Combustion research currently aims to reduce emissions, whilst improving the fuel economy. Burning fuel in excess of air, or lean-burn combustion, is a promising alternative to conventional combustion, and can achieve these requirements simultaneously. However, lean-burn combustion poses new challenges, especially for internal combustion (IC) engines. Therefore, models used to predict such combustion have to be reliable, accurate and robust. In this work, the flamelet approach in the Reynolds-Averaged Navier- Stokes framework, is used to simulate flames relevant to spark-ignition IC engines. A central quantity in the current modelling approach is the scalar dissipation rate, which represents coupling between reaction and diffusion, as well as the flame front dynamics. In the first part of this thesis, the predictive ability of two reaction rate closures, viz. strained and unstrained flamelet models, are assessed through a series of experimental test cases. These cases are: spherically propagating methane- and hydrogen-air flames and combustion in a closed vessel. In addition to these models, simpler algebraic closures are also used for comparison. It is shown that the strained flamelet model can predict unconfined, spherically propagating methane-air flames reasonably well. By comparing spherical flame results with planar flames, under identical thermochemical and turbulence conditions, it is shown that the turbulent flame speed of spherical flames are 10 to 20% higher than that of planar flames, whilst the mean reaction rates are less influenced by the flame geometry. Growth of the flame brush thickness in unsteady spherical flames have been attributed to turbulent diffusion in past studies. However, the present analyses revealed that the dominant cause for this increase is the heat-release induced convective effects, which is a novel observation. Unlike methane-air flames, hydrogen-air flames have non-unity Lewis numbers. Hence, a novel two degrees of freedom approach, using two progress variables, is used to describe the thermochemistry of hydrogen-air flames. Again, it is shown that the strained flamelet model is able to predict the experimental flame growth for stoichiometric hydrogen-air flames. However, none of the models used in this work were able to predict lean hydrogen-air flames. This is because these flames are thermo-diffusively unstable and the current approach is inadequate to represent them. When combustion takes place inside a closed vessel, the compression of the end gases by the propagating flame causes the pressure to rise. This is more representative of real IC engines, where intermittent combustion takes place. The combustion models are implemented in a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, STAR-CD, and it is shown that both strained and unstrained flamelet models are able to predict the experimental pressure rise in a closed vessel. In the final part of this work, a spark-ignition engine is simulated in STAR-CD using the flamelet model verified for simpler geometries. It is shown that this model, together with a skeletal mechanism for iso-octane, compares reasonably well with experimental cylinder pressure rise. Results obtained from this model are compared with two models available in STAR- CD. These models require some level of tuning to match the experiments, whereas the modelling approach used in this work does not involve any tunable parameters.

This thesis presents the results of an investigation of the differences in combustion between gasoline and natural gas in a spark-ignition engine. Combustion development is influenced by calorific value, specific heat, flame speed and the gaseous or liquid state of the fuel. Simple simulation programs were set up to investigate the effects of low flame speed and higher specific heat of the fuel-air mixture. Actual performance was measured on a single cylinder test engine using ionization probes as flame detectors and a pressure pick-up. The experimental results show that longer ignition delay and limited flame speed at high pressure and temperature are the main reasons for' the power loss of natural gas at high engine speed; this is in addition to the basic loss due to the replacement of air by gaseous fuel in the cylinder. From calculations, it was learned that specific heat and dissociation differences had little effect on power. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Mechanical Engineering, Department of / Graduate

Diploma thesis occupy with preparation of porous material from magnesium powder with a HAp admixture by cold pressing followed by spark plasma sintering (SPS). This thesis contain both preparation of bulk material, diffusion plot and charakterization of materials based on the compaction process conditions. On the basis of physical mechanical characteristics, the impact of the pressing process on the subsequent sintering and the resulting material properties are evaluated. Bulk material is characterized considering to structure and physical–mechanical properties. Properties of final metarial will serve to optimize conditions for process of bulk material preparation.

This diploma thesis deals with research and preparation of bulk materials based on the Mg–Al–Ti system. The theoretical part summarizes the basic knowledge about magnesium alloys, focusing mainly on Mg–Al and Mg–Ti systems. Furthermore, basic information on powder metallurgy methods was included here, from the production of powder materials, through their compaction, to heat treatment and spark plasma sintering (SPS). The theoretical part ends with literature review on the current research of the Mg–Al–Ti system. In the experimental part, bulk materials based on the Mg–Al–Ti system was prepared using traditional methods of powder metallurgy, as well as using the SPS method. The microstructure of the material, elemental and phase composition was examined in this thesis. Subsequently, Vickers hardness and flexural strength were measured, and fractographic observation of the fracture surface was performed. It was found that the aluminum was completely dissolved during the heat treatment, but the titanium particles remained almost intact in the material and worked as a particulate reinforcement. Materials prepared by methods of conventional powder metallurgy showed increased porosity compared to materials prepared by the SPS, resulting in lower hardness and flexural strength. The hardness increased with increasing the amount of aluminum and titanium and with the amount of magnesium phase . Fractographic observation of the fracture surface suggests that a diffuse connection between the reinforcement and the matrix may have occurred after the sintering process.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Network analysis is an important research task which explains the relationships among various entities in a given domain. Most of the existing approaches of network analysis compute global properties of a network, such as transitivity, diameter, and all-pair shortest paths. They also study various non-random properties of a network, such as graph densifi cation with shrinking diameter, small diameter, and scale-freeness. Such approaches enable us to understand real-life networks with global properties. However, the discovery of the local topological building blocks within a network is an important task, and examples include clique enumeration, graphlet counting, and motif counting. In this paper, my focus is to fi nd an efficient solution of k-clique enumeration problem. A clique is a small, connected, and complete induced subgraph over a large network. However, enumerating cliques using sequential technologies is very time-consuming. Another promising direction that is being adopted is a solution that runs on distributed clusters of machines using the Hadoop mapreduce framework. However, the solution suffers from a general limitation of the framework, as Hadoop's mapreduce performs substantial amounts of reading and writing to disk. Thus, the running times of Hadoop-based approaches suffer enormously. To avoid these problems, we propose an e cient, scalable, and distributed solution, kc-spark , for enumerating cliques in real-life networks using the Apache Spark in-memory cluster computing framework. Experiment results show that kc-spark can enumerate k-cliques from very large real-life networks, whereas a single commodity machine cannot produce the same desired result in a feasible amount of time. We also compared kc-spark with Hadoop mapreduce solutions and found the algorithm to be 80-100 percent faster in terms of running times. On the other hand, we compared with the triangle enumeration with Hadoop mapreduce and results shown that kc-spark is 8-10 times faster than mapreduce implementation with the same cluster setup. Furthermore, the overall performance of kc-spark is improved by using Spark's inbuilt caching and broadcast transformations.

Sintering parameter effects on the microstructure of boron carbide and boron carbide/titanium diboride composites are investigated. The resulting microstructure and composition are characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray microscopy (XRM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Starting powder size distribution effects on microstructure are present and effect the mechanical properties. Reactive spark plasma sintering introduces boron nitride (BN) intergranular films (IGF's) and their effects on fracture toughness, hardness and flexural strength are shown. Mechanical testing of Vickers hardness, 3-point bend and Chevron notch was done and the microstructural effects on the resulting mechanical properties are investigated.

Elevated concentrations of mercury in soils are quite hazardous to flora and fauna and water bodies near these soils. This makes continuous monitoring of mercury very essential. This work compares two potential spectroscopic methods LIBS and SIBS at their optimum experimental conditions for mercury monitoring. The experimental conditions for Hg measurements with LIBS and SIBS were determined and calibration was developed. The limits of detection (LODs) of Hg in soil were calculated from the Hg calibration curves. The LOD for mercury (Hg) in soil calculated using LIBS and SIBS are 483 parts-per-million and 20 parts-per-million, respectively. The present study indicates that SIBS is more efficient with powder samples in a low concentration region for quantification of mercury in soils while LIBS is efficient in the region of higher concentrations using pellet samples. Both these techniques can be further investigated and improved for in-situ analysis of soils.

Syfte och frågeställning: Detta arbete syftar till att utvärdera en metod för att mäta kraftverkan kvantitativt av slag och spark med avseende på validitet och reliabilitet med målet att svara på frågan: Går det att mäta kraftverkan i slag- och sparkartekniker (genomförande av slag- eller sparkrörelse) på ett enkelt och tillgängligt sätt med god validitet och reliabilitet med den valda metoden? Metod: Detta arbete innehåller flera delar. En litteraturstudie som syftade till att få en bild över forskningsläget kring ämnet. Mätutrustning anskaffades, testutrustning och testmiljö byggdes. Därefter testades validiteten och reliabiliteten i mätutrustningen. Mätutrustningen som användes i den här studien var en vattenvattenfylld droppformad slagsäck med en sensor, Aqua Training Bag (ATB säck), som mätte kraft i slagen. För att kunna mäta validiteten i mätutrustningen användes en mätpåle. Mätpålen bestod av en träbalk med en kalibrerad mätsensor som mätte kraften vid sammanstötningen med slagsäcken. I första delen av testerna släpptes mätpålen likt en vagga (slagvagga), upphängd i taket med snören, mot fyra olika träffområden på slagsäcken. Slagvaggan släpptes från tre olika höjder mot respektive träffområde. I andra delen av testerna utdelades slag med varierande kraft med mätpålen mot ATB säcken. Fem 30 sekunders slagserier genomfördes med mätpålen. Mätvärden från slagsäcken och mätpålen jämfördes med varandra. Resultat: Resultaten visar att det finns en signifikant korrelation mellan uppmätta variablerna maxkraft och impuls från mätpålen och mätvärdena från ATB säcken. Det finns en hög positiv linjär korrelation mellan uppmätta variablerna maxkraft och impuls från mätpålen och kraften i ATB säcken. Höga värden på determinationskoefficienten visar att variationen i kraften i ATB säcken kan förklaras av ändringar i variablerna maxkraft och impuls från mätpålen. Slutsats: Efter att ha validerat metoden med en kalibrerad mätpåle går det att dra slutsatsen att det går att mäta kraftverkan i slag- och sparkartekniker med god validitet och reliabilitet med ATB säcken. Metoden är enkel och tillgänglig då det finns på kommersiella marknaden.

From past experiments conducted with high intensity lasers, it has been known for some time that laser matter interactions result in the emission of short, transient electromagnetic pulses. Previous investigations into laser generated electromagnetic pulses provide basic information regarding frequencies where such pulses may be present, along with the time duration of the pulses. Such investigations have also demonstrated a number of measurement techniques in which basic information on the pulses may be obtained. The purpose of this current investigation is to obtain a more thorough description and understands of electromagnetic pulses generated for laser matter interaction. To this end, spatial radiation patterns emanating from various laser excited matter sources was predicted using antenna theory for far field radiators. Experimentally, it is the intention of this investigation to gather comprehensive time and frequency domain data on laser matter generated electromagnetic pulses using a number of specific laser targets. Radiation detection techniques using broadband, calibrated EMC horn antennas were devised. A unique measurement system known as an inverse superhetereodyne receiver was designed, tested and demonstrated. An experimental setup using such instrumentation was established. Using the above instrumentation and experimental setup should yield comprehensive time and frequency domain data over a spectra range of 1-40 GHz and with a time resolution of 50 ps. Because the experimental system employed is calibrated, measurements can be corresponded to incident electromagnetic fields. Several tests were conducted to ensure the proper operation of experimental apparatus. A modulation test was conducted on the inverse superhetereodyne receiver to ensure that the experimentally observed signals appeared when and where predicted within the receiver's bandwidth. The experimental setup was used to measure radiation emitted from an electrostatic discharge source of known distance and discharge voltage. Frequency domain data from the discharges were collected and compiled using a Matlab application ultimately intended to measure laser matter interaction generated electromagnetic pulses, resulting in a compiled frequency domain description comprising 1-17 GHz. The inverse Fourier transform was used to retrieve the time domain response from the compiled data. The discharge gaps characteristics where systematically altered as to allow a parametric study of the compiled data. The discharge measurements demonstrate the measurement system's ability to analyze unknown, short duration; broadband microwave signals.

No abstract provided. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Scope and contents: The principal aim of the present investigation is to extend our knowledge of the merits and demerits of the mass spectroscopic method of solid analysis. This dissertation provides information concerning relative ionization efficiencies for several elements and factors which effect these efficiencies. Secondary purposes of this work are 1) to make an independent determination of the temperature of the vacuum spark, 2) to resolve the current discrepancy concerning the value of the C3+/C2+ ratio from graphite electrodes in a spark and, finally, 3) to provide an accurate value for the Ni58/Ni60 abundance ratio.