Turbomachinery shafting and casings typically experience axial growth during thermal transients occurring at startup, shutdown, and changes of load. This growth does not usually present difficulties during operation. However, this paper discusses four recent turbomachinery trains that experienced radial subsynchronous vibration resulting from axial misalignment. In each example, the train inclu...

Depression of the Hoffman reflex (H-reflex) is used to examine spinal control mechanisms during exercise, fatigue, and vibration and in response to training. H-reflex depression protocols frequently use trains of stimuli; this is time-consuming and prevents instantaneous assessment of motor neuronal excitability. The purpose of this study was to determine if paired-pulse H-reflex depression is ...

Passing underground trains induce vibrations transmitted to the ground surface and the nearby structures. Ordinarily, these vibrations do not result in structural damage but can harm nonstructural elements and disturb the occupants. These effects are more pronounced when evaluating buildings like hospitals, laboratories, museums, etc., and their assessment is an important design need. To respon...

Asymptotic behavior of initially "large and smooth" pulses is investigated at two typical stages of their evolution governed by the defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. At first, wave breaking phenomenon is studied in the limit of small dispersion. A solution of the Whitham modulational equations is found for the case of dissipationless shock wave arising after the wave breaking point. Th...

The progressive constriction of the Mississippi for navigation since 1837 has caused bottom erosion in some stretches. In others the bottom oscillates up and down with time. The high stages rise much more rapidly. Constriction of the river channel causes flooding and makes floods higher; thus navigation works degrade the protection afforded by levees. The combination of navigation works and lev...

.................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 Background and Study Area ....................................................................................... 2 Methods ...........................

Many public goods like dams, fire departments, and lighthouses do not provide direct utility but act more as insurance devices against floods, fire, and shipwreck. They either diminish the probability or the size of the loss. We extend the public good model with this insurance aspect and generalize Samuelson’s efficient allocation rule when self-insurance and self-protection expenditures are pu...

Damage from two earthquakes that occurred in 2007 was surveyed. The 2007 Sumatra earthquake struck Indonesia. The results were typical of damage observed in developing countries from this magnitude event. Due to questinable detailing and inadequate construction practices, there was significant structural damage, including thousands of collapsed structures. The damage exceeded what is expected f...