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This thesis offers the design and improvement of a 2 GHz to 20 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) utilizing pHEMT technology. The pHEMT technology allows the LNA to generate a boosted signal at a lower noise figure (NF) while consuming less power and achieving smooth overall gain. The design achieves an overall gain (S21) of ≥ 10 dB with an NF ≤ 2 dB while consuming ≤ 30 mA of power while using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components.

Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Byron W. Jones / Airline cabins represent an indoor environment in which the spread of particles or contaminants is of interest due to the large number of passengers and distances they travel. In fact, hundreds of millions of passengers travel each year spending extended periods in close proximity to one another. This close proximity causes concern about the spread of disease and contaminants amongst passengers. These passengers move from region to region of the world increasing the potential for worldwide epidemics. In an effort to understand the aircraft cabin environment and the dispersion of fine particles, an experimental study was conducted. The cabin used for the experiments is a simulated Boeing 767-300 with eleven rows, each comprised of seven seats. The particles release occurred in a short burst in all the seats across the second row simultaneously. This design focused on the longitudinal dispersion of particles throughout the cabin. The particles from this release had corrected aerodynamic diameters between 0.87 and 1.70 micrometers. The collection and analysis of data took place based on five criteria. The first analysis focused on the total particle counts at 27 locations throughout the cabin. The second analysis made use of a reference location for each of the tests and presents the exposure in each of those locations as a fraction of the reference during the same test. The third analysis centers its attention on the transient behavior as the particles were counted at various locations. The forth and fifth types of data analysis focus on the time required for each tested location to reach either 100 total particle counts or ten percent of the total seen at that location during that test. The tests show the regions close to the source experience higher levels of exposure, less time to reach the time limits, and higher levels of variation from test to test. The locations farther from the source show lower exposure levels, longer times to reach the limits, and less variation from test to test. This indicates the variations close to the source stem from the chaotic nature of the airflow rather than from irregularities of the dispersion system. The data agree well with previous work and suggest further studies would improve the understanding of the aircraft cabin environment and the spread of airborne particles and contaminants.

This report addresses the research applied towards the automation of the engineering design process, in particular the structural design process. The three important stages of the structural design process are: the specifications, preliminary design and the detailed design. An iterative redesign architecture of the structural design process lends itself to automation. The automation of the structural design can improve both the cost and the reliability, and enhance the productivity of the human designers. To the extent that the assumptions involved in the design process are explicitly represented and automatically inforced, the design errors resulting from the violated assumptions can be avoided. Artificial Intelligence (AI) addresses the automation of complex and knowledge-intensive tasks such as the structural design process. It involves the development of the Knowledge Based Expert System (KBES). There are several tools, also known as expert shells, and languages available for the development of knowledge-based expert systems. A general purpose language, called LISP, is very popular among researchers in AI and is used as an environmental tool for the development of the KBES for the structural design process. The resulting system, called Expert-SEISD, is very generic in nature. The Expert-SEISD is composed of the user interface, inference engine, domain specific knowledge and data bases and the knowledge acquisition. The present domain of the Expert-SEISD encompasses the design of structural components such as beams and plates. The knowledge acquisition module is developed to facilitate the incorporation of new capabilities (knowledge or data) for beams, plates and for new structural components. The decision making is an integral part of any design process. A decision-making model suitable for the specifications extraction and the preliminary design phases of the structural design process is proposed and developed based on the theory of fuzzy sets. The methods developed here are evaluated and compared with similar methods available in the literature. The new method, based on the union of fuzzy sets and contrast intensification, was found suitable for the proposed model. It was implemented as a separate module in the Expert-SEISD. A session with the Expert-SEISD is presented to demonstrate its capabilities of beam and plate designs and knowledge acquisition.

A model for the shapes and residual forces for an individual, axisymmetric BGA solder interconnect is developed from the basic assumption that the surface bounding the solder possesses constant mean curvature. The inputs for the model include: pad radius, stand-off height, and the volume of the solder. The model is contrasted with simpler ones to identify the combinations of parameters for which more relaxed assumptions regarding the shape of the interconnect (e.g., a cylinder, truncated sphere, or circular arc meridian) may lead to unacceptable errors when designing for the demanding requirements of aerospace applications. The parameter combinations include situations when there exists a large stand-off height in conjunction with residual tension in the interconnect and when there is considerable tension or compression in the interconnect. The errors can be especially significant if one is designing around presumed surface contact angles at the solder/pad/PCB junction The results of this model are incorporated into a fatigue life analysis for BGA packages. In the aerospace industry the fatigue loading on the individual interconnects is Mode II shearing due to cyclic temperatures. A fracture mechanics approach is taken which accounts for this Mode II fatigue loading as well as a constant Mode I loading that is due to the residual forces arising from the surface tension within the molten interconnect. This model, which is referred to as the relative life model, is capable of demonstrating how the relative fatigue life of an interconnect can be altered as a result of a change in the residual force (and, therefore, the shape) of the interconnect. The model is capable of capturing this relationship for variable joint dimensions (i.e., volumes, stand-off heights, radii), service loading, and material constituents (i.e., solder alloys, PCBs, and IC carriers). For an array of pads of known radii, a procedure is presented for determining the optimal volumes of each solder joint so as to optimize the relative life of the entire package / acase@tulane.edu

This research presents a detailed study of non-synchronous vibration (NSV) and the development of an efficient design method for NSV. NSV occurs as a result of the complex interaction of an aerodynamic instability with blade vibrations. Two NSV design methods are considered and applied to three test cases: 2-D circular cylinder, 2-D airfoil cascade tip section of a modern compressor, and 3-D high pressure compressor cascade that encountered NSV in rig testing. The current industry analysis method is to search directly for the frequency of the instability using CFD analysis and then compare it with a fundamental blade mode frequency computed from a structural analysis code. The main disadvantage of this method is that the blades' motion is not considered and therefore, the maximum response is assumed to be when the blade natural frequency and fluid frequency are coincident. An alternate approach, the enforced motion method, is also presented. In this case, enforced blade motion is used to promote lock-in of the blade frequency to the fluid natural frequency at a specified critical amplitude for a range of interblade phase angles (IBPAs). For the IBPAs that are locked-on, the unsteady modal forces are determined. This mode is acceptable if the equivalent damping is greater than zero for all IBPAs. A method for blade re-design is also proposed to determine the maximum blade response by finding the limit cycle oscillation (LCO) amplitude. It is assumed that outside of the lock-in region is an off-resonant, low amplitude condition. A significant result of this research is that for all cases studied herein, the maximum blade response is not at the natural fluid frequency as is assumed by the direct frequency search approach. This has significant implications for NSV design analysis because it demonstrates the requirement to include blade motion. Hence, an enforced motion design method is recommended for industry and the current approach is of little value. / Dissertation

This dissertation provides numerical studies to improve bladed disk assembly design for preventing blade high cycle fatigue failures. The analyses are divided into two major subjects. For the first subject presented in Chapter 2, the mechanisms of transonic fan flutter for tuned systems are studied to improve the shortcoming of traditional method for modern fans using a 3D time-linearized Navier-Stokes solver. Steady and unsteady flow parameters including local work on the blade surfaces are investigated. It was found that global local work monotonically became more unstable on the pressure side due to the flow rollback effect. The local work on the suction side significantly varied due to nodal diameter and flow rollback effect. Thus, the total local work for the least stable mode is dominant by the suction side. Local work on the pressure side appears to be affected by the shock on the suction side. For the second subject presented in Chapter 3, sensitivity studies are conducted on flutter and forced response due to frequency mistuning and aerodynamic asymmetry using the single family of modes approach by assuming manufacturing tolerance. The unsteady aerodynamic forces are computed using CFD methods assuming aerodynamic symmetry. The aerodynamic asymmetry is applied by perturbing the influence coefficient matrix. These aerodynamic perturbations influence both stiffness and damping while traditional frequency mistuning analysis only perturbs the stiffness. Flutter results from random aerodynamic perturbations of all blades showed that manufacturing variations that effect blade unsteady aerodynamics may cause a stable, perfectly symmetric engine to flutter. For forced response, maximum blade amplitudes are significantly influenced by the aerodynamic perturbation of the imaginary part (damping) of unsteady aerodynamic modal forces. This is contrary to blade frequency mistuning where the stiffness perturbation dominates. / Dissertation

<p>Flapping flight is one of the most widespread mean of transportation. It is a complex unsteady aerodynamic problem that has been studied extensively in the past century. Nevertheless, by its complex nature, flapping flight remains a challenging subject. With the development of micro air vehicles, researchers need new computational methods to design these aircrafts efficiently. </p><p>In this dissertation, I will present three different methods of optimization for flapping flight with an emphasis on hovering with each their advantages and drawbacks. The first method was developed by Hall et al. It is an extremely fast and powerful three-dimensional approach. However, the assumptions made to develop this theory limit its use to lightly loaded wings. In addition, it only models the motion of the trailing edge and not the actual motion of the wing. </p><p>In a second part, I will present a two-dimensional unsteady potential method. It uses a freely convected wake which removes the lightly loaded restriction. This method shows the existence of an optimal combination of plunging and pitching motion. The motion is optimal in the sense that for a required force vector, the aerodynamic power is minimal.</p><p>The last method incorporates the three-dimensional effects. These effects are especially important for low aspect ratio wings. Thus, a three-dimensional unsteady potential vortex method was developed. This method also exhibits the presence of an optimal flapping/pitching motion. In addition, it agrees really well with the two previous methods and with the actual kinematics of birds during hovering flapping flight.</p><p>To conclude, some preliminary design tools for flapping wings in forward and hovering flight are presented in this thesis.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis investigates the broad subject of thermal management problems currently encountered in Formula One race car design. A computationally economical tool, based on linear superposition, for predicting the temperature field arising from a set of thermal and inlet velocity boundary conditions was developed. Using a set of base analyses, the research showed that it is possible to superpose and scale these results in order to predict the temperature field for differing sets of boundary conditions. This method was shown to have a significant speed advantage over typical computational simulations. An experimental facility was designed and built to provide validation for aspects of the linear superposition approach. A method of measuring the cylinder wall heat flux has been developed using thin film gauge technology. The resulting sensor was designed to fit the mounting of existing instrumentation in order to avoid requiring large scale modifications to existing test facilities. The design makes use of modern rapid prototyping techniques in order to meet this mounting requirement and to provide a novel solution to routing the signal from the thin film gauge. In addition, the research investigated a method for predicting the cylinder wall temperature in real-time. The cylinder wall is subject to heat fluxes from in-cylinder gases during the engine cycle on the inner face and the effect of the coolant jacket on the outer face. Two separate methods were used to process these thermal boundary conditions respectively, before being superposed in order to form the whole solution. The computation time of the method is characterised in order to demonstrate its feasibility for real-time operation.

Master of Science / Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering / Mohammad H. Hosni / Millions of people travel by commercial aircraft each year. The close proximity of passengers aboard an airplane leads to one of the primary reasons that air quality in an aircraft cabin is of interest. In recent years there have been multiple reported instances of people contracting illnesses after being aboard an aircraft for an extended period of time. In order to better understand air quality in an aircraft cabin, an experimental study of particulate transport in a half cabin model of a Boeing 767 was performed. In the study, both 3[Mu]m and 10[Mu]m particles were tested separately by injecting them into the cabin through a vertical tube, 609.6 mm (24 in) above the floor, at a single location on the centerline of the half cabin test section. Resulting particulate concentrations were measured at five locations along the centerline of the half cabin test section. It was found that for the 3[Mu]m particles, the normalized concentration was about one for all of the locations except directly above the injection site. Therefore, the concentrations were approximately the same as the well-mixed concentration, where the well-mixed concentration is the concentration in the test cabin if the test cabin is uniformly mixed. For the same test conditions, the normalized concentrations for the 10[Mu]m particles were well below one, around 0.1. Several more concentration measurements using the 10[Mu]m particles were taken at the same five locations, both on and off the centerline, and for different particle injection and cabin pressure conditions. The concentration results using a diffuser cone to inject the 10[Mu]m particles into the test cabin and a neutral cabin pressure were higher than the results found using the straight injection tube, but they were not very repeatable. After pressurizing the cabin to slightly above ambient pressure and using the diffuser cone, the resulting average normalized particle concentrations along the centerline were found to be between 0.4 and 1.5 and repeatable within the estimated measurement uncertainty. Therefore, it appears that the 3[Mu]m particles follow the airflow in the test cabin well, but it is not clear if the 10[Mu]m particles do as well.