Analysis of shear forces during mash disk formation

This report concerns a forming process in which mash is forced from a spreading manifold into moulds on a rotating drum, transported in the moulds underneath a surface held flush with the drum (the shoe), and ejected from the moulds. The quality of the final product is understood to be related to the shear stresses experienced by the mash in the moulds as it is transported under the shoe. We describe and analyse mathematical models of the forming process, focusing on the fluid mechanics of mash in a mould. We treat this as a driven cavity flow and obtain flow profiles, stress profiles, and expressions for the maximum shear stress for different rheological models of the mash (Newtonian fluid, power-law fluid, and Bingham plastic)

Efficient description of shape perturbations

Airbus wish to have efficient ways of describing perturbations of a manu- factured aerofoil from its design shape. The typical kind of perturbations expected are waves, steps, and bumps, and automatic classification into the classes is desired. Various possible methods of analysis were pro- posed and studied in some detail, including projection onto suitable basis functions, wavelets, and radial basis functions. Other methods were studied in less detail, but with the aim of giving a digital signature of defects that could be used to classify them

Molecular breeding for improved second generation bioenergy crops

There is increasing urgency to develop and deploy sustainable sources of energy to reduce our global dependency on finite, high-carbon fossil fuels. Lignocellulosic feedstocks, used in power and liquid fuel generation, are valuable sources of non-food plant biomass. They are cultivated with minimal inputs on marginal or degraded lands to prevent competition with arable agriculture and offer significant potential for sustainable intensification (the improvement of yield without the necessity for additional inputs) through advanced molecular breeding. This article explores progress made in next generation sequencing, advanced genotyping, association genetics, and genetic modification in second generation bioenergy production. Using poplar as an exemplar where most progress has been made, a suite of target traits is also identified giving insight into possible routes for crop improvement and deployment in the immediate future

Elucidating the genetic basis of biomass yield, leaf development and drought tolerance traits in Populous Nigra

In the face of global climate change and the need to urgently transition from fossil fuels to a low carbon economy, bioenergy derived from plant biomass has the potential to provide a diverse range of renewable and sustainable solid and liquid fuels. Second generation (2G) lignocellulosics are dedicated bioenergy crops; ideally cultivated on marginal lands with minimal agricultural inputs or competition with food production. The model tree poplar is a fast growing, genetically diverse and widespread hardwood and has great potential for commercial development as a feedstock for cellulosic biorefineries. At this time however, lignocellulosics such as poplar have not received the same research and breeding effort as many food crops. Chapter 2 of this work demonstrates that a substantial yield gap exists for 2G bioenergy crops, which will hamper commercialisation. This yield gap may be closed through sustainable intensification and advanced, molecular breeding techniques offer the potential to increase the efficiency and timeliness of this improvement process. These advanced breeding techniques require an understanding of the genetic basis of traits of interest. To this end Chapters 3 and 4 are centred on a natural, wide population of Populus nigra Linnaeus (black poplar) genotypes, drawn from across the western European range of this species. This highly diverse population has been cultivated under short rotation coppice (SRC) in two field trials in the UK and Italy and phenotyped for important bioenergy traits related to biomass yield, wood quality, leaf development and drought tolerance. The population has also been genotyped; firstly using an Illumina 12K BeadChip array and secondly with targeted, sequence capture genotyping by sequencing (GBS) of the annotated gene space. These single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) have been employed to analyse the population genetic structure of European P. nigra and in genome wide association genetics; identifying trait-marker associations and candidate genes for quantified phenotypes. These data will be valuable for the molecular breeding and commercialisation of bioenergy poplar

Monitoring of the Local Transmission Control Protocol’s State Variables Using L3DGEWorld

Abstract—The monitoring of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) state variables can provide an understanding of how various traffic flows on a network interact. As discussed in previous work [1] the rate and diversity of the raw information available is incomprehensible in real time, considering human cognitive processing limitations. In the technical report we will demonstrate a solution to the problem of monitoring the attributes of TCP flows by projecting them as orthogonal visual characteristics on 3D entities displayed inside a modified game engine, known as L3DGEWorld

General Dynamic Neural Networks for the Adaptive Tuning of an Omni-Directional Drive System for Reactive Swarm Robotics

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

An Open-Source Multi-Robot Construction System

This repository contains the design files, the bill of materials, and assembly videos for SRoCS: A swarm robotics construction system. SRoCS is designed for running experiments in a laboratory setting where the intelligence that coordinates construction may be embedded not only in the robots but also in the building material

An open-source multi-robot construction system

We describe a completely open source system for performing experiments in multi-robot construction in laboratory settings. The system consists of robots that are capable of assembling cubic blocks into structures, which can be up to three blocks in height. The building material contains microcontrollers and multi-color light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that can be programmed by the robots using a near-field communication (NFC) interface. This mechanism is implemented to facilitate experiments where the intelligence that coordinates the construction can be embedded not only in the robots but also in the building material. Keywords: Robotics, Construction, Open-source hardware, Multi-robot syste