Doctoral Recital

List of performers and performances

Depositional Patterns of Miocene Facies, Middle Texas Coastal Plain

UT Librarie

Actinometry of Hydrogen Plasmas

Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) can be used to map the electron energy distribution of hydrogen plasmas. Using actinometry, a type of OES where trace amounts of noble gases are introduced, the effect of discharge power on the electron temperature of hydrogen plasmas was explored. This was done using argon and krypton as actinometers for low pressure hydrogen plasmas. It was determined that the electron temperature decreased with respect to power supplied to the discharge

Verification of mesoscale objective analyses of VAS and rawinsonde data using the March 1982 AVE/VAS special network data

Various combinations of VAS (Visible and Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer Atmospheric Sounder) data, conventional rawinsonde data, and gridded data from the National Weather Service's (NWS) global analysis, were used in successive-correction and variational objective-analysis procedures. Analyses are produced for 0000 GMT 7 March 1982, when the VAS sounding distribution was not greatly limited by the existence of cloud cover. The successive-correction (SC) procedure was used with VAS data alone, rawinsonde data alone, and both VAS and rawinsonde data. Variational techniques were applied in three ways. Each of these techniques was discussed

A receding horizon generalization of pointwise min-norm controllers

Control Lyapunov functions (CLFs) are used in conjunction with receding horizon control to develop a new class of receding horizon control schemes. In the process, strong connections between the seemingly disparate approaches are revealed, leading to a unified picture that ties together the notions of pointwise min-norm, receding horizon, and optimal control. This framework is used to develop a CLF based receding horizon scheme, of which a special case provides an appropriate extension of Sontag's formula. The scheme is first presented as an idealized continuous-time receding horizon control law. The issue of implementation under discrete-time sampling is then discussed as a modification. These schemes are shown to possess a number of desirable theoretical and implementation properties. An example is provided, demonstrating their application to a nonlinear control problem. Finally, stronger connections to both optimal and pointwise min-norm control are proved