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.

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Description
The inherent behavior of many real world applications tends to exhibit complex or chaotic patterns. A novel technique to reduce and analyze such complex systems is introduced in this work, and its applications to multiple perturbed systems are discussed comprehensively. In this work, a unified approach between the Floquet

The inherent behavior of many real world applications tends to exhibit complex or chaotic patterns. A novel technique to reduce and analyze such complex systems is introduced in this work, and its applications to multiple perturbed systems are discussed comprehensively. In this work, a unified approach between the Floquet theory for time periodic systems and the Poincare theory of Normal Forms is proposed to analyze time varying systems. The proposed unified approach is initially verified for linear time periodic systems with the aid of an intuitive state augmentation and the method of Time Independent Normal Forms (TINF). This approach also resulted in the closed form expressions for the State Transition Matrix (STM) and Lyapunov-Floquet (L-F) transformation for linear time periodic systems. The application of theory towards stability analysis is further demonstrated with the system of Suction Stabilized Floating (SSF) platform. Additionally, multiple control strategies are discussed and implemented to drive an unstable time periodic system to a desired stable point or orbit efficiently and optimally. The computed L-F transformation is further utilized to analyze nonlinear and externally excited systems with deterministic and stochastic time periodic coefficients. The central theme of this work is to verify the extension of Floquet theory towards time varying systems with periodic coefficients comprising of incommensurate frequencies or quasi-periodic systems. As per Floquet theory, a Lyapunov-Perron (L-P) transformation converts a time-varying quasi-periodic system to a time-invariant form. A class of commutative quasi-periodic systems is introduced to demonstrate the proposed theory and its applications analytically. An extension of the proposed unified approach towards analyzing the linear quasi-periodic system is observed to provide good results, computationally less complex and widely applicable for strongly excited systems. The computed L-P transformation using the unified theory is applied to analyze both commutative and non-commutative linear quasi-periodic systems with nonlinear terms and external excitation terms. For highly nonlinear quasi-periodic systems, the implementation of multiple order reduction techniques and their performance comparisons are illustrated in this work. Finally, the robustness and stability analysis of nonlinearly perturbed and stochastically excited quasi-periodic systems are performed using Lyapunov's direct method and Infante's approach.
ContributorsCherangara Subramanian, Susheelkumar (Author) / Redkar, Sangram (Thesis advisor) / Rogers, Bradley (Committee member) / Sugar, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Description
Today, the United States consumer vehicle market consists of about 276 million legally registered units, a prime candidate for service skulduggery (BTS, 2019). It raised some concerns when research conducted by the author revealed that about half of United States survey participants state they feel uneasy about approaching either a

Today, the United States consumer vehicle market consists of about 276 million legally registered units, a prime candidate for service skulduggery (BTS, 2019). It raised some concerns when research conducted by the author revealed that about half of United States survey participants state they feel uneasy about approaching either a mechanic they know or one that was new to them. Additionally, when only 10% of participants from the same survey fully trust mechanics, this raises the question, why are so many drivers of consumer vehicles wary about bringing their cars in for service or repair? Furthermore, the author determined that trust within the automotive repair industry is a worldwide issue, and countries with scarce resources have additional struggles of their own. The success of repair centers in countries closer to the equator weighs heavily on the mechanic's knowledge and access to repair resources. The author found that this is partially due to the rapid acceleration of the car market without a proper backbone to the automotive repair industry. Ultimately, this resulted in repair shops with untrained mechanics who perform poor quality labor for an inflated rate (Izogo, 2015). The author focuses on this global industry through the example of the Maasai Automotive Education Center (MAEC), a proposed facility and school located in Talek, Kenya. MAEC is designed to bring automotive customer and repair resources to a rural community that needs it the most to save their land, culture, and people. The author uses various recently conducted global studies, news articles and videos, and personal research to determine the crucial steps and considerations the MAEC development team needs to ensure project sustainability and success. This study's conclusion lists 11 essential attributes recommended for the MAEC repair facility for ethical and high-quality operation.
ContributorsMiller, Miles (Author) / Henderson, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Martin, Thomas (Committee member) / Rogers, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
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Description
This is a two part thesis:

Part 1 of this thesis determines the most dominant failure modes of field aged photovoltaic (PV) modules using experimental data and statistical analysis, FMECA (Failure Mode, Effect, and Criticality Analysis). The failure and degradation modes of about 5900 crystalline-Si glass/polymer modules fielded for 6 to

This is a two part thesis:

Part 1 of this thesis determines the most dominant failure modes of field aged photovoltaic (PV) modules using experimental data and statistical analysis, FMECA (Failure Mode, Effect, and Criticality Analysis). The failure and degradation modes of about 5900 crystalline-Si glass/polymer modules fielded for 6 to 16 years in three different photovoltaic (PV) power plants with different mounting systems under the hot-dry desert climate of Arizona are evaluated. A statistical reliability tool, FMECA that uses Risk Priority Number (RPN) is performed for each PV power plant to determine the dominant failure modes in the modules by means of ranking and prioritizing the modes. This study on PV power plants considers all the failure and degradation modes from both safety and performance perspectives, and thus, comes to the conclusion that solder bond fatigue/failure with/without gridline/metallization contact fatigue/failure is the most dominant failure mode for these module types in the hot-dry desert climate of Arizona.

Part 2 of this thesis determines the best method to compute degradation rates of PV modules. Three different PV systems were evaluated to compute degradation rates using four methods and they are: I-V measurement, metered kWh, performance ratio (PR) and performance index (PI). I-V method, being an ideal method for degradation rate computation, were compared to the results from other three methods. The median degradation rates computed from kWh method were within ±0.15% from I-V measured degradation rates (0.9-1.37 %/year of three models). Degradation rates from the PI method were within ±0.05% from the I-V measured rates for two systems but the calculated degradation rate was remarkably different (±1%) from the I-V method for the third system. The degradation rate from the PR method was within ±0.16% from the I-V measured rate for only one system but were remarkably different (±1%) from the I-V measured rate for the other two systems. Thus, it was concluded that metered raw kWh method is the best practical method, after I-V method and PI method (if ground mounted POA insolation and other weather data are available) for degradation computation as this method was found to be fairly accurate, easy, inexpensive, fast and convenient.
ContributorsShrestha, Sanjay (Author) / Tamizhmani, Govindsamy (Thesis advisor) / Srinivasan, Devrajan (Committee member) / Rogers, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014