Search results for "ToP"
showing 10 items of 17685 documents
Lessons Learned from the Design and Development of Vehicle Simulators
2018
Vehicle simulators are crucial tools used in a variety of areas, such as aviation, driving, or maritime transportation. International standards require the use of motion-based vehicle simulators in training scenarios. However, the huge variety of applications and requirements makes it difficult for end users to find a motion-based commercial solution that fulfils their needs. On the other hand, commercial solutions are usually expensive as they involve specific hardware and software. Although some ad-hoc solutions have been reported, a generalized design strategy is needed. In this article, the authors emphasize the need for finding a development methodology for these important tools and th…
Analysis of Possible Concept Solutions of Chain Drives
2019
Possible concept solutions of chain drives are analysed in this paper in order to point out the benefits of chain drive application and, in particular, the possibility of application of multi-level chain drive. The paper also analyses the possibility of replacing the gear drives with chain drives, which, in the case of short-term drive and using the same direction of rotation, enables a slightly simpler drive solution. The paper doesn’t consider difference between the roller and gear chains application because these two types of chains can be used very successfully. Also, the possibility of using timing belt drive is not considered, but it can be also used very successfully in this type of …
Testing soil water repellency in a Sicilian area two years after a fire
2019
The water drop penetration time (WDPT) technique was applied in 2018 to check persistence of soil water repellency (SWR) in a Sicilian mountain area affected by a wildfire on June 2016. A total of four sites, that were severely water repellent immediately after burning, were sampled. Depending on the site, wettable soil conditions, less SWR and maintenance of a noticeable SWR were detected two years later. At the site showing a near-constant SWR, WDPTs were particularly high in the top soil layer (0-0.03 m) and they appreciably decreased more in depth. Signs of decreasing SWR in drier soil conditions and in association with coarser soil particles were also detected at this site. High gradie…
Partial Stabilization of Input-Output Contact Systems on a Legendre Submanifold
2017
This technical note addresses the structure preserving stabilization by output feedback of conservative input-output contact systems, a class of input-output Hamiltonian systems defined on contact manifolds. In the first instance, achievable contact forms in closed-loop and the associated Legendre submanifolds are analysed. In the second instance the stability properties of a hyperbolic equilibrium point of a strict contact vector field are analysed and it is shown that the stable and unstable manifolds are Legendre submanifolds. In the third instance the consequences for the design of stable structure preserving output feedback are derived: in closed-loop one may achieve stability only rel…
Robust Network Agreement on Logical Information
2011
Abstract Logical consensus is an approach to distributed decision making which is based on the availability of a network of agents with incomplete system knowledge. The method requires the construction of a Boolean map which defines a dynamic system allowing the entire network to consent on a unique, global decision. Previous work by the authors proved the method to be viable for applications such as intrusion detection within a structured environment, when the agent's communication topology is known in advance. The current work aims at providing a fully distributed protocol, requiring no a priori knowledge of each agent's communication neighbors. The protocol allows the construction of a r…
Dynamic Design Intents Capture with Formal Ontology and Perdurants Object Concept for Collaborative Product Design
2016
Loss of design intents and related information throughout the lifecycle of products are common. Capturing design intents of an assembly, which include a temporal (dynamic) stages, is even harder. This research work aims to enhance the spatiotemporal mereotopology (STM) based ontology in tune with the contemporary efforts in this research domain. The main idea with such STM ontology is to capture dynamic design intents and develop an integrated data translation framework from Computer Aided Design (CAD) system to a visualization system. This integration framework is intended to enhance design sharing in a collaborative environment. In this paper, the framework is demonstrated with a simple m…
Enhancing the sound absorption of small-scale 3D printed acoustic metamaterials based on Helmholtz resonators
2018
Acoustic metamaterials have recently become of interest for their ability to attenuate sound by breaking the mass-density law. In this paper, acoustic metamaterials based on Helmholtz resonators and capable of attenuating sound up to 30 dB are fabricated for sound absorption applications in the small scale. The proposed metamaterials are subwavelength at a factor of $\lambda /12$ with respect to the lateral dimension of the units. The directional response due to the position of the acoustic source on the sound attenuation provided by the metamaterial is investigated by controlling the location of a loudspeaker with a robot arm. To enhance and broaden the absorption bands, structural modific…
Surrogate models for the compressive strength mapping of cement mortar materials
2021
Despite the extensive use of mortar materials in constructions over the last decades, there is not yet a robust quantitative method available in the literature, which can reliably predict their strength based on the mix components. This limitation is attributed to the highly nonlinear relation between the mortar’s compressive strength and the mixed components. In this paper, the application of artificial intelligence techniques for predicting the compressive strength of mortars is investigated. Specifically, Levenberg–Marquardt, biogeography-based optimization, and invasive weed optimization algorithms are used for this purpose (based on experimental data available in the literature). The c…
Tutorial on dynamic analysis of the Costas loop
2016
Abstract Costas loop is a classical phase-locked loop (PLL) based circuit for carrier recovery and signal demodulation. The PLL is an automatic control system that adjusts the phase of a local signal to match the phase of the input reference signal. This tutorial is devoted to the dynamic analysis of the Costas loop. In particular the acquisition process is analyzed. Acquisition is most conveniently described by a number of frequency and time parameters such as lock-in range, lock-in time, pull-in range, pull-in time, and hold-in range. While for the classical PLL equations all these parameters have been derived (many of them are approximations, some even crude approximations), this has not…
Reducing the observation error in a WSN through a consensus-based subspace projection
2013
An essential process in a Wireless Sensor Network is the noise mitigation of the measured data, by exploiting their spatial correlation. A widely used technique to achieve this reduction is to project the measured data into a proper subspace. We present a low complexity and distributed algorithm to perform this projection. Unlike other algorithms existing in the literature, which require the number of connections at every node to be larger than the dimension of the involved subspace, our algorithm does not require such dense network topologies for its applicability, making it suitable for a larger number of scenarios. Our proposed algorithm is based on the execution of several consensus pro…