Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-34). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [143]) and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 114.

No description available.

Braided composites find many diverse applications in modern technology and tailoring the mechanical properties of these structures has become increasingly important. This thesis will examine one class of circular braids encompassing an elastic core. By hypothesizing four modes of operation and incorporating primary influences, the mechanical response of the composite is predicted based on its initial parameters and material properties. The ability to model the yarns that constitute the braid as nonlinear materials enables the simulated response to span finite deformations. A scheme for nondimensionalizing the model parameters and governing equations for each mode of operation is also proposed and implemented. In an effort to validate the assumptions underlying the model's formulation, a series of experimental trials are documented that verify the fundamental braid mechanics. A wide variety of analytical cases are also introduced to investigate the influences of various model parameters. Possible extensions for the existing model are also noted. / Master of Science

Thesis advisor: John A. Baldwin / Contact geometry has played a central role in many recent advances in low-dimensional topology; e.g. in showing that knot Floer homology detects the genus of a knot and whether a knot is fibered. It has also been used to show that the unknot, trefoil, and figure eight knot are determined by their Dehn surgeries. An important problem in 3-dimensional contact geometry is the classification of Legendrian and transverse knots. Such knots come equipped with some classical invariants. New invariants from knot Floer homology have been effective in distinguishing Legendrian and transverse knots with identical classical invariants, a notoriously difficult task. The Giroux correspondence allows contact structures to be studied via purely topological constructs called open book decompositions. Transverse links are then braids about these open books, which in turn may be thought of as mapping tori of diffeomorphisms of compact surfaces with boundary having marked points, which we refer to as pointed monodromies. In the first part of this thesis, we investigate properties of the transverse invariant in knot Floer homology, in particular its behavior for transverse closures of pointed monodromies possessing certain dynamical properties. The binding of an open book sits naturally as a transverse link in the supported contact manifold. We prove that the transverse link invariant in knot Floer homology of the binding union any braid about the open book is non-zero. As an application, we show that any pointed monodromy with fractional Dehn twist coefficient greater than one has non-zero transverse invariant, generalizing a result of Plamenevskaya for braids about the unknot. In the second part of this thesis, we define invariants of Legendrian and transverse links in universally tight lens spaces using grid diagrams, generalizing those defined by Ozsvath, Szabo and Thurston. We show that our invariants are equivalent to those defined by Lisca, Ozsvath, Szabo and Stipsicz for Legendrian and transverse links in arbitrary contact 3-manifolds. Our argument involves considering braids about rational open book decompositions and filtrations on knot Floer complexes. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Mathematics.

Thesis advisor: Julia E. Grigsby / The first part of this thesis is on properties of annular Khovanov homology. We prove a connection between the Euler characteristic of annular Khovanov homology and the classical Burau representation for closed braids. This yields a straightforward method for distinguishing, in some cases, the annular Khovanov homologies of two closed braids. As a corollary, we obtain the main result of the first project: that annular Khovanov homology is not invariant under a certain type of mutation on closed braids that we call axis-preserving. The second project is joint work with Adam Saltz. Plamenevskaya showed in 2006 that the homology class of a certain distinguished element in Khovanov homology is an invariant of transverse links. In this project we define an annular refinement of this element, kappa, and show that while kappa is not an invariant of transverse links, it is a conjugacy class invariant of braids. We first discuss examples that show that kappa is non-trivial. We then prove applications of kappa relating to braid stabilization and spectral sequences, and we prove that kappa provides a new solution to the word problem in the braid group. Finally, we discuss definitions and properties of kappa in the reduced setting. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Mathematics.

We investigate various forms of link positivity: braid positivity, strong quasipositivity, and quasi- positivity. On the one hand, this investigation is undertaken in the context of braid simplification: we give sufficient conditions under which a given braid word is conjugate to a braid word with strictly fewer negative bands. On the other hand, we use the famous Bennequin inequality to define a new link invariant: the defect of the Bennequin inequality, or 3-defect, and give criteria in terms of the 3-defect under which a given link is (strongly) quasipositive. Moreover, we use the 4-dimensional analogue of the Bennequin inequality, the slice Bennequin inequality in order to define the analogous defect of the slice Bennequin inequality, or 4-defect. We then investigate the relationship between the 4-defect and the most complicated class of 3- braids, Xu’s NP-form 3-braids, and establish several bounds. We also conjecture a formula for the signature of NP-form 3-braids which uses a new and easily computable NP-form 3-braid invariant, the offset. Finally, the appendices provide lists of all quasipositive and strongly quasipositive knots with at most 12 crossings (with two exceptions, 12n239 and 12n512), along with accompanying quasipositive or strongly quasipositive braid words. Many of these knots did not have previously established positivities or braid words reflecting these positivities—these facts were discovered using various criteria (conjectural or proven) expressed throughout this thesis.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University (Division of Information & Communication Sciences, Dept. of Mathematics), 2007. / Thesis by publication. Bibliography: p. 119-123.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Mathematics, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-62).