This study analyses the applicability of cross correlating the signal between two thermocouples to obtain simultaneous measurement of velocity, integral turbulent length scales, and temperature in fire induced turbulent flows. This sensor is based on the classical Taylor's hypothesis which states that turbulent structures should retain their shape and identity over a small period of time. If sampling rate is fast enough such that the signal from two thermocouples is sampled within this time duration, the turbulent eddy can be used as a tracer to measure flow velocity and fluctuation. Experiments performed in two laboratory scale devices: a heated turbulent jet and a variable diameter natural gas burner show that sampling rate, sampling time, and angular orientation with respect to the bulk flow are the most sensitive parameters in velocity measurements. Flows with Reynolds numbers between 300 (u=0.1m/s) and 6000 (u=2.0 m/s) were tested.

When a cyclist is cycling on a suburban road, it’s a problem to notice fast rear approaching vehicles in some cases. Looking back frequently is not a good idea. Finding some technical way to help cyclist perceiving rear approaching vehicles is quite necessary. This project aims to find some proper sensor to detect rear approaching vehicles. It’s separated into three steps. First, choose the suitable sensor and capture data. Then, find proper analyzing tool to analyze the capture data. Last but not least, draw a conclusion after analyzing contrast. Microphone is chosen as the sensor to recording the sounds form rear approaching vehicles. ”iRig Recorder FREE” is the program to transfer audio format. And the analyzing tool is to be Matlab. Matlab audio analysis makes good frequency spectrum for each piece of audio data. According to the frequency spectrum, the unique amplitude change around 1000 Hz is found when there is a rear approaching vehicle. This change is always distinct with or without noise. After getting the spectrum of different audio sources, the cross-correlation coefficient between 800 Hz and 1200 Hz is computed to see the correlation level. Then according to cross-correlation coefficient between new captured data and knowledge data, we can determine if there is a rear approaching vehicle in the new data or not. So, this project proves that the cross-correlation coefficient of frequency spectrum can determine if there is rear approaching vehicles or not. The future work would be automatic computer detect depending on this method.

Microhemodynamics is the study of blood flow in small vessels, usually on the order of 50 to 100 µm. The in vitro study of blood flow in small channels is analogous to the in vivo study of the microcirculation. At this scale the Reynolds and Womersly numbers are significantly less than 1 and the viscous stress and pressure gradient are the main determinant of flow. Blood is a non-homogeneous, non-Newtonian fluid and this complex composition and behavior has a greater impact at the microscale. A key parameter is the shear stress at the wall, which is involved in many processes such as platelet activation, gas exchange, embryogenesis and angiogenesis. In order to measure the shear rate in these blood flows the velocity profile must be measured. The measured profile can be characterized by the maximum velocity, the flow rate, the shear rate at the wall, or a shape parameter reflecting the bluntness of the velocity profile. The technique of micro-particle image velocimetry (µPIV) was investigated to measure the velocity profiles of blood microflows. The material of the channel, the type of tracer particles, the camera used, and the choice in data processing were all validated to improve the overall accuracy of µPIV as a blood microflow measurement method. The knowledge gained through these experiments is of immediate interest to applications such as the design of lab-on-a-chip components for blood analysis, analysis of blood flow behavior, understanding the shear stress on blood in the microcirculation and blood substitute analysis. Polymer channels were fabricated from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) by soft lithography in a clean room. PDMS was chosen for ease of fabrication and biocompatibility. The contacting properties of saline, water, and blood with various polymer channel materials was measured. As PDMS is naturally hydrophilic, surface treatment options were explored. Oxygenated plasma treatment was found to be less beneficial for blood than for water. The choice of camera and tracer particles were validated. Generally, for in vivo studies, red blood cells (RBCs) are used as tracer particles for the µPIV method, while for in vitro studies, artificial fluorescent micro particles are added to the blood. It is demonstrated here that the use of RBCs as tracer particles creates a large depth of correlation (DOC), which can approach the size of vessel itself and decreases the accuracy of the method. Next, the accuracy of each method is compared directly. Pulsed images used in conjunction with fluorescing tracer particles are shown to give results closest to theoretical approximations. The effect of the various post-processing methods currently available were compared for accuracy and computation time. It was shown that changing the amount of overlap in the post-processing parameters affects the results by nearly 10%. Using the greatest amount of correlation window overlap with elongated windows aligned with the flow was shown to give the best results when coupled with a image pre-processing method previously published for microflows of water. Finally the developed method was applied to a relevant biomedical engineering problem: the evaluation of blood substitutes and blood viscosity modifiers. Alginate is a frequently used viscosity modifier which has many uses in industry, including biomedical applications. Here the effect of alginate on the blood rheology, i.e., the shape of the velocity profile and the maximum velocity of blood flow in microchannels, was investigated. Alginate was found to blunt the shape of the velocity profile while also decreasing the shear rate at the wall. Overall, the accuracy of µPIV measurements of blood flows has been improved by this thesis. The work presented here has extended the known methods and accuracy issues of blood flow measurements in µPIV, improved the understanding of the blood velocity profile behavior, and applied that knowledge and methods to interesting, relevant problems in biomedical and biofluids engineering.

Microhemodynamics is the study of blood flow in small vessels, usually on the order of 50 to 100 µm. The in vitro study of blood flow in small channels is analogous to the in vivo study of the microcirculation. At this scale the Reynolds and Womersly numbers are significantly less than 1 and the viscous stress and pressure gradient are the main determinant of flow. Blood is a non-homogeneous, non-Newtonian fluid and this complex composition and behavior has a greater impact at the microscale. A key parameter is the shear stress at the wall, which is involved in many processes such as platelet activation, gas exchange, embryogenesis and angiogenesis. In order to measure the shear rate in these blood flows the velocity profile must be measured. The measured profile can be characterized by the maximum velocity, the flow rate, the shear rate at the wall, or a shape parameter reflecting the bluntness of the velocity profile. The technique of micro-particle image velocimetry (µPIV) was investigated to measure the velocity profiles of blood microflows. The material of the channel, the type of tracer particles, the camera used, and the choice in data processing were all validated to improve the overall accuracy of µPIV as a blood microflow measurement method. The knowledge gained through these experiments is of immediate interest to applications such as the design of lab-on-a-chip components for blood analysis, analysis of blood flow behavior, understanding the shear stress on blood in the microcirculation and blood substitute analysis. Polymer channels were fabricated from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) by soft lithography in a clean room. PDMS was chosen for ease of fabrication and biocompatibility. The contacting properties of saline, water, and blood with various polymer channel materials was measured. As PDMS is naturally hydrophilic, surface treatment options were explored. Oxygenated plasma treatment was found to be less beneficial for blood than for water. The choice of camera and tracer particles were validated. Generally, for in vivo studies, red blood cells (RBCs) are used as tracer particles for the µPIV method, while for in vitro studies, artificial fluorescent micro particles are added to the blood. It is demonstrated here that the use of RBCs as tracer particles creates a large depth of correlation (DOC), which can approach the size of vessel itself and decreases the accuracy of the method. Next, the accuracy of each method is compared directly. Pulsed images used in conjunction with fluorescing tracer particles are shown to give results closest to theoretical approximations. The effect of the various post-processing methods currently available were compared for accuracy and computation time. It was shown that changing the amount of overlap in the post-processing parameters affects the results by nearly 10%. Using the greatest amount of correlation window overlap with elongated windows aligned with the flow was shown to give the best results when coupled with a image pre-processing method previously published for microflows of water. Finally the developed method was applied to a relevant biomedical engineering problem: the evaluation of blood substitutes and blood viscosity modifiers. Alginate is a frequently used viscosity modifier which has many uses in industry, including biomedical applications. Here the effect of alginate on the blood rheology, i.e., the shape of the velocity profile and the maximum velocity of blood flow in microchannels, was investigated. Alginate was found to blunt the shape of the velocity profile while also decreasing the shear rate at the wall. Overall, the accuracy of µPIV measurements of blood flows has been improved by this thesis. The work presented here has extended the known methods and accuracy issues of blood flow measurements in µPIV, improved the understanding of the blood velocity profile behavior, and applied that knowledge and methods to interesting, relevant problems in biomedical and biofluids engineering.

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo is currently working towards developing a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) database for future code validation efforts. Cal Poly will complete a wind tunnel test on the Advanced Model for Extreme Lift and Improved Aeroacoustics (AMELIA) in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) 40 foot by 80 foot wind tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center in the summer of 2011. The development of two measurement techniques is discussed in this work, both with the objective of making measurements on AMELIA for CFD validation. First, the work on the application of the Fringe-Imaging Skin Friction (FISF) technique to AMELIA is discussed. The FISF technique measures the skin friction magnitude and direction by applying oil droplets on a surface, exposing them to flow, measuring their thickness, and correlating their thickness to the local skin friction. The technique has the unique ability to obtain global skin friction measurements. A two foot, nickel plated, blended wing section test article has been manufactured specifically for FISF. The model is illuminated with mercury vapor lamps and imaged with a Canon 50D with a 546 nm bandpass filter. Various tests are applied to the wing in order to further characterize uncertainties related with the FISF technique. Human repeatability has uncertainties of ±2.3% of fringe spacing and ±2.0° in skin friction vector direction, while image post processing yields ±25% variation in skin friction coefficient. A method for measuring photogrammetry uncertainty is developed. The effect of filter variation and test repeatability was found to be negligible. A validation against a Preston tube was found to have 1.8% accuracy. Second, the validation of a micro flow measurement device is investigated. Anemometers have always had limited capability in making near wall measurements, driving the design of new devices capable of measurements with increased wall proximity. Utilizing a thermocouple boundary layer rake, wall measurements within 0.0025 inches of the surface have been made. A Cross Correlation Rake (CCR) has the advantage of not requiring calibration but obtaining the same proximity and resolution as the thermocouple boundary layer rake. The flow device utilizes time of flight measurements computed via cross correlation to calculate wall velocity profiles. The CCR was designed to be applied to AMELIA to measure flow velocities above a flap in a transonic flow regime. The validation of the CCR was unsuccessful. Due to the fragile construction of the CCR, only one data point at 0.10589 inches from the surface was available for validation. The subsonic wind tunnel’s variable frequency drive generated noise which could not be filtered or shielded, requiring the use of a flow bench for validation testing. Since velocity measurements could not be made in the flow bench, a comparison of a fast and slow velocity was made. The CCR was not able to detect the difference between the two flow velocities. Currently, the CCR cannot be applied on AMELIA due to the unsuccessfully validation of the device.

No description available.

Modeling of plasticity is often hampered by the difficulty in accurately characterizing dislocationdensity on the microscale for real samples. It is particularly difficult to resolve measureddislocation content onto individual dislocation systems at the length scales most commonly of interestin plasticity studies. Traditionally, dislocation content is analyzed at the continuum levelusing the Nye tensor and the fundamental relation of continuum dislocation theory to interpret informationmeasured by diffraction techniques, typically EBSD or High Resolution EBSD. In thiswork the established Nye-Kroner method for resolving measured geometrically necessary dislocationcontent onto individual slip systems is assessed and extended. Two new methods are alsopresented to relieve the ambiguity of the Nye-Kroner method. One of these methods uses modifiedclassical dislocation equations to bypass the Nye-Kroner relation, and the other estimates the bulkdislocation density via the entry-wise one-norm of the Nye tensor. These methods are validatedvia a novel simulation of distortion fields around continuum fields of dislocation density based onclassical lattice mechanics and then applied to actual HR-EBSD scans of a micro-indented singlecrystals of nickel and tantalum. Finally, a detailed analysis of the effect of the spacing betweenpoints in an EBSD scan (which is related to the step size of the numerical derivatives used in EBSDdislocation microscopy) on geometrically necessary dislocation measurements is conducted.

Recently, the development of electronic technology towards higher frequencies and larger band widths has led to interest in finding new piezoelectric materials, which could be used to make filters with larger pass band widths and oscillators with better frequency stability. Langasite (La3Ga5SiO14, LGS) and its isomorphs have enticed considerable attention of researchers as a potential substrate material for piezoelectric device applications because of its high frequency stability and fairly good electromechanical coupling factors for acoustic wave devices. Nonlinear effect including drive level dependence, mode coupling, force-frequency effect and electroelasic effect are critical for the design of these devices. Third-order elastic constants (TOEC) play an important role in a quantitative analysis of these nonlinear effects. In particular these elastic constants are of great importance when the BAW (Bulk Acoustic Wave) and SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) sensors of force, acceleration and so on are designed. Until now Langasite (LGS) and Langatate (LGT) crystal resonators have been qualified in terms of quality factor, temperature effect, isochronism defect and material quality. One of the most important advantages of those crystals is that they will not undergo phase transitions up to its melting temperature of 1450°. Presently there is no data on TOEC of LGT crystals. Our objective is to create an experimental procedure to measure and collect the complete set of third-order elastic constants of Langasite (La3Ga5SiO14) and Langatate (La3Ga5.5Ta0.5O14) crystals and compare the new values for langasite with values previously reported.

No description available.

No description available.