Thesis (Aeronautical Engineer). / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-127). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 32-34). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-58). Also available via the Internet.

Volatile emissions from Cascades cinder cone eruptions have been well-documented; however the implications for understanding the effects that volcanic gases have on surrounding communities have not been addressed. This study examines the hazards from volatile degassing during explosive activity by (1) analyzing S, Cl, and F concentrations dissolved in olivine-hosted melt inclusions and matrix glass from cinder cones located in central Oregon and northern California, (2) estimating the mass of volcanic gas degassed during these eruptions, and (3) predicting gas concentrations downwind of the vent. Analyses reveal that the magmas degassed >88% S, <49% Cl, and <50% F during eruption, equating to a release of ≤4.5 Mt SO2, ≤0.2 Mt HCl, and ≤0.2 Mt HF. Predictions of gas concentrations downwind of the vent provides reassurance that the levels of volcanic gases were not high enough at the time of eruption to present acute or severe health hazards to nearby residents.

No description available.

Les cellules communiquent avec leur environnement par l’intermédiaire d’un réseau de transduction du signal, leur permettant d’interpréter des signaux physico-chimiques et de produire des réponses appropriées. Ce mécanisme est orchestré par des cascades de signalisation, qui jouent le rôle d’émetteurs intracellulaires en transférant des stimuli biochimiques entre la membrane et le noyau. Il a été montré qu’une perturbation peut se propager en amont (et pas seulement en aval) d’une cascade par un phénomène appelé rétroactivité. Notre étude vise à comparer les conditions biochimiques qui favorisent un et/ou l’autre sens de signalisation dans des cascades linéaires. Au moyen d’approches analytiques et numériques, nous avons caractérisé les différents régimes de signalisation résultants, que nous avons résumés avec une représentation graphique compacte. Nous avons également développé le concept de profil d’activation d’une voie de signalisation qui est, pour un stimulus donné, la séquence des protéines activées à chaque niveau de la cascade à l’état stationnaire. Ces séquences correspondent à des morceaux d’orbites d’un système dynamique discret bidimensionnel. A partir de l’étude des portraits de phase, en fonction des paramètres biochimiques, nous avons étudié les propriétés de contraction/expansion autour des points fixes et de leurs bifurcations. Nous avons classifié les niveaux de cascade en trois types et examiné leur impact biologique au sein d’un réseau de signalisation. Cette méthode a également fourni une vision globale de l’interaction entre la signalisation en avant et rétroactive, et de l’amplification du signal le long du profil d’activation de la cascade / Living cells communicate with their external environment, by means of a signal transduction network, which allows them to interpret physico-chemical signals and produce appropriate responses. This complex machinery is orchestrated by signaling cascades, which play the role of intracellular transmitters, by transferring biochemical stimuli between cellular membrane and nucleus. It has been shown that a perturbation can propagate upstream (and not only downstream) a cascade, through a phenomenon called retroactivity. Our investigation aims to compare the biochemical conditions promoting one and/or the other direction of signaling in linear cascades. By means of analytical and numerical approaches, we have answered to this question, by characterizing the arising different signaling regimes, and we have designed a compact graphical representation to relay the gist of such conditions. We have also developed the concept of pathway activation profile which is, for a given stimulus, the sequence of activated proteins at each tier of the cascade, at steady state. Such sequences correspond to pieces of orbits of a two-dimensional discrete dynamical system. From the study of the possible phase portraits, as a function of the biochemical parameters, we focused on the contraction/expansion properties around the fixed points of this discrete map, and their bifurcations. We have deduced a classification of the cascade tiers into three main types, whose biological impact within a signaling network has been examined. This method also provided global insights about the interplay between forward and retroactive signaling, and how signal is amplified along the cascade activation profile

Metallic alloys are important structural and cladding materials for current and future reactors. Understanding radiation-induced damage on metallic alloys is important for maintaining the safety of nuclear reactors. This dissertation mainly focuses on radiation-induced primary damage in iron-based metallic. Systematic molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to study the alloying element effects on the primary damage in Fe-based alloys, including defect production and dislocation loop transformations, and their connections with defect thermodynamics. First, effects of alloying elements on the primary damage in three Fe-based ferritic alloy systems were studied, with a particular focus on the production behaviors of solute interstitials. The production behaviors of solute interstitials include over-production or under-production, compared with their solute concentration in the Fe matrix. The three alloy systems are: (1) a Fe-Cr alloy system; (2) a Fe-Cu alloy system; and (3) an ideal but artificial Fe-Cr alloy system, which is used as a reference system. It is found that the number ratio of solute interstitials to the total interstitials is distinct in these alloys. The solute interstitials are over-produced in the Fe-Cr systems but under-produced in the Fe-Cu system, compared with solute composition in the alloys. The defect formation energies in both dilute and concentrated alloys, interstitial-solute binding energies, liquid diffusivities of Fe and solute atoms, and heat of mixing have been calculated for both Fe-Cr and Fe-Cu alloys. Among these factors, our analysis shows that the relative thermodynamic stability between Fe self-interstitials and solute interstitials plays the most important role on the production behaviors of solute interstitials. Next, to obtain a correlation that can quantitatively estimate the solute interstitial fraction in the Fe-based alloys, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to simulate the cascade damage in a series of "artificial" Fe-Cr alloys with tunable binding energies between a substitutional solute (Cr) atom and a Fe self-interstitial atom (SIA). To achieve this, the Fe-Cr cross pair interaction in the interatomic potential was modified by multiplying a scaling factor so that the solute-SIA binding energy varies linearly from positive to negative values. It is found that the solute interstitial fraction has a strong correlation with the solute-SIA binding energy, and the correlation can be approximately described by a Fermi-Dirac-Distribution-like equation. The independent defect production results reported in literature are found to align well with this correlation. The correlation may be used to estimate the solute interstitial fraction in a wide range of Fe-based alloys simply based on the solute-SIA binding energy, without conducting laborious cascade simulations. Furthermore, primary damage was further investigated in Fe-tungsten (W) alloys to investigate the atomic size effect. The large difference in atomic size between Fe and W can introduce both global volume expansion and local lattice distortion in the Fe matrix. In order to understand how oversized W influences the defect production behaviors in Fe-based alloys, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to study the primary damage in three systems at 300 K: (a) unstrained pure Fe, (b) Fe-5at.%W alloy, and (c) strained pure Fe with the same volume expansion as the Fe-5%W. The investigation of defect production behaviors include the production of Frenkel pairs, and cluster formation preference. Based on the total number of Frenkel pairs, it indicates that the global volume expansion introduced by oversized W and external strain can lead to enhanced defect production. Meanwhile, the defect cluster analysis in all three systems indicates that the local lattice distortion induced by oversized W can significantly influence the morphologies and size distributions of defect structures. Defect formation energies were calculated to interpret the different defect production behaviors in these systems. Finally, radiation can produce not only point defects but also both <100> and ½<111> type dislocation loops in pure Fe and Fe-Cr alloys. However, contradictory experimental results have been reported on how the Cr concentration affects the ratio of <100> to ½<111> dislocation loops. In this section, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to study how Cr concentration affects the formation probability of <100> dislocation loops from overlapping cascades on a pre-existing ½<111> dislocation loop in a series of Fe-Cr alloys with 0 – 15%Cr at 300 K. Our atomistic modeling directly demonstrates that the ratio of <100> to ½<111> dislocation loops decreases with the increasing Cr concentration, which is consistent with many experimental observations. Next, independent molecular statics calculations show that the formation energies of both <100> and ½<111> dislocation loops increase with the increasing of Cr content. However, the former has a much faster increase rate than the latter, indicating that the formation of <100> loops becomes energetically more and more unfavorable than ½<111> loops as the Cr content increases. The results provide a thermodynamics-based explanation for why Cr suppresses the formation of <100> dislocation loops in Fe-Cr alloys, which can be applied to all <100> loop formation mechanisms proposed in literature. The possible effects of other alloying elements on the formation probability of <100> loops in Fe-based alloys are also discussed. / Doctor of Philosophy / Metallic alloys are important structural and cladding materials for current and future nuclear reactors. The understanding of radiation-induced damage in metallic alloys is important for the safe operation of nuclear reactors. This dissertation mainly focuses on radiation-induced primary damage in iron-based ferritic alloys. Systematic molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to study how different alloying elements influence the primary damage behaviors in iron-based alloys, including defect production behaviors and dislocation loop transformations. The relations between defect production and defect thermodynamics are also studied. First, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to study the effects of alloying elements on the primary damage behavior in three Fe-based ferritic alloy systems (Fe-Cr, Fe-Cu, and ideal Fe-Cr), with a particular focus on the production behaviors of solute interstitials. It is found that the number ratio of solute interstitials to the total interstitials has distinct behavior in these alloys. In the Fe-Cr alloys, the ratio of Cr interstitials is much higher than the Cr concentration in the Fe-Cr alloys. By contrast, in the Fe-Cu alloys Cu interstitials are barely produced. In the ideal alloy system, the fraction of solute interstitials is close to the solute concentration in the alloys. Among all the factors we have investigated, it is found the relative thermodynamic stability between Fe self-interstitials and solute interstitials plays the most important role on affecting the production behaviors of solute interstitials. Next, to obtain a quantitative correlation that can predict the solute interstitial fraction in the Fe-based alloys, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to simulate the cascade damage in a series of "artificial" Fe-Cr alloys with tunable binding energies between a substitutional solute (Cr) atom and a Fe self-interstitial atom (SIA). It is found that the solute interstitial fraction has a strong correlation with the solute-SIA binding energy, and the correlation can be approximately described by an analytical equation. The correlation may be used to estimate the solute interstitial fraction in a wide range of Fe-based alloys simply based on the solute-SIA binding energy, without conducting laborious cascade simulations. Furthermore, primary damage was further investigated in iron-tungsten (Fe-W) alloys. W is about 10.5% larger in atomic radius or 34.8% larger in atomic volume than Fe. The oversize W can introduce both global volume expansion and local lattice distortion in the Fe matrix. Through molecular dynamics simulations in a series of model systems for comparison, it is found that oversized W can lead to enhanced defect production. In addition, it is found that oversized W can significantly influence the morphologies and size distributions of defect clusters. Finally, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to study how Cr concentration affects the formation probability of <100> and ½<111> dislocation loops in a series of Fe-Cr alloys. Our results demonstrate that the ratio of <100> to ½<111> dislocation loops decreases with the increasing Cr concentration, which is consistent with many experimental observations. The formation energies of both <100> and ½<111> dislocation loops indicate that the formation of <100> loops becomes energetically more and more unfavorable than ½<111> loops as the Cr content increases. The results provide a thermodynamics-based explanation for why Cr suppresses the formation of <100> dislocation loops in Fe-Cr alloys.

Velocity and turbulence intensity measurements were made in a linear stationary cascade of compressor blades under high angles of attack. Laser-doppler velocimetry and flow visualization were used. A method was developed for inducing propagating stall and some triggered ensemble averaged velocity records were obtained. An inviscid model was developed in order to predict the separated flow over an isolated blade. The results of this model were qualitatively compared to the pictures obtained by flow visualization. Finally initial attempts were made for extension of this model to predict the unsteady flow in a cascade. / Master of Science

This thesis is on the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations in R3 which govern the velocity of incompressible fluid with viscosity ν. The solution is obtained in the space of tempered distributions on R3 given an initial condition and forcing data which are dominated by majorizing kernels. The solution takes the form of an expectation of functionals on a Markov process indexed by a binary branching tree. / Graduation date: 2012