15,531 research outputs found
Shingle 2.0: generalising self-consistent and automated domain discretisation for multi-scale geophysical models
The approaches taken to describe and develop spatial discretisations of the
domains required for geophysical simulation models are commonly ad hoc, model
or application specific and under-documented. This is particularly acute for
simulation models that are flexible in their use of multi-scale, anisotropic,
fully unstructured meshes where a relatively large number of heterogeneous
parameters are required to constrain their full description. As a consequence,
it can be difficult to reproduce simulations, ensure a provenance in model data
handling and initialisation, and a challenge to conduct model intercomparisons
rigorously. This paper takes a novel approach to spatial discretisation,
considering it much like a numerical simulation model problem of its own. It
introduces a generalised, extensible, self-documenting approach to carefully
describe, and necessarily fully, the constraints over the heterogeneous
parameter space that determine how a domain is spatially discretised. This
additionally provides a method to accurately record these constraints, using
high-level natural language based abstractions, that enables full accounts of
provenance, sharing and distribution. Together with this description, a
generalised consistent approach to unstructured mesh generation for geophysical
models is developed, that is automated, robust and repeatable, quick-to-draft,
rigorously verified and consistent to the source data throughout. This
interprets the description above to execute a self-consistent spatial
discretisation process, which is automatically validated to expected discrete
characteristics and metrics.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Submitted for publication and under
revie
Aerated blast furnace slag filters for enhanced nitrogen and phosphorus removal from small wastewater treatment plants
Rock filters (RF) are a promising alternative technology for natural
wastewater treatment for upgrading WSP effluent. However, the application
of RF in the removal of eutrophic nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus, is very
limited. Accordingly, the overall objective of this study was to develop a lowcost
RF system for the purpose of enhanced nutrient removal from WSP
effluents, which would be able to produce effluents which comply with the
requirements of the EU Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive (UWWTD)
(911271lEEC) and suitable for small communities. Therefore, a combination
system comprising a primary facultative pond and an aerated rock filter
(ARF) system-either vertically or horizontally loaded-was investigated at
the University of Leeds' experimental station at Esholt Wastewater
Treatment Works, Bradford, UK.
Blast furnace slag (BFS) and limestone were selected for use in the ARF
system owing to their high potential for P removal and their low cost. This
study involved three major qperiments: (1) a comparison of aerated
vertical-flow and horizontal-flow limestone filters for nitrogen removal; (2) a
comparison of aerated limestone + blast furnace slag (BFS) filter and
aerated BFS filters for nitrogen and phosphorus removal; and (3) a
comparison of vertical-flow and horizontal-flow BFS filters for nitrogen and
phosphorus removal.
The vertical upward-flow ARF system was found to be superior to the
horizontal-flow ARF system in terms of nitrogen removal, mostly thiough
bacterial nitrification processes in both the aerated limestone and BFS filter
studies. The BFS filter medium (whieh is low-cost) showed a much higher
potential in removing phosphortls from pond effluent than the limestone
medium. As a result, the combination of a vertical upward-flow ARF system
and an economical and effective P-removal filter medium, such as BFS,
was found to be an ideal optionfor the total nutrient removal of both nitrogen
and phosphorus from wastewater.
In parallel with these experiments, studies on the aerated BFS filter effective
life and major in-filter phosphorus removal pathways were carried out. From
the standard batch experiments of Pmax adsorption capacity of BFS, as well
as six-month data collection of daily average P-removal, it was found that
the effective life of the aerated BFS filter was 6.5 years. Scanning electron
microscopy and X-ray diffraction spectrometric analyses on the surface of
BFS, particulates and sediment samples revealed that the apparent
mechanisms of P-removal in the filter are adsorption on the amorphous
oxide phase of the BFS surface and precipitation within the filter
SurfelMeshing: Online Surfel-Based Mesh Reconstruction
We address the problem of mesh reconstruction from live RGB-D video, assuming
a calibrated camera and poses provided externally (e.g., by a SLAM system). In
contrast to most existing approaches, we do not fuse depth measurements in a
volume but in a dense surfel cloud. We asynchronously (re)triangulate the
smoothed surfels to reconstruct a surface mesh. This novel approach enables to
maintain a dense surface representation of the scene during SLAM which can
quickly adapt to loop closures. This is possible by deforming the surfel cloud
and asynchronously remeshing the surface where necessary. The surfel-based
representation also naturally supports strongly varying scan resolution. In
particular, it reconstructs colors at the input camera's resolution. Moreover,
in contrast to many volumetric approaches, ours can reconstruct thin objects
since objects do not need to enclose a volume. We demonstrate our approach in a
number of experiments, showing that it produces reconstructions that are
competitive with the state-of-the-art, and we discuss its advantages and
limitations. The algorithm (excluding loop closure functionality) is available
as open source at https://github.com/puzzlepaint/surfelmeshing .Comment: Version accepted to IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine
Intelligenc
Gap Processing for Adaptive Maximal Poisson-Disk Sampling
In this paper, we study the generation of maximal Poisson-disk sets with
varying radii. First, we present a geometric analysis of gaps in such disk
sets. This analysis is the basis for maximal and adaptive sampling in Euclidean
space and on manifolds. Second, we propose efficient algorithms and data
structures to detect gaps and update gaps when disks are inserted, deleted,
moved, or have their radius changed. We build on the concepts of the regular
triangulation and the power diagram. Third, we will show how our analysis can
make a contribution to the state-of-the-art in surface remeshing.Comment: 16 pages. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 201
Boundary-Conforming Finite Element Methods for Twin-Screw Extruders using Spline-Based Parameterization Techniques
This paper presents a novel spline-based meshing technique that allows for
usage of boundary-conforming meshes for unsteady flow and temperature
simulations in co-rotating twin-screw extruders. Spline-based descriptions of
arbitrary screw geometries are generated using Elliptic Grid Generation. They
are evaluated in a number of discrete points to yield a coarse classical mesh.
The use of a special control mapping allows to fine-tune properties of the
coarse mesh like orthogonality at the boundaries. The coarse mesh is used as a
'scaffolding' to generate a boundary-conforming mesh out of a fine background
mesh at run-time. Storing only a coarse mesh makes the method cheap in terms of
memory storage. Additionally, the adaptation at run-time is extremely cheap
compared to computing the flow solution. Furthermore, this method circumvents
the need for expensive re-meshing and projections of solutions making it
efficient and accurate. It is incorporated into a space-time finite element
framework. We present time-dependent test cases of non-Newtonian fluids in 2D
and 3D for complex screw designs. They demonstrate the potential of the method
also for arbitrarily complex industrial applications
Using polyhedral models to automatically sketch idealized geometry for structural analysis
Simplification of polyhedral models, which may incorporate large numbers of faces and nodes, is often required to reduce their amount of data, to allow their efficient manipulation, and to speed up computation. Such a simplification process must be adapted to the use of the resulting polyhedral model. Several applications require simplified shapes which have the same topology as the original model (e.g. reverse engineering, medical applications, etc.). Nevertheless, in the fields of structural analysis and computer visualization, for example, several adaptations and idealizations of the initial geometry are often necessary. To this end, within this paper a new approach is proposed to simplify an initial manifold or non-manifold polyhedral model with respect to bounded errors specified by the user, or set up, for example, from a preliminary F.E. analysis. The topological changes which may occur during a simplification because of the bounded error (or tolerance) values specified are performed using specific curvature and topological criteria and operators. Moreover, topological changes, whether or not they kept the manifold of the object, are managed simultaneously with the geometric operations of the simplification process
Spectral/hp element methods: recent developments, applications, and perspectives
The spectral/hp element method combines the geometric flexibility of the
classical h-type finite element technique with the desirable numerical
properties of spectral methods, employing high-degree piecewise polynomial
basis functions on coarse finite element-type meshes. The spatial approximation
is based upon orthogonal polynomials, such as Legendre or Chebychev
polynomials, modified to accommodate C0-continuous expansions. Computationally
and theoretically, by increasing the polynomial order p, high-precision
solutions and fast convergence can be obtained and, in particular, under
certain regularity assumptions an exponential reduction in approximation error
between numerical and exact solutions can be achieved. This method has now been
applied in many simulation studies of both fundamental and practical
engineering flows. This paper briefly describes the formulation of the
spectral/hp element method and provides an overview of its application to
computational fluid dynamics. In particular, it focuses on the use the
spectral/hp element method in transitional flows and ocean engineering.
Finally, some of the major challenges to be overcome in order to use the
spectral/hp element method in more complex science and engineering applications
are discussed
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