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Current research shows that pulse combustion impingement drying is an improvement over the steady impingement drying currently in commercial use. Pulse combustion impingement has higher heat transfer rates and a lower impact on the environment. Commercialization of pulse impingement drying is the goal of the Pulsed Air Drying group at IPST. To that end the objective of this project is to develop a system that will allow researchers to measure heat transfer rates at the impingement surface from the impinging air. A water cooled impingement plate with temperature and heat flux measuring capabilities was developed which accurately measures and records the desired information. The impingement plate was tested and its results were verified by comparison with previous literature. Finally a preliminary comparison between steady and pulse combustion impingement was carried out. The study shows pulsed combustion impingement to be superior to steady impingement.

The aim of this study was to characterize the interaction between a pulsed ultrasonic wave and a paper forming screen for potential development of a smart paper forming sensor to measure velocity profile of the forming jet as it impinges on the wire. To achieve this goal, a Signal-Processing DOP 2000 pulsed ultrasonic Doppler velocimeter was used to generate a pulsed ultrasonic signal. The signal was transmitted and received using four different ultrasonic transducers: a 2 MHz 10 mm, 4 MHz 5 mm, 4MHz 8 mm focused, and 8 MHz 5 mm. The ultrasonic signals were then analyzed in order to determine the ultrasonic beam echo amplitude and shape. These tests were performed with and without various paper forming screens placed between the ultrasonic transducer and an ultrasonic signal target. Two different paper forming screens were utilized to study the interaction of the ultrasonic beam with the forming screens. The tests showed that the ultrasonic signal passing through the forming screens is greatly attenuated causing a sharp decrease in echo amplitude. To overcome the attenuation of the signal, a much higher amplification of the signal was used causing an increase in the saturation region around the forming screen. This increased the minimum distance that a target had to be away from the forming screen. The closest distance from the plastic sphere to the screen over the widest range of transducer-screen-distances that produced detectable echoes was achieved with the 4 MHz 5 mm transducer. The tests showed for both screens that there is more variation in beam width when the screen is moved laterally than when it is not moved at all. They also show that even though the pores in the forming screen are very small, they seem to have a great effect on the beam width measurements of the ultrasonic transducer.

The role of bonding in the tensile creep behavior of paper was analyzed. This was accomplished by producing handsheets at a range of different bonding levels through manipulation of relative bonded area and specific bond strength. This was done by varying the level of wet pressing (to change relative bonded area) and using debonding and bonding agents (to change specific bond strength). Once manufactured, sheets underwent an extensive battery of physical testing and creep testing. Creep testing was conducted under constant humidity and cyclic humidity (accelerated creep) conditions. Microscopic analysis techniques were also employed to visually study bonded area loss from creep strain. Two mathematical models (one empirical and one rheological) were created to isolate, account for, and incorporate bonding into predicting tensile creep behavior in paper. Overall, the results from this thesis show that the role of bonding in tensile creep behavior (and accelerated creep behavior) is no different than its role in stress-strain behavior, which is a new finding. This means the bonding influence on tensile creep behavior is related to sheet efficiency and how effectively stress is distributed within the structure, bonded area loss is a strain-induced phenomenon and bonding is not the cause of accelerated creep behavior.

After the newspaper prohibition period, the News industry entry into the diversity free market competition in Taiwan. Each news group and the collective have their own abundant resources to occupy the market. In the past prohibition rule, the local newspaper media industry can not hold the benefit, the issued hurriedly reduced. After that, how to renew to find the market value and the localization, that is mass communication worker and the researcher was very concern question. There are three variables in this research. We focus on the life model variable (includes population statistic), readers satisfy and in need, then marketing promotion strategy. We assume those three variables affect the local paper consumer to purchase policy-making the factor. In this research, we make the questionnaire for these news consumers who stay in the Kaohsiung area. We will inquire the local paper, what is special characteristics can hold the reader after the market redefine? What is factor influence these consumers purchase policy-making? In this research, we will use sample investigation in the ¡§The Commons Daily, Chinese daily and Taiwan News circulation ratio. In Kaohsiung area , we will proceed investigation in subscription household name list , altogether obtains effective sample 315; In another way , I penetrated the chain store to obtains three local newspapers retail 106 household, four nationwide newspaper (union newspaper, the Chinese Times, apple daily paper, liberty Times) retail the household 200 effective samples. After statistical analysis, I find out three main points as following: First, our local newspaper consumer¡¦s age between 35 and 45 years old, month income range between one ten thousand to three ten thousand working race for the main race group, then most of reader belong no party and ¡§pan-green party¡¨. Second, There are 70 % above Kaohsiung area local newspaper consumer satisfies about the local newspaper for the content of local news , the local information, the specific information content, seeks employment classified ad content affect the local newspaper consumer to purchase the policy-making important attribute. Third, local newspaper consumer to local paper opinion standpoint has higher identification, if they can pay attention to newspaper arrangement, printing and set price¡K.etc packaging. It also coordinates effective promotion to be helpful to the local paper marketing. Finally, the researcher discovery on this research suggested the local newspaperman should be concern what the reader in needs, and provide region market for the nationwide newspaper, and refer to relative research with suggestion in the future.

A Study on Applying Analytic Hierarchy Process to Technician Performance Evaluation for the Paper Industry Abstract The papermaking business is one of the primary industries closely associated with people¡¦s livelihood. Its growth that shows a positive relationship with both Gross National Product and the education index serves as a major indicator of the economic progress and cultural level of a nation. For decades, with domestic economic growth and increment of national income, prosperity has been brought to the Taiwan Paper Industry. However, under the great impact from the society in recent years, enterprises with inappropriate business management and inferior performance may be struggling for survival, or even have been eliminated. In face of such challenges, to work out an approach to exert the maximum effect of human resources by employing an effective system for performance management to further enhance the competence of the organization has become an urgent issue for enterprise managers and human resource management professionals. Due to the skill-intensive feature of the paper industry, the performance evaluations of technicians who play a decisive role in the organizations are obviously significant. Analytic Hierarchy Process is adopted in this study in an attempt to discuss the critical elements of the technician performance evaluation for the paper industry and construct a hierarchical appraisal system, expecting to provide managers of the paper industry with an appropriate evaluation method to facilitate performance management. The achievements attained in this study are as follows: 1. Discussions on the present conditions of the performance evaluation for the paper industry. 2. Construction of the hierarchical appraisal system for technician performance evaluation. 3. The relative weights of the performance evaluation indicators with Analytic Hierarchy Process are applied. 4. The substance and significance of the performance evaluation indicators and relative weights. (1) Work achievement is a key factor to determine the quality of a technician. (2) Loyalty to the organization has received much attention, which facilitates innovation and improvement for the minorities. (3) Active professionals will be favored and valued. 5. Empirical applications. Three suggestions are proposed for the enterprises: (1) Constitute items and contents of the performance evaluation. (2) Integrate the performance evaluation into Human Resource Management. (3) Combine with the Human Resource Information System (HRIS).

The area of the digital image processing is getting more attention in the hope that it will increase the accuracy of any scientific measurements, such as in determining an object velocity, temperature, and size. While human vision is excellent to recognize and differentiate objects, it has been proven to be a poor tool when it comes to measure the object performance. One of many digital image processing applications is texture analysis whose purpose is to evaluate image patterns. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the use of texture analysis as a tool to micro fiber dispersion measurement. Micro fiber dispersion can be found in many applications such as in paper and industry powder engineering. Three cases related to micro fiber dispersion were investigated in this study. The first case was the experimental study of the dispersion in open water channel. Sets of synthetic fibers were put into water channel to simulate a process that can be found in papermaking industry. The research investigated the effect of three operating parameters: fluid velocity, fiber consistency, and fiber aspect ratio to fiber dispersion. Using two-factorial experimental design technique, the main and interaction effects of these parameters were evaluated. The study found that increasing fluid velocity, fiber aspect ratio, and consistency decreased the dispersion level. The study also found that the effect of individual parameters is more pronounced than the role of the interactive terms on the fiber flocculation. The second case considered was applying the fiber dispersion analysis to computer-synthesized images consisting of different arrangements of fibers. Four sets of sub-cases were presented. These sub-cases were divided based on the fiber-concentrated location and fiber distribution. The use of computer-synthesized images was found to be very useful to simulate real situation during fiber dispersion. The third case investigated the fiber distribution on a dry paper. Images for different types of paper were taken and evaluated to see the dispersion level of each type of paper. It was found that the current texture analysis was applicable to determine the dispersion level for dry papers. While three cases indicated that the texture analysis can be used to investigate the fiber dispersion, the texture analysis used here is not a perfect and universal method and may not be suitable to analyze other types of dispersions. The human vision will always be essential to determine if the texture analysis is applicable to any other problem.

In this dissertation, we studied two seemingly uncorrelated, but conceptually related problems in terms of source-channel coding: 1) wireless image transmission and 2) Costa ("dirty-paper") code design. In the first part of the dissertation, we consider progressive image transmission over a wireless system employing space-time coded OFDM. The space-time coded OFDM system based on a newly built broadband MIMO fading model is theoretically evaluated by assuming perfect channel state information (CSI) at the receiver for coherent detection. Then an adaptive modulation scheme is proposed to pick the constellation size that offers the best reconstructed image quality for each average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). A more practical scenario is also considered without the assumption of perfect CSI. We employ low-complexity decision-feedback decoding for differentially space- time coded OFDM systems to exploit transmitter diversity. For JSCC, we adopt a product channel code structure that is proven to provide powerful error protection and bursty error correction. To further improve the system performance, we also apply the powerful iterative (turbo) coding techniques and propose the iterative decoding of differentially space-time coded multiple descriptions of images. The second part of the dissertation deals with practical dirty-paper code designs. We first invoke an information-theoretical interpretation of algebraic binning and motivate the code design guidelines in terms of source-channel coding. Then two dirty-paper code designs are proposed. The first is a nested turbo construction based on soft-output trellis-coded quantization (SOTCQ) for source coding and turbo trellis- coded modulation (TTCM) for channel coding. A novel procedure is devised to balance the dimensionalities of the equivalent lattice codes corresponding to SOTCQ and TTCM. The second dirty-paper code design employs TCQ and IRA codes for near-capacity performance. This is done by synergistically combining TCQ with IRA codes so that they work together as well as they do individually. Our TCQ/IRA design approaches the dirty-paper capacity limit at the low rate regime (e.g., < 1:0 bit/sample), while our nested SOTCQ/TTCM scheme provides the best performs so far at medium-to-high rates (e.g., >= 1:0 bit/sample). Thus the two proposed practical code designs are complementary to each other.

The Pigeon River was severely impacted beginning in the early 1900s by a paper mill located in Canton, North Carolina. The mill discharged chemical byproducts into the Pigeon River until 1992 when the paper mill modified their processes. As a result, water quality improved but the status of salamander species in the Pigeon River was unknown. Worldwide amphibian declines over the last 20 years have drawn attention to the need for more research and a better understanding of species-specific habitat relationships. There is concern about amphibian population declines because amphibians are critical to the balance of ecosystems and are considered exceptional indicators of environmental health.The objectives of this study were: 1) to conduct a baseline survey of salamander species composition in the Pigeon River watershed, 2) to determine if salamander populations differ above and below the Canton paper mill, and 3) to attempt to explain variance in salamander abundance, richness and diversity by comparing water quality and substrate characteristics among streams. Eight stations were examined on the Pigeon River, with four stations located above the paper mill and four stations below. We also chose three stations on each of four tributaries, Big Creek, Fines Creek, Jonathan Creek and Richland Creek. Snorkel surveys were completed in the summer of 2009. Five of eight species of stream salamanders were found that historically existed in Haywood County, NC: Eastern hellbender, Blue Ridge two-lined salamander, shovel-nosed salamander, black-bellied salamander and spring salamander. No salamanders were found in the main channel of the Pigeon River below the mill. Eastern hellbenders and Blue Ridge two-lined salamanders preferred substrates consisting of rubble and avoided bedrock. Percent rubble was the only variable retained in substrate models and was positively related to salamander abundance, richness and diversity. Conductivity, salinity, and water temperature were higher in the Pigeon River below the mill than at all other sites. Salamander abundance was explained by dissolved oxygen, pH, and stream width in water quality models. The results of this study suggest salamander abundance was negatively associated with the Pigeon River below the mill because of poor water quality and not habitat availability.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Institute of Paper Chemistry, 1980. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-57).