21,973 research outputs found
An exploration into aesthetic association of product form
Creating a relevant and pleasing design aesthetic is a fundamental aim designers
endeavour to achieve. Perception of aesthetics takes place both during the design
process when the designer creates a form, and later, through the users’
interpretation of the form. Within the perception process, association plays a
significant role. This paper addresses the stage research results of our exploration
into the associative meanings of a product. By analysing the evaluation of a series of
top award winning designs, it was found that some associative meanings
(represented by descriptive words) are correlated, such as ‘pure-architecturalgeometrical’,
‘delicate-curvaceous-organic’ etc. By conducting a series of
workshops, both in the UK and China, we have been able to explore the extent to
which young designers are able to manipulate form, style and create an overall
perception of a positive aesthetic. One of the main outputs during the workshops
was to design a MP3 player with speaker units, styled in line with three topics of
aesthetic association: topic 1 – pure, architectural, geometrical and technical; topic 2 – curvaceous, organic, and fun; topic 3 – graceful, cheerful, and powerful. Three non-correlated associative descriptors were deliberately used in topic 3. Results suggest that young designers tend to differ in their ability and success of manipulating form to match different aesthetic targets. When the descriptive words in one aesthetic topic are correlated, student designers seem to find it easier to manipulate the form matching the topic. Comparative analysis between the results from the workshops in the UK (Southampton Solent University) and in China
(Tsinghua University) is also presented in the paper
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The influence of bulk particulate properties on pneumatic conveying performance
Interest in the use of dense phase conveying has grown considerably in recent years. However, not all products are capable of being conveyed in dense phase and it is often difficult to predict which products have dense phase capability without carrying out pilot conveying trials.
The main objective of this work was to investigate the effect of bulk particular properties on pneumatic conveying performance. To achieve this, an extensive programme of conveying trials was carried out and each product tested was subjected to a series of bench scale tests to evaluate the bulk properties of the material.
A phase diagram is proposed, based on the aeration properties of a material, which groups together products of similar conveying potential. The phase diagram gives a first indication on the basis of a small sample of material whether or not a product is capable of dense phase conveying. Further, it will predict the most appropriate mode of flow.
For products capable of dense phase in a moving bed type flow regime, a further correlation is proposed which predicts the likely conveying performance in the pipeline in terms of mass throughput of product for given conditions based on the air retention characteristics of a product. The correlation has been generalised to extend its applicability to a range of pipeline configurations. The combination of the phase diagram and the correlation for dense phase moving bed type flow (the most commonly used form of dense phase conveying) provides a powerful design tool which will reduce the need for full conveying trials.
In addition, the effect of material bulk properties on blow tank performance has also been investigated and a correlation between aeration properties and blow tank discharge characteristics is proposed
Millimetre Wave Power Measurement
There is currently no traceable power sensor for millimetre wave frequencies above 110 GHz. This thesis investigates a novel approach to remove this limitation by combining the placement of a uniquely designed microchip directly in waveguide. The design of the chip is novel in that it does not rely on a supporting structure or an external antenna when placed in the waveguide.
The performance of the design was primarily analysed by computer simulation and verified with the measurement of a scale model. The results show
that it is feasible to measure high frequency power by placing a chip directly in waveguide. It is predicted that the chip is able to absorb approximately 60% of incident power. Any further efficiency would require modification of the chip substrate. However, this proposed design should allow the standards institutes a reference that will enable the calibration of equipment to beyond
110 GHz
Parameterized Algorithms for Load Coloring Problem
One way to state the Load Coloring Problem (LCP) is as follows. Let
be graph and let be a 2-coloring. An
edge is called red (blue) if both end-vertices of are red (blue).
For a 2-coloring , let and be the number of red and blue edges
and let . Let be the maximum of
over all 2-colorings.
We introduce the parameterized problem -LCP of deciding whether , where is the parameter. We prove that this problem admits a kernel with
at most . Ahuja et al. (2007) proved that one can find an optimal
2-coloring on trees in polynomial time. We generalize this by showing that an
optimal 2-coloring on graphs with tree decomposition of width can be found
in time . We also show that either is a Yes-instance of -LCP
or the treewidth of is at most . Thus, -LCP can be solved in time
$O^*(4^k).
Identifying the task variables that predict object assembly difficulty.
We investigated the physical attributes of an object that influence the difficulty of its assembly. Identifying attributes that contribute to assembly difficulty will provide a method for predicting assembly complexity
An improved simulated annealing algorithm for standard cell placement
Simulated annealing is a general purpose Monte Carlo optimization technique that was applied to the problem of placing standard logic cells in a VLSI ship so that the total interconnection wire length is minimized. An improved standard cell placement algorithm that takes advantage of the performance enhancements that appear to come from parallelizing the uniprocessor simulated annealing algorithm is presented. An outline of this algorithm is given
Kernels for Below-Upper-Bound Parameterizations of the Hitting Set and Directed Dominating Set Problems
In the {\sc Hitting Set} problem, we are given a collection of
subsets of a ground set and an integer , and asked whether has a
-element subset that intersects each set in . We consider two
parameterizations of {\sc Hitting Set} below tight upper bounds: and
. In both cases is the parameter. We prove that the first
parameterization is fixed-parameter tractable, but has no polynomial kernel
unless coNPNP/poly. The second parameterization is W[1]-complete,
but the introduction of an additional parameter, the degeneracy of the
hypergraph , makes the problem not only fixed-parameter
tractable, but also one with a linear kernel. Here the degeneracy of
is the minimum integer such that for each the
hypergraph with vertex set and edge set containing all edges of
without vertices in , has a vertex of degree at most
In {\sc Nonblocker} ({\sc Directed Nonblocker}), we are given an undirected
graph (a directed graph) on vertices and an integer , and asked
whether has a set of vertices such that for each vertex there is an edge (arc) from a vertex in to . {\sc Nonblocker} can be
viewed as a special case of {\sc Directed Nonblocker} (replace an undirected
graph by a symmetric digraph). Dehne et al. (Proc. SOFSEM 2006) proved that
{\sc Nonblocker} has a linear-order kernel. We obtain a linear-order kernel for
{\sc Directed Nonblocker}
Design study of a thermocouple power sensor as a monolithic fin-line
Making traceable power measurements above 110 GHz using current measurement technologies is challenging. We investigate a design of power sensor consisting of a thermocouple-based integrated circuit (IC) mounted as a finline component in WR-6 waveguide. The design is original in that it contains an antenna, terminating resistor and thermocouples on-chip. We detail the design and report results from simulations and measurements made on a two-port 16:1 scale model. Our design of scale model provides both insertion and reflection loss measurements. Electromagnetic simulation and easily-calibrated model measurements confirm that the short antenna fins feasible on a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) can achieve acceptable specifications. The design proves to be relatively insensitive to the value of the terminating resistance or the size of the antenna fins
Graph inverse semigroups: their characterization and completion
Graph inverse semigroups generalize the polycyclic inverse monoids and play
an important role in the theory of C*-algebras. This paper has two main goals:
first, to provide an abstract characterization of graph inverse semigroups; and
second, to show how they may be completed, under suitable conditions, to form
what we call the Cuntz-Krieger semigroup of the graph. This semigroup is the
ample semigroup of a topological groupoid associated with the graph, and the
semigroup analogue of the Leavitt path algebra of the graph.Comment: Some minor corrections made and tangential material remove
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