A hybrid material design has been developed to improve creep performance in pressurized metallic pipes subjected to high temperatures. Metallic pipes were reinforced with various arrangements of external wires which have substantially greater creep resistance than the pipe material. This research was conducted to explore the field of reinforcement of piping for creep reduction, exploit the creep strength of refractory metals, and investigate structure-property relationships in architectured materials. Two basic wire reinforcement architectures were tested, simple helical windings and braided sleeves. By adjusting the architecture of the reinforcement, apparent tangential (hoop) and longitudinal stresses on the pipe are altered, thereby allowing multiaxial creep strains to be controlled. The utilization of a reinforcement layer in a hybrid layup, where it is not bonded or embedded in a matrix is a relatively unexplored field. Hybridization allows the most desirable properties to be extracted from each component and have them work together in parallel. The use of braided refractory reinforcement is also a particularly novel concept, with refractory materials for reinforcement purposes traditionally being utilized in particle, whisker and discontinuous fibre form. Rather than testing in a uniaxial stress state, the present approach to creep testing pressurized pipes at high temperature remains largely underutilized, and is especially relevant to industry applications where creep takes place in the complex, multiaxial stress state of a pressurized pipe. In a low-temperature reinforcement architecture optimization study of a brass-stainless steel system, designed for ease of fabrication and to negate oxidation issues, pipes were pressurized and creep rupture tested at 400°C. Even in an unoptimized state, braided reinforcement was observed to out-perform a simple iv helical wrap by at least 22%, giving a 10-times life extension without rupture, and a reduction in creep rate in excess of 45-times for reinforcement oriented at a 50°. A simple analytical model from reinforced pressure vessel theory predicts a neutral angle (θN) of 54.7°, at which point the reinforcement is oriented to act proportionally to the applied pressure stresses. An empirical model of effective creep rate with varying reinforcement angle was derived in the present study, and used to find that a braid angle of approximately 54.7±1.5° is optimal to minimize the effective multiaxial creep rate of a hybrid pipe under internal pressure, reducing it to the point of being negligible. The braided reinforcement was observed to be constantly shifting towards the equilibrium point of θN, but only for initial angles below θN. This concept of braid reorientation is generally associated with rapid elastic deformation or static reinforcement of systems at room temperature, and the gradual shift towards θN facilitated by creep deformation has not been reported previously. A relationship for -θ (i.e. creep rate for a given reinforcement angle) was derived, including the reduction in as θ tends to θN. Findings of this optimization study were applied to a high temperature system which served as an acceleration of reformer furnace operating conditions: 253MA pipes were reinforced with tungsten wire and creep rupture tested at 1030-1040°C. Using braided reinforcement oriented at 52.6±1.4° a life extension in excess of 700x was observed, with no signs of bulk deformation after a 309x life extension. These high temperature results were considered in light of the intended industry application, with a balance of life extension, weight reduction and increased operating temperature preferred over outright life extension for the reformer furnace application.

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The objective of this study was to determine how final stocking influences tree growth and radial and longitudinal variation in wood properties at a Pinus radiata D. Don plantation located at one of the warmest forest sites in New Zealand, Forsyth Downs forest in Northland. This thesis addressed both the effect of stocking on stand basal area, height, diameter and branch diameter and the effect of stocking on wood properties microfibril angle (MFA), module of elasticity and density. Finally, how ring width influences wood properties and whether this variable accounts for the treatment effects was investigated. Stocking, height and ring number and all interactions between these variables significantly affected ring width. Ring width by itself was significant as a predictor of density, but when it was combined with other class level variables it was insignificant (i.e. does not account for treatment effects), and it did not add anything to a model with only class effects. There was a significant impact of ring number on density while ring width was insignificant in the same model. MFA was significantly affected by ring width, height and ring number in the tree, and all interactions, apart from the three way interaction, but not by stocking. Ring width was significant in the MFA model both by itself and when it was combined with other variables. Ring width accounted for the stocking effect. The best model of MOE included the class level effects of stocking, height and ring number within the tree, and all interactions between these variables, and ring width, as a continuous variable. While there was a significant effect between stockings this was relatively weak compared to the other main effects. Ring width largely accounted for the effect of stocking, but not that of ring number, or height.

Studies of mid-ocean ridges have provided evidence of magma chambers beneath both fast and intermediate spreading ridges. However no such features have been observed to date beneath slow spreading ridges. These contradictory observations are in direct conflict with seismic studies which reveal that the resulting crustal structures are similar and hence crustal structure is independent of the spreading rate. These latter observations in turn lead to the implication that the accretionary processes operating at all ridge types must also be similar. The aim of this study is to attempt to resolve between this discrepancy in geophysical observations of magma chambers at fast, intermediate and slow spreading ridges and investigate the nature of accretionary processes operating such that the same crustal structure is achieved. Therefore an apparently currently magmatically active section of the slow spreading Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 57 45'N on the Reykjanes Ridge, was selected as the target of a multidisciplinary geophysical experiment to be conducted aboard the RRS Charles Darwin in 1993. Wide-angle seismic data recorded using 10 digital ocean bottom seismometers were used to generate models of the crustal structure along and across-axis. These models were confirmed and further constrained by modelling of normal incidence seismic and gravity data and by comparison with the results of modelling controlled source electromagnetic data. The resultant models indicate that a magma chamber exists beneath the axial volcanic ridge studied, providing the first geophysical observation of such a feature at any slow spreading ridge. This magma chamber is similar in dimensions to those observed beneath fast and intermediate spreading ridges and consists of a thin, narrow sill-like body which appears to be continuous along-axis, and which is underlain by a region of partial melt extending almost to the Moho. This latter feature also appears to be both longer-lived and more extensive than the magma chamber. The 2.5 km depth to the top of the magma chamber is only slightly greater than that observed at fast spreading ridges, which indicates that magma chamber depth does not vary significantly with spreading rate. However, there ore insufficient data available to fully constrain and develop this relationship to its fullest. Therefore the results of this study indicate that the processes of crustal accretion occurring at all spreading ridges are similar, with the lack of observations of magma chambers being due to the fact that the periods of magmatic activity at slow spreading ridges are considerably more widely separated in both space and time than for fast and intermediate spreading ridges. The main difference however, appears to occur in the process of emplacement of layer 2A, which is observed to thicken off-axis at fast spreading ridges due to the less viscous lavas produced at these ridges being able to flow further off-axis. The results of this study, and of two other studies at slow spreading ridges, show that layer 2A is completely formed on-axis and thins off-axis due to extensional faulting. The remainder of the crust is completely emplaced, and the Moho formed, on-axis at all spreading rates.

Remote sensing provides methods to infer vegetation information over large areas at a variety of spatial and temporal resolutions that is of great use for terrestrial carbon cycle modeling. Understory vegetation and foliage clumping in forests present a challenge for accurate estimates of vegetation structural information. Multi-angle remote sensing was used to derive and refine new information about the vegetation structure for the purpose of improving global leaf area index mapping. A field experiment with multi-angle, high resolution airborne observations over modified and natural backgrounds (understory, moss, litter, soil) was conducted in 2007 near Sudbury, Ontario to test a methodology for the background reflectivity retrieval. The experiment showed that it is feasible to retrieve the background information, especially over the crucial low to intermediate canopy density range where the effect of the understory vegetation is the largest. The tested methodology was then applied to background reflectivity mapping over conterminous United States, Canada, Mexico, and Caribbean land mass using space-borne Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) data. Important seasonal development of the forest background vegetation was observed across a wide longitudinal and latitudinal span of the study area. The previous first ever global mapping of the vegetation clumping index with a limited eight-month multi-angular POLDER 1 dataset was expanded by integrating new, complete year-round observations from POLDER 3. A simple topographic compensation function was devised to correct negative bias in the data set cause by topographic effects. The clumping index reductions can reach up to 30% from the topographically non-compensated values, depending on terrain complexity and land cover type. The new global clumping index map is compared with an assembled set of field measurements, covering four continents and diverse biomes. Finally, inclusion of the new vegetation structural information, including background reflectivity and clumping index, gained from the multi-angle remote sensing was then shown to improve the performance of LAI retrieval algorithms over forests.

Surfactant flooding in carbonate matrix acidizing treatment has been widely used for changing the wettability of the rock and to achieve low IFT values. Optimizing the type of surfactant and concentration for the specific oil field is very important in order to avoid formation damage and to reduce the treatment cost. We built an experimental procedure for screening the right surfactant to alter the wettability and aid in acidizing of Pekisko formation, Canada, which is strongly oil-wet and has high viscosity oil. Five surfactants were tested out of which three are cationic, one amphoteric and the other one was a fluoro-surfactant. Measurements were made of interfacial tension with different surfactant types/concentrations in brine with the oil and xylene, critical micelle concentration of each surfactant, solubility characteristics of the surfactants, compatibility of the chemical additives, wettability of the core after treating with surfactants, and core flooding in the laboratory to simulate matrix acidizing. From the results obtained we noted that the fluoro-surfactant can cause formation damage due to precipitation in the brine. So the compatibility of every chemical additive should be tested first. The use of xylene as a pre-flush solution lowered the CMC and hence reduced the cost of the surfactant treatment. Aromox, an amine based surfactant was best suited for matrix acidizing treatment of the Pekisko formation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Community Medicine, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1984.