| 1. |
- Azizoğlu, Yağız, 1986-
(författare)
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Modeling of Cold Pilgering of Tubes
- 2017
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Cold pilgering is a challenging tube forming process in terms of modeling due to the complexity in kinematic of tools, friction condition and material behavior. The process development has mostly been based on simple formulas and costly full-scale tryouts. The aim in this study is to develop validated Finite element models of cold pilgering to increase the understanding of influence of the process parameters on the produced tubes.In the course of this thesis, three-dimensional mechanical and thermo-mechanical Finite element models of cold pilgering were developed. The commercial code MSC.Marc was used in the simulations. General 3D models are needed to be able to capture asymmetric deformation in cold pilgering. It was found that tool deflections together with elastic deformation of roll dies have considerable influence on the rolling force. Furthermore, the strain rate and temperature effects on the response of the material and thereby on the rolling force were evaluated.
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| 2. |
- Loukil, Mohamed Sahbi, 1984-
(författare)
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Microcracking in fiber composites and degradation of thermo-elastic properties of laminates
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The macroscopic failure of composite laminates subjected to tensile increasing load is preceded by initiation and evolution of several microdamage modes. The most common damage mode and the one examined in this thesis is intralaminar cracking in layers. Due to this kind of microdamage the laminate undergoes stiffness reduction when loaded in tension. For example, the elastic modulus in the loading direction and the corresponding Poisson’s ratio will decrease.The degradation of the elastic properties of these materials is caused by reduced stress in the damaged layer which is mainly due to two parameters: crack opening displacement (COD) and crack sliding displacement (CSD). At fixed applied load these parameters depend on the properties of the damaged and surrounding layers, on layer orientation and on thickness. When the number of cracks per unit length is high (high crack density in the layer) the COD and CSD are reduced because of to crack interaction.The main objective of the first paper is to investigate the effect of crack interaction on COD using FEM and to describe the identified dependence on crack density in a simple and accurate form by introducing an interaction function dependent on crack density. This interaction function together with COD of non-interactive crack gives accurate predictions of the damaged laminate thermo-elastic properties. The application of this function to more complex laminate lay-ups is demonstrated. All these calculations are performed assuming that cracks are equidistant.However, the crack distribution in the damaged layer is very non-uniform, especially in the initial stage of multiple cracking. In the second paper, the earlier developed model for general symmetric laminates is generalized to account for non-uniform crack distribution. This model is used to calculate the axial modulus of cross-ply laminates with cracks in internal and surface layers. In parametric analysis the COD and CSD are calculated using FEM, considering the smallest versus the average crack spacing ratio as non-uniformity parameter. It is shown that assuming uniform distribution we obtain lower bond to elastic modulus. A “double-periodic” approach presented to calculate the COD of a crack in a non-uniform case as the average of two solutions for periodic crack systems is very accurate for cracks in internal layers, whereas for high crack density in surface layers it underestimates the modulus reduction.In the third paper, the thermo-elastic constants of damaged laminates were calculated using shear lag models and variational models in a general calculation approach (GLOB-LOC) for symmetric laminates with transverse cracks in 90° layer. The comparison of these two models with FEM was presented for cross-ply and quasi-isotropic laminates.
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| 3. |
- Bäckström, Ingela, 1963-
(författare)
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Quality Management for Sustainable Health : Methodologies, Values and Practices taken from Swedish Organizations
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In many Western countries today, not least in Sweden, there are a lot of organizations that have great problems with sickness absence. The costs connected to the high rates of sickness absence have also risen to alarming levels. Healthy co-workers and healthy organizations are obvious goals for many leaders, but this is not always so easy to establish. Work practices and leadership that are beneficial to co-worker health are thus vital to identify. Studies have shown relationships between company-wide implementation of quality programs and improved co-worker satisfaction along with low co-worker turn over; in other words, co-worker health along with improved customer satisfaction and financial results. Despite the great problems concerning sickness absence, there are organizations that have been awarded prizes for excellence in leadership, internal partnership, working environment, and profitability. The overall purposes of the research described in this thesis are to examine and describe how management and leadership can establish sustainable health among the co-workers and examine how the leadership for sustainable health is related to Quality Management. The in-depth purpose is to examine which aspects within the values derived from the quality movement are those that primarily influence the co-workers’ perceived health. The results presented can be described in three parts and are results from four case studies carried out in five different organizations. Three of the organizations have received awards for establishing good working environment, good financial results, and low sick leaves among their co-workers; the fourth received an award for the successful implementation of quality programs. The first part consists of results from case studies in three different organizations and describes how organizations can work to achieve sustainable health among their co-workers, with practical examples. The results are methodologies, values and organizational structure, which it is considered possible for other organizations to adopt in their efforts to achieve good working conditions resulting in fewer sick leaves. The second part is an attempt to investigate if leadership for sustainable health is related to Quality Management. Methodologies, leadership values, organizational structure, and general values found in organizations which have achieved sustainable health are analyzed in the light of Deming’s 14 points, and a correlation is indicated. There is also correlation found between the TQM values and the co-workers’ perception of their health. The third part examines which of the aspects within the values grown from the quality movement are those that influence the co-workers perceived health. The results show significant correlation between the values and the co-workers’ perception of their health. Aspects found within the value “Top management commitment” were named; Empathy, Presence and Communication, Integrity, and Continuity. Within the value “Let everybody be committed” the aspects; Development, Influence and Being informed were found. These aspects are described in more detail and also in one model per value. The result implies that the TQM values; “Top management commitment”, “Improve continuously” “Let everybody be Committed” and “Focus on customers” are important for achieving healthy organizations and sustainable health among co-workers.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Rundquist, Jonas, 1964-
(författare)
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Outsourcing of New Product Development - A decision framework
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The focus of this thesis is the outsourcing of activities in the New Product Development (NPD) process. Outsourcing of NPD refers to the outsourcing of development activities for the developing of new products (goods and/or service), where all or just the innovative part of the NPD process is purchased externally based on a contract with organizational units separate from the outsourcing firm. This definition implies that (A) the activity should be an innovative part of the NPD process, (B) the activity should have previously been conducted internally, and (C) the activity should be purchased under a contractual agreement between the organizations.This thesis focuses on the outsourcing of NPD in medium sized firms. Although the framework is probably also useful for small and large firms, the three empirical studies in the thesis explored samples of medium sized firms. NPD is a knowledge intensive activity that requires the ability to handle uncertainties and is very dependent on the individuals involved in the process. In this way it differs from production, which (especially when producing standard items on a large scale) is easier to control, monitor and to evaluate the costs. Therefore, some considerations connected to knowledge acquisition and uncertainty needs to be addressed.A literature review reveals that research on outsourcing often focuses on A) Large firms and B) outsourcing of production activities. In addition, research on NPD usually involves large firms, despite the fact that the interest in product development in small and medium sized firms has grown rapidly in recent years. Since outsourcing of NPD is a method frequently used to access competence, and reduce costs and/or uncertainty, it seems motivated to study the outsourcing of NPD in medium sized firms.The thesis presents a decision framework that is based on three empirical studies (two survey studies and one case study) and a theoretical framework. The theoretical framework presented in the thesis is commonly used to understand outsourcing questions in general. In the present thesis the framework is applied in the specific situation of outsourcing a knowledge intensive activity (such as NPD) in the context of medium sized firms. Transactions cost, resource based, resource dependency, knowledge based, agency cost, and institutional theories are revisited in the thesis.Outsourcing can lead to advantages in form of lower costs, access to knowledge or other resources, as well as access to markets, but it can also result in a knowledge drain, lower motivation among in-house staff, or an increased level of dependency on external organizations. Therefore the decision to outsource is not always a good one, and the pros and cons must be carefully evaluated. The result of the thesis is a decision framework that maps factors affecting the decisions that need to be made when outsourcing NPD. The implications can be of value to the outsourcing firm as well as to the potential outsourcing partner. The framework has been presented to the firms in the studies and thus has already proved its value to some extent.The framework will also be used for the design of the studies that will hopefully take me towards my PhD degree, including a new survey study as well as a case study focusing on knowledge integration.
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| 7. |
- Charles, Corinne, 1979-
(författare)
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Modelling microstructure evolution of weld deposited Ti-6Al-4V
- 2008
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The microstructure and consequently the mechanical properties of titanium alloys are highly dependent on the temperature history endured by the material. The manufacturing process of metal deposition induces repetitive cooling and heating in the material determining a specific microstructure. The presented study is devoted to developing and implementing a microstructure model for Ti-6Al-4V intended to be coupled to a thermo- mechanical model of the metal deposition process.Microstructural analysis of the metal deposited samples was first performed to understand the formed microstructure. A set of representative parameters for microstructure modelling were then selected as representative for the known impact of Ti-6Al-4V microstructure on mechanical properties. Evolution equations for these parameters were implemented for thermal finite element analysis of the process. Six representative state variables are modelled: the phase volume fraction of total alpha, beta, Widmanstätten alpha, grain boundary alpha, martensite alpha, and the alpha lath thickness. Heating, cooling and repeated re-heating involved in the process of metal deposition are taken into account in the model. The phase transformations were modelled based on a diffusionnal theory described by a Johnson-Mehl-Avrami formulation, as well as diffusionless transformations for the martensite alpha formation and the beta reformation during reheating. The Arrhenius equation is applied as a simplification to model temperature dependent alpha lath size calculation. Grain growth is not included in the present formulation, but would have to be added for capturing alpha lath coarsening during long term heat treatment.The temperature history during robotised tungsten inert gas deposition welding is simulated together with the microstructure. The implementation of the model handles well the complex cyclic thermal loading from the metal deposition process. A particular banded structure observed in the metal deposited microstructure is partially explained using the proposed microstructure model. It is concluded that although qualitatively interesting results have been achieved, further calibration testing over a wider range of temperature histories must be performed to improve the transformation kinetic parameters for reliable quantitative predictions of the microstructure.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Larsson, Tobias
(författare)
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Effective development of dynamic systems : a structured approach
- 1999
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This licentiate thesis deals with effective simulation of multibody dynamic systems in the product development process. Previous work to make simulation more effective has concentrated on developing faster calculation methods. Instead, this approach is to make the process of multibody dynamics simulation more effective by structuring of products, simulation models and their usage. Efforts have been made to clarify how computer tools are used in product development in industry today. Insight into the two domains of product development and multibody dynamics is given. These domains have traditionally been separated but the introduction of concurrent engineering and faster computers puts new demands on the integration of computer support and analysis in the development process. A proposal for performing the multibody dynamics methodology in a modular way in the product development process is given based on the performed work.
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| 10. |
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| 11. |
- Lilja, Johan
(författare)
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Quality practice and customer value: strengthening the ideal linkage
- 2005
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Quality management is continuously evolving and the progression so far is frequently described in terms of four stages. According to these descriptions, Total Quality Management (TQM) constitutes the currently highest level, or fourth stage, of quality management. Despite the divergence of views on what constitutes TQM, it is commonly described as a number of diverse activities, here designated as quality practice, performed to display and embody a certain set of values. One of these values, acknowledged as central to TQM, is to focus on the customers. This value basically implies that a TQM organization should adapt its operations to what creates value for its customers. Hence, there is ideally a strong linkage between the application of quality practice and the creation of customer value. In a wider perspective, this linkage fundamentally determines the vital contribution of quality practice to competitiveness. However, this linkage has so far been given poor attention among quality researchers. Furthermore, differences of opinions exist regarding its strength. It has for instance been argued that quality practices commonly included in TQM lack a linkage to customer value, decrease the competitiveness of the organization in which they are implemented, and hinder the organization’s ability to create customer value. The aim of this thesis is accordingly to examine the ideal linkage between quality practice and customer value in order to increase its strength. In accordance to the idea of continuous improvement, the aim is to improve the reflection of the value ‘focus on the customers’ in quality practice. The research process described in this thesis has started by examining and developing the current theoretical foundation and models of TQM concerning customer value, in terms of the theory of attractive quality. Furthermore, an affective conceptualization of customer value has been used as a basis for an initial examination of the ideal linkage. Among the presented results it is indicated that quality practice, including the measures currently used to capture customer perceptions, is more or less restricted to negative motivations of external customers. Negative motivations basically stem from the customers strive to avoid and reduce negative emotional states. The linkage to positive motivations of the external customers is seemingly much weaker or even absent. The indicated focus can be seen as a reflection of early theories of motivation emphasizing negative motivations as the governing principle. Modern theories emphasize, however, both negative and positive motivations. The sole emphasis on negative motivations indicated in current quality practice would imply that external customers prefer to exist in a state of boring neutrality. A dual emphasis recognizes that while our customers want to minimize pain and disappointment, they want to maximize pleasure as well, to make life interesting and stimulating. An extension of quality practice, including the use of multiple output measures, is suggested to increasing the reflection of this duality of customer value in TQM. As a foundation for such an extension, a two-dimensional perspective on the mechanisms involved in the strong positive emotional state associated with attractive quality elements has been proposed. The proposed perspective points at two separate mechanisms in terms of the satisfaction of high-level needs and latent needs
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| 12. |
- Wingstedt, Johnny
(författare)
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Narrative music : towards an understanding of musical narrative functions in multimedia
- 2005
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As the computer screen is replacing the book as the dominant medium for communication (Kress, 2003), questions about how meaning is constituted by the multimodal interaction of different media (including music) is becoming increasingly important in contemporary research of pedagogy, sociology and media studies. The overall aim with this licentiate thesis is to explore musical narrative functions as they appear in multimedia such as film and computer games. The thesis is based on three publications. Publication 1 proposes a classification of musical narrative functions, with 6 narrative classes(the Emotive, Informative, Descriptive, Guiding, Temporal and Rhetorical classes) and 11 categories. The relational interplay of music with contextual factors is emphasized. Publication 2 describes the design of a software tool, REMUPP (Relations Between Musical Parameters and Perceived Properties), to be used for experimental studies of musical expression. REMUPP is used for real time alteration of musical expression, by the manipulation of musical parameters such as tempo, harmony, rhythm, articulation, etc. Publication 3 describes a quasi-experiment using REMUPP, where a group of young participants (12-13 years old) were given the task of adapting musical expression - by manipulating 7 parameters - to make it fit 3 visual scenes shown on a computer screen. They also answered a questionnaire asking about their musical backgrounds and habits of listening to music, watching movies and playing computer games. Numerical data from the manipulations were analyzed statistically with regards to the preferred values of the musical parameters in relation to the different visual scenes. The results indicated awareness and knowledge about codes and conventions of musical narrative functions, and were to some degree affected by the participants' gender, musical backgrounds and media habits.
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| 13. |
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| 14. |
- Kuzmin, Leonid, 1958-
(författare)
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Investigation of the most essential factors influencing ski glide
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- There are many different parameters of a ski running surface (material, roughness, hydrophobicity, etc.). All the parameters have an influence on ski glide, some more and some less. Furthermore, some parameters with only minor relevance are commonly declared as critical, while truly critical parameters, as far as we know, never been investigated. In this thesis, we try to identify and structure the different stages of ski running surface preparation. In our experiments, we have applied well-established, commonly used treatments parallel with alternative preparations. The unexpected result of our experiments is that the treatments commonly used today are not as good as alternative treatments, namely; stone grinding and glide wax application are far from an optimal ski treatment if minimising friction over a given distance is the major goal.
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| 15. |
- Köhler, Veronica, 1974-
(författare)
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Co-Creators of Scope of Action : An exploration of the dynamic relationship between people, IT, and work in a nursing context
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Information Technology (IT) is today widespread in our work places, in our spare time and in our society overall. Implementations of IT in organizations come with high expectations on effectiveness, revenue, smoother work processes and so on. However, this simplified view on IT ignores the fact that it is the IT usage rather than the IT artifact per se that in the end decides the effect of an implementation of IT. Although the IT artifact certainly has been designed to support certain tasks and processes, the success or failure of the Information System (IS) in the end depends on the individuals' actions, which ultimately depend on their perceptions and interpretations of the IS. Thus, when technology is being implemented and becomes an IS in use, it becomes a part of work, and as such more of a social system than a technological one.The actual result of a design process does not solely consist of things or artifacts, but above all changed action patterns for the users. From this follows that we must consider design of artifacts as something more than merely the constructing of actual objects with functions and properties that are easily measured. Rather, a large part of all design activities has to do with design of conceivable social milieus, not artifacts. Thus, design may be defined as the suggesting and establishing of scope of action. The concept scope of action aims at describing the fact that the design of, and consequently the implementation of, a specific IT artifact always aims at creating a certain scope of action; some actions are made easier, others are made more difficult or even impossible. This scope of action has to some extent been deliberately designed, but these changes may on the other hand also be undesired and not predicted in advance. The complexity of this phenomenon is great and hard to grasp in advance. However, this does not mean that we can allow ourselves to ignore exploring this phenomenon more deeply. On the contrary, with a usage perspective on IS success or failure, scope of action becomes very important.Although the term scope of action may seem a rather intuitive concept, we need more concrete knowledge about its character in order to be able to understand IT usage, both when designing a new IT artifact and when studying or evaluating IT. Thus, our intuitive understanding of the concept needs to be complemented with theory on the ‘constituents’ and effects of this phenomenon. For this purpose, in this thesis nurses’ use of the Electronic Patient record (EPR) is being explored in order to gain an empirically derived understanding of the character of scope of action.The research findings highlight the emergent character of scope of action. It is obvious that an individual’s scope of action is not being created on one occasion, and above all not only by the IT artifact. Various co- creators such as the IT artifact, the usage and the social context create and re-create scope of action. Also, how the individual interprets and understands the IT artifact in IT usage will influence her scope of action. This since sensemaking and learning processes on both a personal and organizational level take place that are co-creators of the individual’s scope of action, at the same time as the individual’s knowledge and previous sensemaking and learning influences her use of the IT artifact.Thus, reasoning, thinking, learning, and the IT artifact co-evolve over time in adaptation and appropriation processes. This means that IT as a mediational means constitutes an important co-creator of scope of action. From this also follows that work integrated learning is an important co- creator of scope of action when using IT in a work setting, at the same time as work integrated learning is being influenced by the individual’s scope of action.Finally, in order to understand how scope of action emerges in use, merely focusing on structures is insufficient. Scope of action emerges as a product of interplay between complex processes involving artifacts, usage and context. This means that the user’s scope of action is co-created by both static structures as well as dynamic processes relating to the IT artifact, the organization, and the work practice. Thus, the IT artifact, and subsequently scope of action, must be must be understood in relation to the multi-aspectual context of which it is a part instead of merely in relation to the properties of the IT artifact per se.
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| 16. |
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| 17. |
- Aalipour, Mojgan
(författare)
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Human Factors Approach for Maintenance Improvement
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this research work is to explore and describe human factors affectingmaintenance execution. To achieve the purpose of this study, the influencing factors have been identified using a literature survey. They have been categorized into four main groups namely organizational, workplace, job and individual factors. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is employed on data questionnaires to rank the priority of the factors. The interrelationships between these factors have been recognized by theInterpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) model. In the present case studies, MICMAC1analysis technique is also implemented for identifying the driving, dependent, linkage and autonomous factors. The data was collected through a questionnaire survey involving the participation of 16 and 25 maintenance staff and 10 mining experts in Swedish and Iranian mines, respectively. Within the study, it has been identified that the temperature, work layout, tools design and tools availability are the most important factors in both mines related to these categories. However, the significant factors in the organizational and individual categories are different in the selected mines. The effect of workplace factors on the maintainability of mining equipment is discussed and thereafter a methodology for maintainability management in the design and operation phases is developed. In the thirdcase study HEART2 is applied to estimate the probability of human error occurring duringmaintenance execution in an Iranian cable company. This research supports maintenance management to gain knowledge of human factors that affect maintenance execution. Further, this understanding could be useful in the development of strategies to improve the execution of maintenance.Keywords: Human Factors, Maintenance Management, Human Reliability, HumanPerformance, AHP, ISM, MICMAC, HEART
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| 18. |
- Aas, Gro Hanne
(författare)
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Kvinneforskningspolitiske (pr)øvelser
- 1999
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Målsettingen for licentiatuppsatsen er å analysere nordisk kvinneforsknings formuleringer av forskningspolitiske felter, problemstillinger og utfordringer, og gjennom kontakt og diskusjon bidra til samarbeid, diskusjoner og offentlighet om forskingspolitikk i kvinneforskning. Arbeidet har tatt utgangspunkt i relativt nytt materiale fra Danmark, Norge og Sverige. I kap. 1 presenteres prosjektet, problemstillinger og materiale. Kapitlene 2-6 består av innledninger og artikler holdt eller skrevet i løpet av de to senaste åren. Diskusjoner om kjønn og akademia står i fokus i kap. 2 - "Universities have politics". I kap. 3, artikkelen "Gamle og nye drømmer", diskuteres et kvinneforskningspolitiske intervensjonsprosjekt som blev utført for en del år tilbake, og det antydes noen nye omdreiningspunkter for et slikt arbeid. Enkelte perspektiver utdypes i kap. 4, "Kvinneforskningens samfunnskontrakt", hvor termen "kvinneperspektiv" som forskningspolitisk term granskas krtitiskt. De to siste kapitlene tar utgangspunkt i den norske forskningsmeldingen som kom våren 1999. Ut fra tre lesestrategier forsøkes det leses muligheter for kvinneforskningspolitiske strategier. Det ses også på innholdet i regjeringens forskningspolitiske verdidebatt, og det diskuteres mulige intervensjoner i denne ut fra feministiske vitenskaps- og teknologistudier.
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| 19. |
- Abdikalikova, Zamira
(författare)
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Embedding theorems for spaces with multiweighted derivatives
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This Licentiate Thesis consists of four chapters, which deal with a new Sobolev type function space called the space with multiweighted derivatives. This space is a generalization of the usual one dimensional Sobolev space. Chapter 1 is an introduction, where, in particular, the importance to study function spaces with weights is discussed and motivated. In Chapter 2 we consider and analyze some results of L. D. Kudryavtsev, where he investigated one dimensional Sobolev spaces. Moreover, in this chapter we present and prove analogous results by B. L. Baidel'dinov for generalized Sobolev spaces. These results are crucially for the proofs of the main results of this Licentiate Thesis. In Chapter 3 we prove some embedding theorems for these new generalized Sobolev spaces. The main results of Kudryavtsev and Baidel'dinov about characterization of the behavior of functions at a singularity take place in weak degeneration of spaces. However, with the help of our new embedding theorems we can extend these results to the case of strong degeneration. In Chapter 4 we prove some new estimates for each function in a Tchebychev system. In order to be able to study also compactness of the embeddings from Chapter 3 such estimates are crucial. I plan to study this question in detail in my further PhD studies.
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| 20. |
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| 21. |
- Abid, Nosheen, 1993-
(författare)
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Deep Learning for Geo-referenced Data : Case Study: Earth Observation
- 2021
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis focuses on machine learning methods for Earth Observation (EO) data, more specifically, remote sensing data acquired by satellites and drones. EO plays a vital role in monitoring the Earth’s surface and modelling climate change to take necessary precautionary measures. Initially, these efforts were dominated by methods relying on handcrafted features and expert knowledge. The recent advances of machine learning methods, however, have also led to successful applications in EO. This thesis explores supervised and unsupervised approaches of Deep Learning (DL) to monitor natural resources of water bodies and forests. The first study of this thesis introduces an Unsupervised Curriculum Learning (UCL) method based on widely-used DL models to classify water resources from RGB remote sensing imagery. In traditional settings, human experts labeled images to train the deep models which is costly and time-consuming. UCL, instead, can learn the features progressively in an unsupervised fashion from the data, reducing the exhausting efforts of labeling. Three datasets of varying resolution are used to evaluate UCL and show its effectiveness: SAT-6, EuroSAT, and PakSAT. UCL outperforms the supervised methods in domain adaptation, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The subsequent study is an extension of UCL for the multispectral imagery of Australian wildfires. This study has used multispectral Sentinel-2 imagery to create the dataset for the forest fires ravaging Australia in late 2019 and early 2020. 12 out of the 13 spectral bands of Sentinel-2 are concatenated in a way to make them suitable as a three-channel input to the unsupervised architecture. The unsupervised model then classified the patches as either burnt or not burnt. This work attains 87% F1-Score mapping the burnt regions of Australia, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method. The main contributions of this work are (i) the creation of two datasets using Sentinel-2 Imagery, PakSAT dataset and Australian Forest Fire dataset; (ii) the introduction of UCL that learns the features progressively without the need of labelled data; and (iii) experimentation on relevant datasets for water body and forest fire classification. This work focuses on patch-level classification which could in future be expanded to pixel-based classification. Moreover, the methods proposed in this study can be extended to the multi-class classification of aerial imagery. Further possible future directions include the combination of geo-referenced meteorological and remotely sensed image data to explore proposed methods. Lastly, the proposed method can also be adapted to other domains involving multi-spectral and multi-modal input, such as, historical documents analysis, forgery detection in documents, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) classification tasks.
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| 22. |
- Abiri, Olufunminiyi
(författare)
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Simplifications of non-local damage models
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ductile fracture presents challenges with respect to material modelling and numerical simulations of localization. The strain and damage localization may be unwanted as it indicates a failure in the process or, as in the case of machining and cutting, a wanted phenomenon to be controlled. The latter requires a higher accuracy regarding the modelling of the underlying coupled plastic and fracturing/damage behaviour of the material, metal in the current context as well as the robustness of the simulation procedure. The focus of this thesis is on efficient and reliable finite element solution of the localization problem through the non-local damage model. The non-local damage model extends the standard continuum mechanics theory by using non-local continuum theory in order to achieve mesh independent results when simulating fracture or shear localization. In this work, the non-local damage model and its various simplifications are evaluated in an in-house finite element code developed using Matlab™. The accuracy, robustness, efficiency and costs of the models are investigated and also compared to a general multi-length scale finite element formulation. A numerical study versus published data is used to demonstrate the validity of the model. The explicit non-local damage variant will be implemented in a commercial finite element code for use in machining simulation
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| 23. |
- Adolfsson, Daniel
(författare)
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Steelmaking slags as raw material for sulphoaluminate belite cement
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present work was undertaken as part of the research in the Minerals and Metals Recycling research centre, MiMeR. The course of the thesis is attributed to metallurgical slags from the steelmaking industry and the possible use of such by-products as raw material for sulphoaluminate belite cement (SAB). Implementing steel slags into the production of cement could contribute to the steel industry's possibility of increasing the recirculation. In addition to the previous objective, the introduction of slag into the cement manufacturing can also facilitate the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions as well as lowering the overall energy consumption during the manufacturing. The reason for this is that the SAB system enables the reduction of the lime saturation factor (LSF) which in turn implies that less limestone is needed in the raw meal. Additionally, the firing temperature can be reduced by about 100-150°C, since dicalcium silicate and sulphoaluminate are formed already at approximately 1200-1250°C. In any event, one should remember that this is not intended to be a final solution for the recycling of slag, nor a replacement for already accepted cement materials. A number of applications currently exist where ordinary Portland cement (OPC) is used, but in cases where the OPC could be replaced with other type of cements, e.g. SAB cement, the possibility of using residues material in cement applications is increased. Considering the clinker covered within this work, possible applications are those where slow hydraulic properties are suitable. The behaviour of high temperature reactions of tested mixtures was investigated using thermogravimetric analysis coupled with a quadrupole mass spectrometer. Mineralogical observations were carried out with x-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results proved that steelmaking slags have the potential to work as raw material, since sulphoaluminate along with polymorphs of dicalcium silicate and ferrite phases were detected after firing at 1200 ºC in an air atmosphere. The hydraulic properties of the specimens were analysed through conduction calorimetry, XRD, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) as was the mechanical strength of the specimens when hydrated for 2 and 28 days. The compressive strength was in accordance with that suggested in the literature for slow hardening SAB cement. Both mixtures tested behaved the same with regard to heat development as well as the amount of AFt formed during the first 24 hours of the hydration.
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| 24. |
- Aguilar, Wilson
(författare)
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Study of the Synthesis of ZSM-5 from Inexpensive Raw Materials
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- ZSM-5 is an aluminosilicate with high silica ratio with suitable properties for catalysis, ion exchange, adsorption and membrane applications. ZSM-5 is usually produced industrially from concentrated systems in which there is formation of an amorphous gel phase. Typical syntheses of ZSM-5 require sources of silicon and aluminium, a mineralizer and an organic molecule as so-called templating agent. The silicon and aluminum sources widely used for the synthesis are pure reagent chemicals and in particular quaternary ammonium compounds like tetrapropyl ammonium hydroxides (TPA-OH), are employed as templating agents. Unfortunately, these compounds are rather expensive. Demand for inexpensive sources of aluminosilicates for the synthesis of ZSM-5 has increased during the last two decades. Natural raw materials such as kaolin clay and diatomaceous earth (diatomite) are two potential inexpensive sources of silica and alumina. Moreover, the molecule n-butylamine (NBA) has been reported as a low-cost templating agent to replace the quaternary ammonium compounds. The aim of this work was to show for the first time that leached metakaolinite or diatomite in combination with sodium hydroxide and n-butylamine could be used as inexpensive raw materials for the synthesis of ZSM-5 without using an additional source of silica. After synthesis optimization, both sources of aluminosilicate were found to behave differently during the course of synthesis and led to slightly different products. The chemical composition of the raw materials and the products were determined using inductively coupled plasma-sector field mass spectrometry (ICP-SFMS). Crystallinity was examined by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), the morphology was studied by extreme-high-resolution scanning electron microscopy (XHR-SEM) and the specific surface area was estimated from nitrogen adsorption data by the BET method. The chemical composition of individual crystals was determined by energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS). Dealumination of the raw materials by acid leaching made it possible to reach appropriate SiO2/Al2O3 ratios and reduced the amount of impurities. The final ZSM-5 products had a SiO2/Al2O3 ratio in the range 20 – 40. The use of leached diatomite allowed reaching higher yield of ZSM-5 crystals within comparable synthesis times. However, low amounts of mordenite were formed, which was related to the high calcium content of diatomite. Another considerable advantage of diatomite over kaolin is that diatomite does not require heat treatment at high temperature to convert the kaolin to reactive metakaolin. Further characterization of the system by XHR-SEM and EDS at low voltage was carried out in order to understand the nucleation and early growth of the ZSM-5 zeolite crystals. The observations with unprecedented detail strongly suggest that nucleation and the succeeding growth occurs on the gel surface. The growth rates in the various crystallographic directions already at an early stage are such that the shape of the growing crystals resembles that of the final crystals. However, as the early growth is interface mediated, the growth rate along the gel particles is high and the gel particles will become partially embedded inside the growing crystals at an early stage. The Si and Al nutrients are probably transported along the solid/liquid interface and possibly through the liquid in the form of nanoparticles detaching from the gel. The organic template was initially contained in the liquid. However, it remains unclear at which stage the template becomes incorporated in the solid material. EDS at low voltage was also used to gain compositional information about the sodium/calcium ion exchanged products and extraneous phases when kaolin and Bolivian montmorillonite clay were used for the synthesis of zeolite A by alkali fusion. In order to evaluate the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the synthesized zeolite, ICP-SFMS and EDS were compared. The EDS method used in this work resulted in (Na,Ca)/Al ratios in equivalent moles very close to 1.0 as expected and was therefore found more reliable than ICP-SFMS to measure cation exchange capacity for zeolite A. To summarize, the present work shows that it was possible to synthesize well-crystallized ZSM-5 zeolite from inexpensive raw materials such as leached metakaolin or leached diatomite, sodium hydroxide and n-butyl amine. Furthermore, the crystallization mechanism evidenced in this system might be more general and also apply for other concentrated systems, e.g. those using TPA as structure-directing. Finally, this work displays that EDS at low voltage can provide valuable local compositional information in the field of zeolite synthesis.
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| 25. |
- Ahmadi, Alireza
(författare)
-
An assessment of operational consequences of failures to support aircraft scheduled maintenance program development
- 2007
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A majority of the direct and indirect maintenance costs in the life cycle of aircraft stems from the consequences of decisions taken during the initial maintenance program development. In particular, the preventive and corrective maintenance requirements, which greatly influence both the system availability and life cycle cost, need to be defined in order to perform only those preventive actions that are absolutely necessary and costeffective. Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a systematic methodology used to identify the preventive maintenance tasks that are necessary to realize the inherent reliability of equipment at the lowest possible cost. Developing a scheduled maintenance program by means of RCM consists of identifying those preventive tasks which are both applicable (technically feasible) and effective (worth doing). An applicable maintenance task must satisfy the requirements of the type of failure to restore the item's initial performance capability. To be effective, a preventive maintenance task must lead to a reduced risk (or expected loss) of the consequence classes to a level which is acceptable to the user. In the design development phase, in order to identify the most cost effective solution, a design trade-off study is needed. This involves choosing the correct balance of the cost of consequences of failure and its correction, with their cost of prevention. However, during initial aircraft maintenance program development, lack of a methodology that supports the assessment of the operational consequences of failures has made the costeffectiveness analysis of maintenance tasks a challenging issue. This might reduce the accuracy of the analysis, which results in higher maintenance costs and may decreases the punctuality of operation, which ultimately increases the total aircraft life cycle cost. The purpose of this study is to develop a methodology for identifying different operational consequences and associated costs caused by aircraft system failure, in order to facilitate and enhance the capability of taking correct and efficient decisions when analyzing the cost-effectiveness of maintenance tasks. Some empirical studies of possible scenarios involving aircraft failures and their operational consequences for a commercial airline have been performed. Empirical data were extracted through document studies and interviews, guided by the application of an Event Tree Analysis (ETA). The analysis was performed together with experienced practitioners from both an aircraft manufacturer and commercial airlines, which contributed to a continuous verification of the outcomes of the study. Finally, the study has also estimated the associated cost of the identified operational consequences of failures. In order to quantify the operational consequences of failures, in the absence of adequate and reliable data, a methodology using pair-wise comparison technique has been applied to extract judgments of experts efficiently
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| 26. |
- Ahmed, Hamzah
(författare)
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Relationship Between Crystal Structure and Mechanical Properties in Cocrystals and Salts of Paracetamol
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Oral tablets are convenient and widely administered drugdosage forms.The mechanical properties of a drug substance such as plasticity, ability to cohere into compacts and friction/adhesion are important in the development of a tablet formulation. Crystal engineering is an interesting and viabletool for improving or optimizing these technical properties of a drug substance.The creation of a lternative polymorphic forms, cocrystals, salts or hydrates of a drug substance can result in structural variations in the molecular packing of the crystals and, thereby, can alter the deformation behavior of the materials.Knowledge of the relationships between crystal modifications and the technical properties in multicomponent systems is limited, but represents a possibility to predict mechanical properties based on crystalstructure that facilitates engineering particles for the optimal processing performance. The overall objective of this thesis is thus to gain better understanding of the relationships between the crystal structure features and the mechanical properties of cocrystals and salts. Paracetamol form I, its cocrystals with oxalic acid and 4,4´-bipyridine, and its hydrochloride salt were selected as model systems in the study.The materials were scaled-up using rational crystallization methods and the physical purity was confirmed. The relevant properties of these powders were determined.Tablets were then made at applied pressures of50-250 MPa under controlled conditions.The tabletability and compactability of the powders were determined. The compression mechanics of the powders were the investigated according to a material classification protocol.Slip planes were identified by visually observing the crystal structures and based on the attachment energies calculated using different force fields in the materialsstudio.The tensile strengths of the powders increased with increasing pressure and the tabletability decreased in the order oxalic acid>paracetamol-hydrochloride salt≈paracetamol-oxalic acid>4,4´-bipyridine>paracetamol-4,4´-bipyridine.The tensile strength of the tablets decreased exponentially with increasing porosity,with some exceptions.Ingeneral, the cocrystals and the salt displayed intermediate compression characteristics as compared to the reference substances.The elastic recovery of the cocrystal and salt forms of paracetamol was not markedly different from that of paracetamol.It was found that slip plane prediction based on the attachment energies was not reliable. While it was possible to explain the improved tableting properties of powders based on the crystal features (i.e. the presence of slip planes and flat layers), no clear relationship was found with yield pressure. This may be attributed to possible brittle material characteristics and the surface energies of the crystals,which need to be further studied.Thus, cocrystallization and salt formation introduced structural features that were responsible for changes in the compaction and compression properties of drug substances. In future work, we intend to extend these studies to provide a clear picture of structure-mechanical property relationships in organic molecular crystals over multiple length scales;molecules to crystals to bulk powder.Key words Crystal engineering, solid forms, cocrystals, salts, tableting, crystal structure, mechanical properties, compression analysis
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| 27. |
- Ahmed, Mukhtiar
(författare)
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Fluorine-Free Ionic Liquid Based Electrolytes: Synthesis and Structural Characterization
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since their introduction by Sony in 1990, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have acquired a sizable market share. They have the best energy densities, a high open circuit voltage, a low self-discharge rate, no memory effect, and a slow loss of charge when not in use. These properties make them the most popular rechargeable batteries for portable gadgets, electric vehicles and aerospace applications. They do, however, pose major safety issues since the electrolytes are made up of fluorinated salts dissolved in volatile organic solvents, the former being meta-stable at ambient temperature and the latter being flammable a with high vapour pressure. Thus, there is an urge to develop thermally and electrochemically stable non-fluorinated electrolytes to improve the safety and performance of batteries. Electrolytes based on ionic liquids (ILs) in general offer a range of suitable advantages including low volatility and high thermal and electrochemical stabilities,and can additionally be made fluorine-free. In general, their physicochemical properties are determined by the interactions between the cations and anions, which are controlled by the chemical functionalities present, with vast freedom in structural design to reduce these interactions and enhance also the ion mobilities. In this study, favoring from of “structural design” three different families of fluorine-free ionic liquids-based electrolytes are designed and created. These families of ILs comprising n- tetrabutylphosphonium, imidazolium, pyridinium based cations and pyridine, pyrazine and ether functionalized salicylate-based anions. The structures and purity of these new ILs are characterized by using multinuclear NMR, FTIR and mass spectrometry. Several features and properties of the novel electrolytes are investigated; thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, ionic conductivity and electrochemical stability. These studies are further complemented by using PFG NMR diffusometry to understand the possible interaction mechanisms between the oppositely charged ions within the electrolytes, and especially, the influence of Li+ addition in the IL-based electrolytes.
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| 28. |
- Aitomäki, Yvonne
(författare)
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Towards a measurement of paper pulp quality : ultrasonic spectroscopy of fibre suspensions
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- For the paper and pulp industry in Sweden and Finland to remain competitive against countries with lower overheads, they have to constantly strive to improve the quality and the efficiency of the manufacturing processes. One of the ways of doing this is to introduce sensors that will provide valuable online feedback on the characteristics of the pulp so that adjustments can be made to optimise the manufacturing process. The measurement method proposed in this thesis is based on ultrasound, since it is rapid, inexpensive, non-destructive and non-intrusive. Thus could be done online. Since ultrasound propagation and attenuation depends on the material properties through which is propagates, it has the potential to provide measurements of material properties such as pulp fibre density and elasticity. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the possibility of using ultrasound to measure pulp fibre material properties. The idea is to solve the inverse problem of estimating these properties from attenuation measurements and to establish the degree of accuracy to which this can be done. Firstly a model is developed and is tested with synthetic fibres to establish is validity. It is then used to solve the inverse problem of estimating material properties from attenuation measurements, again with synthetic fibres, to test the accuracy to which these properties can be estimated. Resonance peaks in the frequency response of the attenuation were found. On closer investigation it was established that the location of these peaks in the frequency domain is sensitive to the diameter of the fibres and their material properties. If the diameter is known, these peaks improve the accuracy of the estimation process. The results of the estimation process for synthetic fibre suspensions show values for the shear modulus are within known ranges but the estimation of Poisson's ratio and Young's modulus is poor. Improving the model or the estimation procedure may lead to better results. For the method as it is to have application in the paper and pulp industry there are certain conditions that need to be fulfilled. These are that we find peaks in the frequency response of the attenuation in pulp, know the diameter distribution of the fibres and the hollow nature of the fibres does not significantly alter the results. We can then, potentially, be able to establish the shear modulus of the pulp fibres. If the shear modulus is a factor in paper quality, we may be close to an online measurement of paper pulp quality using ultrasonic spectroscopy. Improving the model may allow us to estimate further properties and take into account the fibres being hollow. The thesis consists of two parts. The first part includes an overview of the pulp and paper industry and current testing methods, background theory on which the model is based and an overview of the model that is used in predicting ultrasound attenuation. There then follows a summary of the work done, some addition points are raised in the discussion before drawing conclusions. Finally we discuss what needs to be done to take this further. The second part contains a collection of four papers describing the research.
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| 29. |
- Aittamaa, Simon
(författare)
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Programming embedded real-time systems : implementation techniques for concurrent reactive objects
- 2011
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An embedded system is a computer system that is a part of a larger device with hardware and mechanical parts. Such a system often has limited resources (such as processing power, memory, and power) and it typically has to meet hard real-time requirements. Today, as the area of application of embedded systems is constantly increasing, resulting in higher demands on system performance and a growing complexity of embedded software, there is a clear trend towards multi-core and multi-processor systems. Such systems are inherently concurrent, but programming concurrent systems using the traditional abstractions (i.e., explicit threads of execution) has been shown to be both difficult and error-prone. The natural solution is to raise the abstraction level and make concurrency implicit, in order to aid the programmer in the task of writing correct code. However, when we raise the abstraction level, there is always an inherent cost. In this thesis we consider one possible concurrency model, the concurrent reactive object approach that offers implicit concurrency at the object level. This model has been implemented in the programming language Timber, which primarily targets development of real-time systems. It is also implemented in TinyTimber, a subset of the C language closely matching Timber’s execution model. We quantify various costs of a TinyTimber implementation of the model (such as context switching and message passing overheads) on a number of hardware platforms and compare them to the costs of the more common thread-based approach. We then demonstrate how some of these costs can be mitigated using stack resource policy. On a separate track, we present a feasibility test for garbage collection in a reactive real-time system with automatic memory management, which is a necessary component for verification of correctness of a real-time system implemented in Timber
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| 30. |
- Akhmetkaliyeva, Raya
(författare)
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Coercive estimates for the solutions of some singular differential equations and their applications
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This Licentiate thesis deals with the study of existence and uniqueness together with coercive estimates for solutions of certain differential equations. The thesis consists of four papers (papers A, B, C and D) and an introduction, which put these papers into a more general frame and which also serves as an overview of this interesting field of mathematics. In the text below the functions r(x), q(x), m(x) etc. are functions on (-∞,+∞), which are different but well defined in each paper. In paper A we study the separation and approximation properties for the differential operator ly=-y″+r(x)y′+q(x)y in the Hilbert space L2 :=L2(R), R=(-∞,+∞), as well as the existence problem for a second order nonlinear differential equation in L2 . Paper B deals with the study of separation and approximation properties for the differential operator ly=-y″+r(x)y′+s(x)‾y′ in the Hilbert spaceL2:=L2(R), R=(-∞,+∞), (here ¯y is the complex conjugate of y). A coercive estimate for the solution of the second order differential equation ly =f is obtained and its applications to spectral problems for the corresponding differential operatorlis demonstrated. Some sufficient conditions for the existence of the solutions of a class of nonlinear second order differential equations on the real axis are obtained. In paper C we study questions of the existence and uniqueness of solutions of the third order differential equation (L+λE)y:=-m(x)(m(x)y′)″+[q(x)+ir(x)+λ]y=f(x), (0.1) and conditions, which provide the following estimate: ||m(x)(m(x)y′)″||pp+||(q(x)+ir(x)+λ)y||pp≤ c||f(x)||pp for a solution y of (0.1). Paper D is devoted to the study of the existence and uniqueness for the solutions of the following more general third order differential equation with unbounded coefficients: -μ1(x)(μ2(x)(μ1(x)y′)′)′+(q(x)+ir(x)+λ)y=f(x). Some new existence and uniqueness results are proved and some normestimates of the solutions are given.
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| 31. |
- Al-Douri, Yamur K.
(författare)
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Information assurance for maintenance of railway track
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Railway traffic is steadily increasing, having a negative impact on maintenance and resulting in decreased track availability, comfort, and safety. Swedish railway track maintenance mostly focuses on the actual track condition via a nationwide condition-based maintenance (CBM) strategy. For maintenance to be conducted in an appropriate way, data on the actual track condition must be accurate; furthermore, those data need to be converted into accurate information for maintenance decisions. An information assurance (IA) framework has the potential to deal with the system risks from a technical perspective. The framework is a guideline that can be implemented within CBM to understand both condition monitoring data behaviour and the information processing used to reach maintenance decisions.This research investigates ways of an information assurance (IA) framework can be implemented in the following CBM steps: data collecting, data processing and making maintenance decisions on Swedish railway. The framework can be used to understand data behaviour, information processing and the communication between information layers for decisions at organisation, infrastructure and data/information levels. The research uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate critical information data, parameters, and problems and to suggest which areas need improvement. Quantitative analysis of the Swedish track geometry database reveals specific information about the behaviour of the railway data and their processing to make maintenance decisions.A case study shows how certain sections of a railway track are monitored and evaluates maintenance practices on those sections. The study finds several different types of measurements are taken using several different measurement systems. It is difficult to integrate these data for proper processing. In addition, there are problems of incomplete or irregular data; this affects the derivation of information and the use of models to understand track irregularities.Given the problems of data processing and subsequent decision making, the study suggests implementing an IA framework with CBM. The study checks the achievement of three IA principles in the existing data: authenticity, integrity and availability. The results show data have problems of authenticity and integrity, something also mentioned by the stakeholders in interviews. In particular years and on certain track sections, CM data are more than 5 percent incomplete, significantly affecting analysis. Incomplete track measurement data reach as high as 63 percent for the parameters of standard deviation (STD), longitudinal level and STD cooperation. Inaccurate measured values for alignment long wavelength within certain speed limits reach as high as 71 percent. These indicators are important for calculating track quality but are either incomplete or incorrect, negatively affecting the calculation of the Q-value and estimations of the track quality. This, in turn, negatively affects the maintenance decisions. Using information assurance will increase the system performance by permitting stakeholders to make accurate decisions.The suggested information assurance framework can discover technical problems but it needs to be improved using technologies, techniques and services to ensure complete and accurate data are available to be processed for maintenance decisions.
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| 32. |
- Al-Gburi, Majid
(författare)
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Restraint in structures with young concrete : Tools and estimations for practical use
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- One of the widespread issues in concrete structures is cracks occurring at early age. Cracks that appear in the young concrete may cause early start of corrosion of rebars or early penetration of harmful liquids or gases into the concrete body. These situations could result in reduced service life and in significantly increased maintenance cost of structures. Therefore it is important for construction companies to avoid these cracks. Restraint represents one of the main sources of thermal and shrinkage stresses at early age concrete. Paper I, deals with both the compensation plane method, CPM, and local restraint method, LRM, as alternative methods studying crack risks for early age concrete. It is shown that CPM can be used both for cooling and heating, but basic LRM cannot be applied to heating. This paper presents an improved equivalent restraint method, ERM, which easily can be applied both for usage of heating and cooling for general structures. Restraint curves are given for two different infrastructures, one founded on frictional materials and another on rock. Such curves might be directly applied in design using LRM and ERM.In Paper II, existing restraint curves have been applied to the method of artificial neural networks (ANN) to model restraint in the wall for the typical structure wall-on-slab. It has been proven that ANN is capable of modeling the restraint with good accuracy. The usage of the neural network has been demonstrated to give a clear picture of the relative importance of the input parameters. Further, it is shown that the results from the neural network can be represented by a series of basic weight and response functions. Thus, the results can easily be made available to any engineer without use of complicated software.Paper III, discusses the influence of five casting sequences for the typical structure slab-on-ground. The aim is to map restraints from adjacent structures for a number of possible casting sequences, and to identify the sequence with the lowest restraint. The paper covers both continuous and jumped casting sequences, which include one, two and three contact edges. The result shows that the best casting sequence is the continuous technique with one contact edge.
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| 33. |
- Al-Jabban, Wathiq
(författare)
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Soil Modification By Adding Small Amounts of Soil Stabilizers : Impact of Portland Cement and the Industrial By-Product Petrit T
- 2017
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This licentiate thesis presents results of laboratory experiments regarding the effectiveness of adding small amounts of binders in order to modify and improve the mechanical performance of low organic clayey silt soil. Two types of binders have been used i.e. cement and an industrial by-product named Petrit T. The study covered both the immediate and longterm effects on the soil material. Binder content was added by soil dry weight, Petrit T at 2, 4 and 7% and cement at 1, 2, 4 and 7%. An experimental program has been carried out, including tests of consistency limits, unconfined compressive strength, density, solidification, grain size distribution (by laser particle size analyzer) and pH. The tests were conducted on the treated soil with varying binder contents and after different curing periods, i.e. after 7, 14, 28, 60 and 90 days. Results show that cement is more effective in improving the physical and engineering properties than Petrit T. Plasticity index decreases after treatment and leads to an immediate increase in workability. This is found directly after treatment and it increases with time. Soil density increased, whilst water content decreased, with increasing binder content and curing time. Particle size distribution of soil is changed toward the granular side by the reduction of the particles in clay size fraction and increasing silt size particles after 28 days of treatment. Both binder types resulted in an immediate effect on the soil pH value. This value increased to 12.3 after adding 7% of the binder and then it gradually decreased as curing time increased. The cement treated soil exhibits a more brittle failure behavior than the soil treated with Petrit T. In this case a more ductile behavior was observed. The findings confirmed that adding small binder contents of cement and by-product Petrit T significantly improved the physical and mechanical properties of soil, which can contribute to reduce the environmental threats and costs that are associated with using high binder contents in various construction projects.
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| 34. |
- Al-Maqdasi, Zainab, 1986-
(författare)
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Development of Constituents for Multi-functional Composites Reinforced with Cellulosic Fibers
- 2019
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Bio-basedcomposites are being increasingly used in applications where weight saving,and environmental friendliness is as important as structural performance. Obviously, bio-based materials have their limitations regarding durability and stability of the properties,but their potential in use for advanced applications can be expanded if they were functionalized and considered beyond their structural performance.Multifunctionalityincomposites can be achieved by modifyingeither of the composite constituents at different levelsso that they can perform energy-associated roles besides their structural reinforcement in the system. For the fibers, this can be done at the microscale by altering theirmicrostructure during spinning process or by applying functional coatings. As for the matrix, it is usually done by incorporating additives that can impart the required characteristics to the matrix. The nano-sized additives that mightbe considered for this objective are graphene and carbon nano-tubes. A big challenge with such materials is the difficulty to reachthe dispersionstate necessary for formation ofstable network to overcome the percolation threshold for conductivity. However, once the network is formed, the composite can have improved mechanical performance together with one or more of the added functionalities such as barrier capabilities,thermal and/or electrical conductivities or electromagnetic interference ability.Enormous work has been done to achieve the functionality incomposites produced with special care in laboratories. However, when it comes to mass production, it is both cost and energy inefficient to use tedious,complex methods for the manufacturing. Hence there is a need to investigate the potential of using scalable and industrial-relevant techniques and materials with acceptable compromise between cost and properties.The work presented in this thesis is performedwithin two projects aiming to achieve functional composites based on natural and man-made cellulosic fibers suitable for industrial upscaling. Conductive Regenerated Cellulose Fibers (RCFs) were produced by coating them with copper by electroless coating process using commercial materials. On the other hand, commercial masterbatches based on Graphene Nano-Platelets (GNPs) were used to produce wood polymer composites (WPC) with added multifunctionality by melt extrusion process. The process is one of the conventional methods used inpolymerproductionand needsno modifications for processingfunctional composites. Both materials together can be used to produce hybrid functional composites.The incorporation of the GNP into HDPE has resulted in improvement in the mechanical propertiesof polymer as well as composite reinforced with wood fibers. Stiffness has increased to a large extent while effect on the strength was less pronounced(>100% and 18% for stiffness and strength at 15%GNP loading). The enhancement of thermal conductivityat higher graphene loadingswas also observed. Moreover, time-dependent response of the polymer has also been affected and the addition of GNP has resulted in reduced viscoplastic strains and improved creep behavior.The copper-coated cellulose fibers showed a significant increasein electrical conductivity(<1Ω/50mm of coated samples) and a potential in use as sensor materials. However, these results come with the cost of reduction in mechanical properties of fibers (10% and 70% for tensile stiffness and strength, respectively) due to theeffect ofchemicals involved in the process.
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| 35. |
- Al-Ramahi, Nawres, 1980-
(författare)
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Numerical stress analysis in hybrid adhesive joint with non-linear materials
- 2018
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis presents systematic numerical study of stresses in the adhesive of a single-lap joint subjected to various loading scenarios (mechanical and thermal loading). The main objective of this work is to improve understanding of the main material and geometrical parameters determining performance of adhesive joint for the future analysis of failure initiation and development in these structures.The first part of the thesis deals with development of a 3D model as well as 2D model, optimized with respect to the computational efficiency by use of novel displacement coupling conditions able to correctly represent monoclinic materials (off-axis layers of composite laminates). The model takes into account the nonlinearity of materials (adherend and adhesive) with geometrical nonlinearity also accounted for. The parameters of geometry of the joint are normalized with respect to the dimensions of adhesive (e.g. thickness) thus making analysis of results more general and applicable to wide range of different joints. Optimal geometry of the single-lap joint is selected based on results of the parametric analysis by using peel and shear stress distributions in the adhesive layer as a criteria and it allows separation of edge and end effects. Three different types of single lap joint with similar and dissimilar (hybrid) materials are considered: a) metal-metal; b) composite-composite; c) composite-metal. In case of composite laminates, four lay-ups are evaluated: uni-directional ([08]T and [908]T) and quasi-isotropic laminates ([0/45/90/-45]S and [90/45/0/-45]S). The influence of the abovementioned parameters is carefully examined by analyzing peel and shear stress distributions in the adhesive layer. Discussion and conclusions with respect to the magnitude of the stress concentration at the ends of the joint overlap as well as overall level of stresses within overlap are presented. Recommendations concerning use of nonlinear material model are given.The rest of the work is related to the various methods of manufacturing of joint (curing) and application of thermo-mechanical loading suitable to these scenarios. The appropriate sequences of application of thermal and mechanical loads for the analysis of the residual thermal stresses developed due to manufacturing of joints at elevated temperature required to cure polymer (adhesive/composite) are proposed. It is shown that the most common approach used in many studies of simple superposition of thermal and mechanical stresses works well only for linear materials and produces wrong results if material is non-linear. The model and simulation technique presented in the current thesis rectifies this issue and accurate stress distributions are obtained. Based on the analysis of these stress distributions the following conclusions can be made: joint processing at elevated temperature causes high stresses inside the adhesive layer; the residual thermal stresses will reduce the peel stress concentration at the ends of overlap joint and the shear stress within the overlap, moreover, this effect is more pronounced for the case of the one-step joint manufacturing in comparison with two-step processing technique.This study has generated a lot of results for better understand of behavior of adhesive joints and it will help in design of stronger, more durable adhesive single-lap joints in the future.
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| 36. |
- Al-Sukhni, Muthana, 1988-
(författare)
-
Information Sharing and the Bullwhip Effect Reduction : A new Prespective Through the Lens of Blockchain Technology
- 2023
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Globalization and the surge of competition across industries forced companies to improve their supply chain capabilities to serve their customers efficiently and effectively. Due to this fact, businesses are no longer capable of handling all supply chain operations without collaboration and coordination with other firms. One of the key obstacles to coordination is the lack of information sharing and trust between firms since they view information as a sensitive asset. Digital technologies like blockchain, with its inherited features, have the capability to facilitate real-time information sharing, solve trust issues, and improve end-to-end visibility across the supply chain. This licentiate thesis highlights the impact of multiple aspects of information sharing on the bullwhip effect mitigation and explores the potential of blockchain technology as a new coordination mechanism for reducing information distortions, enhancing trust, and orchestrating decision making. Three research papers have been produced within this context and are appended to the thesis. Paper A presents an information sharing-based blockchain architecture to mitigate the bullwhip effect in service supply chains. Paper B aims to explores the literature in terms of using multiple aspects of information sharing to lessen the bullwhip effect. Finally, Paper C introduces an agent-based modeling and simulation approach for two aspects of information sharing: “what to share” and “how to share.” The results show that blockchain technology does provide a significant solution to trust-based issues and information sharing visibility considering the bullwhip effect mitigation. The results also provide a guide for supply chain managers to achieve better coordination and serve as a roadmap for supply chain researchers.
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| 37. |
- Al-Taie, Entidhar
(författare)
-
Foundations of educational buildings in Iraq : past, present and future
- 2013
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Foundation is considered as one of the main parts of any structure such as buildings, railways, bridges, etc. The type of foundation used is highly dependent on the type and properties of soil. The design of foundations requires many factors that should be defined such as the load that the foundation is going to hold, geological conditions of the soil under the foundation, type of soil and the local building code criteria.There are number of differences in the geological and soil conditions in Iraq. As a consequence, these differences are reflected on the type of foundation to be used. Despite these differences, same materials and style of buildings are used all over Iraq. To have good information about the materials and the required design of the foundation, a comprehensive historical review was executed to highlight the progress of the materials and types of foundation that was used since the dawn of civilization up to the present (ancient, Islamic, Ottoman and British occupation till after independent). Present day situation had been analysed through a case study which illustrated the link between soil and foundation types in three different parts of Iraq (Mosul, Baghdad and Basrah). One building was analysed using STAAD. Pro software in these regions. Furthermore, the same building was analysed using local materials, which were historically used and was compared with present day materials used.It is evident that Iraqi designers and engineers require local code to define all the loads, materials and design of the foundation to be used. The use of local materials might be very effective from both engineering and economic perspectives.
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| 38. |
- Al-Taie, Laith
(författare)
-
Performance of landfills of hazardous waste with special respect to the function of clay liners
- 2012
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This licentiate thesis is based on four papers related to the performance of near-surface low-level (LLW) repositories (landfills) focusing on construction and performance of clay liners in the cappings. The first paper discusses the source of hazardous wastes, their location and their impact on public health. The paper also discusses the scientific basis of the selection of the isolation of such wastes taking in account also cost issues. The paper also shows rules and principles of composing and constructing isolation of such waste according to American and German regulations. The second paper deals with the criteria for locating plants for processing and disposal of hazardous waste in Iraq with special respect to environmental, geological and socio-economic factors. Referring to these criteria a potential disposal site in the Al-Jezira desert is assessed in the paper. The third paper describes the properties of two candidate Iraqi smectitic clays of potential value for isolating hazardous wastes. These clays have been and are still being examined in order to determine their performance and usability for waste isolation. The fourth paper, finally, discusses in detail the hydration-dehydration processes in clay liners in cappings of waste landfills in desertic climates. It also deals with construction issues.
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| 39. |
- Alakangas, Lena
(författare)
-
Sulphide oxidation and geochemical processes in mine tailings
- 2003
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The generation of acid mine drainage (AMD) from oxidation of sulphide- bearing waste is a world wide problem, due to low pH levels and the release of metals to recipients. It is therefore important to understand the fundamental geochemical processes occurring in mine waste. The geochemistry of the drainage water from the tailings at the abandoned Laver copper mine in Northern Sweden was studied in 2001 and compared with a previous study performed in 1993. All drainage water is collected in a brook, which means that Laver is a favourable site for mass balance studies. The results show a decrease in the amount of sulphide-associated elements such as S, Cu and Zn in the drainage water, and an increase of the pH level. It has been suggested that this is due to the decrease in the sulphide oxidation rate in the tailings. Modelling the oxidation front movement using the shrinking core model gives similar results. This indicates that the sulphur transported in the drainage water could relatively well reflect the oxidation rate in the tailings. Oxygen sampling was also performed in 2001- 2002 to evaluate whether the flux of oxygen into the tailings was restricted by a vegetation cover. The results show that vegetation does not limit oxygen diffusion into the tailings. There is an atmospheric concentration throughout a profile through oxidised grass covered tailings during the whole sampling period. Oxygen concentrations at depths where sulphide oxidation occurs show seasonal variations, probably due to varying water saturation. Cemented layers were sampled at two locations in the Laver impoundment tailings, where they had been formed in spite of the low sulphide content and lack of carbonates. The aim of the study was to determine the effects of cemented layer formation on metal mobility in the tailings. The cementing agents are jarosite and Fe-oxyhydroxides. Arsenic is strongly enriched and somewhat higher concentrations of Pb, V, Mo and Hg, compared to those in unoxidised tailings, occur in these layers. Sequential extraction shows that these metals are mostly adsorbed/co-precipitated with crystalline iron oxyhydroxides. The enriched metals will probably be remobilised if changes towards more reducing conditions occur, for instance as a result of remediation of the tailings impoundment. An attempt was made to use LA-ICP-SMS to quantify the role of pyrite surfaces as scavengers of metals in oxidising mine tailings. Pyrite grains were collected from a profile through the pyrite-rich tailings at the Kristineberg mine in Northern Sweden. At each spot hit by the laser, the surface layer was analysed in the first shot, and a second shot on the same spot indicated the chemical composition of the pyrite immediately below. The crater diameter for a laser shot is known, and by estimating the crater depth and total pyrite surface, the total enrichment on pyrite grains was calculated. Results are presented for As, Cd, Co, Cu, Ni and Zn. The results clearly show that there is an enrichment of As, Cd, Cu and Zn on the pyrite surfaces below the oxidation front in the tailings, but not of Co and Ni. Arsenic is also enriched on the pyrite grains that survived in the oxidised zone. However, only 1.4 to 3.1% of the Cd and Zn released by sulphide oxidation in the oxidised zone had been enriched on the pyrite surfaces in the unoxidised tailings, but for As and Cu the corresponding figures are about 64 and 43%, respectively. The results should not be taken too literally but allow the conclusion that scavenging to pyrite surfaces is an important process for retention of As and Cu below the oxidation front in pyrite-rich tailings. Although only pyrite grains that appeared to be fresh, without surface coatings, were used in this study, the possibility of a thin layer of Fe-hydroxides occurring must be considered. Both adsorption to the pyrite directly, or to Fe-oxyhydroxides, may explain the enrichment of As, Cd, Cu and Zn on the pyrite surfaces, and, in the case of Cu, also replacement of Fe (II) by Cu(II) in pyrite.
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| 40. |
- Alam, Md. Minhaj
(författare)
-
A study of the fatigue behaviour of laser and hybrid laser welds
- 2009
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This licentiate thesis focuses on the fatigue cracking behaviour of laser and hybrid laser-MAG welded structures. Beside the welding process and the resulting weld, several topics related to fatigue of welded structures are treated such as; macro and micro surface geometry, weld defects and their influence on fatigue performance of welded structures, fatigue analysis by the nominal and effective notch stress method, fatigue life prediction using LEFM (Linear Elastic Fracture Mechanics), fatigue testing, metallurgical analysis, elastic and elastic-plastic finite element analysis. The main objective is to gain understanding of the impact of weld defects and weld shape details on the fatigue behaviour of laser and hybrid laser welded joints. The first paper is a literature survey which compiled useful information regarding fracture and fatigue analysis of various welded joints. In the second paper fatigue testing by bending of laser hybrid welded eccentric fillet joints was carried out. The weld surface geometry was measured and studied in order to understand the crack initiation mechanisms. The crack initiation location and the crack propagation path were studied and compared to Finite Element stress analysis, taking into account the surface macro- and micro-geometry. Based on the nominal stress approach, SN-curves were designed for laser hybrid welded eccentric fillet joints. The competing criteria of throat depth and stress raising by the weld toe radii and by the surface ripples are explained, showing that surface ripples can be critical.The third paper is the continuation of the second paper, but studying the fatigue crack propagation of laser hybrid welded eccentric fillet joints. Microscopic analysis was carried out to identify internal weld defects. Nominal and effective notch stress analysis was carried out to compare standardized values. LEFM analysis was conducted for this joint geometry for four point bending load in order to study the effect of LOF on fatigue life. In good agreement between simulation and metallurgy, cracking starts and propagates from the lower toe, but for certain geometries alternatively from the weld bead or upper toe, even in case of Lack of Fusion, as was well be explained. Improved understanding of the crack propagation for these geometrical conditions was obtained and in turn illustrated. Lack of fusion surprisingly was not critical and only slightly lowered the fatigue life. Two dimensional linear elastic finite element analyses is carried out in the fourth paper on laser welding of a beamer in order to study the impact of geometrical aspects of the joint design and of the weld root on the fatigue performance. Critical geometrical aspects were classified and then studied by FE-analysis with respect to their impact on the fatigue behaviour. Stress comparison of full 15 mm and partial 6 mm weld penetration of the beam was done by varying the toe and root geometry to identify the critical details. Generalization of the knowledge by new methods was an important aspect, particularly to apply the findings for other joints. Together the papers provide better understanding of fatigue behaviour for complex geometries and are therefore suitable guidelines for improved weld design.
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| 41. |
- Alatalo, Johanna
(författare)
-
Charge dynamics in tumbling mills : simulation and measurements with an in-mill sensor
- 2011
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Grinding is a process of reducing the particle size distribution of an extracted ore commonly performed in tumbling mills. The process is complex with many factors affecting the result, predominately the ores physical and chemical properties. The ore feed to a concentrator varies and optimisation is important, since grinding has high energy consumption and therefore is an expensive process. In an attempt to increase the knowledge of pebble mill grinding, experiments were performed with a pilot-scale mill at the LKAB R&D facilities at Malmberget. The purposes of the experiments were to investigate how the mill reacts to changes in the system and to find out how the grinding ability is affected by the changes. The first set of experiments concentrated on different operational settings, varying the filling degree, the volume-% solids and the percentage of critical speed of the mill. In the second set of experiments, different pebbles mixtures with varying magnetite content and different size fractions were tested. An interesting response variable (result) is the product size for the different operational conditions, since higher amount of fine material < 45 μm can be seen as a probable increase of production rate. The environment inside a mill is too harsh for direct measurements and there is a lack of knowledge of the events occurring inside the mill. Information on the events in the charge can be achieved by the use of different sensors. In the experiments, a Continuous Charge Measurement (CCM) system by Metso Minerals has been used to learn more about the charge dynamics. This system consists of a strain gauge detector embedded in one rubber lifter and measures the deflection as the lifter passes through the charge in the mill. The information received from the deflection curve is used in the evaluation of the experiments. The data from the experiments have been analysed with the aid of a statistical program. The analyses show that there will be an increased production of fines at low critical speed especially when the mill has high filling degree. This setting will also increase the power consumption but it improves the grindability of the ore even more. A higher degree of filling also give a smaller toe angle and a higher shoulder angle as expected. In addition, there is an advantage to keep the magnetite pebbles fraction as high as possible. This will increase the power consumption and maximum deflection of lifters, but at the same time increase the amount < 45 μm, the grindability and the pebbles consumption. A pebble size fraction of 10-35 mm will improve the grindability and amount < 45 μm. To further increase the understanding of charge dynamics, simulations are used to possibly illustrate the events inside the mill. However, for simulations to be reliable it demands that they are verified against process data. Previously, a series of experiments with a steel media charge were performed with the CCM system installed and this provides an opportunity to validate simulation results. The measured lifter deflection signal is used to compare with signals from two- and three-dimensional DEM simulations of the pilot-scale mill. The resulting deflection signals from simulation show that the three-dimensional case displays a better profile and the difference of toe and shoulder angles are less than in the twodimensional case. This means that the simulations are more reliable when they are run in three dimensions and they may be used to increase the understanding of the mill and its charge.
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| 42. |
- Alberg, Henrik
(författare)
-
Material modelling for simulation of heat treatment
- 2003
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Heat treatment of materials is a fundamental metallurgical process. Materials are subjected to heat treatment to relieve internal stresses, reduce brittleness and to improve machinability. The properties of materials can also be altered such as hardness, strength, toughness, and wear resistance to suit particular applications. Nevertheless, heat treatment can generate unwanted stresses and deformations, a fact that has to be taken into consideration when designing or changing the sequence of manufacturing for a given component. One way to decrease cost and reduce time in product development can be to use simulation tools that can reliably predict the final properties and shape of a component caused by the used manufacturing process. A decrease in cost and better knowledge of final properties already in product development can give the company a better market position and competitiveness. The objective of the work presented in this thesis is to develop efficient and reliable methods and models for simulation of heat treatment using the Finite Elements Method. The result of the simulation must be sufficiently accurate and completed within an acceptable time when the manufacturing simulation is to be used in product development. The models would enable us to predict residual stresses, distortion, final shape, and amount material phases after a heat treatment process. The formulation of constitutive equations for elasticity, plasticity, and creep is discussed, along with three unified models, bringing together plasticity/viscoplasticity, and creep into one model. There are many materials models to choose among but material parameters are usually lacking An approach where the same numerical algorithm for the implementation of a constitutive model in the finite element code is also used for material parameter identification is presented. A parameter fitting using a viscoplastic model with nonlinear isotropic hardening is performed. Combined welding and heat treatment simulation is performed on a geometrical complex shaped aerospace component. Efforts to accurately determine the boundary conditions have been made. During the cooling sequence most of the heat transfer is carried out by convective heat transfer. Therefore, a method is developed and a CFD analysis is carried out to obtain this convective heat transfer Moreover, comparisons how the use of different material models affects the response from combined welding and heat treatment on an aerospace component is made. The material models include different effects; rate-independent and viscoplastic models including microstructure calculation and transformation induced plasticity. Different creep models and different ways to apply them has also been investigated.
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| 43. |
- Albing, Malin
(författare)
-
Process capability analysis with focus on indices for one-sided specification limits
- 2006
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis some aspects of process capability analysis are considered. Process capability analysis deals with how to assess the capability of manufacturing processes. Based on the process capability analysis one can determine how the process performs relative to its product requirements or specifications. An important part within process capability analysis is the use of process capability indices. This thesis focuses on process capability indices in the situation when the specification limits are one- sided. The thesis consists of a summary and three papers, of which one is already published in an international journal. The summary gives a background to the research area, a short overview of the three papers, and some suggestions for future research. In Paper I, the frequency and use of process capability analysis together with statistical process control and design of experiments, within Swedish companies hiring alumni students are investigated. We also investigate what motivates organisations to implement or not implement these statistical methods, if there are differences in use that can be related to organisational types and what will be needed to increase the use. One conclusion drawn from the results is that the students employed in the Swedish industrial sector witness a modest use of these statistical methods and use in other sectors hiring the alumni is uncommon. In Paper II we present a graphical method useful when doing capability analysis having one-sided specification limits. This is an extension of the process capability plots previously developed for two-sided specification intervals. Under the assumption of normality we suggest estimated process capability plots to be used to assess process capability at a given significance level. The presented graphical approach is helpful to determine if it is the variability, the deviation from target, or both that need to be reduced to improve the capability. In Paper III the situation with non-negative process data having a skew distribution with a long tail towards large values are considered, when an upper specification limit only exists and the target value is 0. No proper indices exist for this specific situation, which is common in practice. We contribute to this area by proposing a new class of indices designed for skew, zero-bound distributions when an upper specification only exists and the target value is 0. This new class of indices is simple and possesses properties desirable for process capability indices. Two estimators of the proposed index are studied and the asymptotic distributions of these estimators are derived. Furthermore, we consider decision procedures, based on the estimated indices, suitable for deeming the process capability or not.
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| 44. |
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| 45. |
- Alhashimi, Anas
(författare)
-
Statistical Calibration Algorithms for Lidars
- 2016
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Robots are becoming increasingly available and capable, are becoming part of everyday life in applications: robots that guide blind or mentally handicapped people, robots that clean large office buildings and department stores, robots that assist people in shopping, recreational activities, etc.Localization, in the sense of understanding accurately one's position in the environment, is a basic building block for performing important tasks. Therefore, there is an interest in having robots to perform autonomously and accurately localization tasks in highly cluttered and dynamically changing environments.To perform localization, robots are required to opportunely combine their sensors measurements, sensors models and environment model. In this thesis we aim at improving the tools that constitute the basis of all the localization techniques, that are the models of these sensors, and the algorithms for processing the raw information from them. More specifically we focus on:- finding advanced statistical models of the measurements returned by common laser scanners (a.k.a. Lidars), starting from both physical considerations and evidence collected with opportune experiments;- improving the statistical algorithms for treating the signals coming from these sensors, and thus propose new estimation and system identification techniques for these devices.In other words, we strive for increasing the accuracy of Lidars through opportune statistical processing tools.The problems that we have to solve, in order to achieve our aims, are multiple. The first one is related to temperature dependency effects: the laser diode characteristics, especially the wave length of the emitted laser and the mechanical alignment of the optics, change non-linearly with temperature. In one of the papers in this thesis we specifically address this problem and propose a model describing the effects of temperature changes in the laser diode; these include, among others, the presence of multi-modal measurement noises. Our contributions then include an algorithm that statistically accounts not only for the bias induced by temperature changes, but also for these multi-modality issues.An other problem that we seek to relieve is an economical one. Improving the Lidar accuracy can be achieved by using accurate but expensive laser diodes and optical lenses. This unfortunately raises the sensor cost, and -- obviously -- low cost robots should not be equipped with very expensive Lidars. On the other hand, cheap Lidars have larger biases and noise variance. In an other contribution we thus precisely targeted the problem of how to improve the performance indexes of inexpensive Lidars by removing their biases and artifacts through opportune statistical manipulations of the raw information coming from the sensor. To achieve this goal it is possible to choose two different ways (that have been both explored):1- use the ground truth to estimate the Lidar model parameters;2- find algorithms that perform simultaneously calibration and estimation without using ground truth information. Using the ground truth is appealing since it may lead to better estimation performance. On the other hand, though, in normal robotic operations the actual ground truth is not available -- indeed ground truths usually require environmental modifications, that are costly. We thus considered how to estimate the Lidar model parameters for both the cases above.In last chapter of this thesis we conclude our findings and propose also our current future research directions.
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| 46. |
- Ali, Ammar Adel
(författare)
-
Morphology of Tigris River inside Baghdad City
- 2013
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Tigris and Euphrates rivers represent the artery of life in Iraq. Tigris River rises from Turkey and flows toward the southeast to enter Iraq. It drains a catchment area of 473 100 km² of which about 58% lies in Iraq. In this study the reach, about 50 km long, of the river inside Baghdad was been studied. It starts at Al-Muthana Bridge and ends at Tigris-Diyala River confluence. Generally, the river reach is part of an alluvial plain, single channel and meandering. The bed material of the river is composed mainly of fine sand and small portion of silt and clay. Other significant features of the reach are the growing islands and bank depositions. Recently water resources of Iraq are negatively affected by climatic changes and the huge water projects in the riparian countries. As a result, the flow of Tigris River at Baghdad city has significantly decreased where the average monthly flow is 520 m³/s for the period 2000-2012 which represents about 50% reduction compared to previous periods. The estimated trend for the average monthly discharges is a reduction of 5.4 % during the last 23 years. Low flow and low water levels have enhanced the water to erode the banks below its protected part. This might affect the future stability of the banks. The drop of the river discharge together with debris from the last wars in 1991 and 2003 enhanced the growing of islands in the river. In this research, changes in the morphology of Tigris River within Baghdad are to be investigated and the causes will be highlighted in order to take the right measures to restore the river system. This is a first step toward studying the hydrological characteristics of the reach. One-dimensional gradually varied flow model, using HEC-RAS, was applied to examine the flood capacity and the possibilities of inundation of the banks. The geometry of the river was represented by the findings from the river survey of 2008. Additional data about the locations and dimensions of the bridges were supplied to the model. The average monthly discharge at Sarai Baghdad for the years 2000-2012 was assumed as the base flow. A range of different scenarios were examined by increasing the discharges in order to determine the critical discharge that may cause inundation. Model calibration was achieved by adjusting the Manning’s roughness coefficient for an observed water surface profile along the lowest part of the reach. The associated error with the computed water surface profiles was in order 0.026m. Additional water level observations at Sarai Baghdad were used for verification purposes. It was found that the discharges higher than 2700 m3/s could cause partial inundation in some areas in the northern part of the reach and these areas extend to approximately 9 km for discharges greater than 3500 m3/s. The southern part of the reach is still safe from inundation for discharges below 3500 m3/s. The slope of water surface profile varies from 6.03 to 10 cm/km for discharges between 400 and 4000 m3/s respectively. In this study, a field survey was conducted between May, 2012 and January, 2013. It involved the installation of 25 bench marks, surveying the upper river banks (from the crest of the stony protection to the water surface) and 250 cross sections. Three kinds of samples were collected at this stage work: (i) river bed material, (ii) suspended load samples and (iii) bed loads samples. Hydraulic measurements were conducted and included water surface elevations, water depths at sampling points, water discharges and transversal velocities. Water temperature and other environmental measurements were also conducted. Particle size distribution, specific gravity and concentration of suspended sediment were executed in the laboratory for the collected samples.
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| 47. |
- Alici, Güler
(författare)
-
Integration på arbetsmarknaden : en studie av personer med utländsk bakgrund
- 2007
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- I denna licentiatuppsats redovisar erfarenheter från åtta fallstudier som alla har haft målsätt¬ningen att underlätta arbetsmarknadsintegrationen för personer med utländsk bakgrund. De åtta studierna har alla olika inriktning och innehåller olika aktiviteter som t.ex "starta eget"-program, nätverksbyggande, yrkesutbildning eller praktik. Syftet med licentiatuppsatsen är att identifiera hinder och gynnsamma faktorer i de åtta studier samt identifiera vilka faktorer som underlättar respektive motverkar integrationsprocessen. Studien bygger på ett rikt empiriskt material och metoden har valts beroende på vilket fall som studerats. Fem metoder har varit aktuella, studier av dokument, enkäter, individuella intervjuer, gruppintervjuer och deltagande observationer. En slutsats som kan dras här är att de flesta personer av utländsk bakgrund och som startar eget, blir objektivt integrerade på arbetsmarknaden. Deras företagande är inte en direkt integrationsfrämjande handling, men en bieffekt av företagandet är just att de känner sig integrerade i arbetslivet, även om yrket i sig inte råkar vara det bästa eller mest eftersträvans¬värda alternativet i deras perspektiv. Företagarna visade sig ha tillgång till ett omfattande etniska och informell nätverk bestod av släkt och familj, vänner och både inom och utom den etniska eller nationella gruppen. Däremot fanns inte ett fungerande formellt nätverk i lokalsamhället bland företagare och andra organisationer och näringsliv. Utan att förringa betydelsen av en social och kulturell integration så är i ett första steg en ekonomisk integration av största vikt för den invandrade. En annan slutsats är att är att många aktörer på det lokala planet erbjuder personer med utländsk bakgrund utbildning och praktik som ska gynna deras integrering i det svenska samhället. Valmöjligheterna mellan olika utbildningsalternativ och praktikplatser är dock tämligen begränsade. Man tvingas således till ett mer instrumentellt förhållningssätt som innebär att man väljer sådant som eventuellt kan gynna möjligheterna att få ett arbete utan att man för den skull är intresserad av yrket i sig. Detta påverkar deltagarna att uppleva sina egna val som otillfredsställande vilket också påverkar deras motivation att genomföra utbildningar och praktik och i förlängningen förutsättningarna att integreras, både i arbetsliv och i samhället som helhet. Trots att praktik lett till arbete för flera personer hamnade många deltagare efter utbildning och praktik utanför arbetsmarknaden, vilket ledder till att man går tillbaka till arbetslöshet eller nya utbildningar. Slutligen kan man konstatera att det fanns en stor potential i att engagera engagerade individer och ideella organisationer i arbetet att integrera individer med utländsk bakgrund i det lokala samhället, men det var svårt att finna former för ett konstruktivt samarbete med olika myndigheter.
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| 48. |
- Alizadeh, Morteza, 1987-
(författare)
-
Blockchain and Distributed Hash Table Technology in Decentralized Systems
- 2021
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the popular domains in real-time analytics, ma-chine learning, ubiquitous computing, commodity sensors, and embedded systems where remote smart devices play notable roles in smart homes and industry. The information from emerging IoT environments like remotely-controlled objects, autonomous vehicles (AVs), and energy management can produce a huge amount of data. Moreover, under-standing the security in a scalable decentralized IoT environment is a significant issue.Decentralization has become popular again in the world since cryptocurrencies started to be a part of businesses. Therefore, researchers invested in upgrading resources to increase the reliability of these systems among people when most of the activities and human works are now managed by smart electronic devices remotely. Distributed ledgers, Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs), and blockchain technologies are proper decentralized technologies that improve system security, scalability, and trustworthiness. Blockchains contain a group of connected blocks that are digitally signed transactions stored in a decentralized fashion. The DHT technology is another decentralized solution that helps applications keep files and information immutable in a decentralized manner to mitigate the high cost of storage without memory limitations.In this thesis, we argue for a decentralized systems paradigm and, in conjunction with IoT and the blockchain. Our contributions are as follows. First, we introduce the term networks and service architectures and how it is possible to use blockchain in the real world. We consider different architectures in IoT systems and show the blockchain en-counter with the IoT and the resulting behavior. Second, we detect most of the frequent types of attacks in IoT related to using blockchain in the systems. We also describe how the blockchain works and illustrate a variety of security problems in systems. Fur-thermore, we discuss how the blockchain solves security problems by comparing different blockchains and explain how users handle their communication without third-party de-pendence. As our third contribution, we propose a novel architecture that consists of finding global identification in distributed applications and enable decentralized systems to be more secure with the help of blockchain technology. We also validate the proposed architecture and novel decentralized application development to evaluate high efficiency by combining blockchain, DHT, and biometric technologies.
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| 49. |
- Almqvist, Andreas
(författare)
-
Rough surface elastohydrodynamic lubrication and contact mechanics
- 2004
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the field of tribology, there are numerous theoretical models that may be described mathematically in the form of integro-differential systems of equations. Some of these systems of equations are sufficiently well posed to allow for numerical solutions to be carried out resulting in accurate predictions. This work has focused on the contact between rough surfaces with or without a separating lubricant film. The objective was to investigate how surface topography influences contact conditions. For this purpose two different numerical methods were developed and used. For the lubricated contact between rough surfaces the Reynolds equation were used as a basis. This equation is derived under the assumptions of thin fluid film and creeping flow. In highly loaded, lubricated, non- conformal contacts of surfaces after running-in, the load concentration no longer results in plastic deformations, however large elastic deformations will be apparent. It is the interaction between the hydrodynamic action of the lubricant and the elastic deformations of the surfaces that, in certain applications, enable the lubricant film to fully separate the surfaces. This is commonly referred to as full film elastohydrodynamic (EHD) lubrication. Typical machine elements that operates in the full film EHD lubrication (FL) regime include rolling element bearings, cams and gears. Unfortunately, a cost effective way of machining engineering surfaces seldom results in a surface topography that influence contact conditions in the same way as a surface after running-in. Such topographies may prevent the lubricant from fully separating the surfaces because of deteriorated hydrodynamic action. In this case the applied load is carried in part by the lubricant and in part by surface asperities and/or surface active lubricant additives. This could also be the case in lubricant starved contacts, which is a common situation in not only grease lubricated contacts but also in many liquid lubricated contacts, such as high speed operating rolling element bearings. The load sharing between the highly compressed lubricant and the surface and/or surface active lubricant additives is the reason why this lubrication regime is most commonly referred to as mixed EHD lubrication (ML). Machine elements that while running operate in the FL regime may experience a transition into the ML regime at stops or due to altered operating conditions. It is not possible to simulate direct contact between the surfaces using a numerical method based on Reynolds equation. A parameter study, of elementary surface features passing each other inside the EHD lubricated conjunction, was performed. The results obtained, even though no direct contact could be simulated, does indicate that a transition from the FL to the ML regime would occur for certain combinations of the varied parameters. At start-ups, the contact in a rolling element bearing could be both starved and drained from lubricant. In this case the hydrodynamic action becomes negligible in terms of load carrying capacity. The load is carried exclusively by surface asperities and/or surface active lubricant additives. This regime is referred to as boundary lubrication (BL). Operation conditions could also make both FL and ML impossible to achieve, for example, in the case in a low rpm operating rolling element bearing. The BL regime is in this work modeled as the unlubricated frictionless contact between rough surfaces, i.e., a dry contact approach. A variational principle was used in which the real area of contact and contact pressure distribution are those which minimize the total complementary energy. A linear elastic-perfectly plastic deformation model in which energy dissipation due to plastic deformation is accounted for was used. The dry contact method was applied to the contact between four different profiles and a plane. The variation in the real area of contact, the plasticity index and some surface roughness parameters due to applied load were investigated. The surface roughness parameters of the profiles differed significantly.
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- Almqvist, Torbjörn
(författare)
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Numerical simulation of elastohydrodynamic and hydrodynamic lubrication using the Navier-Stokes and Reynolds equations
- 2001
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The work presented in this thesis concerns computer simulations of the lubrication process. The main subject of interest is elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) and, to some extent, hydrodynamic lubrication (HD). The thesis comprises an introductory section and three papers; referred to as A, B and C. Simulation of EHL is an inter-disciplinary task, incorporating the fields of fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, thermodynamics and rheology. In almost all numerical simulations of lubrication performed today, the hydrodynamics are modelled using the Reynolds equation. This equation is derived from the equations of momentum and continuity and using the thin film approximation. However, the assumptions made when deriving this equation limits the size of the computational/spatial domain and the equation cannot predict pressure variations across the lubricating oil film. The subject of papers A and B are numerical simulations using the full equations of momentum and continuity, (Paper B), and the equation of energy (Paper A). The main aim of the work was to investigate the possibilities of carrying out numerical simulations based on the above equations. The rheology was assumed to be Newtonian; the equations are then commonly referred to as the Navier-Stokes equations (N-S). The second aim of the work was to investigate the possibilities of using a commercial software, CFX 4.3 [1], to carry out the numerical simulations. The results in Paper A show that it is possible to simulate thermal EHL line contacts up to pressures of approximately 1 GPa. The limitations of the approach are due to a singularity that can occur in the equation of momentum when a critical shear stress is reached. With a more complete rheological model (non-Newtonian rheology) it should be possible to perform simulations at even higher contact pressures. Paper B presents the results of isothermal simulations comparing the N-S and Reynolds equation approaches. The result show that there may be some discrepancies between the two approaches; although only small discrepancies have been observed in the smooth line contact simulations made. The characteristics of the EHL-contact with a wide range of scales and large gradients in pressure, viscosity and temperature make developing accurate numerical simulations to a difficult task. The computational cost is high due to the small under-relaxations factors that must be used in order to obtain converged numerical solutions. The work to date has shown that is possible to use the extended approach in conjunction with a commercial software, CFX 4.3 [1]. This approach makes it possible to extend the computational domain in future in EHL-simulations, where the Reynolds approach is not valid. Paper C presents the results of simulations of a lubricated pivoted thrust bearing. The objective of this study was to verify a thermo-hydrodynamic (THD) model for this type of bearing. The model developed handles three-dimensional temperature distribution in the oil film and pad, as well as two-dimensional temperature variation in the runner. The viscosity and density are treated as functions of both temperature and pressure. Experiments have been performed in a test rig consisting of two identical equalising pivoted pad thrust bearings. Experimentally measured power loss, runner temperature and pressure profiles as a function of load and rotational speed were compared with the theoretical investigations. The results showed fairly good agreement when the oil inlet temperature and heat transfer coefficients were modified in order to obtain the same runner temperature in both theory and experiment.
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