Uncertainty analysis of the manufacturing process and systems

The use of energy has been a key in helping human adapt to the environment, however the increasing use of fossil fuel has raised serious concerns to human society. Energy resource has been seen paradigm shifting from “availability” of traditional energy (i.e. fossil fuels) to “environment sustainability” of new energy (i.e. solar energy, wind energy). However, it is expected that the interest in searching traditional oil and gas will continue to remain strong and coexistence of traditional and new energy will last for next many years to come. This dissertation includes 2 projects. Project 1 studies the uncertainties in resource planning in traditional oil and gas industry with the objective of minimizing total cost and maximizing profit, and the result shows an increased profit of 11% is achieved comparing to when resource is randomly planned. Project 2 studies the uncertainties in evaluating thermoelectric (TE) performance of a new energy conversion material (PEDOT Nanowires in PEDOT: PSS matrix) with the objective of quantifying the uncertainties of the measurement as currently there is no consistent methods to determine ZT. Through this study, the uncertainty of 1.31 uV/K for Seebeck coefficient (S = 40.01 uV/K), 32.1 S/cm for electrical conductivity (EC = 625.5 s/CM), and 11.8 uW/mK2 for power factor (PF = 101.1uW/mK2) are determined. The quantified uncertainties make it possible to evaluate TE properties of the material more objectively, and make the comparison between different materials more reliably.

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