A Visual Tool to Improve Layered Manufacturing Part Quality

A software tool is described that will aid the user in. choosing the optimum build orientation to obtain the ..best composite set of surface finishes on a part built .on a Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) rapid prototyping machine.• Experiments were conducted to obtain statistical .surface roughness values as a function of orientation and layer thickness.Three types of surfaces (features}.have been. considered planar (both upward facing and downward facing (over hang surfaces)),.quadratic and free form Surfaces..Data analysis of surface roughness of planar surfaces at various orientations·and their mapping. to. quadratic and freeform surfaces are presented. decision support software tool allows dynamic .. color-coded visualization of the surface quality simultaneous with build parameters including orientation and layer thickness.Mechanical Engineerin

Skin cancer by state and territory

Presents the number of new skin cancer problems managed per 100,000 encounters nationally and for each state and territory, from April 2008 to March 2013. Summary There is a paucity of Australian state-based data on the incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the skin are not notifiable diseases and are not collected by the state and territory cancer registries. In a 2002 survey, the Australian age-standardised incidence per 100,000 persons for NMSC was 1170 (BCC 884, SCC 387) , with a higher incidence in the northern latitudes

Cost Adaptation for Robust Decentralized Swarm Behaviour

Decentralized receding horizon control (D-RHC) provides a mechanism for coordination in multi-agent settings without a centralized command center. However, combining a set of different goals, costs, and constraints to form an efficient optimization objective for D-RHC can be difficult. To allay this problem, we use a meta-learning process -- cost adaptation -- which generates the optimization objective for D-RHC to solve based on a set of human-generated priors (cost and constraint functions) and an auxiliary heuristic. We use this adaptive D-RHC method for control of mesh-networked swarm agents. This formulation allows a wide range of tasks to be encoded and can account for network delays, heterogeneous capabilities, and increasingly large swarms through the adaptation mechanism. We leverage the Unity3D game engine to build a simulator capable of introducing artificial networking failures and delays in the swarm. Using the simulator we validate our method on an example coordinated exploration task. We demonstrate that cost adaptation allows for more efficient and safer task completion under varying environment conditions and increasingly large swarm sizes. We release our simulator and code to the community for future work.Comment: Accepted to IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 201

Computational modelling of structural integrity following mass loss in polymeric charred cellular solids

A novel computational technique is presented for embedding mass-loss due to burning into the ANSYS finite element modelling code. The approaches employ a range of computational modelling methods in order to provide more complete theoretical treatment of thermoelasticity absent from the literature for over six decades. Techniques are employed to evaluate structural integrity (namely, elastic moduli, Poisson’s ratios, and compressive brittle strength) of honeycomb systems known to approximate three-dimensional cellular chars. That is, reducing the mass of diagonal ribs and both diagonal-plus-vertical ribs simultaneously show rapid decreases in the structural integrity of both conventional and re-entrant (auxetic, i.e., possessing a negative Poisson’s ratio) honeycombs. On the other hand, reducing only the vertical ribs shows initially modest reductions in such properties, followed by catastrophic failure of the material system. Calculations of thermal stress distributions indicate that in all cases the total stress is reduced in re-entrant (auxetic) cellular solids. This indicates that conventional cellular solids are expected to fail before their auxetic counterparts. Furthermore, both analytical and FE modelling predictions of the brittle crush strength of both auxetic and conventional cellular solids show a relationship with structural stiffness

Strategies for the online dissemination of large geographically disaggregated time-series

This thesis investigates the various strategies used to produce a large on-line database which stores its data in the terms of dates and areas. The database studied was Nomis which was released in 1982 and provides remote access to official labour market data. The Nomis system underwent a complete redesign in 1997. A detailed account of the 'Old Nomis' system is provided in order to set the context for a study of its limitations. This study discusses the limitations due to the data design of the original model and code organisation as well as the limitations of the command interface and geographical management. The next part of the study was to investigate different methods of implementing a redesign of the original system. This focused on the choice of technology available both in terms of software and hardware, ways of improving the user interface, designing a new data model and the development of a new geographical management system. Once the new system was in place a menu-style interface was developed to provide a more user-friendly way to access the Nomis data. Various technologies were considered and the decision was taken to use the basic Web technology of HTML and forms due mainly to its accessibility to the majority of Nomis users and supported by all WWW browsers. Future Web technologies are also discussed. The success of the redesign was evaluated in terms of examining the 'New Nomis' interface to see if limitations had been addressed. Also the 'Beta Testing' process was discussed with various users feedback indicating possible strengths and weaknesses of the 'New Nomis' system. Usage level performance graphs were also considered which compare usage levels of the 'Old Nomis' system against the 'New Nomis' system