Lipídios em solução aquosa formam uma variedade de estruturas diferentes que incluem monocamadas de surfactantes na interface água-ar, conhecidas como monocamadas de Langmuir, como também vesículas unilamelares ou plurilamelares no interior da solução. Sob variação de temperatura, estas estruturas apresentam diferentes fases, observadas através de calorimetria ou variação isotérmica de pressão lateral. Entre as fases apresentadas por estas estruturas, as duas mais importantes se diferenciam pela ordem das cadeias lipídicas. Entendemos que do ponto de vista das fases termodinâmicas, simplificado e qualitativo, monocamadas de Langmuir e bicamadas lipídicas constituem o mesmo sistema físico sob vínculos diferentes. Neste trabalho, desenvolvemos um modelo estatístico para o estudo da transição ordem-desordem destes sistemas, que inclui flutuações de densidade, estas ausentes no modelo de Doniach, de 1980, a base para muitos estudos teóricos para transições de fase de sistemas lipídicos. Flutuações de densidade são fundamentais na descrição de vesículas lipídicas carregadas, compostas de surfactante cuja cabeça polar se dissocia em água. O estudo em laboratório das propriedades térmicas e estruturais de membranas artificiais de lipídios carregados _e relativamente recente, e foi desenvolvido em grande parte no Laboratório de Biofísica do IFUSP. Tais membranas apresentam comportamento distinto das membranas neutras, notoriamente influenciado pela concentração de sal na solução. Isto motivou o desenvolvimento de uma segunda versão do modelo, na qual passamos a descrever a cabeça polar do lipídio em termos de um par de cargas opostas, sendo que a camada lipídica foi acoplada ao modelo primitivo restrito na rede, que desempenha o papel da solução salina. O primeiro modelo foi estudado por aproximação de campo médio e por simulações de Monte Carlo, e o segundo modelo foi investigado apenas através de simulações numéricas. O estudo do modelo carregado foi precedido por uma investigação criteriosa das técnicas de simulação de sistemas com interação Coulombiana, resultando no desenvolvimento de uma metodologia adequada a condições de contorno não isotrópicas e com custo computacional reduzido. Os modelos estatísticos propostos por nós levaram a dois resultados importantes. O modelo para camadas lipídicas neutras é, até hoje, o único modelo estatístico que descreve tanto a transição gel-fluido de bicamadas lipídicas, como a transição líquido condensado - líquido expandido\" de monocamadas de Langmuir, além de descrever também a transição líquido expandido gás na interface água-ar. O modelo para camadas lipídicas que se dissociam em água reproduz a variação abrupta na dissociação, concomitante com a transição ordem-desordem, propriedade que permite interpretar estudos experimentais relativos à condutividade das soluções lipídicas correspondentes. / Lipids in aqueous solution form a variety of different structures which include monolayers of surfactants at the water-air interface, known as Langmuir monolayers, as well as unilamellar or plurilamellar vesicles within the solution. Under temperature variation, these structures display different phases, observed through calorimetry or isothermal variation of lateral pressure. Among the phases presented by these structures, the two most important differ in the order of the lipid chains. From the point of view of the thermodynamic phases, our understanding is that Langmuir monolayers and lipid bilayers constitute the same physical system under different constraints. In this work, we develop a statistical model for the order - disorder transition of lipid bilayers which adds density fluctuations to Doniach\'s 1980 model, which has been considered the basis for many theoretical studies for lipid systems phase transitions. Density fluctuations are essential in the description of the properties of charged vesicles in solution, which consist of surfactants whose polar head dissociates in water. The study in the laboratory of thermal and structural properties of artificial charged lipid membranes is relatively new, and was developed largely in the IFUSP Laboratory of Biophysics. Such membranes exhibit distinct behavior if compared to neutral membranes, notoriously influenced by the solution salt concentration. The experimental investigations motivated us to develop a second model, in which we describe the polar headgroups through a pair of opposite charges. The lipid layer is attached to the lattice restricted primitive model, which plays the role of the saline solution. The first model was studied both through a mean-field approximation as well as through Monte Carlo simulations, whereas the second model was investigated only through numerical simulations. The study of the charged model was preceded by a thorough investigation of the simulation techniques for Coulomb interaction systems, leading to the development of a methodology suitable for non isotropic boundary conditions and with reduced computational cost. The statistical models proposed by us led to two important results. To our knowledge, our model for neutral lipid layers is the only statistical model which, aside from describing simultaneously both the gel-fluid transition of lipid bilayers and the condensed liquid - expanded liquid transition of Langmuir monolayers, also describes the gas- expanded liquid transition at the air-water interface. The model for lipid layers that dissociate in water reproduces the abrupt change in dissociation, concomitant with the order-disorder transition, a property that allows us to interpret experimental studies related to conductivity of the corresponding lipid solutions.

Os processos envolvidos em condução eletrônica de polímeros condutores são muito complicados devido à intricada morfologia estrutural de tais materiais. Realizamos medidas de condutividade alternada em filmes de polianilina em uma grande faixa de freqüência, variando o grau de dopagem dos filmes e temperatura. Ao mesmo tempo, desenvolvemos um modelo estatístico de rede de resistores para descrever a estrutura polimérica e para simular as componentes real e imaginária de sua resistividade alternada. Leva-se em conta a polidispersividade do material, assim como os mecanismos de transportes de carga intracadeia e intercadeia. Pela aplicação de uma técnica de matriz de transferência, o modelo reproduz medidas de resistividade alternada realizadas em filmes de polianilina em diferentes graus de dopagem e em diferentes temperaturas. Nossos resultados indicam que os mecanismos intercadeias governam o comportamento da resistividade em regiões de baixa freqüência enquanto que, para altas freqüências, mecanismos intracadeia são dominantes. Essa simulação foi desenvolvida para redes bi e tridimensional. Aplicamos, também, esse método para estudar sistemas isoenergéticos de estrutura desordenada (poliacetileno estirado), sistemas isoenergéticos de estrutura desordenada (poliacetileno não-estirado) e sistemas não-isoenergéticos de estrutura desordenada (polianilina). Finalmente, uma comparação entre esses três materiais, permitiu-se discutir, em detalhes, a distribuição de barreiras de energia potencial e a diferença dos níveis de energia que controlam o mecanismo de salto dos portadores eletrônicos. / The processes involved in electronic conduction of conducting polymers are very complicated due to the intricate morphological structure of such materials. We carried out alternating conductivity measurements in polyaniline films in a large frequency range, varying the doping degree of the films and temperature. At the same time, we developed a statistical model of resistor networks to describe a polymer structure and to simulate the real and imaginary components of their ac resistivities. This model takes into account the polydispersiveness of the material as well as intrachain and interchain charge transport mechanisms. By the application of a transfer-matrix technique, it reproduces ac resistivity measurements carried out with polyaniline films in different doping degrees and temperatures. Our results indicate the interchain mechanisms govern the resistivity behavior in the low frequency region while, for higher frequencies, intrachain mechanisms are dominated. These simulations were developed in bi and tridimensional lattice. We also applied this method to study ordered structure in isoenergetic systems (stretched polyacetylene), disordered structure in isoenergetic systems (normal polyacetylene), and disordered structure in non-isoenergetic systems (polyaniline). Finally, a comparison between these three materials, allowed us to discuss in detail the energy barriers distribution and the difference in energy levels, which control the hopping mechanisms of the electronic carriers.

Modern software systems are increasingly characterized by uncertainties in the operating context and user requirements. These uncertainties are difficult to predict at design time. Achieving the quality goals of such systems depends on the ability of the software to deal with these uncertainties at runtime. A self-adaptive system employs a feedback loop to continuously monitor and adapt itself to achieve particular quality goals (i.e., adaptation goals) regardless of uncertainties. Current research applies formal techniques to provide guarantees for adaptation goals, typically using exhaustive verification techniques. Although these techniques offer strong guarantees for the goals, they suffer from well-known state explosion problem. In this thesis, we take a broader perspective and focus on two types of guarantees: (1) functional correctness of the feedback loop, and (2) guaranteeing the adaptation goals in an efficient manner. To that end, we present ActivFORMS (Active FORmal Models for Self-adaptation), a formally founded model-driven approach for engineering self-adaptive systems with guarantees. ActivFORMS achieves functional correctness by direct execution of formally verified models of the feedback loop using a reusable virtual machine. To efficiently provide guarantees for the adaptation goals with a required level of confidence, ActivFORMS applies statistical model checking at runtime. ActivFORMS supports on the fly changes of adaptation goals and updates of the verified feedback loop models that meet the changed goals. To demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the approach, we applied ActivFORMS in several domains: warehouse transportation, oceanic surveillance, tele assistance, and IoT building security monitoring. / Marie Curie CIG, FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, Project ID: 303791

Cette thèse présente les travaux réalisés en vue de l’élaboration d’un modèle cardiaque associant croissance, mouvement et circulation sanguine pour permettre ensuite la construction d’un modèle patient à partir d’un modèle de population. Le premier axe de ce travail est la simulation de la croissance bi-ventriculaire. Un modèle existant de surface unique, calculé à l’aide de méthodes statistiques, a été généralisé à un modèle bi-ventriculaire puis appliqué à la tétralogie de Fallot (ToF). Le deuxième axe concerne la modélisation du mouvement cardiaque au niveau de la population. Un modèle d’ordre réduit basé sur un modèle Polyaffine et LogDemons a été proposé. Il simule la dynamique cardiaque avec peu de paramètres. Les paramètres de transformation sont analysés par des méthodes statistiques. Un modèle de mouvement moyen a été calculé pour représenter le mouvement standard de la population. Le troisième axe s'intéresse à la simulation de l’écoulement sanguin à l’échelle de la population. La complexité des simulations spécifiques à un patient a été réduite grâce à l’utilisation de méthodes d’analyse d’image, de dynamique des fluides numérique et de réduction d’ordre de modèle. La simulation du flux sanguin dans l’artère pulmonaire pour des patients ToF a permis de mieux comprendre l’impact du sang régurgité sur la pression et la vitesse. Étant donné nos contributions sur ces trois axes, nous sommes maintenant en bonne position pour élaborer le modèle couplé des contributions interdépendantes de la croissance, du mouvement et de l'écoulement sanguin. Ce modèle pourrait être utilisé afin d'aider la planification de la thérapie chez les patients atteints de maladies cardiaques. / This thesis presents work towards a coupled model of cardiac growth, motion, and blood flow to enable predictive patient-specific models to be built from a population-based model. The first axis of this work is to simulate bi-ventricular growth through aging. A previously proposed single surface model computed using statistical methods was extended to a bi-ventricular model and applied to Tetralogy of Fallot patients to model the complex evolution of the ventricles due to the pathology. The second axis concerns the development of a model to simulate cardiac motion at a population level. A reduced-order cardiac-specific motion model was proposed to simulate the motion dynamics with a small number of parameters using a Polyaffine and LogDemons based model. From the computed transformations, the parameters were analysed using statistical methods to obtain population-based measures of normality. A mean motion model was derived to represent the normal motion for a given population. The third axis is to develop a model of population-based flow dynamics. The complexity of patient-specific simulations was reduced by combining image analysis, computational fluid dynamics and model order reduction techniques. Blood flow through the pulmonary artery in Tetralogy of Fallot patients was simulated to better understand the impact of regurgitated blood on pressure and velocity. Given our contributions on these three axes, we are now in a good position to couple the models in order to capture the interrelated contributions of growth, motion and flow. Such a model could be used to aid in therapy planning and decision making for patients with heart disease.

Data storage in current hard disk drives is limited by three factors. These are thermal stability of recorded data, the ability to store data, and the ability to read back the stored data. An attempt to alleviate one factor can affect others. This ultimately limits magnetic recording densities that can be achieved using traditional forms of data storage. In order to advance magnetic recording and postpone these inhibiting factors, new approaches are required. One approach is recording on Bit Patterned Media (BPM) where the medium is patterned into nanometer-sized magnetic islands where each stores a binary digit.This thesis presents a statistical model of write errors in BPM composed of single domain islands. The model includes thermal activation in a calculation of write errors without resorting to time consuming micromagnetic simulations of huge populations of islands. The model incorporates distributions of position, magnetic and geometric properties of islands. In order to study the impact of island geometry variations on the recording performance of BPM systems, the magnetometric demagnetising factors for a truncated elliptic cone, a generalised geometry that reasonably describe most proposed island shapes, were derived analytically.The inclusion of thermal activation was enabled by an analytic derivation of the energy barrier for a single domain island. The energy barrier is used in a calculation of transition rates that enable the calculation of error rates. The model has been used to study write-error performance of BPM systems having distributions of position, geometric and magnetic property variations. Results showed that island intrinsic anisotropy and position variations have a larger impact on write-error performance than geometric variations.The model was also used to study thermally activated Adjacent Track Erasure (ATE) for a specific write head. The write head had a rectangular main pole of 13 by 40 nm (cross-track x down-track) with pole trailing shield gap of 5 nm and pole side shield gap of 10 nm. The distance from the pole to the top surface of the medium was 5 nm, the medium was 10 nm thick and there was a 2 nm interlayer between the soft underlayer (SUL) and the medium, making a total SUL to pole spacing of 17 nm. The results showed that ATE would be a major problem and that cross-track head field gradients need to be more tightly controlled than down-track. With the write head used, recording at 1 Tb/in² would be possible on single domain islands.

La Directiva Marco Europea del Agua es la norma legislativa más importante que ha establecido la Comisión Europea, en materia de aguas, y constituye un importante avance para lograr una gestión sostenible del agua. Esta norma exige que todas las aguas, alcancen en el 2015 un status bueno e indica los pasos a seguir para conseguirlo, mediante el establecimiento de objetivos ecológicos y medioambientales en las mismas. Para concretar estos objetivos, la DMA ha establecido un sistema de indicadores biológicos, hidro-morfológicos y fisicoquímicos que determinan la calidad ecológica de las diferentes masas de agua. Para proporcionar una clasificación ecológica de las masas de agua costeras en la Comunidad Valencia existe una red de monitoreo costera que analiza la biomasa de fitoplancton, de forma indirecta a partir de la clorofila a. En las mismas, se establece la calidad de las aguas costeras en base al valor del percentil 90 del total de mediciones de clorofila a recogidas en sucesivas campañas mensuales durante un período de 5 años. Se ha considerado la posibilidad de reducir el número de campañas realizadas a lo largo del año y la posibilidad de reducir el número de estaciones revisadas en cada campaña y que consecuencias lleva esta reducción por estado ecológico. Los resultados del estudio exploratorio para la reducción temporal, muestran que una reducción no controlada en el número de campañas realizadas a lo largo del año en las aguas costeras valencianas, puede producir alteraciones impredecibles en su clasificación ecológica. Un estudio conjunto de las series pluviométricas, de oleaje, salinidad y clorofila a, para los tres climas marítimos presentes en las aguas costeras valencianas, ha permitido observar que el equilibrio trófico de los ecosistemas, en esta zona, depende tanto de la influencia antropogénica como de factores medioambientales determinados por la estacionalidad e irregularidad del clima. En base a ello, se han definido tres tipos de ecosistema / Abramic, A. (2011). ANALYSIS OF MONITORING NETWORK SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL REDUCTION AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES ON THE ECOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION IN THE SCOPE OF WATER FRAME DIRECTIVE [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/28851 / Palancia

This thesis discusses autonomous vehicles. At first it contains describing development of these type of vehicles, how they work and discuss their future development. Further it describe tools which can be used for create model of autonomous vehicle. The thesis includes design, description of the development and testing of the model in the UPPAAL Stratego verification environment. The resulting model is a system of intercommunicating timed automata. The analysis of the model properties is based on the method of statistical verification. The model allows us to investigate behavior of an autonomous vehicle in situations which correspond to regular traffic.

Theme Master’s thesis was studying of wind energy power supply. Comparison of character of wind power supply in Czech Republic to power supply abroad. Thesis begins with short introduction of historical wind applications. It continues by theory of wind engines, the wind engines construction and its facilities. Next part describes wind energy characteristics and physics. It describes wind speed influence to power supply of wind turbine, a physical limits of wind engines efficiency. Later, meteorological forecast possibilities are mentioned. Following chapter classifies wind power plants by geographical locations and characterizes them. It presents and explains individual cases of wind energy business growth in Czech Republic and other countries. There are also mentioned many suitable locations for wind parks in Czech Republic. There are described data analysis methods in chapter number 5. Analysis results of day period graph and year period graphs are shown. Unsophisticated forecast model is sketched out and created in following chapter. Here the regressive analysis methods are described, such as Autoregressive moving average model (ARMA), which can bring satisfactory results. Another example is Markov switching autoregressive model (MSAR). Next step from statistic forecast models is to sophisticated large forecasting systems. Those systems require meteorological forecast data and historical wind power data. Data are analyzed by statistical models. They have been developed recently and they are ordinary used nowadays.

The transportation sector is the dominant source of U.S. fuel consumption and emissions. Specifically, highway travel accounts for nearly 75 percent of total transportation energy use and slightly more than 33 percent of national emissions of EPA's six Criteria pollutants. Enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990 (CAAA) and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) have changed the ways that most states and local governments deal with transportation problems. Transportation planning is geared to improve air quality as well as mobility. It is required that each transportation activity be analyzed in advance using the most recent mobile emission estimate model to ensure not to violate the Conformity Regulation. Several types of energy and emission models have been developed to capture the impact of a number of factors on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. Specifically, the current state-of-practice in emission modeling (i.e. Mobile5 and EMFAC7) uses the average speed as a single explanatory variable. However, up to date there has not been a systematic attempt to quantify the impact of various travel and driver-related factors on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. This thesis first systematically quantifies the impact of various travel-related and driver-related factors on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. The analysis indicates that vehicle fuel consumption and emission rates increase considerably as the number of vehicle stops increases especially at high cruise speed. However, vehicle fuel consumption is more sensitive to the cruise speed level than to vehicle stops. The aggressiveness of a vehicle stop, which represents a vehicle's acceleration and deceleration level, does have an impact on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. Specifically, the HC and CO emission rates are highly sensitive to the level of acceleration when compared to cruise speed in the range of 0 to 120 km/h. The impact of the deceleration level on all MOEs is relatively small. At high speeds the introduction of vehicle stops that involve extremely mild acceleration levels can actually reduce vehicle emission rates. Consequently, the thesis demonstrated that the use of average speed as a sole explanatory variable is inadequate for estimating vehicle fuel consumption and emissions, and the addition of speed variability as an explanatory variable results in better models. Second, the thesis identifies a number of critical variables as potential explanatory variables for estimating vehicle fuel consumption and emission rates. These explanatory variables include the average speed, the speed variance, the number of vehicle stops, the acceleration noise associated with positive acceleration and negative acceleration noise, the kinetic energy, and the power exerted. Statistical models are developed using these critical variables. The statistical models predict the vehicle fuel consumption rate and emission rates of HC, CO, and NOx (per unit of distance) within an accuracy of 88%-96% when compared to instantaneous microscopic models (Ahn and Rakha, 1999), and predict emission rates of HC, CO, and NOx within 95 percentile confidence limits of chassis dynamometer tests conducted by EPA. Comparing with the current state-of-practice, the proposed statistical models provide better estimates for vehicle fuel consumption and emissions because speed variances about the average speed along a trip are considered in these models. On the other hand, the statistical models only require several aggregate trip variables as input while generating reasonable estimates that are consistent with microscopic model estimates. Therefore, these models could be used with transportation planning models for conformity analysis. / Master of Science

Polymer matrix composites (PMC's) are now being used more and more extensively and over wider ranges of service conditions. Large changes in pressure, chemical environment or temperature influence the mechanical response of such composites. In the present effort, we focus on temperature, a parameter of primary interest in almost all engineering applications. In order to design composite structures without having to perform extensive experiments (virtual design), the necessity of establishing theoretical models that relate the macroscopic response of the structure to the microscopic properties of the constituents arises. In the first part of the present work, a new stiffness versus temperature model is established. The model is validated using data from the literature. The influence of the different polymer's properties (Molecular weight, crystallinity, and filler content) on the model are studied by performing experiments on different grades of four polymers PMMA, PEEK, PPS, and PB. This statistical model is proven to be applicable to very different polymers (elastomers, thermoplastics, crystalline, amorphous, cross-linked, linear, filled, unfilledâ ¦) over wide temperature ranges (from the glassy state to the flow region). The most attractive feature of the proposed model is the capability to enable a description of the polymer's mechanical behavior within and across the property transition regions. In order to validate the feasibility of using the model to predict the mechanical response of polymer matrix composites, the stiffness-temperature model is used in various micromechanical models (rule of mixtures, compression models for the life prediction of unidirectional PMC's in end-loaded bendingâ ¦). The model is also inserted in the MRLife prediction code to predict the remaining strength and life of unidirectional PMC's in fatigue bending. End-loaded fatigue experiments were performed. A good correlation between theoretical and experimental results is observed. Finally, the model is used in the Classical Lamination Theory; some laminates were found to exhibit stress reversals with temperature and behaved like thermally activated mechanical switches. / Ph. D.