Educational process modelling with workflow and time Petri nets : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

The research presented in this thesis describes how to use workflow management technology to model educational processes with a time axis. As workflow management technology has been widely used in modelling business processes, it has the potential to model educational processes. Based upon the components of workflow, educational processes and business processes have many common features such that educational processes can be modelled with workflow management technology. In addition, owing to the importance of the time component in processes, time Petri nets have been chosen as the design language for the modelling of the educational processes. The notation of time Petri nets has been illustrated in this thesis for the educational process. In this thesis, three different educational processes have been presented and modelled with workflow management technology as well as with time Petri nets individually. Furthermore, the architecture of the educational process management system has been constructed by adopting the reference model from the Workflow Management Coalition. To show the validity of using workflow management technology in the education domain, a sub-process of an educational process has been modelled and developed with certain developing techniques. It provides the potential research direction for further research on the modelling of educational process with workflow technology associated with a time component

Macro Regime and Economic Growth in China

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between Chinese macroeconomic policy and economic growth, and examine how the choice of macroeconomic regime affects economic performance in China. An open-economy model is developed for this purpose. It is a three-sector “almost small" open-economy macroeconomic model, with asset markets and forward-looking agents. This open-economy model is then adopted to analyse the implications of both domestic and external growth shocks to the Chinese economy under two alternative macroeconomic policy regimes. These policy regimes have two extreme assumptions on the exchange rate, with differing degrees of financial capital mobility. The simulation results show that greater flexibility in the exchange rate regime allows the central bank to conduct independent monetary policy in the Chinese economy, the benefit from which increases as financial capital becomes more internationally mobile. Most growth shocks cause an expansion in the real GDP level, and there is a deflation in the price level and depreciation in the real exchange rate when the economy operates a floating exchange rate regime with high financial capital mobility. Overall, the expansionary effects in this macroeconomic environment will be beneficial to the Chinese economy.Macroeconomics, Economic Growth, Monetary Policy, Exchange Rate, Capital Mobility, Chinese Economy, Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Modelling

Thermal Modeling of Metal Powder-Based Selective Laser Sintering

In order to get a better understanding of Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) process of the metal powders, three-dimensional modeling of laser sintering of a metal powder mixture that contains two kinds of metal powder with significantly different melting points under a moving Gaussian laser beam is investigated numerically. Laser induced melting and resolidification accompanied by shrinkage are modeled using a temperature transforming model. The liquid flow of the melted low melting point metal driven by capillary and gravity forces is also included in the physical model. Both complete and partial shrinkages are considered in the model. Simulations are performed for both single line laser scanning and multiple-line laser scanning. The numerical results are compared with experimental results and a detailed parametric study is performed. The effects of the moving heat source intensity, the scanning velocity, the thickness of the powder layer and the number of existing sintered layers underneath on the sintering depth, the shape of the heat affected zone (HAZ) and the temperature distribution are discussed. The optimized dimensionless moving heat source intensity increases with increasing scanning velocity in order to achieve the desired sintering depth and bond the newly sintered layer to the previously sintered layers.Mechanical Engineerin