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An important part of mathematics is the construction of good definitions. Some things, like planar graphs, are trivial to define, and other concepts, like compact sets, arise from putting a name on often used requirements (although the notion of compactness has changed over time to be more general). In other cases, such as in set theory, the natural definitions may yield undesired and even contradictory results, and it can be necessary to use a more complicated formalization.    The notion of a curve falls in the latter category. While it is intuitively clear what a curve is – line segments, empty geometric shapes, and squiggles like this: – it is not immediately clear how to make a general definition of curves. Their most obvious characteristic is that they have no width, so one idea may be to view curves as what can be drawn with a thin pen. This definition, however, has the weakness that even such a line has the ability to completely fill a square, making it a bad definition of curves. Today curves are generally defined by the condition of having no width, that is, being one-dimensional, together with the conditions of being compact and connected, to avoid strange cases.    In this thesis we investigate this definition and a few examples of curves.

The environmental impact of consumer goods is becoming a growing concern in the modern world. With the increasing awareness of our daily impact and our effects on such crises as global warming, there has been a recent push to develop better environmental strategies and new industries focused on sustainability and the recycling of a variety of post-consumer goods. In other words, there is a shift towards turning waste into money in the name of the environment. Urban regions provide the perfect setting for such development. The concentration of post-consumer waste makes the mining of recyclable materials economical and the availability of labor needed to support the emerging sustainable industries sets the stage for social, economic and environmental benefits. There are currently several end-of-life (EOL) options for post-consumer products. EOL scenarios include secondary material reclamation, material reclamation, repurpose material reclamation, and waste disposal. Within each of these EOL scenarios exists a myriad of process permutations ranging from various collection schemes and modes of transportation to material processing standards and new recycled product industries. Due to the variety of EOL options for post-consumer products, there is no straight-forward answer to the question Which EOL option is preferred? Thus, under the guidelines of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO) in ISO14040, with the inclusion of social and economic requirements as well, the various EOL scenarios are compared in several impact categories including energy use, greenhouse emissions, waste generation, social implications and economic viability. The results of this comparative analysis provide insight into the potential of a more sustainable urban environment, which is part of a much larger goal of reducing our daily impact on the world around us. One industry sector that contributes to a rather large amount of post-consumer trash each year, nearly 4.7 billion tons, is the carpet industry. Carpet thus occupies a great percentage of overall dedicated waste space according to product density. Within an urban environment, the burden of such a bulky waste product is more evident; thus carpet is used here as a case study for the social, economic and environmental impacts of material mining in urban regions for the improvement of overall industrial sustainability. A comparative EOL study is conducted comparing the social, economic and environmental effects of secondary material reclamation, material reclamation, repurpose material reclamation, and waste disposal of post-consumer carpet (PCC) within the thirteen county urban region of Atlanta, GA.

The objective of this thesis is to categorize carpet types according to their XRF spectra and verify if further classification of carpets is possible for use of an XRF analysis system in the carpet manufacturing line. This thesis consists of (1) implementing and studying effective algorithms for automated analysis of X-ray spectra, (2) comparing known algorithms for X-ray spectra analysis, and (3) implementing our own algorithm for classification of carpets spectra obtained for further fluorine online analysis of XRF inspected carpets. This research is intended for quick and accurate automated analysis of raw XRF spectra and matching analysis results to a database of XRF spectra of raw carpets. The research uses spectrum signal processing and spectrum analysis regarding efficacy of combined methods for XRF inspected carpets. X-Ray Fluorescence is a key technology for detection of chemical elements. Fluorine is a key element for carpet's quality. XRF has been chosen to be a potential candidate to measure fluorine since it is a versatile tool for low concentration element detection. Due to specific XRF background spectrum for each different carpet type, carpet samples may need specific calibrations for further computation of carpet fluorine concentration. Automating the detection of the carpet type is intended to help in automating the XRF calibration.

Thesis (M. S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2009. / Committee Chair: Bras, Bert; Committee Member: Paredis, Chris; Committee Member: Realff, Matthew.

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To acquire deeper understanding and insights into the mechanical behaviour of fibre reinforced saturated/unsaturated cohesive soils, a programme of work was designed and included. 1) Conducting standard Consolidation Undrained (CU) tests to investigate mechanical behaviour of non-reinforced fully saturated soil. 2) Studying the strength of fibre reinforced clay though unconfined compression tests. 3) Testing the behaviour of unsaturated reinforced soil in unsaturated triaxial tests. 4) Determining the soil-water characteristic curves (SWCC) on soil sample with different fibre content. The investigation was undertaken on a clay of low plasticity index. Samples tested with addition of 1, 3 and 5 % fibre content and different values of matric suction of 50, 100 and 200 kPa, one of the challenges that were encountered in this research are how to prepare homogenous samples. A method for prepared compacted fibre reinforced soils with improved fibre distribution and density profile has been proposed and examined. The test results indicated that waste carpet fibres increase the shear strength of unsaturated clay soils. It was also found that relative increase in strength is also a function of applied suction. An increase in waste carpet fibres was found to reduce the hysteresis of soil. A data analysis conducted on the results of unsaturated tests as a function of fibre content and matric suction. The behaviour modelled was shown to be a perfect fit with the experimental data.

Aim of this diploma thesis is calculating the carpet area/built-up area coefficient and make a proposal how to put this coefficient in place in building evaluation field. Also, assessment of error rate of this method is needed. More methods were suggested based on differently calculated coefficients. Comparison of different sources of public information about buildings was made and these were compared to actual state of the buildings. Research was made whether there is correlation between age of the building and tipical building´s characteristics in examined area. Studied area is called Kluky (part of Hradec Králové).

This project involved the measurement and reduction of unscheduled equipment maintenance in the final stage of a nylon-6 bulk continuous filament process. The SINTEX operation was selected because the cost of poor quality (COPQ) was estimated to be higher here than elsewhere in the process. An accurate measure of the time lost was obtained by measuring the time spent on unscheduled maintenance for a typical machine for forty-eight days. Area personnel ranked potential causes for the most frequent baseline repairs in a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA.) Using the causes listed in the FMEA, an experiment was designed with three treatments; cleaning the draw and separator rolls, checking and adjusting threadpath, and maintaining a vibration standard. Results from the experiment showed that the combination of adherence to a vibration standard and weekly inspection and repair of the threadpath reduced unscheduled maintenance by 69 percent over the baseline. Maintaining the denlonstrated gains would involve monitoring the amount of unscheduled maintenance downtime and require entering the data recorded at each of fourteen lines daily into a database. This would require hundreds of hours per year. Therefore, an automated maintenance reporting system is recommended to allow a timely response to the unscheduled maintenance system possible. / Master of Science

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