After 333 years under depths of the Baltic Sea, the warship Vasa was salvaged and nowadayslies in a dry dock inside the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. Its current support system, which consists on eighteen cradle-stanchions pairs of steel, is not able to handle the present loads in a satisfactory manner. Experimental tests showed that the Vasa's hull is gradually deforming mainly due to creep behavior. Thus, in order to preserve the Vasa for future generations, a new support system has to be implemented in a foreseeable future. There are several factors to take into consideration for its construction, which are: the degradation of the oak, its current mechanical properties and its inhomogeneity in addition to the climatic conditions of the Museum and the impossibility of taking unlimited specimens for its analysis. Hence, it is crucial to investigate the areas where the stresses and deformations are critical in the ship and how affected is the stiffness of the hull, its most important component. In this dissertation work two Finite Element Analyses are accomplished. The first study consists on the creation of a superelement of a section of Vasa's hull with the intention of investigating the influence of the dowels on the stiffness of the hull. In the second analysis a simplied model of the entire warship Vasa is created in order to analyze it and locate possible critical areas on the hull due to its own weight and the stresses originated by the support system. The software selected for these simulations are Abaqus and CreoSimulate 2.0. From the first study it is concluded that that the dowels do not have a signicant influence in the stiffness coeffcients of the hull. The second analysis determines that the maximum stresses are located on the bottom part of the hull. This dissertation work concludes with a suggested future work.

Au moment de sa création, en 1959, la Commission de la capitale nationale (CCN) a pour but d’intégrer les villes de Hull et d’Ottawa, cette union devant symboliser, plus largement, celle des deux peuples fondateurs du Canada. Or, ce projet a provoqué d’importants débats politiques à Hull au fil des années. En se voyant ainsi intégrée à la région de la capitale nationale (RCN), Hull perdait une partie de son autonomie. Cette thèse propose une étude de la CCN pendant la rénovation urbaine de l’Île de Hull des années 1960 et 1970 afin d’y cerner le rôle joué par le débat sur la question nationale. Il s’agit d’un élément moteur de l’action de la CCN. En fait, la question nationale se trouve à plusieurs niveaux de la problématique. Ce sujet peu exploré donne à cette recherche son originalité. En examinant les relations entre les acteurs de la revitalisation du centre-ville, soit la CCN, le conseil municipal de Hull, les regroupements citoyens et le gouvernement du Québec, la thèse opte pour une perspective à la fois politique, institutionnelle et sociale. Un jeu de pouvoir entre les paliers gouvernementaux prend place alors que Hull et Ottawa se disputent les investissements fédéraux. Les citoyens de l’Île de Hull s’engagent dans les assemblées citoyennes et y développent une conscience régionale qui tardait à s’affirmer.

This thesis mainly focuses on analyzing and pricing European swaption via Crank{Nicolson Finite Dierence method. This paper begins with some rather common instruments, denitions and valuations are also provided. MATLAB is the main computer language used throughout this paper, for the numerical examples, the MATLAB codes are also provide in the appendix in order for reader to reproduce the result. Also, the paper extends to price cancellable swap in the end.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2007. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed Jan. 29, 2008). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2007. / Includes abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-328). Available also via the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1970. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Au moment de sa création, en 1959, la Commission de la capitale nationale (CCN) a pour but d’intégrer les villes de Hull et d’Ottawa, cette union devant symboliser, plus largement, celle des deux peuples fondateurs du Canada. Or, ce projet a provoqué d’importants débats politiques à Hull au fil des années. En se voyant ainsi intégrée à la région de la capitale nationale (RCN), Hull perdait une partie de son autonomie. Cette thèse propose une étude de la CCN pendant la rénovation urbaine de l’Île de Hull des années 1960 et 1970 afin d’y cerner le rôle joué par le débat sur la question nationale. Il s’agit d’un élément moteur de l’action de la CCN. En fait, la question nationale se trouve à plusieurs niveaux de la problématique. Ce sujet peu exploré donne à cette recherche son originalité. En examinant les relations entre les acteurs de la revitalisation du centre-ville, soit la CCN, le conseil municipal de Hull, les regroupements citoyens et le gouvernement du Québec, la thèse opte pour une perspective à la fois politique, institutionnelle et sociale. Un jeu de pouvoir entre les paliers gouvernementaux prend place alors que Hull et Ottawa se disputent les investissements fédéraux. Les citoyens de l’Île de Hull s’engagent dans les assemblées citoyennes et y développent une conscience régionale qui tardait à s’affirmer.

This paper defines tropical projective space, TP^n, and the tropical general linear group TPGL(n). After discussing some simple examples of tropical polynomials and their hypersurfaces, a strategy is given for finding all conics in the tropical projective plane. The classification of conics and an analysis of the coefficient space corresponding to such conics is given.

The need to design a controller that self-schedules itself during the flight of an aircraft has been an active area of research. New methods have been developed beyond the traditional gain-scheduling approach. One such design method leads to a linear parameter varying (LPV) controller that changes based on the real-time variation of system dynamics. Before such a controller can be designed, the system has to also be represented as an LPV system. The current effort proposes a LPV modeling technique that is inspired by an affine LPV modeling techniques found in recent research. The properties of the proposed modeling method are investigated and compared to the affine modeling technique. It is shown that the proposed modeling technique represents the actual system behavior more closely than the existing affine modeling technique. To study the effect of the two LPV modeling techniques on controller design, a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller using linear matrix inequality (LMI) formulation is designed. This control design method provides a measure of conservatism that is used to compare the controllers based on the different modeling techniques. An F-16 short-period model is used to implement the modeling techniques and design the controllers. It was found that the controller based on the proposed LPV modeling method is less conservative than the controller based on the existing LPV method. Interesting features of LMI formulation for multiple plant models were also discovered during the exercise. A stability robustness analysis was also conducted as an additional comparison of the performance of the controllers designed using the two modeling methods. A scalar measure, called the probability of instability, is used as a measure of robustness. It was found that the controller based on the proposed modeling technique has the necessary robustness properties even though it is less conservative than the controller designed based on the existing modeling approach. / Master of Science