Design for urban vertical-axis wind turbines: balancing performance and noise

In urban areas, vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) show promise due to their omnidirectional design, addressing challenges faced by traditional horizontal-axis turbines (HAWTs). Despite significant progress in urban VAWTs, extensive multidisciplinary research is needed to optimise their efficiency and use in such environments. <br/><br/>This...

Replacement optimisation for public infrastructure assets: Quantitative optimisation modelling taking typical public infrastructure related features into account

Ageing infrastructures and shortage of financing induce the need for optimising public infrastructure replacements. From an economic perspective, classical net present value comparison is traditionally the method of choice to decide on investments and replacements. The current research observes that typical infrastructure related features make...

Optimising marine seismic acquisition: Source encoding in blended acquisition and target-oriented acquisition geometry optimisation

Seismic data acquisition is a trade-off between cost and data quality subject to operational constraints. Due to budget limitations, 3D seismic acquisition usually does not have a dense spatial sampling in all dimensions. This causes artefacts in the processed images, velocity models, or other physical properties. However, we rely on, for...

Influence of inland vessel stern shape aspects on propulsive performance: Derivation of insights and guidelines based on a computational study

This research focuses on identifying the most important stern shape aspects, with regard to resistance and propulsion power, of inland ships. Such information should help designers to determine which hull form aspect to adjust in case design requirements need them to do so. The information is obtained by firstly conducting a large series of CFD...

An Integrated Approach to Optimised Airport Environmental Management

Airports around the world continue to face issues related to the environmental impact of aviation. Mitigation measures have therefore been implemented at many of these airports. Attaining an optimal combination of these mitigation measures is a complex process and because of these complexities, this process does not always result in the most...

Great expectations for offshore wind turbines: Emulation of wind farm design to anticipate their value for customers

To date, the technical feasibility of making electricity from offshore wind energy has been convincingly proven. However, the current challenge is to reduce the costs of this form of energy. One of the aspects playing a role in cost reduction is the optimisation of the wind turbine. The wind turbine influences the costs of various elements of an...

Wheel/rail interface optimisation

In this thesis, wheel/rail interface optimisation, and particularly the problems of wheel and rail profile design are considered. The research task pursued by this thesis engenders investigation of a range of problems. First, geometric properties of contact between wheel and rail are investigated. Then, physical properties of rolling contact...

Model-based control of hopper dredgers

The modern trailing suction hopper dredgers are advanced ships that are equipped with many automation systems that can be controlled with integrated computer systems from the bridge. From the operators it is expected that they generate the right set-points for all these systems. The latest ships are designed such that one operator is responsible...

Virtual thermo-mechanical prototyping of microelectronics devices

Microelectronics have pervaded our lives for the past fifty years, with massive penetration into health, mobility, safety and security, communications, education, entertainment and virtually every aspect of human lives. The main technology drivers that enabled this expansion are miniaturization and integration. The combination of these two has...

Fluid catalytic cracking: Feedstocks and reaction mechanism

The Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) process is one of the key units in a modern refinery. Traditionally, its design is primarily aimed for the production of gasoline from heavy oil fractions, but as co-products also diesel blends and valuable gasses (e.g. propene and butenes) are formed in considerable quantities. Environmental legislation, the...

Filament Winding. A Unified Approach

In this dissertation we have presented an overview and comprehensive treatment of several facets of the filament winding process. With the concepts of differential geometry and the theory of thin anisotropic shells of revolution, a parametric shape generator has been formulated for the design procedure of optimal composite pressure vessels in...