Low Pressure Die Casting (LPDC) process is one the most common casting process to produce structural automotive components, such as alloy wheels and suspension components. It has been identified that cavity filling and solidification process are two most critical aspects to produce premium quality casting components.During the solidification process of casting alloy, it is a well known phenomenon that metal experiences volumetric shrinkage due to its density difference between liquid and solid phase. When this volumetric shrinkage is not properly compensated, then a casting defect commonly known as solidification shrinkage occurs. The solidification shrinkage has very detrimental effects on structural integrity required for premium quality casting such as aluminium alloy wheels.Literature and practical experiences of foundry men show that it is critical to achieve unidirectional solidification pattern by avoiding an isolated hot spot in order to minimise the solidification shrinkage. However, it is found that the geometry of industrial casting applications is often constrained by other design factors that would not naturally avoid these isolated hot spots. The subject of this research, aluminium alloy wheels, is not excluded from this constraint.In aluminium alloy wheels, an isolated hot spot is commonly observed in an area known as rim and spoke junction due to its geometry constraints. Consequently, the solidification shrinkage is commonly experienced, which is undesirable due to its detrimental effects for the structural integrity of alloy wheels. In order to minimise the solidification shrinkage, forced cooling method is applied to avoid an isolated hot spot. The control of this forced cooling is achieved by cooling media, flow rate of cooling media and duration cooling circuit. Foundry experiments in industrial environment were conducted producing aluminium alloy wheels using commercially treated A356 (Al-Si) alloy, where different durations of cooling circuit were used to understand the sensitivity of solidification shrinkage formation to the duration of cooling circuit. This was followed by metallurgical structure analysis and numerical modelling to suggest the sensitivity of cooling circuit duration in controlling solidification shrinkage.The major finding conclusion of this research is that control of the shrinkage formation is not very sensitive to the duration cooling circuit. It is suggested that as casting solidifies initially from the mould wall, it retracts away from the cast-mould interface due to thermal contraction. Consequently, air gap is formed between casting and mould interface, creating an effective thermal resistance layer. Thereafter, heat transfer across the cast-mould interface is not sensitive to the change in the cooling channel which is a distance to the cast-mould interface.Some limitations of numerical modelling and metallurgical analysis were also identified during this research and recommendations were made to improve the accuracy of local hot spot prediction in production of aluminium alloy wheels. More specifically, numerical modelling of the effect of grain refinement and use of non homogeneous material property (particularly fraction of solid) for rapidly chilled area. Fraction of eutectic rather than secondary dendrites arm spacing is a proper microstructure parameter that can be used to locate the hot spot.

Increasing evidence suggests that the environment is related to many public health challenges. Unequal distributions of services and resources needed for healthy lifestyles may contribute to increasing levels of health disparity. However, empirical studies are not sufficient to understand the relationship between health disparity and the built environment. This dissertation examines how health disparity are associated with the built environment and if the environmental conditions that support physical activity and healthy diet are associated with lower health disparity. This research uses a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from urban planning, regional economics and public health. The data came from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, and the GIS derived environmental data and the 608-respondent survey data from a larger study conducted in urbanized King County, Washington. Health disparity was measured with the Gini-coefficient, and health status and obesity were used as indicators of health. Hot spot analysis was used to identify the spatial aggregations of high health disparity, and multiple regression models identified the environmental correlates of health disparity. The overall trend showed that disparity has increased in most states in the US over the past decade and the southern states showed the highest disparity levels. Strong spatial autocorrelations were found for disparities, indicating that disparity levels are not equally distributed across different geographic areas. From the multivariate analyses estimating disparity levels, spatial regression models significantly improved the overall model fit compared to the ordinary least-square models. Areas with more supportive built environments for physical activity had lower health disparities, including proximity to downtown (+) and access to parks (+), day care centers (+), offices (+), schools (+), theaters (+), big box shopping centers (-), and libraries (-). Overall results showed that the built environment, compared to the personal factors, was more strongly correlated with health disparities. This study brings attention to the problem of health disparity in the US, and provides evidence supporting the existence of spatial disparity in the environmental support for a healthy lifestyle. Further research is needed to better understand environmental and socioeconomic conditions associated with health disparity among more diverse population groups and in different environmental settings.

It is more and more popular to transmit and receive information with Wireless LAN(WLAN) as the time of science and technology has been approaching. Every type of business gradually has priority on WLAN for marketing. Especially business of agents of real estate, they use WLAN as tool for marketing to improve the service with information and human nature and to break through the shape of traditional human operation. They record characters and functions of surrounding environment of the houses which are entrusted by clients in their system to provide immediate and local information with house-buyer. This becomes personalizing and valuable selling information. It takes both quantitative and qualitative methods as research methods in the study, and agents of real estate using and not using WLAN in Kaohsiung City are picked as research objects. The study takes depth interviews to realize conditions for wireless network marketing using, motivation for wireless network marketing, and using mode for wireless network marketing, and it also analyzes the differences among wireless network marketing, traditional marketing, and internet marketing. Meanwhile the study use questionnaires survey to figure out the reason why some agents of real estate do not use WLAN for marketing. There are four findings in the study as follows: (1) Agents of real estate using WLAN for marketing are mainly direct branches and over 15 years old. (2) The traditional way for marketing used by agents of real estate using or not using WLAN for marketing is newspaper. (3) Agents of real estate using WLAN for marketing know the requirements of clients and can improve the quality of service better then agents of real estate not using WLAN for marketing. (4) The rate of agents of real estate not using WLAN for marketing at present would like to use WLAN for marketing in the future become more. The conclusion of the study indicates the marketing mode of using new science technology can inquire new information anytime and anywhere. The mode of marketing with WLAN provides business of agents of real estate with the immediate and local information, and this is the point that mass media can not achieve. There are difficulties for business of agents of real estate in Kaohsiung City to use high science technology as a kind of marketing mode. Kaohsiung City should try to upgrade M capacity step by step and take both traditional marketing and WLAN marketing to enhance the function of WLAN for marketing in business of agents of real estate.

In this thesis, the effects of Harmonics on the Top Oil and Hot Spot Temperatures of Power Transformers used in Turkish Electricity Transmission System have been investigated. Due to the solid state equipment, the harmonic levels increase. This effect raises the losses and temperatures in the transformer windings. None of the power transformers currently used in Turkey has measuring equipment suitable for measuring the Hot-Spot temperatures. In this study, a computer program is written in LABVIEW which measures the harmonics and calculates the temperatures in accordance with the methods recommended in IEEE Standards C57.110-1998 and C57.91-1995. Also for sample transformers the work has been verified by measuring the Top-Oil temperatures of the transformers and then comparing with the calculated results.

Pleasure is part of hedonic well-being, with roots back to Epicurus 2000 years ago. With the new evolving neuroscientific methods of the late 20th and beginning of the 21st century, we are now able to study the biological components of pleasure. This thesis aims to review empirical studies on the neural correlates of pleasure, which can have important implications for well-being, and treatment of addiction and affective disorders. Recent studies have suggested that pleasure can be separated into coding and causing. Discoveries show that causing of pleasure is created in so called hedonic hot spots, areas of the brain that intensely creates pleasure in the shell of nucleus accumbens and in the ventral pallidum. Areas that codes pleasure on the other hand is represented into more cortical areas of the brain, including orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insular cortex. There has been a growing understanding about how pleasure is represented in the brain, and a discussion on interpretations and limitations are provided followed by future research suggestions in the final section.

Low Pressure Die Casting (LPDC) process is one the most common casting process to produce structural automotive components, such as alloy wheels and suspension components. It has been identified that cavity filling and solidification process are two most critical aspects to produce premium quality casting components.During the solidification process of casting alloy, it is a well known phenomenon that metal experiences volumetric shrinkage due to its density difference between liquid and solid phase. When this volumetric shrinkage is not properly compensated, then a casting defect commonly known as solidification shrinkage occurs. The solidification shrinkage has very detrimental effects on structural integrity required for premium quality casting such as aluminium alloy wheels.Literature and practical experiences of foundry men show that it is critical to achieve unidirectional solidification pattern by avoiding an isolated hot spot in order to minimise the solidification shrinkage. However, it is found that the geometry of industrial casting applications is often constrained by other design factors that would not naturally avoid these isolated hot spots. The subject of this research, aluminium alloy wheels, is not excluded from this constraint.In aluminium alloy wheels, an isolated hot spot is commonly observed in an area known as rim and spoke junction due to its geometry constraints. Consequently, the solidification shrinkage is commonly experienced, which is undesirable due to its detrimental effects for the structural integrity of alloy wheels. In order to minimise the solidification shrinkage, forced cooling method is applied to avoid an isolated hot spot. The control of this forced cooling is achieved by cooling media, flow rate of cooling media and duration cooling circuit. Foundry experiments in industrial environment were conducted producing aluminium alloy wheels using commercially treated A356 (Al-Si) alloy, where different durations of cooling circuit were used to understand the sensitivity of solidification shrinkage formation to the duration of cooling circuit. This was followed by metallurgical structure analysis and numerical modelling to suggest the sensitivity of cooling circuit duration in controlling solidification shrinkage.The major finding conclusion of this research is that control of the shrinkage formation is not very sensitive to the duration cooling circuit. It is suggested that as casting solidifies initially from the mould wall, it retracts away from the cast-mould interface due to thermal contraction. Consequently, air gap is formed between casting and mould interface, creating an effective thermal resistance layer. Thereafter, heat transfer across the cast-mould interface is not sensitive to the change in the cooling channel which is a distance to the cast-mould interface.Some limitations of numerical modelling and metallurgical analysis were also identified during this research and recommendations were made to improve the accuracy of local hot spot prediction in production of aluminium alloy wheels. More specifically, numerical modelling of the effect of grain refinement and use of non homogeneous material property (particularly fraction of solid) for rapidly chilled area. Fraction of eutectic rather than secondary dendrites arm spacing is a proper microstructure parameter that can be used to locate the hot spot.

Temperature is one of the parameters that limits the output torque and reduces the lifespan of electrical machines. Models that can provide accurate estimation of the temperature field in the most critical components (e.g. windings) at lower computational effort can be useful to improve the design process and reduce the time to market. Depending on the application, engineers usually rely on hi-fidelity models, e.g. based on the finite elements method (FEM), or lower order models, e.g. thermal equivalent circuits (TECs). The aim of the present work is to provide new tools and methodologies to obtain the temperature distribution within the windings using reduced order hi-fidelity models or improved TEC that could account for any working condition, including AC effects. A new methodology, based on the multiple scales method (MSM), is introduced which homogenises the complex windings domain and allows for the estimation of its effective thermal properties. The homogenisation through the MSM is performed solving a single elementary cell. The MSM also allows for the reconstruction of the actual thermal field. Extensive numerical and experimental validation is provided, in particular for the case of electrical windings encapsulated with epoxy. The thermal homogenisation is then combined with an electromagnetic homogenisation technique to estimate winding losses including AC effects, such as proximity and skin effects. The coupled analysis is validated numerically on reference test problems, and experimentally, on a suitably built "motorette". The method is proven to correctly predict losses including thermal effects and to estimate magnitude and location of the temperature hotspot within the winding domain. This work also introduces a new approach for building thermal equivalent circuits that represents the most commonly employed modelling technique for electrical machine thermal analysis. Here the TEC approaches are thoroughly analysed, highlighting limitations. The proposed new technique extends the range of numerical accuracy, accounting for high Biot numbers (up to Bi = 2) and internal heat generation. The result of this approach is higher spatial resolution about the temperature field within the winding domain and thus enables improved information on hotspot location and magnitude. The method is experimentally validated and also applied to model an electrical machine for full-electric in-wheel vehicle propulsion.

This analysis explores the formation of stable hot spots and the overall shifts of repeat and near repeat residential burglary over time. Data were obtained from a small college town police department. There were 1,513 repeat residential burglaries between January 2003 and December 2009 that occurred at a total of 356 addresses. Based upon past research it is thought that repeat residential burglaries will cluster in time and space creating stable hot spots and that the centrographic measures of the burglaries will remain relatively constant from year to year. The results found support for the formation of stable hot spots but found that the area in which the repeat residential burglaries were occurring increased over time.

abstract: Underground transmission cables in power systems are less likely to experience electrical faults, however, resulting outage times are much greater in the event that a failure does occur. Unlike overhead lines, underground cables are not self-healing from flashover events. The faulted section must be located and repaired before the line can be put back into service. Since this will often require excavation of the underground duct bank, the procedure to repair the faulted section is both costly and time consuming. These added complications are the prime motivators for developing accurate and reliable ratings for underground cable circuits. This work will review the methods by which power ratings, or ampacity, for underground cables are determined and then evaluate those ratings by making comparison with measured data taken from an underground 69 kV cable, which is part of the Salt River Project (SRP) power subtransmission system. The process of acquiring, installing, and commissioning the temperature monitoring system is covered in detail as well. The collected data are also used to evaluate typical assumptions made when determining underground cable ratings such as cable hot-spot location and ambient temperatures. Analysis results show that the commonly made assumption that the deepest portion of an underground power cable installation will be the hot-spot location does not always hold true. It is shown that distributed cable temperature measurements can be used to locate the proper line segment to be used for cable ampacity calculations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Electrical Engineering 2015

Land use regulations are typically established as a response to development activity. For effective growth management and habitat preservation, the opposite should occur. This study considers tree preservation ordinances of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area as a means of evaluating development regulation in a metropolitan context. It documents the impact urban cores have on regulations and policies throughout their region, demonstrating that the same urban-rural gradient used to describe physical components of our metropolitan areas also holds true in terms of policy formation. Although sophistication of land use regulation generally dissipates as one moves away from an urban core, native habitat is more pristine at the outer edges. To more effectively protect native habitat, regional preservation measures are recommended.