Delta-V, the change in velocity of a vehicle, is a widely used predictor of occupant injury in vehicle collisions. In real world crashes, delta-V is commonly estimated from measurements of vehicle deformation using absorbed energy based methods. The accuracy of these estimates is highly dependent on the availability of deformation measurements for both vehicles involved in a crash. Specialized ...

An important requirement of household energy simulation models is their accuracy in estimating energy demand and its fluctuations. Occupant behavior has a major impact upon energy demand. However, Markov chains, the traditional approach to model occupant behavior, (1) has limitations in accurately capturing the coordinated behavior of occupants and (2) is prone to over-fitting. To address these...

Advanced naturally ventilated systems based on integration of basic natural ventilation strategies such as cross-ventilation and stack effect have been considered to be a key element of sustainable design. In this respect, there is a pressing need to explore the potential of such systems to achieve the recommended occupant comfort targets throughout their lifetime without relying on mechanical ...

In this paper, we present a room-level building occupancy estimation system (BOES) utilizing low-resolution vibration sensors that are sparsely distributed. Many ubiquitous computing and building maintenance systems require fine-grained occupancy knowledge to enable occupant centric services and optimize space and energy utilization. The sensing infrastructure support for current occupancy esti...

In a laboratory crash test, the injuries of occupants, such as Head Injure Criterion (HIC), Nij, Combined Thorax Index (CTI) etc., can be obtained and transferred to the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). The calculated AIS value usually represents the severity of injury and can be adopted to evaluate the safety of the test vehicle. However, the AIS cannot reflect the medical resources consumed du...

There are limited data on air quality parameters, including airborne particulate matter (PM) in residential green buildings, which are increasing in prevalence. Exposure to PM is associated with cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, and since Americans spend almost 90% of their time indoors, residential exposures may substantially contribute to overall airborne PM exposure. Our objectives were...

Abstract—Buildings with shared spaces such as corporate office buildings, university dorms, etc. are occupied by multiple occupants who typically have different temperature preferences. Attaining a common temperature set-point that is agreeable to all users (occupants) in such a multi-occupant space is a challenging problem. Furthermore, the ideal temperature set-point should optimally trade of...

DEVELOPMENT OF LOWER EXTREMITY INJURY CRITERIA ANDBIOMECHANICAL SURROGATE TO EVALUATE MILITARY VEHICLE OCCUPANTINJURY DURING AN EXPLOSIVE BLAST EVENTbyBRIAN JOSEPH MCKAYDecember 2010Advisor: Dr. Cynthia BirMajor: Biomedical EngineeringDegree: Doctor of Philosophy Anti-vehicular (AV) landmines and improvised explosive devices (IED) haveaccounted for more than ...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has concluded that there is a relationship between roof intrusion and the risk of injury to belted occupants in rollovers events. Previous testing on many different production vehicle types indicates that damage consistent with field rollover accidents can be achieved through inverted drop testing from small drop heights. It has been shown in p...

This paper introduces a microscopic simulation method to investigate the operational effects of allowing single occupant hybrid vehicles and or toll-paying single occupant vehicles into HOV lanes. The demand methodology is based on disaggregate stated and revealed preference vehicle purchase models, and includes a flexible aggregation method for converting the household level predictions to agg...