Introduction on writing your “Thesis”

The structure of a scientific thesis or dissertation has three parts. The average

number of pages ranges between 220 and 350. You probably will not have all these

sub-sections in your thesis or dissertation, but this scheme provides a basic structure

from which to plan your writing:

1. The Beginning:

Title Page - Cover

Abstract (Summary – 1 page).

Dedication.

Acknowledgements (Supervisor-Professors-Drs-Department-EPSRC-Family-

Friends – 1 page)

Table of Contents (Indice, from Abstract until Nomenclature in Roman

numbers, from Chapter 1 on in natural numbers)

List of Figures.

List of Tables.

List of Appendices.

List of Abbreviations; also known as ‘Nomenclature’ in some disciplines

(Upper case – Lower case - Greek Letters)

Introduction chapters (including a Literature Review). It precedes a research

proposal and results section. Its main goals are to situate the current study

within the body of literature and to provide context for the particular reader,

reviewing the critical points of current knowledge including substantive

findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular

topic. Literature reviews are secondary sources, and as such, do not report

any new or original experimental work. For instance:

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1. Motivation and Background

1.2. Objectives/Contribution

1.3. Layout of the Thesis/Thesis Layout or Outline (orden de

exposicion, plan). One page, something like: “The thesis is a

summation of the all work that has been carried out since October

2012 on XXXXXXX. In Chapter 2 an overview of the basic concepts

associated with XXXXX are explained together with a review of all the

principal XXXXX used to study the XXX. In Chapter 3…”

Chapter 2 An Introduction to XXX and a review of the relevant Literature

2.1 Supercritical Fluids (intro, definition, applications)

2.2 Supercritical Boilers in Coal-Fired Power Plants (intro, features,

heat transfer)

2.3. Experimental Techniques (rigs for heat transfer, techniques used

to measure the heat transfer in SC boilers)

2.4. Computational Fluid Dynamics for Simulation (intro, applications,

programs, former tests for supercritical fluids).

Chapter 3 Supercritical Coal-Fired Power Plants

3.1. Definition and history

3.2. Supercritical Boilers

3.3. Heat Transfer properties

Chapter 4 Computational Fluid Dynamics Modelling

4.1. Definition and history

4.2. Applications of CFD

4.3. Validation of CFD models

4.4. Advantages of CFD

4.5. CFD analysis procedure

Initial thinking (theory)

Geometry creation

Mesh generation

Flow specification (Boundary Conditions and Settings).

Calculation of the numerical solution (Solving Scheme).

Results analysis

4.6. CFD methodology

Equations describing fluids in motion

Discretisation

Finite-difference method

Finite-element method

Finite volume method

Producing a solution

4.7. Commercial CFD software

Pre-processing

Solving the equations

Post-processing

4.8. Ansys CFX

4.9. Discretisation methods

Transient term

Diffusion term

Convection term

Source term

Pressure-velocity coupling

4.10. Solution strategy

Solving the numerical equations

Controlling the iterative process

4.11. Results analysis

X-Y charts

Contour plots

Streamlines

Particle tracks

Animation

2. The Middle: chapters depicting the methods and data obtained.

Chapter 5 Materials and Methods Experimental Techniques

Chapter 6 Results/Data (graphs, etc): do you need to learn a software

package like Excel in order to display data as pie charts for example? If you

need to use Excel or Access, training material for these applications can be

found in the course 'IT Skills Training', which you can download into your

WebCT course list. There are also courses on these packages which can be

found using the Training Gateway at:

http://www.skills.bham.ac.uk/courses/postgrad.shtml

3. The End:

Chapter 7 Conclusion/Discussion of Results and Recommendations for

Future Work

7.1. Conclusions

7.1.1. Experimental (if done so)

7.1.2. Simulations

7.2. Future work

References: also known as ‘Bibliography’ in some disciplines. Will you use

bibliographic software such as Endnote, or a card system? We would

recommend that you use Endnote (or Reference Manager for Chemical

Engineering), as the Engineering Schools have licences which means you

can have the software on your computer at work.

Glossary

Appendix A (any additional data that doesn’t match anywhere in thesis)

Appendix B

Appendix C

Published Papers