With an increasing number of transport operators seeking permits to operate nonstandard or purpose-built vehicle types, information is required to assist road authorities to determine which vehicle types could operate on the road network without compromising the safety of other road users. A project was created by ARRB TR to develop guidelines for determining route access for heavy vehicles. This project was developed in conjunction with the state road authorities, the National Road Transport Commission and the transport industry to obtain an understanding of the road space requirements for a range of common vehicle types. This project is the subject of this thesis. Two series of field experiments were conducted with six common heavy vehicle types on public roads west of Parkes NSW. Information collected during these full-scale experiments was used to increase the knowledge of the dynamic behaviour of these vehicles and to develop model route access guidelines. Data obtained from these field experiments also provided information to validate computer models and simulation outputs. This thesis showed that: 1) There was experimental evidence to demonstrate that vehicle lateral movement is excited by differences in vehicle wheelpath profiles (point-by-point pavement crossfall), which make a contribution to trailing fidelity (swept width), offtracking and swept path; 2) Vehicle type and speed are prime influences on the lateral movement of the rear trailer and therefore an important input into the model route access guidelines. Notwithstanding the practical and safety implications of applying different speed limits for various vehicle types, speed is a prime contributor to vehicle lateral movement and should be considered when determining route access; 3) Limited lateral position information suggested that one driver of two vehicle types position the vehicles so that the tyres on the rear trailer track on the sealed pavement and not on the pavement shoulder; 4) Based on a statistical analysis of the data obtained from the small sample which only considered the average crossfall of each test section the relative importance of the key parameters was (highest to lowest), IRI, vehicle speed and vehicle type. It was shown that good estimates of lateral movement can be obtained using a double integration technique of the measured lateral acceleration, without applying compensation for the trailer roll or the pavement crossfall. It is recommended that route access guidelines be developed using the lateral performance of a larger sample of vehicles in each class of heavy vehicles operating over a larger range of road types. The route access guidelines should contain a matrix of information on vehicle type/length, pavement condition roughness/profile and lane width. This would provide operators and regulators with a desk-top assessment tool for determining route access.

<p><em>Determining bumpiness and inclination of surfaces is very important in many different areas, such as airports and at constructions sites. In this study, a surveying trolley and a remote controlled (RC) car were used to determine the bumpiness of two different surfaces. The aim with this study was to test the accuracy of a surveying trolley and an RC car to see how the accuracy can be increased with different observation methods. Total station, GPS and laser scanner surveying equipments were used, and all observations obtained by them were analysed. The laser scanner data was found to have the best precision. For that reason, it was accepted as the “true” data and it was used for comparing and evaluating other methods. It was found that the trolley and the RC car provided good height information with total stations and they were corresponding to the laser scanner data. When they were used with GPS, the accuracy was much lower. It was concluded that using two total stations is not increasing the accuracy, the RC car and the trolley are good measuring methods but not capable to inspect 1,2 mm tolerance for the floors, and finally, 2-3 cm positioning accuracy is obtainable when using GPS.</em></p>

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This work presents a model of the fouling mechanism and the evaluation of compressor washing on line. The results of this research were obtained from experimental and computational models. The experimental model analyzed the localization of the particle deposition on the blade surface and the change of the surface roughness condition. The design of the test rig was based on the cascade blade arrangement and blade aerodynamics. The results of the experiment demonstrated that fouling occurred on both surfaces of the blade. This mechanism mainly affected the leading edge region of the blade. The increment of the surface roughness on this region was 1.0 μm. This result was used to create the CFD model (FLUENT). According to the results of the CFD, fouling reduced the thickness of the boundary layer region and increased the drag force of the blade. The model of fouling was created based on the experiment and CFD results and was used to calculate the engine performance in the simulation code (TURBOMATCH). The engine performance results demonstrated that in five days fouling can affect the overall efficiency by 3.5%. The evaluation of the compressor washing on line was based on the experimental tests and simulation of the engine performance. This system demonstrated that it could recover 99% of the original blade surface. In addition, this system was evaluated in a study case of a Power Plant, where it proved itself to be a techno-economic way to recover the power of the engine due to fouling. The model of the fouling mechanism presented in this work was validated by experimental tests, CFD models and information from real engines. However, for further applications of the model, it would be necessary to consider the specific conditions of fouling in each new environment.

This report contains a study of ink mileage, show through and other mechanisms that are important inthe study of substrate printability. These mechanisms have an impact on how ink will react on paper.To develop a substrate that provides good ink mileage and less show through requires a closer studyof substrate characteristics.Substrates with different characteristics have been tested by a technique developed for this projectcalled modified ink mileage. Ink mileage is a method to determine how much ink that is required for acertain target density. Further tests on the same substrates have been done including print throughand surface roughness measurements.

The emotional experience of products can have enormous impact on the overall product experience: someone who is feeling positive is more likely to be accepting of novel products or to be more tolerant of unexpected or unusual interface behaviours. Being able to improve users’ emotions through product interaction has clear benefits and is currently the focus of designers all over the world. The extent to which touch-based information can affect a user’s experience and observable behaviour has been given relatively little attention in haptic technology or other touch-based products where research has tended to focus on psychophysics relating to technical development, in the case of the former, and usability in the case of the latter. The objective of this research was therefore to begin to explore generalizable and useful relationship(s) between design parameters specific to the sense of touch and the emotional response to tactile experiences. To this end, a theoretical ’touch-emotion model’ was developed that incorporates stages from existing information and emotion processing models, and a subset of pathways (the ‘Affective’, ‘Cognitive’, and ‘Behaviour Pathways’) was explored. Four experiments were performed to examine how changes in various touch factors, such as surface roughness and availability of haptic (that is, touch-based) information during exploration, impacted user emotional experience and behaviour in the context of the model’s framework. These experiments also manipulated factors related to the experience of touch in real-world situations, such as the availability of visual information and product context. Exploration of the different pathways of the touch-emotion model guided the analysis of the experiments. In exploring the Affective Pathway, a robust relationship was found between increasing roughness and decreasing emotional valence (n = 36, p < 0.005), regardless of the availability of haptic or visual information. This finding expands earlier research that focused on the effect of tactile stimuli on user preference. The impact of texture on the Cognitive Pathway was examined by priming participants to think of the stimuli as objects varying in emotional commitment, such as a common mug (lower) or a personal cell phone (higher). Emotional response again decreased as roughness increased, regardless of primed context (n = 27, p < 0.002) and the primed contexts marginally appeared to generally improve or reduce emotional response (n = 27, p < 0.08). Finally, the exploration of the Behaviour Pathway considered the ability of roughness-evoked emotion to act as a mediator between physical stimuli and observable behaviour, revealing that, contrary to the hypothesis that increased emotional valence would increase time spent reflecting on the stimuli, increased emotion magnitude (regardless of the positive or negative valence of the emotion) was associated with increased time spent in reflection (n = 33, p < 0.002). Results relating to the Behaviour Pathway suggested that the portion of the touch-emotion model that included the last stages of information processing, observable behaviour, may need to be revised. However, the insights of the Affective and Cognitive Pathway analyses are consistent with the information processing stages within those pathways and give support to the related portions of the touch-emotion model. The analysis of demographics data collected from all four experiments also revealed interesting findings which are anticipated to have application in customizing haptic technology for individual users. For example, correlations were found between self-reported tactual importance (measured with a questionnaire) and age (n = 79, r = 0.28, p < 0.03) and between self-reported tactual importance and sensitivity to increased roughness (n = 79, r = -0.27, p < 0.04). Higher response times were also observed with increased age (rIT = 0.49, rRT = 0.48; p < 0.01). This research contributes to the understanding of how emotion and emotionevoked behaviour may be impacted by changing touch factors using the exemplar of roughness as the touch factor of interest, experienced multimodally and in varying situations. If a design goal is to contribute to user emotional experience of a product, then the findings of this work have the potential to impact design decisions relating to surface texture components of hand-held products as well as for virtual surface textures generated by haptic technology. Further, the touchemotion model may provide a guide for the systematic exploration of the relationships between surface texture, cognitive processing, and emotional response.

Currently, finite element analysis (FEA) serves as the only analytical tool used in the evaluation of seals. The FEA does not allow the dynamic analysis of the seal, which must be performed experimentally. As a result, the designing of a seal can be a costly and extensive procedure. The aim of this project has been to develop a numerical model and computer program that will have the ability to predict key seal performance characteristics, such as leakage and friction. This numerical model provides a means for evaluating potential seal designs, which can be performed without having to endure the costs of creating and evaluating the performance of the seal. Thus, the numerical model reduces the time and cost involved in evaluating seal designs. The numerical model developed differs from previous models as the effects of mixed lubrication and surface roughness are investigated. This model consists of three coupled analyses of fluid mechanics, deformation, and contact mechanics. After computational procedure has converged coupling the three analyses, auxiliary calculations are performed to obtain the quantities of leakage rate and friction force. These obtained results then allow the evaluation of the seal design, which will lead to better seal designs with lower friction and less (or no) leakage. The results obtained for a typical hydraulic seal show that the leakage characteristics depend strongly on the seal roughness.

In this study, DLC thin films were electrodeposited at low DC potential using a mixture of acetic acid and DI water with different ratio. The parameters of DLC thin film deposition include the DC potential, deposition temperature, concentration of electrolyte solution, were correlated to the growth mechanism. The amount of nitrogen incorporated into DLC thin films were varied with the deposited temperature. The characteristics of DLC films by various measurements such as : the I-t curves of DLC film growth, SEM, AFM, FTIR, XPS, Raman and N&K spectroscopy, were investigated in detail. Experimental results showed that the surface roughness decreased, and sp3/sp2+sp3 value of DLC increased with the deposition temperature and deposition time. Optical properties showed that the refractive index, optical energy gap increased with the deposition temperature. For SEM cross-section measurement, it showed that the thickness of DLC films decreased due to the erosion process. However, the N-DLC films become graphitization. According to our study, we find that the surface morphology of the N-DLC films are homogeneous and compact. However, with the increase of the deposition temperature, the ratio of sp3-C-N bonds increase and the ratio of sp2-C-C bonds decrease, and these lead to the increase of refractive index and optical energy gap.

This work studies the application of laser structured light scanning to measure the small scale roughness of seabed. We use a CCD camera to capture the dislocation of laser light. The location of the laser light in pixel coordinates can be converted into world coordinates if the CCD camera is calibrated. We propose an algorithm which is analogous to the idea of longitudes/latitudes in map projection. The idea is to place a calibration board to be aligned with the laser scanning sheet. On the calibration board, grid points of 50mm are laid to represent the intersection of the longitudes and latitudes. The position of a point in pixel coordinates can be obtained by referring to its neighboring graticule. We designed three experiments to verify the accuracy of the system: The first experiment consists of measuring the distance between feature points on the calibration board, then check and correct the optic distortion effects of the lenses. The second experiment is to measure the slice of laser scanning image of a known object, and check the accuracy of our laser scanning system by measuring the object's height and width. In the third experiment, we measure an object which has a small height variety of its surface, to test the resolution of the system. The results indicate that the error is under 1%, only then that we proceed with the design, analysis, and measurement of artificial seabed. The artificial seabed model is made by using a 210mm * 210mm * 30mm acrylic board with sand ripples forms in the 150mm * 150mm square. The amplitude of the ripples is no higher/larger than ¡Ó 8mm, and no lower/smaller than ¡Ó 1.5mm. Contour map of the sand ripples would be plotted to analyze the results obtained from the measurements. The analysis is carried out by obtaining slice data from a reconstructed surface of the sand ripples, then compare it with the theoretical values. From the result we know that the error between sand dune ideal wave index and measured index is in the range of ¡Ó 2mm. To further test the system's tolerance with turbidity, we incorporate conditions which would alter environmental turbidity into the seabed experiments before running the experiments for analysis. The results show that the system is able to maintain a stable performance in an environment below 2.3 NTU (Nephelometric Turbidity Unit), and the error between ideal sand dune ideal wave index and measured index is still in the range of ¡Ó 2mm.

Abstract The removing efficiency of surface roughness for the hydrodynamic polishing process under semi-contact lubricating condition was investigated in this thesis. The experimental relationships between surface roughness and polishing were first examined. From the relationships, the potential influential factors of the removing efficiency and the magnitude of surface roughness were identified. Finally, a mathematical model that was related to the removing efficiency and the magnitude of surface roughness was proposed. Based on the experimental study, it was shown that the surface roughness would be rapidly reduced at the beginning by polishing process and then hardly improved afterward. This trend implied that surface roughness would not be completely removed during the polishing process. It was proposed that the amplitude and wavelength of surface roughness would affect the removing efficiency of surface roughness. Further, the removing efficiency was not sensitive to the tool velocity. From the mathematical model, several points were concluded. First, the removing efficiency was positively proportional to the amplitude of surface roughness. Second, the removing efficiency was inversely to the amplitude of surface roughness. Third, the removing efficiency was inverse proportional to a waviness of tool surface. Fourth, the removing efficiency was not sensitive to tool velocity. Finally, there existed an achievable minimum surface roughness for a surface with specific wavelength. The magnitude of a minimum surface roughness was shown to be proportional to the wavelength of work surface.