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This work presents a study of the vernacular boats of modern Greece. A new typology of boats is offered, and an account is given of tools and boatyard practice, design and construction techniques. Evidence for these subjects is drawn from field surveys, museum collections, iconographic studies, and interviews with old boatbuilders. Although most of the information presented comes from the first half of the 20th century, background information from the 18th and 19th centuries is also covered. This longer historical perspective is particularly important in making comparisons between 20th century practices and the boatbuilding techniques of the past. There is evidence for the existence of two main periods of technical change in the industry, namely, the late 18th century, when new methods such as lofting were introduced, and the late 19th century, when changes in the wider shipbuilding industry initiated a process of decline in vernacular boatbuilding. At the same time however, a number of older techniques, for example certain moulding methods, survived at least into the first part of the 20th century. This work offers new insights into the design methods involved in the control of hull-form during "skeletonfirst" boatbuilding from the last two hundred years. It also offers an analysis of the structural integrity and strength of vernacular boats and shows how the structure of boats has evolved across time to incorporate new techniques and changes in boat function.

This thesis examines the methods used by high reliability industries to collect incident data regarding the human factors causes and uses this information to develop a tool for the investigation of accidents and incidents. The focus is the UK offshore oil gas industry, where attention to human behaviour in incident analysis has increased in importance with the reliability of technology. It is proposed that such analysis is also applicable to other high reliability organisations. Reviews of accident causation research, incident reporting and investigation systems, as well as safety climate studies, have provided the basis for three empirical studies. Two reporting forms and one investigation tool have been designed and tested in the offshore oil and gas industry. The first reporting form contains 11 open questions to be completed by the witnesses to incidents. The second reporting form contains 166 questions, which provide more cues for the users to describe the possible causes of the incident. The human factors investigation tool (HFIT) is a more complex method of collecting incident data and contains a total of 391 questions to aid investigators determine the contributing factors to the incident. This thesis provides some evidence that the two reporting forms and the investigation tool have improved the investigation of the human factors causes of incidents over and above the oil companies existing systems. This was accomplished by applying psychological theories and methods successfully used in other industries to develop the reporting and investigation system which focus mainly on the human and organisational causes of accidents. HFIT combines aspects from a number of investigation tools currently used in other industries, such as processes for investigation and causal codes. In addition, the question set of categories, elements, sub-elements and item codes has been developed as a computer programme which is a unique system for incident investigation. The system includes an original set of team working and safety culture questions based on current research in these areas.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (University of Texas Digital Repository, viewed on Sept. 9, 2009). Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-48).

Thesis (M.Eng.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2003. / Bibliography: leaves 75-80.

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing sources of renewable energy in the world. There has been a lot of research, development, and investment in wind energy in recent years. Offshore sites offer stronger winds and low turbulence, along with fewer noise and visual impacts. Establishing large turbines at deepwater sites offers promising opportunities for generating high power output while utilizing the favorable environmental conditions. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) have developed a very large wind turbine model with a 13.2 MW rating that has 100-meter long blades; this turbine is designated as the SNL100 13.2 MW wind turbine. With a hub height of 146 meters and a rotor diameter of 205 meters, such a large turbine is best suited for offshore sites. Developing a wind turbine model for an offshore site requires that a platform model be developed first. Of the various kinds of floating platforms, a moored semi-submersible platform supporting the wind turbine, which offers stability by virtue of the intercepted water-plane area, is an appropriate choice. The goal of this study is to develop a semi-submersible platform model to support the 13.2 MW wind turbine, while keeping loads and deflections within safe limits. The platform is developed based on work completed as part of the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration Continuation (OC4) Phase II project, which involved a 5 MW wind turbine supported by a semi-submersible platform. The present study focuses on three important topics: (i) development of the combined offshore wind turbine system model with the 13.2 MW wind turbine, a floating semi-submersible platform, and a mooring system; (ii) the entire procedure involved in modeling and analyzing first-order hydrodynamics using two codes, MultiSurf and WAMIT; and (iii) assembling of the integrated aero-hydro-servo-elastic model considering hydrodynamics in order to verify the steady-state and stochastic response of the integrated wind turbine system. / text

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