Damage Curves Derived from Hurricane Ike in the West of Galveston Bay Based on Insurance Claims and Hydrodynamic Simulations

Hurricane Ike, which struck the United States in September 2008, was the ninth most expensive hurricane in terms of damages. It caused nearly USD 30 billion in damage after making landfall on the Bolivar Peninsula, Texas. We used the Delft3d-FM/SWAN hydrodynamic and spectral wave model to simulate the storm surge inundation around Galveston...

Wave overtopping processes for very mild sloping and shallow foreshores

A sea-dike system is of importance for the protection of the hinterland. However, the effect of very gentle and shallow sloping foreshores (in the order up to 1 in 1000) on wave overtopping processes has not yet been quantified enough and, thus, so far is not well understood. This dissertation seeks an answer to the question of whether the...

Remote sensing-based prediction of forest fire characteristics

Forest fires are a major ecosystem disturbance at global scale, put pressure on agencies in charge of citizens and infrastructure security and cause unvaluable human losses. Fires are controlled by multiple static and dynamic drivers related to topography, land cover, climate, weather, and anthropic activity. Among these, weather is an active...

Data Analytics for Grid Resilience with Early Failures and Wear-out Failures

The here reported work is part of a project on supporting grid resilience by asset management techniques. The present work focuses on support of decision-making after a few failures occurred that may be the start of many more. Methods are reviewed and new algorithms developed where the present IEEE/IEC standard does not provide. Two cases of...

Distribution of individual wave overtopping volumes at rubble mound seawalls

For a safe design of a rubble mound seawall, overtopping characteristics such as the mean overtopping discharge (q) and the maximum individual overtopping volume (V_max) should be limited. Unlike q, the estimation of V_max is more complex and requires a wave-by-wave analysis of overtopping as well as a statistical analysis...

Estimation of the incubation time distribution for COVID-19

We consider smooth nonparametric estimation of the incubation time distribution of COVID-19, in connection with the investigation of researchers from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Dutch: RIVM) of 88 travelers from Wuhan: Backer et al. (2020). The advantages of the smooth nonparametric approach with respect to...

Predictive maintenance of systems subject to hard failure based on proportional hazards model

The remaining useful lifetime (RUL) estimated from the in-situ degradation data has shown to be useful for online predictive maintenance. In the literature, the RUL is often estimated by assuming a soft-failure threshold for the degradation data. In practice, however, systems may not be subject to the degradation-induced soft failures....

Prediction of Strength for Inhomogeneous: Defective Glass Elements Based on the Sequential Partitioning of the Data and Weibull Statistical Distribution

An analytical approach based on the on the sequential partitioning of the data and Weibull Statistical Distribution for inhomogeneous - defective materials is proposed. It allows assessing the guaranteed strength of glass structures for the low probability of fracture with a higher degree of reliability. Parameters of equations for the piecewise...

Optimal siting and sizing of wind farms

In this paper, we propose a novel technique to determine the optimal placement of wind farms, thereby taking into account wind characteristics and electrical grid constraints. We model the long-term variability of wind speed using a Weibull distribution according to wind direction intervals, and formulate the metrics that capture wind speed...

Multigrid method for nonlinear poroelasticity equations

In this study, a nonlinear multigrid method is applied for solving the system of incompressible poroelasticity equations considering nonlinear hydraulic conductivity. For the unsteady problem, an additional artificial term is utilized to stabilize the solutions when the equations are discretized on collocated grids. We employ two nonlinear...

Life-cycle assessment of high-voltage assets using statistical tool

Nowadays, utilities are confronted with assets reaching or even exceeding their designed life. This in turn, implies the occurrence of upcoming replacements to assure reliable network operation. In this thesis, the application of statistical tools for life-time and residual life assessment of high-voltage assets installed in a power network is...

Drying and Rehydration of Calcium Alginate Gels

In this paper, we study the rehydration properties of air-dried calcium alginate gel beads. Rehydration is shown to depend on alginate source (i.e. mannuronic to guluronic acid ratio) and the salt concentration in the rehydration medium. Rehydration curves are described adequately by the empirical Weibull equation. Wide-angle X-ray diffraction...

Example of the determination of a design storm

Example for the the dataprocessing of wave data in such a way that design values for coastal structures can be determined

Size effect of concrete and sandstone

A series of uniaxial tension experiments has been conducted to investigate the size effect on strength and fracture energy of concrete and sandstone. The experiments were carried on specimens of six different sizes in a scale range of 1:32. Depending on the material and the curing conditions a stronger or weaker size effect on the nominal...