Chad A. Burel

Date of Award

12-1995

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

First Advisor

Dennis Quinn, PhD

Abstract

Space launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) and the Cape Canaveral Air Station (CCAS) produce exhaust from the solid rocket boosters and liquid hypergolic fuels containing several toxic substances including hydrogen chloride and hydrazine. In order to estimate the health risk that would be imposed upon the public by proposed launches, range safety officials rely on the Rocket Exhaust Effluent Diffusion Model to predict where the exhaust chemicals will go after the launch and how strong the concentrations will be. The original REEDM program averaged the meteorological parameters (wind speed, wind direction, shear, etc.) across the entire mixing level and used these averages in its Gaussian calculations to predict instantaneous concentration, dose and time weighted average concentration. This thesis modified the model program to perform its meteorological parameter averaging using only those parameters which affected source material transport in diffusion, excluding from the averaging, those parameters which did not affect the calculation. The difference in before and after modification REEDM output was statistically, significantly different for maximum centerline instantaneous concentrations and maximum centerline doses. However, the magnitude of the difference may not be considered practically significant by launch safety officials.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GEEM-ENC-95D-02

DTIC Accession Number

ADA305621

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