiency and minimize sprawl. The skyscraper is uniquely suited to meet these demands. / Master of Architecture

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-05T13:59:42Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 27 / Nenhuma / As escalas de tripulações em companhias aéreas é um fator importante na logística de operações dessas empresas e um problema interessante para a aplicação de Pesquisa operacional. Os custos com tripulantes no transporte aéreo são extremamente altos, superiores a 20% dos custos de operações das empresas. Diante desse contexto, este trabalho vem abordar o problema de rotações de tripulações em empresas aéreas. Uma rotação de tripulação – crew pairings – é uma seqüência de etapas ou segmentos de vôo que começam e terminam em uma base domiciliar de tripulantes. O objetivo deste planejamento é encontrar um subconjunto dessas rotações com custo mínimo e que cubra todas as etapas de vôo na programação da empresa atendendo as restrições inerentes ao problema. O trabalho desenvolveu uma solução para o problema com um modelo set covering/set partitioning, primeiramente, promovendo, uma solução inicial viável que foi aplicada, numa segunda etapa, a um processo de otimização utilizando a meta-heurística Busca Tabu e jan / The flight scheduling crews in airliners are an important factor in logistic of operations of a these companies and interesting problem for the application of Operational Research. The costs with crew members in the air transportation are extremely high, superior 20% of the costs of operations of the companies. So, this study presents an approach of the crew pairing problem in airlines. The objective of this planning is to find a subgroup of these pairings with minimum cost and that it covers all the flight legs in the programming of the airliners taking care of the inherent restrictions to the problem. The solution for the problem implemented a set covering/set partitioning model, first, promoting, a viable initial solution that was applied, in one second stage, to optimize process using the meta-heuristic Tabu Search and time windows. The results had disclosed values satisfactory, demonstrating solutions that, compared with the real solution, had promoted minimization indices superior 70%. The validation

The objective of the thesis was to focus on all the necessary requirements needed at first for establishing an airline company and then for establishing a regular air route. The thesis also contains a practical part - an analysis of Delta Air Lines company and her two already operated direct and regular air routes Prague - New York and Prague - Atlanta. The thesis has through the company focused on description of operating passenger air transportation from the point of view a network airliner. Part of the objective was to show the contemporary state of the air transportation branch and outlining its possible future development with regard to the chosen airline company.

The diploma thesis is focused on design of electrohydraulic system for nose gear control on small civil airliners. First part consists of brief review of small civil airliners, nose gears and CS 23 restrictions relevant for the design. In practical part a typical small civil airliner is defined and kinematic of landing gear mechanisms is designed. Then the electrohydraulic system itself is designed and parameters of some components are suggested. The wheel steering mechanism is simulated and, in conclusion, the whole system is evaluated.