Skip to Main Content

Basic Search

Skip to Search Results
 
 
 

Left Column

Filters

Show More

Show More

Show More

Right Column

Search Results

Search Results

(Total results 19)

Mini-Tools

 
 

Search Report

  • 1. Tahmasebi, Mostafa Integrated optimization based modeling and assessment for better building energy efficiency

    PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Engineering and Applied Science: Civil Engineering

    A substantial portion of buildings' total energy use is caused by heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that buildings in the U.S. currently exhaust 72% of electricity produced and 55% of U.S. natural gas. In the U.S. the energy consumption of buildings exceeds that of transportation and other demand sectors. Of this energy, approximately half is used by heating and cooling systems. If energy usage trends continue at this pace, by 2025 buildings will turn into the largest users of energy worldwide. Developing methods and models that contribute to building energy savings is increasingly imperative for a sustainable future. Although most modern buildings today are equipped with advanced building automation systems (BAS) giving them the ability to collect a large amount of data, they still lack the embedded computational means and centralized solutions to operate in an optimal way. They face long term challenges too as it is estimated that around 30% of the total energy consumption in buildings is wasted due to lack of proper maintenance, aging equipment, and/or control issues. There is a significant need to explore how the latest computational methods can draw from available building data sources to perform modeling for optimization and energy efficiency. Fault detection requires model accuracy and appropriate thresholds. Machine learning-based energy models have proved to be efficient and accurate at this. This multi-level study introduces a comprehensive method to model, optimize and assess the performance of different components of HVAC systems. The proposed methods use performance data collected from real building components and are applicable to any existing system regardless of its complexity, configuration, or age. Development of accurate performance models was achieved by implementing various data driven modeling algorithms to datasets obtained from components performa (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Nabil Nassif (Committee Chair); Munir Nazzal Ph.D. (Committee Member); Hazem Elzarka Ph.D. (Committee Member); Pravin Bhiwapurkar (Committee Member) Subjects: Engineering

  • 2. Zhu, Dongrui Glass Curtain Wall Retrofit Through Modular Kinetic Facade To Design Safe, Energy Efficient, Sustainable Urban Office High-rise Facade

    MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2021, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

    The notion of transformable facades suggests an unconventional design thinking in which both the building exterior's configuration and functionality changes interchangeably between varied real-time environmental conditions. As ideas such as energy efficient design, performance driven design, and sustainable design progressively influence more architects, adaptive kinetic building facade systems prove to be an ideal tool to actualize these environment oriented design objectives. Furthermore, an intelligent multifunctional building facade system also provides building users improved indoor comfort level and contributes to sculpting a visually attractive dynamic building facade. For decades, modern technologies have played a major role in contemporary upscaling climate change. Sleek contemporary urban glass office high-rises pose subtle yet growing risks to the urban environment and worsen the urban habitat. However, evolving technologies can also become an effective tool to combat environmental challenges. This research attempts to find innovative kinetic facade design solutions which contribute to mitigating urban glass office high-rises' negative environmental effects. Then, the design proposals will be evaluated in terms of indoor lighting performance and the building facade's visual impact on the immediate surrounding context. Overall, this thesis explores retrofitting an existing office high-rise with modular kinetic facade systems and speculates the possibility of embedding kinetic components into future office high-rise designs. In P1, the research methodology starts with precedent case studies where the study concentrates on extracting applicable kinetic concepts and components from each precedent. In P2, experimental modular kinetic facade systems are generated with overarching design goals, which aim to block undesirable sunlight while continuing to admit sufficient daylight and create visually dynamic building facades. The proposed modular kinetic f (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Elizabeth Riorden M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

  • 3. Aull, Mark Airborne Wind Energy System Analysis and Design Optimization

    PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Engineering and Applied Science: Aerospace Engineering

    Airborne wind energy (AWE) used tethered aircraft to harvest wind energy, with significant potential advantages over conventional wind turbines. Aerodynamic and tether forces propel the aircraft perpendicular to the wind, analogous to a wind turbine blade, but with significantly less structural weight for the same power production. The logistical benefits of AWE promise a lower cost of energy, higher performance for mobile wind systems, and easier installation for offshore systems. Because AWE systems are a relatively new concept (many are in various states of R\&D, but no commercial AWE wind farms currently exist), and because they are significantly more complex to design, analyze, and test than traditional wind turbines, better analysis tools are important for the technology to mature. One desirable capability is a performance analysis tool that calculates power output quickly enough to be feasible for system design optimization and versatile enough to permit changing most input parameters without requiring a higher level analyses (like a control design, CFD simulation, etc.) High fidelity simulations are computationally intensive enough to be undesirable for iterating through parameters for design optimization. The analysis tool developed is unique and distinct from a simulator in several ways. It uses Fourier series inputs to define the path and velocity of the aircraft, guaranteeing a closed, steady state cycle (rather than requiring iterations to converge to a steady state solution), then calculates attitudes, forces, and moments required to follow that trajectory. No controller is required and therefore there is no need to design or tune a controller for each set of system parameters, and there are no deviations from the proscribed trajectory or instabilities due to the controller. Conversely, the analysis tool produces estimated control signals required to pilot a simulator operating in the same conditions. With this analysis tool, analyzing a single c (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Kelly Cohen Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Manish Kumar Ph.D. (Committee Member); Anoop Sathyan PhD (Committee Member); Rajnikant Sharma Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christopher Vermillion B.S.E. M.S. Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aerospace Materials

  • 4. Zaidi, Syed Tabish Energy Modeling Existing Large University Buildings

    MS, University of Cincinnati, 2019, Engineering and Applied Science: Civil Engineering

    Buildings account for almost 75% of total electricity consumption and nearly 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Improving the energy-efficiency of buildings is one of the most effective and affordable ways to decrease greenhouse gas emissions on a large scale. Thus, Energy Modelling Software (EMS) are required to analyze a building for its energy use. These software are designed to evaluate energy performance of buildings during design phase, and not for buildings that already exist. For existing buildings, any attempt to evaluate energy-efficiency strategies should begin by understanding how it currently consumes energy by constructing its model in the software. The goal of this research is to better understand how Existing University Buildings (EUB)s use energy, to determine what factors impact the energy consumption and how changes in these factors affect its energy consumption. It also evaluates potential use of existing energy modelling software for simulating energy consumption of an existing building and provides recommendation on how to improve simulation results and reduce energy consumption. The methodology included analyzing architectural and HVAC equipment details of an existing building at University of Cincinnati, modeling the building in an EMS (eQUEST), comparing its utility consumption to actual data provided by the university, and performing a sensitivity analysis to determine factors affecting energy consumption. Recommendations on how to improve the energy simulation results and reduce the building's energy consumption were then developed.
    ... More

    Committee: Hazem Elzarka Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Anton Harfmann M.Arch. (Committee Member); Julian Wang Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Civil Engineering

  • 5. Frey, Jeffrey The Sustainability of Nonprofit Leaders: Principles and Practices that Encourage and Restore Personal Wellbeing and Professional Effectiveness

    Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2019, Management

    The personal sustainability of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) influences their effectiveness and thus, their organization's performance. Leaders whose personal mission is too closely intertwined with their organization's professional mission are at the most risk of experiencing diminished sustainability; defined as personal wellbeing and professional effectiveness over time. Suggestions have been made on combatting the issue, but the phenomenon of low sustainability persists among nonprofit leaders. Through studying nonprofit organization leaders, the purpose of this research is to elevate and preserve the personal wellbeing of nonprofit organization leaders while contributing to a growing body of knowledge on professional effectiveness. Using mixed methods, a qualitative study was followed by a quantitative study at two time periods. Critical incident interviews for the qualitative study were conducted with twenty "sustainable" and ten "unsustainable" CEOs of diverse nonprofit organizations, as identified by trusted third party raters. Interviews were also conducted with fifteen spouses. A true focus on the organization's mission, mastery over relationships, and self-care significantly differentiated the sustainable and unsustainable CEOs. Building off those findings, 107 nonprofit executive directors and CEOs were administered a survey in the quantitative study combining the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1999), Personal Sustainability Index (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2013), Relational Climate Survey (Boyatzis & Rochford, 2015), Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, 1984), and Reputational Effectiveness Survey (Tsui, 1994). Portions were administered to the spouse and a direct report for validation. Personal sustainability practices, both the intensity and variety of renewal activities engaged in by leaders in relation to stressful activities, had a positive impact on leadership effectiveness. The qualitative survey was also take (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Richard Boyatzis Ph.D. (Committee Chair); David Aron MD, MS (Committee Member); Christopher Burant Ph.D., MACTM (Committee Member); Melvin Smith Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences; Business Administration; Health; Management

  • 6. Laseter, Joel Holistic Performance Evaluation of the Built Environment: The Olin Building Past, Present & Future

    Master of Sciences (Engineering), Case Western Reserve University, 2019, EECS - Electrical Engineering

    This thesis discusses an integrated tripartite method of building performance evaluation, analysis, and improvement. This method is described and explained through the context of studies involving the Olin Building on the campus of Case Western Reserve University. The three methods of design analysis, data collection, and fieldwork are introduced, and performance is defined as an optimization of comfort, energy efficiency, and reliability. Relevant history of the building's construction and renovation are discussed, including insights developed by the author regarding the consequences of various design features and modifications. Olin's major renovation in 1996 is a major focus, and the current controls installed in the building are discussed in detail. Data collection and analytical methods used and devised by the author are reviewed, and effective fieldwork techniques are outlined. The author concludes by summarizing major themes, illustrating accomplishments in Olin, and enumerating future work that could be done.
    ... More

    Committee: Kenneth Loparo (Advisor); Frank Merat (Committee Member); Sunniva Collins (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Mechanical Engineering

  • 7. McNally, Michael Energetic Contributions to Performance and Upper Extremity Joint Kinetics in Baseball Pitching

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

    More than half of adolescents participating in baseball experience shoulder or elbow pain during a competitive season (Lyman, Fleisig, Andrews, & Osinski, 2002; Lyman et al., 2001), increasing future risk of overuse injury by 7.5x (Yang et al., 2014). Because of these unique demands, baseball has the greatest percentage of injuries in high school athletics resulting in surgery (32.3%), with 60.3% of these injuries due to overuse. Injuries to the shoulder and elbow comprise 53-63% of all injuries in baseball (Collins & Comstock, 2008; Shanley, Rauh, Michener, & Ellenbecker, 2011), believed to occur as a result of repeated microtrauma to soft-tissues caused by the repetitive mechanical strain throwing (Andrews & Fleisig, 1998). Research and practice has suggested that pitchers who generate and transfer greater energy from the lower extremity will exhibit better performance and reduced stress on the arm, thereby decreasing the risk of injury. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the generation, dissipation, and transfer of mechanical energy during the pitching motion as it relates to performance and upper extremity joint kinetics, with the goal of maximizing performance while minimizing shoulder and elbow joint kinetics. Aim 1 investigated the role of ground reaction forces in baseball pitching performance. The results of this study showed that contrary to commonly held belief, drive leg ground reaction forces demonstrated no association to hand velocity in adult baseball pitchers. Stride leg ground reaction forces, however, were significantly correlated to hand velocity, particularly posteriorly directed ground reaction force. This relationship suggests that the production of force and stiffening of the stride leg upon landing helps a pitcher to halt the linear energy of the body towards home plate, allowing maximum transfer of energy to the pelvis and trunk at the initiation of the kinematic sequence (McNally, Borstad, Onate, & Chaudhari, 2015). (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Ajit Chaudhari PhD (Advisor); James Onate PhD, ATC (Advisor); Laura Boucher PhD, ATC (Committee Member); Jingzhen Yang PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Biomechanics; Health Sciences; Kinesiology; Mechanics; Sports Medicine

  • 8. Brocanelli, Marco Improving the Performance of Smartphone Apps with Soft Hang Bug Detection and Dynamic Resource Management

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Two critical quality factors for mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) are battery life and apps' user perceived performance. For example, apps that require frequent user actions with the user interface should have high responsiveness, which indicates how fast an app reacts to user actions. On the other hand, apps used mostly for video/music play should have a high throughput, which allows for example a video to be played smoothly without perceivable frame rate loss. Two main causes of poor performance for these apps are soft hang bugs and resource contention. A soft hang bug causes the app to have soft hangs, i.e., the app's response time of handling a certain user action is longer than a user-perceivable delay. A soft hang bug is a blocking operations that executes on the app's main thread and can be fixed by moving the execution of this operation to a background worker thread. Resource contention can cause concurrent foreground apps to miss their performance target. Indeed, during recent years, the improvements in mobile operating system performance and the increasing display size have brought these resource constrained devices to be able to execute multiple apps at the same time, e.g., watch a video while chatting with a friend. As a result, the resource contention among the apps sharing the screen can either cause performance degradation for at least one of the concurrent apps or cause an unnecessarily high energy consumption. In this dissertation, we first introduce Hang Doctor, a runtime soft hang detection and diagnosis methodology that runs in the wild on user devices. Hang Doctor helps developers track the responsiveness performance of their apps and provides diagnosis information for them to fix soft hangs. Hang Doctor exploits performance event counters to ensure high detection quality and low overhead. In particular, we propose a soft hang filter that examines the performance event counters during the app execution to automatically prune false (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Xiaorui Wang (Advisor); Feng Qin (Committee Member); Christopher Stewart (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering

  • 9. Zheng, Kuangyu Power Optimization of Data Center Network with Scalability and Performance Control

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Electrical and Computer Engineering

    Larger-scale data centers are well known for their significant energy cost. Among all the power consumers within a data center, data center network (DCN) can account for as much as 10% to 20% of the total power. Therefore, the power optimization for DCNs has recently received increasing research attention. Currently, an effective type of power-saving approach for DCNs is traffic consolidation, which consolidates traffic flows onto a small set of links and switches such that unused network devices can be dynamically turned to sleep for power savings when the total workload is low, and be turned on again when workload increases. However, this type of approach has many limitations, such as 1) Current DCN optimization approaches are usually applied without the coordination with other data center components (e.g., servers, cooling), thus losing the chance for improved energy savings, or even leading to network congestions; 2) Existing DCN power optimization approaches are mostly centralized and do not scale well for nowadays larger-scale DCNs. 3) Current approaches usually only focus on the power optimization, but ignore the impact of traffic consolidation on network performance, especially one of the most important metrics of network performance as the flow completion time (FCT). In this dissertation, we try to address above limitations of the state-of-the-art power optimization approaches, by proposing and analyzing different solutions respectively. Firstly, we propose PowerNetS, a power optimization framework that jointly coordinate the DCN and servers during the consolidation leveraging correlation analysis. Evaluation on both a physical testbed and large-scale simulation with real DCN trace files from Wikipedia, Yahoo! and IBM data centers show that, PowerNetS can provide as much as 51.6% energy savings, and outperforms two state-of-the-art baselines by 44.3% and 15.8%, respectively. Secondly, we try to address the scalability issue by proposing DISCO, a highly s (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Xiaorui Wang (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Engineering

  • 10. Warr, Dartanian THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MINDSET: A KEY INGREDIENT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERS

    Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Management

    Who doesn't want an extraordinary leader working for them? Who doesn't want to work for an extraordinary leader? Chief executives to directors are constantly searching for the next generation of leaders and invest billions into those they perceive as “high potentials” only to lament later in board meetings about the dearth of talent. So, what's going on? This research looked at what senior leaders do to help the development process through the lens of emotional and social intelligence and relational climate. Our journey led to a new concept called the Professional Development Mindset which is focused on chief executives and their overt support and active participation in the development of the leaders in their companies. This research was based on a mixed-method approach combining findings from three studies: an initial qualitative study based on interviews with 32 senior leaders ranging from chief executives to directors from a cross section of industries; a survey-based quantitative study with 211 respondents consisting of chief executives to senior managers from a cross section of industries; and a third quantitative study which was an extension of the second which moved from self-report data to dyadic data gathered from 104 senior leaders ranging from chief executive to directors and one of the senior leader's direct reports. The overall findings suggest that senior leader's professional development mindset and the creation of a shared vision are key antecedents in their attempt to create a cadre of leaders able to help their companies flourish in the 21st century as measured by financial performance, work engagement and leader effectiveness. In particular, both shared vision and relational energy, subsets of relational climate proved to be key components which when coupled with professional development mindset drives improvement in key business outcomes. This new mindset focuses on what senior leaders do to create development opportunities for subord (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Richard Boyatzis Dr. (Committee Chair); Phillip Cola Dr. (Committee Member); Shannon French Dr. (Committee Member); Melvin Smith dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Management; Organizational Behavior

  • 11. Almshekhs, Rasha Data Modeling to Predict the Performance of Emerson Walk-in Freezer

    Master of Science (M.S.), University of Dayton, 2017, Mechanical Engineering

    The energy consumption of Walk-in freezers are greatly affected by the door opening. Extensive studies have been made to study the effect of the door opening on the refrigerator/ freezer energy consumption. This paper presents the effect of the door openings of walk-in freezer energy consumption. The walk in freezer was tested in Emerson laboratory to determine the responsiveness of its energy consumption, evaporator return air temperature, and inside air temperature to various door opening schedule. The experiment performed to explore the effect of new door opening schedule on energy consumption and either evaporator return air temperature or inside air temperature. More detailed tests were performed under three different control models. The models have been developed to determine the effect on energy consumption and either evaporator return air temperature or inside air temperature. The testing procedure was conducted under the ambient air temperatures of 70 F, and the door opening operation was carried out by one automatic robotic apparatus in an environmental control room. The three models succeed in eliminating original door opening schedule and predicting new door opening schedule, but they failed in predicting the magnitude of energy consumption and evaporator return air temperature strikes due to door opening. A new model was developed to predict the total power consumption and its results show that increasing the number of door openings will increase the energy consumption.
    ... More

    Committee: Kevin Hallinan (Committee Chair); Andrew Chiasson (Committee Member); Jun Choi Ki (Committee Member) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering

  • 12. Wang, Kai HIGH PERFORMANCE SOLUTION-PROCESSED PEROVSKITE HYBRID SOLAR CELLS THROUGH DEVICE ENGINEERING AND NOVEL

    Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2017, Polymer Engineering

    ABSTRACT Efficiently and economically harnessing the solar energy via solar cell devices is one of promising solutions to address the global energy crisis. This thesis mainly focuses on a novel family of photoactive layer materials, namely organic-inorganic lead halide perovskite hybrids, and their corresponding solar cell devices, due to their potential for achieving outstanding power conversion efficiency and low-cost processibility. Specifically, the main research themes of this thesis are to achieve high performance perovskite hybrid solar cells through optimizing device structures, developing novel functional perovskite materials, and elucidating the underlying physics and mechanisms for guiding us to construct high performance solution-processed perovskite hybrid solar cells. This dissertation contains four parts and 10 chapters. In PART I, a broaden overview on both solar cell device and material is given, which specifically reviews the importance of solar energy and solar cells, comparison between previous-generation solar cells and perovskite hybrid solar cells, history of perovskite hybrid materials for solar cell application in Chapter 1 and describes the theoretical background of solar cell devices and material used for fabrication of solar cells in Chapter 2. PART II mainly includes the detailed projects on solar cell device engineering. Firstly, in Chapter 3, we employ a highly electrical conductive, polyethylene oxide (PEO)-doped poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) as the hole extraction layer (HEL) for the planar heterojunction (PHJ) perovskite hybrid solar cells (pero-HSCs). The dramatically enhanced electrical conductivity of the PEO-doped PEDOT:PSS HEL provides an efficient pathway for the hole extraction, transport, and collection from the perovskite active layer to the anode. As a result, a significantly enhanced short-circuit current (JSC) of 23.42 mA cm-2, a slightly enlarged open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 0 (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Xiong Gong (Advisor); Matthew Becker (Committee Member); Alamgir Karim (Committee Member); Nicole Zacharia (Committee Chair); Jie Zheng (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering; Energy; Nanoscience; Physics; Polymers

  • 13. Deng, Nan Systems Support for Carbon-Aware Cloud Applications

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Computer Science and Engineering

    Datacenters, which are large server farms, host cloud applications, providing services ranging from search engines to social networks and video streaming services. Such applications may belong to the same owner of the datacenter or from third party developers. Due to the growth of cloud applications, datacenters account for a larger fraction of worldwide carbon emissions each year. To reduce the carbon emissions, many datacenter owners are slowly but gradually adopting clean, renewable energy, like solar or wind energy. To encourage datacenter owners to invest into renewable energy, the usage of renewable energy should lead to profit. However, in most cases, renewable energy supply is intermittent and may be limited. Such fact makes renewable energy more expensive than traditional dirty energy. On the other hand, not all customers have the need of using renewable energy for their applications. Our approach is to devise accountable and effective mechanisms to deliver renewable energy only to users that will pay for renewable-powered services. According to our research, datacenter owners could make profit if they could concentrate the renewable energy supply to carbon-aware applications, who prefer cloud resources powered by renewable energy. We develope two carbon-aware applications as use cases. We conclude that if an application take carbon emissions as a constraint, it will end up with using more resources from renewable powered datacenters. Such observation helps datacenter owners to wisely distribute renewable energy within their systems. Our first attempt of concentrating renewable energy focuses on architectural level. Our approach requires datacenters have on-site renewable energy generator using grid ties to integrate renewable energy into their power supply system. To measure the concentration of renewable energy, we introduce a new metric, the renewable-powered instance. Using this metric, we found that grid-tie placement has first-order effects on (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Christopher Stewart Dr. (Advisor); Xiaorui Wang Dr. (Committee Member); Gagan Agrawal Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

  • 14. Wo, Chung PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF THE CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY WIND TURBINE AND CHARACTERIZATION OF WIND AVAILABILITY

    Master of Sciences (Engineering), Case Western Reserve University, 2014, EMC - Mechanical Engineering

    To better understand the behavior of wind turbines placed in an urban environment, a study was performed to characterize the wind availability and performance of a 100-kilowatt Northern Power Systems wind turbine installed at Case Western Reserve University. It was found that the annual average wind speed was 4.0m/s, generating net energy of 67MWh at a rate of 8.0kW. It was also found that the winds rarely reach the required 15m/s for the turbine to output at its rated capacity. The winds that do reach 15m/s or faster exist only in short gusts, prevalently during the Winter 2011 and Spring 2012 months. Additionally, in studying the turbine performance, it was found that the turbine has a maximum efficiency of 65-70% relative to the Betz Limit, at a wind speed of approximately 6.75m/s.
    ... More

    Committee: Iwan Alexander (Advisor); Jaikrishnan Kadambi (Committee Chair); Paul Barnhart (Committee Member) Subjects: Aerospace Engineering; Energy; Engineering; Mechanical Engineering

  • 15. Van Meter, David Synthesis and Characterization of Surface-Confined Ionic Liquid Stationary Phases for High Performance Liquid Chromatography

    PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Arts and Sciences : Chemistry

    Surface-confined ionic liquid (SCIL) stationary phases for high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) have shown utility in separating various classes of compounds, yet very little work has been completed to provide insights into the retention mechanism of the phases. Previous investigations in our laboratory have shown that the retention characteristics of the SCIL phases can be adequately modeled by the linear solvation energy relationship (LSER) methodology. This body of work is a continuation of work completed previously in our laboratory and examines synthesis strategies as well as a characterization of SCIL phases by the LSER model. The first Chapter provides a survey of the history of covalently modified silica sorbents and the development of surface-confined ionic liquids for use as stationary phases in HPLC. The utility of SCIL phases reported in literature are highlighted as well as an overview of the methods used in this manuscript (LSER and κ - κ plots) to glean information about the retention mechanisms of stationary phases from chromatographic retention data. A major portion of this final section is devoted to building the statistical model which was used to evaluate the similarities/differences between the LSER system coefficients in the third chapter of this manuscript. Chapter 2 discusses the synthesis of SCIL stationary phases for HPLC. Details outlining the synthesis, isolation and subsequent grafting of an 8-bromooctyl-1-trichlorosilane linking ligand to a silica surface are discussed. Furthermore, methods for the subsequent attachment of ionic liquid precursor compounds to the previously modified sorbents, forming SCIL stationary phases, are presented. This chapter also includes imaging by scanning electron microscopy and elemental analysis results for the modified sorbents. In Chapter 3, a statistical model is employed in conjunction with the LSER model to examine the role of the cation and anion on retention of neutral aromatic pr (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Apryll M. Stalcup PhD (Advisor); Thomas H. Ridgway PhD (Committee Member); William B. Connick PhD (Committee Member); Neville G. Pinto PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Analytical Chemistry; Biochemistry; Chemistry; Materials Science; Organic Chemistry

  • 16. BENTON, W. ENERGY PERFORMANCE DESIGN ARCHITECTURE: A FACTORY IN CLEVELAND, OHIO

    MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

    The burning of fossil fuels to produce energy has degraded the environment and adversely affected human health. In order to control and prevent further environmental damage, it is necessary to reduce the fossil fuel consumption associated with energy generation. Architecture may play a large role in this. Architects can design buildings which consume less energy than conventional structures. This is the area of energy performance design. Energy performance design has long been known for heating, cooling, and lighting purposes but was pushed aside as fossil fuel costs decreased resulting in cheap energy sources. Only now are we discovering the impacts of our intense use of fossil fuels. Also, rising energy costs have once again made energy performance design an economically viable solution to our space conditioning needs. Carefully designing heating, cooling, and lighting systems to operate without the need for energy generated from fossil fuel sources can sufficiently lower the energy needs of a building. Even designing these systems based on fundamentals for their use can produce energy savings. Further analysis of using these systems will result in optimized energy performance and significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption as a result.
    ... More

    Committee: Robert Burnham (Advisor) Subjects: Architecture

  • 17. Li, Jing Duty Cycling for Energy Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications

    Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Computer Science and Engineering

    Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer a powerful combination of distributed sensing, computing and communication, which enable a broad spectrum of applications and, at the same time, lead numerous challenges due to their distinctiveness, primarily the non-negligible power consumption from especially radio activities and stringent energy constraints to which sensor nodes are typically subjected. The distinguishing traits of sensor networks have a direct impact on their protocol design at each layer, especially at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer since it manages transmission scheduling as well as duty cycling for energy conservation. To maximize energy efficiency of WSNs, my thesis studies duty cycling in time and frequency domains for both MAC schedulers and applications. The first part of the thesis focuses on energy efficiency at the MAC layer, including modeling, evaluating and designing MAC schedulers with duty cycling; the second part of the dissertation investigates energy efficiency in applications, which introduces two duty-cycled sensor applications that are deployed in a large building. In the first part of this dissertation, I begin by studying the impact of perfect duty cycling, in addition to perfect transmission scheduling, on the capacity of random wireless networks with single and multiple channels. The analysis of the duty-cycled throughput reveals nontrivial scaling gains resulting from the ability to avoid interference by spreading interferers to mutually exclusive times, which corroborates the importance of efficient co-scheduling of both transmissions and duty cycling for energy efficiency. Since duty cycling and transmission scheduling are controlled by MAC schedulers, I analytically quantify the gap between the duty-cycled throughput with an optimal scheduler and with existing MAC schedulers. In order to characterize energy efficiency achieved by existing MACs, I classify CSMA-based MAC protocols in terms of critical MAC-design factors (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Anish Arora (Advisor); Ten-Hwang Lai (Committee Member); Ness Shroff (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science

  • 18. Rathi, Priyanka Optimization of Energy Efficient Windows in Office Buildings for Different Climate Zones of the United States

    MARCH, Kent State University, 2012, College of Architecture and Environmental Design

    Recent research estimates that windows are responsible for 39% of commercial heating energy use and 28% of commercial cooling energy use; this is equivalent to almost 1.5% of the total U.S. energy consumption (Apte and Arasteh, 2006). In addition, the commercial sector in U.S. accounts for 37% of the total electrical energy consumption for lighting (Ander, 2003). Therefore, window design optimization for thermal and daylight performance is important in achieving energy conservation and increasing overall efficiency of office buildings in the U.S. Because current energy standards [ASHRAE 90.1] focus on thermal performance, they set requirements for fenestration based on minimum thermal characteristics. They suggest window to wall ratio (WWR) values based on thermal performance alone while do not recommend visual transmittance values. Providing fenestration related parameters optimized for thermal and daylight performance may help in achieving efficient design solutions. This study is intended to propose modified fenestration guidelines for the office buildings by investigating the optimization strategies for seven climate zones of the U.S. To determine the pattern of energy usage with and without daylight utilization, series of computer simulations were conducted using the Radiance link in the IES Virtual Environment simulation software. The optimum ranges of fenestration related parameters were derived to meet the daylight requirement and to conserve energy. The results revealed 10-15% reductions in the total energy use of office buildings with an increase in overall efficiency. Further, the recommended guidelines provide the designers with a simple method for evaluating the fenestration design in the initial design phase to achieve optimized building facade solutions.
    ... More

    Committee: Dr. Adil Sharag-Eldin PhD (Advisor); Dr. Elwin Robison PhD (Committee Member); Jonathan Fleming (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture; Energy; Sustainability

  • 19. Ruberg, Daniel Integrated Design Strategies: A Live-Work Industrial Arts Center for Cincinnati, Ohio

    MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2013, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

    Questions about the environment and sustainability dominate a major portion of the discussion within the field of architecture. The Building Sector uses more energy and generates more carbon dioxide than any other sector, consuming nearly half (48.7%) of all energy created in the U.S. and producing nearly half (46.7%) of U.S. CO2 emissions (2009). This produces a substantial economic and environmental impact. While the increasing concern for the environment is countered by a significant amount of disbelief and opposition, most architects recognize the danger associated with a built environment that is overly reliant on fossil fuels. The profession of architecture has the ability to respond to climate change, to create alternative energy, and to reduce the level of toxic materials in the built environment. A new direction in architecture strives for buildings that produce zero energy, zero carbon, zero waste, and this is necessary in order to mitigate the impact buildings have on the environment. This thesis argues that we must question conventional building design and embrace new practices of integrated design to create more comfortable, productive, and efficient buildings. The research will focus on understanding and incorporating the essential elements of integrated building design and the beneficial results. The project component of this thesis investigates strategies that seek to unite the four major components of integrated design: climate, use, building design and systems. The project uses the Living Building Challenge (LBC) as a comprehensive, performance-based framework to guide the integrated design decisions. The design project makes reuse of an existing building in Cincinnati, Ohio and the program for an industrial arts center that includes both a living and making component. The design project promotes community and uses the dynamic potential of solar energy, air, and water on site to optimize the design and generate renewable energy. A set of si (open full item for complete abstract)
    ... More

    Committee: Michael McInturf M.Arch (Committee Chair); Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture
Release 3.2.12