Developing inclusion in England for children with special educational needs: identifying and exploring the Local Authority contribution

This thesis examines the contribution of local authorities in England to the development of educational inclusion for children with special educational needs (SEN). The literature review traces the development of the concept of inclusion over the last three decades and assesses the status of national government policy. It examines the assertion that progress toward greater inclusion must typically be 'school-led', through an analysis of the literature on school effectiveness and improvement and the suggested linkages with the development of inclusive practice. It then considers the evidence of local authority influence. Following an overview of methodological issues, it describes a multi-method research study, comprising three elements. The first two involved a formal re-analysis of data obtained by the author as part of a national survey of SEN support services in English LEAs commissioned by the DfEE and NASEN (Gray 2001). Quantitative data from the national questionnaire were used as an indicator of the priority given by a range of stakeholders (officers, support services, parent and schools) to the role of support services in promoting greater inclusion. Ratings given by each Authority were compared to national statistics on the percentage of pupils in special schools for a similar period (1997-2001). This comparison was supplemented by a qualitative analysis of field notes taken during visits to three local authorities, as part of the earlier survey. The analysis of this secondary data was supplemented by an in-depth single case-study of an urban Authority where there had been a significant decrease in the percentage of pupils educated in special schools, which had been sustained over time. The findings from the different elements are used to help understand the degree and nature of local authority influence and a conceptual model is proposed, building on earlier work by Ainscow et al (2003) and Croll & Moses (2000). Broader policy factors are proposed, which are consistent with the model but which may limit the direct application of the case-study findings to other local authorities in the current and future context.Exeter University (Studentship

Design Optimization of a Boundary Layer Ingestion Propulsor Using a Coupled Aeropropulsive Model

Within a few years of the first jet engine powered aircraft entering military service, engineers proposed a tightly coupled aeropropulsive concept called boundary layer ingestion (BLI) that could offer reduced aircraft fuel burn. The central idea was that the jet engine, essentially a massive air pump, would ingest the boundary layer air and thereby reduce aircraft drag and improve propulsion system efficiency at the same time. Although a promising idea, BLI failed to catch on at the time due to a combination of computational limitations and and the availability of easier to achieve performance gains. More recently though, BLI concepts have seen renewed interest. Due to the increased computational power and developments in the field of multidisciplinary design optimization RANS CFD is now a viable design tool for early stage aircraft design and which has now opened the door to the design of BLI propulsion systems. This thesis presents a detailed aeropropulsive study of the aft-mounted BLI propulsor for NASA's turboelectric STARC-ABL aircraft. The multidisciplinary modeling was performed using a fully coupled model built with RANS CFD and newly developed 1-D thermodynamic propulsion analysis. First an aeropropulsive study is presented that investigates the fundamental interactions between aerodynamics and propulsion and provides a quantitative analysis of the relative contributions of each to the overall BLI gain. The results show that both contribute equally to the overall BLI effect and that in order to accurately capture each contribution fully coupled aeropropulsive models are required. Next the results of a performance and sizing study for the aft-mounted BLI propulsor are presented. These results were generated with a simplified 2-D aerodynamic model of the STARC-ABL configuration. The study was performed using efficient gradient based optimization with analytic derivatives in order to enable investigation of the large design multidisciplinary space. The sizing study shows that STARC-ABL could use between 1% and 4.6% less energy at cruise compared to a non BLI aircraft, depending on assumptions made about the efficiency of the turboelectric power transmission system. Last a more detailed study of the aft-mounted BLI propulsor was performed using a 3-D aerodynamic model that included the wings, vertical tail, and full fuselage. The 3-D aerodynamic effects create inlet distortion, which was mitigated using design optimization. The results compare the BLI efficiency with and without the presence of distortion, demonstrating that while it is possible to reduce the distortion doing so comes at the cost of reduced BLI efficiency. Collectively the results in this thesis represent the first aeropropulsive design studies of the STARC-ABL performed with fully coupled models. The studies were made possible through the development of new design methods that leveraged gradient based optimization with analytic derivatives. The efficiency of that approach enabled multiple optimizations to be run to conduct the design studies presented here. The results of those studies have demonstrated the potential for BLI to offer significant improvements to aircraft performance and motivate continued future work.PHDAerospace EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147625/1/grayju_1.pd

Modeling Efforts with the OpenMDAO Framework

No abstract availabl

OpenMDAO: Framework for Flexible Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis and Optimization Methods

The OpenMDAO project is underway at NASA to develop a framework which simplifies the implementation of state-of-the-art tools and methods for multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimization. Foremost, OpenMDAO has been designed to handle variable problem formulations, encourage reconfigurability, and promote model reuse. This work demonstrates the concept of iteration hierarchies in OpenMDAO to achieve a flexible environment for supporting advanced optimization methods which include adaptive sampling and surrogate modeling techniques. In this effort, two efficient global optimization methods were applied to solve a constrained, single-objective and constrained, multiobjective version of a joint aircraft/engine sizing problem. The aircraft model, NASA's nextgeneration advanced single-aisle civil transport, is being studied as part of the Subsonic Fixed Wing project to help meet simultaneous program goals for reduced fuel burn, emissions, and noise. This analysis serves as a realistic test problem to demonstrate the flexibility and reconfigurability offered by OpenMDAO

Optimal Control within the Context of Multidisciplinary Design, Analysis, and Optimization

Multidisciplinary design, analysis and optimization involves modeling the interactions of complex systems across a variety of disciplines. The optimization of such systems can be a computationally expensive exercise with multiple levels of nested nonlinear solvers running under an optimizer.The application of optimal control in project development often involves performing trajectory optimization for fixed vehicle designs or parametric sweeps across some key vehicle properties.This information is then relayed to the subsystem design teams who update their designs and relay some bulk characteristics back to the trajectory optimization procedure.This iteration is then repeated until the design closes.However, with increasing interest in more tightly coupled systems, such as electric and hybrid-electric aircraft propulsion and boundary layer ingestion, this process is prone to ignore subtle coupling between vehicle subsystem designs and vehicle operation on a given mission.Integrating trajectory optimization into a tightly coupled multidisciplinary design procedure can be computationally prohibitive, depending on the complexity of the subsystem analyses and the optimal control technique applied.To address these issues a new optimal control software tool, Dymos, has been developed.Dymos is built upon NASA's OpenMDAO software and can leverage its capabilities to efficiently compute gradients for the optimization and optimize complex models in parallel on distributed memory systems.This report provides some explanation into the numerical methods employed in Dymos and provides several use cases that demonstrate its performance on traditional optimal control problems and improvements ino techniques have been used extensively in recent decades to solve a variety of optimal control problems, typically in the form of aerospace vehicle trajectory optimization

Planned communities for coal miners

Thesis (M.C.P.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture, 1952.Bibliography: leaves 118-119.by Justin Gray.M.C.P