Browsing by Subject "Parameters"
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Item Computational fluid dynamics for LNG vapor dispersion modeling: a key parameters study(2009-05-15) Cormier, Benjamin RodolpheThe increased demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) has led to the construction of several new LNG terminals in the United States (US) and around the world. To ensure the safety of the public, consequence modeling is used to estimate the exclusion distances. The purpose of having these exclusion distances is to protect the public from being reached by flammable vapors during a release. For LNG industry, the exclusion zones are determined by the half lower flammability limits (half LFL, 2.5% V/V). Since LNG vapors are heavier?than?air when released into atmosphere, it goes through stages, negative, neutral and positive buoyant effect. In this process, it may reach the half LFL. The primary objective of this dissertation is to advance the status of LNG vapor dispersion modeling, especially for complex scenarios (i.e. including obstacle effects). The most used software, box models, cannot assess these complex scenarios. Box models simulate the vapor in a free?obstacle environment. Due to the advancement in computing, this conservative approach has become questionable. New codes as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have been proven viable and more efficient than box models. The use of such advance tool in consequence modeling requires the refinement of some of the parameters. In these dissertation, these parameters were identified and refine through a series of field tests at the Brayton Firefighter Training Field (BFTF) as part of the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS). A total of five tests contributed to this dissertation, which three of them were designed and executed by the LNG team of the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center (MKOPSC) and the financial support from BP Global SPU Gas (BP). The data collected were used as calibration for a commercial CFD code called CFX from ANSYS. Once the CFD code was tuned, it was used in a sensitivity analysis to assess the effects of parameters in the LFL distance and the concentration levels. The dissertation discusses also the validity range for the key parameters.Item Determining quality parameters as a foundation for effective ranking of undergraduate hospitality management programs(2005-12) Assante, Lisa M.; Huffman, Lynn; Harp, Shelley S.; Blum, Shane C.Attempts to prepare ratings/rankings of four-year undergraduate hospitality management programs have caused dismay among faculty members in these programs. Efforts to develop rankings, though well intentioned, have not been successful because there is not a clear consensus of what constitutes quality in an undergraduate hospitality program, much less how to quantify it. Consequently, it is important to focus on the dimensions of hospitality programs that are the basis of quality. Educators, administrators, students, and hospitality executives were queried using focus groups and on-line survey techniques to identify primary quality indicators for hospitality management programs. The results of the focus groups (N = 28) provided the constructs for the on-line survey. The participants of the on-line survey were a convenience sample (N = 277) who held a membership in an international hospitality education organization. Factor analysis, cluster analysis, and discriminant analysis were conducted on the data. The results of this study may become foundational in assessing how quality indicators can be incorporated into related areas including academic program improvement and assessment, along with documentation of program success, strategic planning, and with further inquiry, a potential rating/ranking system.Item Effect of semen parameters of bovine spermatozoa after using a contemporary collecting receptacle(2007-05) Langdon, Wendee C.; Prien, Samuel D.; Brady, Heidi A.; Johnson, Jay W.Bovine seminal parameters (motility, forward progression, and acrosome reaction) were tested using three different collection methods. To represent a traditional collection method, one method collected into a dry, standard 15 mL conical tube. The other two collection methods utilized the revolutionary technology patented under the trade name BreedMaXtm; one dry BreedMaXtm (designated as BreedMaXtm-) tube was used, and one BreedMaXtm tube as designed was used (designated as BreedMaXtm+). BreedMaXtm was developed with the intention of allowing the breeder to breed with less semen to obtain more breedings from a single ejaculate. The collected data suggest that presence or absence of media in the BreedMaXtm appeared to have little effect on motility and forward progression; yet there was a trend toward delayed acrosome reaction in the BreedMaXtm+. The results of this study suggest that the BreedMaXtm+ maintains semen parameters for longer periods of time as compared to the conventional collection techniques.Item Learning in simulation for real robots(2012-05) Farchy, Alon; Stone, Peter, 1971-; Ballard, Dana H.Simulation is often used in research and industry as a low cost, high efficiency alternative to real model testing. Simulation has also been used to develop and test powerful learning algorithms. However, optimized values in simulation do not translate directly to optimized values in application. In fact, heavy optimization in simulation is likely to exploit the simplifications made in simulation. This observation brings to question the utility of learning in simulation. The UT Austin Villa 3D Simulation Team developed an optimization framework on which a robot agent was trained to maximize the speed of an omni-directional walk. The resulting agent won first place in the 2011 RoboCup 3D Simulation League. This thesis presents the adaptation of this optimization framework to learn parameters in simulation that improved the forward walk speed of the real Aldebaran Nao. By constraining the simulation with tree models learned from the real robot, and manually guiding the optimization based on testing on the real robot, the Nao's walk speed was improved by about 30%.