This 17 square mile area, on the western plunge of the Catawba syncline and the eastern plunge of the Price Mountain anticline, consists of the Cambrian Rome and Elbrook Formations thrust over younger Cambrian, Ordovician, and Mississippian rocks. The more or less age autochthonous rocks are the Cambrian dolomites of uncertain and Copper Ridge Formation, the Ordovician Chepultepec, Longview, and Mascot-Kingsport Formations, the Middle Ordovician limestones, and the Liberty Hall Formation; and the Mississippian Price and Stroubles Formations. All fault structures within the area have formed during post-late Mississippian time. The apparent sequence of faulting is: (1) the westward thrusting of the Catawba syncline over the Price Mountain anticline; (2) the emplacement of the Pulaski thrust sheet; and (3) reverse movement along the eastward dipping Yellow Sulphur fault, which raised the Catawba syncline about 3000 feet relative to the Price Mountain anticline. Subsequent erosion has exposed Mississippian rocks in Price Mountain window of the Pulaski thrust and Cambrian rocks through the Blacksburg window of the Pulaski thrust sheet. Erosion has also revealed that near the base of the Pulaski thrust sheet are brecciated with the Elbrook, being typically a crush conglomerate, and the Rome being a phyllite breccia. / Master of Science

Three topics are developed: interval convex programming, and program generation techniques. The interval convex programming problem is similar to the convex programming problem of the real number system except that all parameters are specified as intervals of real numbers rather than as real scalars. The interval programming solution procedure involves the solution of a series of 2n real valued convex programs where n is the dimension of the space. The solution of an interval programming problem is an interval vector which contains all possible solutions to any real valued convex program which may be realized. Attempts to improve the efficiency of the interval convex programming problem lead to the eventual development of a new solution procedure for the real valued linear programming problem, Orthogonal linear programming. This new algorithm evolved from some heuristic procedures which were initially examined in the attempt to improve solution efficiency. In the course of testing these heuristics, which were unsuccessful, procedures were developed whereby it is possible to generate discrete and continuous mathematical programs with randomly chosen parameters, but known solutions. / Ph. D.

Power electronics is inevitably concerned with the processing of variable speed power generations such as in wind turbines, aircraft systems and naval on-board ship systems. The nature of these types of energy is distinct in that their frequency and power vary depending on the speed of the prime-mover. To make use of the variable speed energy, a power processing scheme which transforms the variable speed energy into a constant frequency power is required. There are measures such as mechanical and electrical links for such purposes. Electrical link systems are chosen in this study due to their fast responses and high reliabilities. The power conversion stage may be a dc link with a line-commutated converter, a dc link with a self-commutated inverter, or a cycloconverter. The line-commutated converter and cycloconverter power stages require a fixed frequency supply for operation whereas the self-commutated inverter is capable of stand-alone operation, thus making it attractive. Two cases of variable speed power generation using a permanent magnet synchronous machine (hereafter referred to as PMSM) and a switched reluctance machine (hereafter referred to as SRM) were studied in this dissertation. The possible use of PMSMs has been proved by the good correlation between the experimental results and the theoretically predicted results. Three different control strategies have been proposed, implemented in hardware, and experimentally verified. The efficiency of the VSCF power conversion with a self commutated converter were comparable to the one using a line-commutated converter. A novel converter topology with no dc link capacitor has been proposed for the application of SRMs to the VSCF power conversion. The proposed topology directly links the constant frequency ac source to the SRM. This feature enhances the reliability of the power conversion scheme and reduces the weight and volume of the system. The correlation between the theoretical and experimental results of some key issues showed the feasibility of the proposed VSCF power conversion scheme. In the course of the study, one stage ac to dc power conversion with a compact transformer was required for dc loads. However, phase-controlled ac to dc conversion has the disadvantages of low power factor and harmonic pollution on the utility side, particularly in the case where dc voltage regulation is required. Therefore, a novel single phase rectifier for dc load which provides ohmic isolation with a high frequency transformer is extensively investigated. The proposed scheme had a wide output variation on dc output while maintaining unity power factor and sinusoidal current in the ac input side. Three control strategies for the operation of the converter were proposed and verified experimentally. The harmonic spectra on ac and dc sides are analytically derived and experimentally proved under some load conditions. / Ph. D.