ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 65
Description
This document is intended to show the various kinds of stylistically appropriate melodic and rhythmic ornamentation that can be used in the improvisation of the Sarabandes by J.S. Bach. Traditional editions of Bach's and other Baroque-era keyboard works have reflected evolving historical trends. The historical performance movement and other attempts to "clean up" pre-1950s romanticized performances have greatly limited the freedom and experimentation that was the original intention of these dances. Prior to this study, few ornamented editions of these works have been published. Although traditional practices do not necessarily encourage classical improvisation in performance I argue that manipulation of the melodic and rhythmic layers over the established harmonic progressions will not only provide diversity within the individual dance movements, but also further engage the ears of the performer and listener which encourages further creative exploration. I will focus this study on the ornamentation of all six Sarabandes from J.S. Bach's French Suites and show how various types of melodic and rhythmic variation can provide aurally pleasing alternatives to the composed score without disrupting the harmonic fluency. The author intends this document to be used as a pedagogical tool and the fully ornamented Sarabandes from J.S. Bach's French Suites are included with this document.
ContributorsOakley, Ashley (Author) / Meir, Baruch (Thesis advisor) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Norton, Kay (Committee member) / Pagano, Caio (Committee member) / Ryan, Russell (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Nowadays product reliability becomes the top concern of the manufacturers and customers always prefer the products with good performances under long period. In order to estimate the lifetime of the product, accelerated life testing (ALT) is introduced because most of the products can last years even decades. Much research has been done in the ALT area and optimal design for ALT is a major topic. This dissertation consists of three main studies. First, a methodology of finding optimal design for ALT with right censoring and interval censoring have been developed and it employs the proportional hazard (PH) model and generalized linear model (GLM) to simplify the computational process. A sensitivity study is also given to show the effects brought by parameters to the designs. Second, an extended version of I-optimal design for ALT is discussed and then a dual-objective design criterion is defined and showed with several examples. Also in order to evaluate different candidate designs, several graphical tools are developed. Finally, when there are more than one models available, different model checking designs are discussed.
ContributorsYang, Tao (Author) / Pan, Rong (Thesis advisor) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Borror, Connie (Committee member) / Rigdon, Steve (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The purpose of the paper is to outline the process that was used to write a reduction for Henry Brant's Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra, to describe the improvements in saxophone playing since the premiere of the piece, and to demonstrate the necessity of having a reduction in the process of learning a concerto. The Concerto was inspired by internationally known saxophonist, Sigurd Rascher, who demonstrated for Brant the extent of his abilities on the saxophone. These abilities included use of four-octave range and two types of extended techniques: slap-tonguing and flutter-tonguing. Brant incorporated all three elements in his Concerto, and believed that only Rascher had the command over the saxophone needed to perform the piece. To prevent the possibility of an unsuccessful performance, Brant chose to make the piece unavailable to saxophonists by leaving the Concerto without a reduction. Subsequently, there were no performances of this piece between 1953 and 2001. In 2011, the two directors of Brant's Estate decided to allow for a reduction to be written for the piece so that it would become more widely available to saxophonists.
ContributorsAmes, Elizabeth (Pianist) (Author) / Ryan, Russell (Thesis advisor) / Levy, Benjamin (Committee member) / Hill, Gary (Committee member) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The teaching of singing remained remarkably stable until, at the end of the twentieth century, advances in the understanding of voice science stimulated dramatic changes in approach to vocal pedagogy. Previously, the technology needed to accurately measure physiologic change within the larynx and breath-support musculature during the process of singing simply did not exist. Any prior application of scientific study to the voice was based primarily upon auditory evaluation, rather than objective data accumulation and assessment. After a centuries-long history, within a span of twenty years, vocal pedagogy evolved from an approach solely derived from subjective, auditory evidence to an application grounded in scientific data. By means of analysis of significant publications by Richard Miller, Robert Sataloff, and Ingo Titze, as well as articles from The Journal of Singing and The Journal of Voice, I establish a baseline of scientific knowledge and pedagogic practice ca. 1980. Analysis and comparison of a timeline of advancement in scientific insight and the discussion of science in pedagogical texts, 1980-2000, reveal the extent to which voice teachers have dramatically changed their method of instruction. I posit that voice pedagogy has undergone a fundamental change, from telling the student only what to do, via auditory demonstration and visual imagery, to validating with scientific data how and why students should change their vocal approach. The consequence of this dramatic pedagogic evolution has produced singers who comprehend more fully the science of their art.
ContributorsVelarde, Rachel (Author) / Doan, Jerry (Thesis advisor) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / Solis, Theodore (Committee member) / Elgar Kopta, Anne (Committee member) / Britton, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Sonata for Violin and Piano in E-flat Major, Op. 18 (1888), was the last major work of chamber music by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). Although for only two instruments, the Sonata reflects Strauss's growing interest in symphonic writing both in his tone poems and orchestral songs, anticipating his style of orchestration and his expressive use of tone colors. This study examines instances of orchestral writing in the piano and makes suggestions for their performance. An overview of Strauss's compositions, from his early chamber music to the `heroic' symphonic works, places the Sonata in context. An analytical description of each of the Sonata's three movements shows the structure and content of this large work and provides the framework for examination of the orchestral effects in the piano. Comparison of excerpts from the Sonata with passages from Strauss's orchestral writing in Don Juan (1889), "Cäcilie," "Morgen!," and "Lied der Frauen" leads to suggestions for the collaborative pianist of ways to re-create the various orchestral effects.
ContributorsNixon, Thomas (Pianist) (Author) / Ryan, Russell R (Thesis advisor) / Campbell, Andrew (Committee member) / FitzPatrick, Carole (Committee member) / Hamilton, Robert (Committee member) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Accelerated life testing (ALT) is the process of subjecting a product to stress conditions (temperatures, voltage, pressure etc.) in excess of its normal operating levels to accelerate failures. Product failure typically results from multiple stresses acting on it simultaneously. Multi-stress factor ALTs are challenging as they increase the number of experiments due to the stress factor-level combinations resulting from the increased number of factors. Chapter 2 provides an approach for designing ALT plans with multiple stresses utilizing Latin hypercube designs that reduces the simulation cost without loss of statistical efficiency. A comparison to full grid and large-sample approximation methods illustrates the approach computational cost gain and flexibility in determining optimal stress settings with less assumptions and more intuitive unit allocations.
Implicit in the design criteria of current ALT designs is the assumption that the form of the acceleration model is correct. This is unrealistic assumption in many real-world problems. Chapter 3 provides an approach for ALT optimum design for model discrimination. We utilize the Hellinger distance measure between predictive distributions. The optimal ALT plan at three stress levels was determined and its performance was compared to good compromise plan, best traditional plan and well-known 4:2:1 compromise test plans. In the case of linear versus quadratic ALT models, the proposed method increased the test plan's ability to distinguish among competing models and provided better guidance as to which model is appropriate for the experiment.
Chapter 4 extends the approach of Chapter 3 to ALT sequential model discrimination. An initial experiment is conducted to provide maximum possible information with respect to model discrimination. The follow-on experiment is planned by leveraging the most current information to allow for Bayesian model comparison through posterior model probability ratios. Results showed that performance of plan is adversely impacted by the amount of censoring in the data, in the case of linear vs. quadratic model form at three levels of constant stress, sequential testing can improve model recovery rate by approximately 8% when data is complete, but no apparent advantage in adopting sequential testing was found in the case of right-censored data when censoring is in excess of a certain amount.
Implicit in the design criteria of current ALT designs is the assumption that the form of the acceleration model is correct. This is unrealistic assumption in many real-world problems. Chapter 3 provides an approach for ALT optimum design for model discrimination. We utilize the Hellinger distance measure between predictive distributions. The optimal ALT plan at three stress levels was determined and its performance was compared to good compromise plan, best traditional plan and well-known 4:2:1 compromise test plans. In the case of linear versus quadratic ALT models, the proposed method increased the test plan's ability to distinguish among competing models and provided better guidance as to which model is appropriate for the experiment.
Chapter 4 extends the approach of Chapter 3 to ALT sequential model discrimination. An initial experiment is conducted to provide maximum possible information with respect to model discrimination. The follow-on experiment is planned by leveraging the most current information to allow for Bayesian model comparison through posterior model probability ratios. Results showed that performance of plan is adversely impacted by the amount of censoring in the data, in the case of linear vs. quadratic model form at three levels of constant stress, sequential testing can improve model recovery rate by approximately 8% when data is complete, but no apparent advantage in adopting sequential testing was found in the case of right-censored data when censoring is in excess of a certain amount.
ContributorsNasir, Ehab (Author) / Pan, Rong (Thesis advisor) / Runger, George C. (Committee member) / Gel, Esma (Committee member) / Kao, Ming-Hung (Committee member) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In the three phases of the engineering design process (conceptual design, embodiment design and detailed design), traditional reliability information is scarce. However, there are different sources of information that provide reliability inputs while designing a new product. This research considered these sources to be further analyzed: reliability information from similar existing products denominated as parents, elicited experts' opinions, initial testing and the customer voice for creating design requirements. These sources were integrated with three novels approaches to produce reliability insights in the engineering design process, all under the Design for Reliability (DFR) philosophy. Firstly, an enhanced parenting process to assess reliability was presented. Using reliability information from parents it was possible to create a failure structure (parent matrix) to be compared against the new product. Then, expert opinions were elicited to provide the effects of the new design changes (parent factor). Combining those two elements resulted in a reliability assessment in early design process. Extending this approach into the conceptual design phase, a methodology was created to obtain a graphical reliability insight of a new product's concept. The approach can be summarized by three sequential steps: functional analysis, cognitive maps and Bayesian networks. These tools integrated the available information, created a graphical representation of the concept and provided quantitative reliability assessments. Lastly, to optimize resources when product testing is viable (e.g., detailed design) a type of accelerated life testing was recommended: the accelerated degradation tests. The potential for robust design engineering for this type of test was exploited. Then, robust design was achieved by setting the design factors at some levels such that the impact of stress factor variation on the degradation rate can be minimized. Finally, to validate the proposed approaches and methods, different case studies were presented.
ContributorsMejia Sanchez, Luis (Author) / Pan, Rong (Thesis advisor) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Villalobos, Jesus R (Committee member) / See, Tung-King (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This thesis presents a meta-analysis of lead-free solder reliability. The qualitative analyses of the failure modes of lead- free solder under different stress tests including drop test, bend test, thermal test and vibration test are discussed. The main cause of failure of lead- free solder is fatigue crack, and the speed of propagation of the initial crack could differ from different test conditions and different solder materials. A quantitative analysis about the fatigue behavior of SAC lead-free solder under thermal preconditioning process is conducted. This thesis presents a method of making prediction of failure life of solder alloy by building a Weibull regression model. The failure life of solder on circuit board is assumed Weibull distributed. Different materials and test conditions could affect the distribution by changing the shape and scale parameters of Weibull distribution. The method is to model the regression of parameters with different test conditions as predictors based on Bayesian inference concepts. In the process of building regression models, prior distributions are generated according to the previous studies, and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is used under WinBUGS environment.
ContributorsXu, Xinyue (Author) / Pan, Rong (Thesis advisor) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Wu, Teresa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The main objective of this research is to develop an approach to PV module lifetime prediction. In doing so, the aim is to move from empirical generalizations to a formal predictive science based on data-driven case studies of the crystalline silicon PV systems. The evaluation of PV systems aged 5 to 30 years old that results in systematic predictive capability that is absent today. The warranty period provided by the manufacturers typically range from 20 to 25 years for crystalline silicon modules. The end of lifetime (for example, the time-to-degrade by 20% from rated power) of PV modules is usually calculated using a simple linear extrapolation based on the annual field degradation rate (say, 0.8% drop in power output per year). It has been 26 years since systematic studies on solar PV module lifetime prediction were undertaken as part of the 11-year flat-plate solar array (FSA) project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) funded by DOE. Since then, PV modules have gone through significant changes in construction materials and design; making most of the field data obsolete, though the effect field stressors on the old designs/materials is valuable to be understood. Efforts have been made to adapt some of the techniques developed to the current technologies, but they are too often limited in scope and too reliant on empirical generalizations of previous results. Some systematic approaches have been proposed based on accelerated testing, but no or little experimental studies have followed. Consequently, the industry does not exactly know today how to test modules for a 20 - 30 years lifetime.
This research study focuses on the behavior of crystalline silicon PV module technology in the dry and hot climatic condition of Tempe/Phoenix, Arizona. A three-phase approach was developed: (1) A quantitative failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) was developed for prioritizing failure modes or mechanisms in a given environment; (2) A time-series approach was used to model environmental stress variables involved and prioritize their effect on the power output drop; and (3) A procedure for developing a prediction model was proposed for the climatic specific condition based on accelerated degradation testing
This research study focuses on the behavior of crystalline silicon PV module technology in the dry and hot climatic condition of Tempe/Phoenix, Arizona. A three-phase approach was developed: (1) A quantitative failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) was developed for prioritizing failure modes or mechanisms in a given environment; (2) A time-series approach was used to model environmental stress variables involved and prioritize their effect on the power output drop; and (3) A procedure for developing a prediction model was proposed for the climatic specific condition based on accelerated degradation testing
ContributorsKuitche, Joseph Mathurin (Author) / Pan, Rong (Thesis advisor) / Tamizhmani, Govindasamy (Thesis advisor) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Wu, Teresa (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In this era of fast computational machines and new optimization algorithms, there have been great advances in Experimental Designs. We focus our research on design issues in generalized linear models (GLMs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI). The first part of our research is on tackling the challenging problem of constructing
exact designs for GLMs, that are robust against parameter, link and model
uncertainties by improving an existing algorithm and providing a new one, based on using a continuous particle swarm optimization (PSO) and spectral clustering. The proposed algorithm is sufficiently versatile to accomodate most popular design selection criteria, and we concentrate on providing robust designs for GLMs, using the D and A optimality criterion. The second part of our research is on providing an algorithm
that is a faster alternative to a recently proposed genetic algorithm (GA) to construct optimal designs for fMRI studies. Our algorithm is built upon a discrete version of the PSO.
exact designs for GLMs, that are robust against parameter, link and model
uncertainties by improving an existing algorithm and providing a new one, based on using a continuous particle swarm optimization (PSO) and spectral clustering. The proposed algorithm is sufficiently versatile to accomodate most popular design selection criteria, and we concentrate on providing robust designs for GLMs, using the D and A optimality criterion. The second part of our research is on providing an algorithm
that is a faster alternative to a recently proposed genetic algorithm (GA) to construct optimal designs for fMRI studies. Our algorithm is built upon a discrete version of the PSO.
ContributorsTemkit, M'Hamed (Author) / Kao, Jason (Thesis advisor) / Reiser, Mark R. (Committee member) / Barber, Jarrett (Committee member) / Montgomery, Douglas C. (Committee member) / Pan, Rong (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014