Modeling and Simulation of Mudflows Impacting Railway Infrastructure Using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics

In the Canadian context, it is common that railway tracks transverse a mountainous area prone to natural disaster like mudflows. In the geographical areas where Champlain clays of the Ottawa Valley and St. Lawrence Lowlands in Canada are prone to mudflows, which results in further safety implications when a freight train is passing through this area, further threatening human lives in addition to public properties. Therefore, the investigation of the interaction of flow with trains, the parameters affecting mudflows’ destructive force and the train derailment potential is important to determine the amount of potential damage. The aim of this research was to study the feasibility of modeling mudflows utilizing the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method based on the available data in the literature and model the scenario of mudflows impacting railway cars on top of a railway embankment and quantitatively investigate the interaction of mudflow with trains. The parametric studies were performed including the identification of key factors, such as geometric characteristics of the natural hillslope and the railway embankment, mudflows’ properties and freight train loading. To calibrate the simulation tool for reproducing the mudflow flowing on hillslope as in the real-world, a series of flume tests were modeled based on the physical large-scale experiment carried out by Bugnion et al. (2010), paved the way for implementation of the case studies' environment and properties of mudflow in the simulation tool in order to be modeled. The control variable method was introduced in numerical model studies to individually study each parameter and its effect on the impact force exerted by mudflows on railway cars. As a contribution, this study provides the information of critical case resulting train derailment with geometric terrain parameters and mudflows' quantities, which could be used as a reference for guidelines used in railway industry

Computer science: the hardware software and heart of IT

1st edition, 201

From Hesiod to Saussure, from Hippocrates to Jevons: An Introduction to the History of Scientific Thought between Iran and the Atlantic

This work offers an introduction to the history of scientific thought in the region between Iran and the Atlantic from the beginnings of the Bronze Age until 1900 CE—a “science” that can be understood more or less as a German Wissenschaft: a coherent body of knowledge carried by a socially organized group or profession. It thus deals with the social and human as well as medical and natural sciences and, in earlier times, even such topics as astrology and exorcism. It discusses eight periods or knowledge cultures: Ancient Mesopotamia – classical Antiquity – Islamic Middle Ages – Latin Middle Ages – Western Europe 1400–1600 – 17th century – 18th century – 19th century. For each period, a general description of scientific thought is offered, embedded within its social context, together with a number of shorter or longer commented extracts from original works in English translation

Einstein vs. Bergson

On 6 April 1922, Einstein met Bergson to debate the nature of time: is the time the physicist calculates the same time the philosopher reflects on? Einstein claimed that only scientific time is real, while Bergson argued that scientific time always presupposes a living and perceiving subject. On that day, nearly 100 years ago, conflict was inevitable. Is it still inevitable today? How many kinds of time are there

Involute Analysis: Virtual Discourse, Memory Systems and Archive in the Involutes of Thomas De Quincey

Thomas De Quincey’s involutes inform metaphysical thought on memory and language, particularly concerning multiplicity and the virtual, repetition and difference. When co-opting the mathematic and mechanic involute in Suspiria de Profundis, De Quincey generates an interdisciplinary matrix for the semiotics underpinning his philosophy of language and theory of memory and experience. Involutes entangle and reproduce. De Quincey’s involute exposes the concrete and actual through which all experience accesses the abstract or virtual. The materiality of their informatics and technics provides a literary model and theoretical precursor to a combination of archive and systems theory. The textuality of involute system(s)—both De Quincey\u27s mind and narrative—accommodates the intersections: archive recognizes proliferating layers of re-inscription or a system of discursivity and systems observes the self-regulation of processes and signals/messages in communication. De Quincey\u27s involutes, as a method, transform memory and experience into involute texts: texts invested in the form and layered reading processes of fragmenting and sedimenting data within the strata of memory storage, actively sorted, re-fragmented, reiterated

Course Catalog 2012-2013

https://repository.wellesley.edu/catalogs/1140/thumbnail.jp

Wellesley College Courses [2007-2008]

https://repository.wellesley.edu/catalogs/1105/thumbnail.jp