In all branches of industry, especially in power-engineering, thin wall steel structures are extensively used. Land vertical cylindrical tanks are examples of such structures. The manufacture and assembling of these structures are usually accompanied by deviations from an ideal cylindrical form. Therefore, the exact evaluation of real local imperfections and common deviations from the analytical model of the tank is very important for such potentially dangerous structures. The main objective of the presented investigations is to identify stress/strain state of the wall tank with local imperfections from the ideal cylindrical surface, taking into account the membrane theory of the shells by using the natural experiment and finite element’s method. / Visose pramonės šakose, ypatingai energetikoje, plačiai taikomos plonasienės metalinės konstrukcijos. Tokių konstrukcijų pavyzdžiu yra antžeminiai vertikalūs ci-lindriniai rezervuarai. Kadangi šių statinių konstrukcijų gamybos ir montavimo darbus sudėtinga atlikti be lokalių ar bendrų nukrypimų nuo idealios cilindrinės formos, tikslus jų įvertinimas labai svarbus tokiems potencialiai pavojingiems statiniams. Šio darbo tyrimų pagrindinis tikslas yra: talpyklos sienelės su įduba įtemptojo deformuotojo būvio identifikavimas baigtinių elementų metodu ir eksperimentiniu metodu.

Kompozicinių medžiagų konstrukcijų taikymas aviacijoje didėja. Saugumui aviacijoje užtikrinti reikalingos patikimos kontrolės sistemos. Šiame darbe pateiktas ultragarso greičio matavimo metodo taikymas kompozicinėms struktūroms tirti. Metodas numato akustinių gardelių panaudojimą, sudarant ultragarso bangų sklidimo greičio matavimo kanalą tiriamame sluoksnyje. Šis metodas atitinka keliamus tikslumo, patikimumo ir operatyvumo reikalavimus. Darbo apimtis – 65 p. teksto be priedų, 44 iliustr., 3 lent., 16 bibliografiniai šaltiniai. / Usage of compositional materials in aviation increases. To ensure safety in aviation - reliable control systems are required. Method of examination of compositional materials using ultrasound measuring system is introduced in this work. This method implies usage of acoustic lattice for measurement of created ultrasound waves in examined layer. This method complies with requirements for accuracy, reliability and effectiveness.

Mechanical waves provide information about the stiffness and the condition of a medium; thus, changes in medium conditions can be inferred from changes in wave velocity and attenuation. Non-destructive testing (NDT) methods based on ultrasonic waves are often more economical, practical and faster than destructive testing. Multichannel analysis of surface waves (MASW) is a well-established surface wave method used for determination of the shear-wave profile of layered medium. The MASW test configuration is also applicable to assess the condition of concrete elements using appropriate frequency range. Both attenuation and dispersion of ultrasonic waves can be evaluated by this technique. In ultrasonic testing, the characterization of a medium requires the precise measurement of its response to ultrasonic pulses to infer the presence of defects and boundary conditions. However, any ultrasonic transducer attached to a surface affects the measured response; especially at high frequencies. On the other hand, ultrasonic transducers available for engineering application are mostly used to measure wave velocities (travel time method). Therefore, these transducers do not have a flat response in the required frequency range. Moreover, in the case of full-waveform methods, the recorded signals should be normalized with respect to the transfer functions of the transducers to obtain the real response of the tested specimen. The main objective of this research is to establish a comprehensive methodology based on surface wave characteristics (velocity, attenuation and dispersion) for condition assessment of cemented materials with irregular defects. To achieve the major objective, the MASW test configuration is implemented in the ultrasonic frequency range. The measured signals are subjected to various signal processing techniques to extract accurate information. In addition, a calibration procedure is conducted to determine the frequency response functions (FRF) of the piezoelectric accelerometers outside their nominal frequency range. This calibration is performed using a high-frequency laser vibrometer. This research includes three main studies. The first study introduces the calibration approach to measure the FRFs of the accelerometers outside of their flat frequency range. The calibrated accelerometers are then used to perform MASW tests on a cemented-sand medium. The original signals and the corrected ones by eliminating the effect of the FRFs are used to determine material damping of the medium. Although, the damping ratios obtained from different accelerometers are not same, the values from the corrected signals are found closer to the characteristic damping value compared to those from the uncorrected signals. The second study investigates the sensitivity of Rayleigh wave velocity, attenuation coefficient, material damping and dispersion in phase velocity to evaluate the sensitivity of these characteristics to the damage quantity in a medium. The soft cemented-sand medium is preferred as the test specimen so that well-defined shaped defects could be created in the medium. MASW test configuration is implemented on the medium for different cases of defect depth. The recorded signals are processed using different signal processing techniques including Fourier and wavelet transforms and empirical mode decomposition to determine the surface wave characteristics accurately. A new index, ‘dispersion index’, is introduced which quantifies the defect based on the dispersive behaviour. All surface wave characteristics are found capable of reflecting the damage quantity of the test medium at different sensitivity levels. In the final study, the condition assessment of six lab-scale concrete beams with different void percent is performed. The beam specimens involving Styrofoam pellets with different ratios are tested under ultrasonic and mechanical equipment. The assessment produce established in the second study with well-defined defects is pursed for the beams with irregular defects. Among the characteristics, attenuation, P and R-wave velocities and dispersion index are found as the promising characteristics for quantifying the defect volume.

Academia and industry expend much effort to predict software defects. Researchers proposed many defect prediction algorithms and metrics. While previous defect prediction techniques often take the author of the code into consideration, none of these techniques build a separate prediction model for each developer. Different developers have different coding styles, commit frequencies, and experience levels, which would result in different defect patterns. When the defects of different developers are combined, such differences are obscured, hurting the prediction performance. This thesis proposes two techniques to improve defect prediction performance: personalized defect prediction and confidence-based hybrid defect prediction. Personalized defect prediction builds a separate prediction model for each developer to predict software defects. Confidence-based hybrid defect prediction combines different models by picking the prediction from the model with the highest confidence. As a proof of concept, we apply the two techniques to classify defects at the file change level. We implement the state-of-the-art change classification as the baseline and compare with the personalized defect prediction approach. Confidence-based defect prediction combines these two models. We evaluate on six large and popular software projects written in C and Java—the Linux kernel, PostgreSQL, Xorg, Eclipse, Lucene and Jackrabbit.

No description available.

A potential characterization tool for printer quality is the power spectral density (PSD) analysis of flat-field printer outputs. This thesis explains the relationship between the PSD and characteristics of printer defects using examples of scanned printer outputs. In addition, a protocol is also presented for scanning flat fields and performing a PSD analysis. The protocol considers sampling and windowing issues to best focus on defects or quality issues of interest. The main objective of this work is to determine the interactive relationships of print defect patterns such as graininess, streaking, and banding under flat-field hardcopy outputs. The additive and multiplicative models are considered for describing the interaction between printer defects. Simulated print defect patterns and metrics base on the PSD are used to demonstrate the patterns generated by multiplicative and additive processes. These results are compared the PSD of actual flat-field prints from digital printers to draw conclusion concerning actual artifact interaction. For all defects examined the additive model is shown to be a good model of the interactions between printer defects.

Repair of bone defects is a major challenge in orthopaedic surgery. Current bone graft treatments, including autografts, allografts and xenografts, have many limitations making it necessary to develop a biomaterial to be a bone graft substitute. One such biomaterial is bioactive resorbable silica-calcium phosphate nanocomposite (SCPC). SCPC was processed using a 3D rapid prototyping technique and sintered at different temperatures to create porous scaffolds. SEM analyses and mercury intrusion porosimetry showed SCPC to be highly porous with micro- and nanopores. BET analysis indicated that SCPC had high surface area. Mechanical testing demonstrated that SCPC had a compressive strength similar to trabecular bone. Analysis of different thermal treatment temperatures indicated as the temperature was increased, the porosity decreased and the mechanical strength increased. When loaded with rhBMP-2 (SCPC-rhBMP-2), SCPC provided a sustained release profile of rhBMP-2 for 14 days. This was shown to be a greater release than hydroxyapatite (HA)-rhBMP-2. After immersion in SBF, ICP analyses showed the calcium concentration of SBF dropped drastically after one day of immersion. In conjunction, FTIR showed the formation of a hydroxyapatite layer on the SCPC surface and was confirmed by SEM. SCPC thermally treated at 850 ??C demonstrated the greatest dissolution/precipitation reactions when immersed in SBF. Processing the SCPC-rhBMP-2 hybrid using a rapid prototyping technique allowed for an exact replica of the rabbit ulna to be fabricated. This was implanted into a 10 mm segmental defect in the rabbit ulna. CT scans during the healing of the defect showed intimate union between SCPC-rhBMP-2 and the bone and about 65% healing of the defect after 4 weeks. Rabbits were euthanized after 12 and 16 weeks. Digital images show almost complete healing of the defect after 16 weeks. Torsional testing of the ulna after 12 weeks demonstrated restoration of maximum torque and angle at failure. Histological evaluation after 12 weeks showed the regenerated bone has all the morphological characteristics of mature bone. Through in-vitro and in-vivo testing, it can be recommended that the porous bioactive SCPC can serve as a successful delivery system for biological growth factors and serve as an alternative to autologous bone grafting.

Many smooth, highly specular coatings such as automotive paints are subjected to considerable performance demands as the customer expectations for appearance of coatings are continually increasing. Therefore it is vital to develop robust methods to monitor surface quality online. An automated visual assessment of specular coated surface that would not only provide a cost effective and reliable solution to the industries but also facilitate the implementation of a real-time feedback loop. The scope of this thesis is a subset of the inspection technology that facilitates real-time close loop control of the surface quality and concentrates on one common surface defect the seed defect. This machine vision system design utilizes surface reflectance models as a rational basis. Using a single high-contrast image the height of the seed defect is computed; the result is obtained rapidly and is reasonably accurate approximation of the actual height.

Product visual inspection is still performed manually or semi automatically in most industries from simple ceramic tile grading to complicated automotive body panel paint defect and surface quality inspection. Moreover, specular surfaces present additional challenges to conventional vision systems due to specular reflections, which may mask the true location of objects and lead to incorrect measurements. Some sophisticated optical inspection methods have already been developed for high precision surface defect inspection in recent years. Unfortunately, most of them are highly computational. Systems built on those methods are either inapplicable or costly to achieve real-time inspection. This thesis describes an integrated low-cost intelligent system developed to automatically capture and extract regular defects of the ceramic tiles with uniformly colored specular coatings. The proposed system is implemented on a group of smart cameras using its on-board processing ability to achieve real-time inspection. The results of this study will be used to facilitate the design of a robust, low-cost, closed-loop inspection system for a class of products with smooth specular coatings. The experimental results on real test panels demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of proposed system.

När en ny produkt lanseras på marknaden uppkommer det med stor sannolikhet brister som intetidigare upptäckts. Syftet med denna studie är att skapa en arbetsmodell för hur medelstora företagska hantera kvalitetsavvikelser som uppkommer inom produktion. För att skapa en realistisk modellför hur dessa kvalitetsavvikelser skall hanteras, baseras detta examensarbete på en fallstudie utfördpå ett tillverkande företag vid namn AQ ParkoPrint AB som är beläget i Gävle. Följande forskningsfrågor har besvarats för att understödja det huvudsakliga syftet: • Vilka kvalitetsavvikelser kan uppkomma inom medelstora företag? • Hur kan dessa kvalitetsavvikelser hanteras samt om möjligt reduceras? Metoderna som använts i studien är intervjuer och observationer. Fem intervjuer och tvåobservationer utfördes på AQ ParkoPrint AB. Den arbetsmodell som skapats kallas förfemstegsmodellen och innebär att processen för att hantera kvalitetsavvikelser delats upp i fem steg:dokumentera, utred, illustrera, forma åtgärdsförslag och genomför. Femstegsmodellen är utformadför medelstora tillverkande företag och inriktad på att skapa ett arbetssätt för systematiskt arbetemed hantering samt om möjligt reducering av kvalitetsbrister. Dessa steg är flexibla på det viset attvarje företag utformar egna åtgärdshanteringar och använder femstegsmodellen som grundstruktur idet fullständiga kvalitetsarbetet.Med hjälp av den utvecklade femstegsmodellen kan medelstora företag hantera och reducera sinakvalitetsbrister. Arbetsmodellen i sig kräver inga kostsamma verktyg utan det som styr kostnadernaär omfattningen av det arbete som läggs på samtliga steg.I denna studie presenteras även frågeställningar som företag kan arbeta utifrån för att reducerakvalitetsbrister som kan härledas till underleverantörer. Fallstudien påvisar att de kvalitetsavvikelsersom uppkommer troligtvis kan härledas till underleverantörerna. / When a new product is launched, product defects in various processes and process steps willprobably appear that were not previously known or detected. The purpose of this study is to create aworking model for how middle-sized companies should manage to handle defects in quality thatwill appear in manufacturing productions. To be able to create a realistic model, this thesis will bebased on a case study of a manufacturing company by the name of AQ ParkoPrint AB, located in Gävle, Sweden. The following research questions are answered in order to support the main purpose: • What defects in quality occur most often in middle-sized manufacturing companies? • How can these defects in quality be managed, and if possible, be reduced? The methods used in this study are interviews and observations. Five interviews and twoobservations were performed on AQ ParkoPrint AB. The working model that was created wasnamed “Five-step-model” and involves the process of managing defects in quality divided into fivesteps: document, investigate, illustrate, propose action and implement. The “Five-step model” isdesigned for middle-sized manufacturing companies focused on creating a way to worksystematically with how to managing quality defects and how to reduce them if possible. The stepsin this model are flexible because every single company should be able to customize each step tosuit their company needs, and only use the “Five-step model” that is created in this study as thebasic structure of the quality work. The case study shows that the suppliers are the majorcontributors of causing quality defects. Middle-sized companies can use the developed five stepmodel to handle and reduce their quality defects. The “Five-step model” itself requires no expensivetools. It is the extent of the work in every specific step that determines the costs.This study also presents some question formulations that companies can use to reduce their qualitydefects that can be traced back to the subcontractors.