Development of a Multi-body Statistical Shape Model of the Wrist

With continually growing availability of high performance computing resources, the finite element methods (FEM) are becoming increasingly more efficient and practical research tools. In the domain of computational biomechanics, FEMs have been successfully applied in investigation of biomedical problems that include impact and fracture mechanics of bone, load transmission through the joints, feasibility of joint replacements, and many others. The present research study was concerned with the development of a detailed, anatomically accurate, finite element model of the human hand and wrist. As a first step in this direction, we used a publically available database of wrist bone anatomy and carpal kinematics to construct a multi-body statistical shape model (SSM) of the wrist. The resulting model provides an efficient parameterization of anatomical variations of the entire training set and can thus overcome the major shortcoming of conventional biomechanical models associated with limited generalization ability. The main contributions of this work are: 1) A robust method for constructing multi-body SSM of the wrist from surface meshes. 2) A novel technique for resampling closed genus-0 meshes to produce high quality triangulations suitable for finite element simulations. Additionally, all techniques developed in the course of this study could be directly applied to create an equivalent model of the tarsus

Remote Monitoring of Surface Water Sources to Detect & Warn of Contamination

Created in fulfillment of the course requirements for ENGG*3100 Engineering and Design III. This course combines the knowledge gained in the advanced engineering and basic science courses with the design skills taught in ENGG*1100 and ENGG*2100 in solving open-ended problems. These problems are related to the student's major. Additional design tools are presented, including model simulation, sensitivity analysis, linear programming, knowledge-based systems and computer programming. Complementing these tools are discussions on writing and public speaking techniques, codes, safety issues, environmental assessment and professional management. These topics are taught with the consideration of available resources and cost.This paper outlines the application of technology related to "Remote Asset Monitoring" (RAM), such as "Machine to Machine communication (M2M), to the problem of designing a system for monitoring surface water quality and relaying appropriate warnings to the proper authorities when contamination levels have been breached. The system was implemented using electronic sensors to take continuous readings of contaminant levels in the water to be fed to a microcontroller to process and interpret whether they were acceptable. If not, an appropriate warning message would be sent through a satellite network which would then relay the message to necessary base stations through an internet based website. A milestone of the design was to show that the system is able to detect abnormal levels of contamination related to water quality and report an alarm if they exceeded predefined tolerance levels through use of a simulation using a series of test inputs