Matching Items (2)
Description
A numerical study of incremental spin-up and spin-up from rest of a thermally- stratified fluid enclosed within a right circular cylinder with rigid bottom and side walls and stress-free upper surface is presented. Thermally stratified spin-up is a typical example of baroclinity, which is initiated by a sudden increase in rotation rate and the tilting of isotherms gives rise to baroclinic source of vorticity. Research by (Smirnov et al. [2010a]) showed the differences in evolution of instabilities when Dirichlet and Neumann thermal boundary conditions were applied at top and bottom walls. Study of parametric variations carried out in this dissertation confirmed the instability patterns observed by them for given aspect ratio and Rossby number values greater than 0.5. Also results reveal that flow maintained axisymmetry and stability for short aspect ratio containers independent of amount of rotational increment imparted. Investigation on vorticity components provides framework for baroclinic vorticity feedback mechanism which plays important role in delayed rise of instabilities when Dirichlet thermal Boundary Conditions are applied.
ContributorsKher, Aditya Deepak (Author) / Chen, Kangping (Thesis advisor) / Huang, Huei-Ping (Committee member) / Herrmann, Marcus (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
One of the premier technologies for studying human brain functions is the event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The main design issue for such experiments is to find the optimal sequence for mental stimuli. This optimal design sequence allows for collecting informative data to make precise statistical inferences about the inner workings of the brain. Unfortunately, this is not an easy task, especially when the error correlation of the response is unknown at the design stage. In the literature, the maximin approach was proposed to tackle this problem. However, this is an expensive and time-consuming method, especially when the correlated noise follows high-order autoregressive models. The main focus of this dissertation is to develop an efficient approach to reduce the amount of the computational resources needed to obtain A-optimal designs for event-related fMRI experiments. One proposed idea is to combine the Kriging approximation method, which is widely used in spatial statistics and computer experiments with a knowledge-based genetic algorithm. Through case studies, a demonstration is made to show that the new search method achieves similar design efficiencies as those attained by the traditional method, but the new method gives a significant reduction in computing time. Another useful strategy is also proposed to find such designs by considering only the boundary points of the parameter space of the correlation parameters. The usefulness of this strategy is also demonstrated via case studies. The first part of this dissertation focuses on finding optimal event-related designs for fMRI with simple trials when each stimulus consists of only one component (e.g., a picture). The study is then extended to the case of compound trials when stimuli of multiple components (e.g., a cue followed by a picture) are considered.
ContributorsAlrumayh, Amani (Author) / Kao, Ming-Hung (Thesis advisor) / Stufken, John (Committee member) / Reiser, Mark R. (Committee member) / Pan, Rong (Committee member) / Cheng, Dan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019