The operation of pulse tube cryocoolers (PTCs) is based on complicated and poorly-understood solid-fluid interactions involving periodic flows of a cryogenic fluid in a flow loop that includes components filled with micro porous structures. CFD simulation is the current trend in modeling of pulse-tube cryocoolers. Such simulations can only be meaningful if correct closure relations are available. The objective of this investigation is to measure and empirically correlate the axial hydrodynamic parameters for two widely used cryocooler regenerator structures. A test section will be designed, constructed and instrumented for the measurements. Porous structures tested will include 325 and 400-Mesh stainless screens, each at two different porosities. Tests will be performed with helium as the working fluid, over a wide range of parameters. The longitudinal permeabilities and Forchheimer s inertial coefficients will then be obtained in an iterative process where agreement between the data and the predictions of detailed CFD simulations for the entire test sections and their vicinity are sought. Empirical correlations representing the longitudinal permeability and Forchheimer s coefficient in terms of relevant dimensionless parameters will then be developed.

This paper studies the dependence structure between the real estate and financial markets in the United States from roughly 1975 to 2010, including the stock, bond and foreign exchange markets. This analysis uses dynamic copulas, including the Gaussian, Gumbel and Clayton copula. The Gumbel and Clayton copulas are used to separately capture the tail dependence of data. The dependence between the property indices (HPI and NCREIF) and the three financial markets is analyzed using the parameters of the copula. The property indices are divided in two different ways: by different regions and by different types of real estate. Although we study the dependence between the real estate and the financial markets in the U.S., the main objective of this paper is to analyze the change in the dependence structure when financial disasters occur. This study indicates that the real estate and the stock markets were positively related during this time period, and this dependence drove extreme movement when financial crises occurred. This dependence differed depending on the type of financial crisis, such as the Internet bubble crisis or the financial crisis in 2008. The dependence between the real estate and bond markets was also positively related, and extreme movement also occurred during financial crises. As for the dependence between the real estate and foreign exchange markets, although the results shows that dependence decreased when financial crises occurred, this is because the value of U.S. dollars are opposite to those of the index, and the left tail dependence exists as previous result. When looking at different regions or types of property, the differences in dependence structure were not obvious, although they were positively related. Both right and left tail dependences existed for most regions and property types, although some regions or types showed either right or left tail dependences alone. Therefore, investors should focus on the relationship between different markets, not on the region or type of real estate.

In this thesis, we have analyzed the coupling gap dependent micro-ring loss in a single ring all-pass filter configuration using the two dimension (2D) finite difference time domain (FDTD) and EIM (effective index method). We utilized a new analysis scheme by calculating the transmission signal as a function of input wavelength and fitting the transmission spectrum with a phenomenological ring loss parameter. This novel scheme circumvents the complex waveguide mode analysis process, when the coupling gap is narrow and the all-pass coupling region becomes multi-mode. We first find that the radiation loss increases rapidly with decreasing coupling gap width. Our results show that the intrinsic bending losses of silicon micro-rings (on oxide) with the radius of 1.5 £gm, 2.5£gm, and 5£gm are about 20 dB/cm, 3 dB/cm, 1 dB/cm for TE polarization modes, respectively. For TM modes, the intrinsic bending losses with the radius of 1.5£gm, 2.5 £gm, and 5£gm are about 2573 dB/cm, 64 dB/cm, and 0.8 dB/cm, respectively. Next, we find that power coupling coefficients of the single ring all-pass filter configuration using the ring to ring couplers are much higher than the bus to ring couplers. The radiation losses of the ring to ring couplers for TM modes are improved significantly in all coupling gap widths. In a high-density integrated optics circuit, specially designed ring coupling region device structure is needed to address this serious optical loss issue.

Energy use index (EUI) is an important measure of energy use which normalizes energy use by dividing by building area. Energy use indices and associated coefficients of variation are computed for major industry categories for electricity and natural gas use in small and medium-sized plants in the U.S. The data is very scattered with the coefficients of variation (CoV) often exceeding the average EUI for an energy type. The combined CoV from all of the industries considered, which accounts for 8,200 plants from all areas of the continental U.S., is 290%. This paper discusses EUIs and their variations based on electricity and natural gas consumption. Data from milder climates appears more scattered than that from colder climates. For example, the ratio of the average of coefficient of variations for all industry types in warm versus cold regions of the U.S. varies from 1.1 to 1.7 depending on the energy sources considered. The large data scatter indicates that predictions of energy use obtained by multiplying standard EUI data by plant area may be inaccurate and are less accurate in warmer than colder climates (warmer and colder are determined by annual average temperature weather data). Data scatter may have several explanations, including climate, plant area accounting, the influence of low cost energy and low cost buildings used in the south of the U.S. This analysis uses electricity and natural gas energy consumption and area data of manufacturing plants available in the U.S. Department of Energy’s national Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) database. The data there come from Industrial Assessment Centers which employ university engineering students, faculty and staff to perform energy assessments for small to medium-sized manufacturing plants. The nation-wide IAC program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. A collection of six general energy saving recommendations were also written with Texas manufacturing plants in mind. These are meant to provide an easily accessible starting point for facilities that wish to reduce costs and energy consumption, and are based on common recommendations from the Texas A&M University IAC program.

Wave attenuation by vegetation is a highly dynamic process and its quantification is important for accurately understanding and predicting coastal hydrodynamics. However, the influence of vegetation on wave dissipation is not yet fully established nor implemented in current hydrodynamic models. A series of laboratory experiments were conducted at the Haynes Coastal Engineering Laboratory and in a two-dimensional flume at Texas A and M University to investigate the influence of relative vegetation height, stem density, and stem spacing uniformity on wave attenuation. Vegetation fields were represented as random cylinder arrays where the stem density and spatial variation were based on collected field specimens. Experimental results indicate wave attenuation is dependent on relative vegetation height, stem density, and stem spacing standard deviation. As stems occupy more of the water column, an increase in attenuation occurred given that the highest wave particle velocities are being impeded. Sparse vegetation fields dissipated less wave energy than the intermediate density; however, the extremely dense fields dissipated very little, if any, wave energy and sometimes wave growth was observed. This is possibly due to the highest density exceeding some threshold where maximum wave attenuation capabilities are exceeded and lowering of damping ensues. Additionally, wave attenuation increased with higher stem spatial variation due to less wake sheltering. A one-dimensional model with an analytical vegetation dissipation term was developed and calibrated to these experimental results to capture the wave transformation over the vegetation beds and to investigate the behavior of the vegetation field bulk drag coefficient. The best fit between predicted and measured wave heights was obtained using the least squares method considering the bulk drag coefficient as the single calibration parameter. The model was able to realistically capture the wave transformations over vegetation. Upon inspection, the bulk drag coefficient shared many of the dependencies of the total wave dissipation. The bulk drag coefficient increased with larger relative vegetation heights as well as with higher stem spacing standard deviation. Higher densities resulted in a lowering of the bulk drag coefficient but generally an increase in wave attenuation. These parameters and their influences help in identifying the important parameters for numerical studies to further our understanding of wave attenuation by wetlands.

Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) could have a significant impact on the U.S. agriculture industry and the welfare of U.S. producers and U.S. consumers. In order to address the potential impact from animal disease outbreaks, this project is designed to utilize a combined epidemic and economic modeling framework to evaluate animal disease management strategies which can be used to reduce the potential losses in an unusual event such as FMD outbreaks. In this study, we compare the welfare changes among three different parties with different strategies using, 1) ANOVA analysis; 2) cost benefit analysis; and 3) Risk Aversion Coefficient (RAC) analysis. Four types of index feedlots are selected in the study including, Feedlot Type 1 (> 50,000 heads of animals), Feedlot Type 4 (backgrounder feedlot), Large Beef Grazing (>100 heads of animals), and Backyard (<10 heads of animals). Results suggest that early detection of FMD events has the advantage in reducing risk as shown in the epidemiological impacts. Enhanced surveillance is found to be a preferred mitigation strategy for U.S. consumers in the scenario of smaller feedlot disease introductions (e.g. Large Beef Grazing and Backyard) and for U.S. producers in the larger feedlot disease introduction scenarios (e.g. Feedlot Type 1 and Feedlot Type 4). Adequate vaccination is not cost effective when seeking to minimize average loss but becomes a preferred strategy when the risk aversion rises. Risk modeling with stochastic programming adopted in this study also confirms the importance of incorporating risk evaluation into decision making process. It offers another option for us to evaluate the mitigation strategies. Two portfolio models are adopted in this study including, E-V model (mean variance portfolio choice model) and Unified model. The results show that the preference for control strategies depends on risk attitude. Early detection proves to be preferable for U.S. consumers and is also preferred by U.S. processors and producers as Risk Aversion Parameters (RAP) rises. Adequate vaccination strategy can benefit U.S. consumers but does not give U.S. processors a better outcome. Adequate vaccination provides a better choice for U.S. producers when the RAP rises. Enhanced surveillance is preferred for U.S. consumers. For U.S. processors, enhanced surveillance does not give a better risk/return outcome. U.S. producers are likely to switch their preferences from regular surveillance to enhanced surveillance as their RAP rises.

Perception and sense of touch are extremely important factors in design, but until recently, the exploration of skin tribology related to tactility has been relatively untouched. In this emergence, skin-on-polymer interactions are becoming more widely investigated due to the prevalence of polymers in everyday life, and the ability to define these interactions in terms of tactility would be hugely beneficial to the engineering and design process. Previous work has investigated polymer textiles concerning tactility, examining environmental and material properties that affect skin on fabric coefficient of friction. In this study, similar friction procedure was used to compare coefficients of friction of a fingerpad across varying polymer fabrics. Forces were applied in both longitudinal and lateral directions, and it was discovered that force directionality greatly affects coefficient of friction. Specific causes have yet to be determined, but it is suspected that material weave and microscopic surface properties play a major role in this directional behavior. To complement these studies and relate them to tactility, trained human evaluators rated the samples against four tactile attributes: abrasiveness, slipperiness, sensible texture, and fuzziness. These ballots were then analyzed with Quantitative Data Analysis and shown to be repeatable among the participants, and each of the attributes were shown to be statistically independent of coefficient of friction. It should be noted, however, that fuzziness showed the greatest correlation coefficient of R^2=0.27. Material selection plays an integral role in frictional behavior, and researchers have been studying contact theory on both microscopic and macroscopic levels to determine how surface topography affects skin-polymer tribology. To negate material effects discussed in the Greenwood-Williamson contact model, frictional tests were performed on identical polypropylene plaques with textured grooves of varying dimensions. Both geometry and directionality proved to be major frictional contributors; as groove size increased, finger friction in the longitudinal direction decreased, but friction increased laterally. In addition to testing a fingerpad, friction was measured with a silicone wand to simulate a finger with different material properties. The silicone exhibited the opposite trend as skin; as groove width decreased, frictional forces increased longitudinally and decreased laterally. While topography affects frictional behavior, counterface stiffness, and intrinsic material properties may cause the trend shift between skin and silicone.

The aim of this research was mainly to investigate desulfurization behaviour of ladle furnace slags of a low-sulfur steel. First, the change of the amount of unstable oxides (FetO and MnO) in slags was studied from the converter till the end of ladle furnace treatment for different steel quality groups. It was found that the change in the amount of unstable oxides could be examined best with low-C steel qualities. Then, the change of activity of iron oxide was investigated for a member of low-C steel quality group, namely 4937K, a low-S steel. The relation between the degree of desulfurization at the ladle furnace, % DeS (measured), and the change in activity of iron oxide, % Decrease in aFetO, was examined first using an empirical expression obtained from literature. Then, this relationship was studied using steel oxygen activity measurements conducted at the ladle furnace. With this method, a regression formula was proposed for 4937K slags relating activity coefficient of iron oxide, gama(FetO), with the major slag components. The results obtained from steel oxygen activities were found to be representative for 4937K steel-slag system showing similar behaviour with the ones from the empirical expression obtained from literature. Similar results were found using Temkin equation and the polymeric anion model. In relation to formation of less harmful inclusions to suppress adverse effects of sulfur, morphological studies of some steels produced in ERDEMiR plant were performed. D-type globular inclusions with severity values of 1-2 were observed.

In this study, visibility observation, aerosol sampling, statistical analysis and model regression were conducted to investigate the influence of suspended particle characteristics and pollution sources on visibility and extinction coefficient in Koahsiung metropolitan area. The scene monitored by a digital camera was then proceeded by digital image processing and were then compared with observed atmospheric visibility observation. Meteorological parameters of various weather patterns (including relative humidity, wind direction, wind speed and mixing height ) played important roles on the reduction of visibility in metropolitan area. Synoptic charts were collected over the 1992-1999 period to analyze their influence on ambient air quality. This study revealed that high PM10 concentration and unhealthful PSI index occurred at weather patterns of high pressure outflow style I and circus-sluice of high pressure outflow¡C Regular visibility was observed during the period of November 1998- April 2000. The highest visibility was above 20 km while the lowest visibility was loss than 1 km in Koahsiung metropolitan area. The observed visibility was mainly distribution over the 2-6 km. The visibility below 6 km were about 61.88% of total observation days and poor visibility was usually occurred in winter. Besides, intensive visibility observation was conducted in January and March, 2000. Visibility was observed hourly at Kaohsiung Meteorological Station and Fa-Shin Temple, respectively. Suspended particles were continuously sampled for five hours at Chien-Chen, Sen-Min and Chien-Gin ambient air quality stations. These measurements were conducted to investigate the influence of chemical and physical properties of suspended particle and meteorological parameters on visibility and extinction coefficient in Koahsiung metropolitan area. Receptor model was applied to understand the emission sources of fine particles (PM2.5) and investigate the influence of emission sources on visual air quality. In addition, the determination of visibility by imagine processing was discussed. Visibility observation was coincided with scene monitoring in order to clarify the relationship between image processing and observed visibility. A illumination eigenvalue calculated by picture transfer software was used to correlate with observed visibility. This study revealed that, illumination eigenvalue and observed visibility had strong negative correlation (R=-0.9079) at effective visual range of 5-10 km. Results form single-factor analysis indicated that no significant variation of aerosol particle concentration was observed at three ambient air quality stations. A bi-mode size distribution of aerosol particles was observed for most stations in Koahsiung metropolitan area. The peak aerodynamic diameter of fine and coarse particles was observed at 0.56-1.0

Abstract The studies measure the porosity, permeability of porous structures with different grain size and shapes such as those of crushed gravels and glass balls. Then discuss the relationship between various coefficients like intrinsic permeability, dimensionless turbulent coefficient, Reynolds number and so on in previous experimental formula¡]Ward¡A1964¡^and writer's formula from practical physics conceptions . Physics conceptions particularly consider respectively sheer flow effect and vortex effect in porous flow field. The study will be considered as the first phase in a full study of the resistance force inside porous structure.