Aus der Einleitung: "Das selektive Elektronenstrahlschmelzen (engl. Electron Beam Melting (EBM®)) ist ein pulverbettbasiertes additives Fertigungsverfahren, mit dessen Hilfe metallische Bauteile schichtweise hergestellt werden können. Der schematische Aufbau einer entsprechenden Anlage ist in Abbildung 4 dargestellt. Dabei erfolgt die Strahlerzeugung im Bereich 1 (die Kathode besteht entweder aus Wolfram oder bei den neuesten Systemen aus einkristallinem LaB6). Die Strahlablenkung durch ein elektromagnetisches Linsensystem erfolgt im Bereich 2. Der Bereich 3 ist die eigentliche Baukammer, in der sich unter anderem die Vorratsbehälter für das Pulver, das Rakelsystem sowie die Komponenten des Bauraums (Käfig mit Hitzeschild, Bauplattform mit Startplatte) befinden. ..."

Klimatförändringarna påverkar världen negativt. År 2015 togs Parisavtalet fram för att bekämpa klimatkrisen, vilket resulterade i större krav på byggnadssektorn. Byggnadssektorn står för en stor del av både den totala energianvändningen och energirelaterade utsläpp av växthusgaser. Dessa måste minskas för att kunna uppnå de miljökrav som definieras i Parisavtalet. Korslimmat trä, även kallat KL-trä, är ett konstruktionsmaterial på marknaden som främjar för ett hållbart byggande jämfört med det nuvarande dominerande materialet betong.  Syftet med forskningen är att redogöra för skillnaden mellan väggar av armerad betong och KL-trä. Studien har framtagits genom ett experiment där modelleringsprogrammet StruSoft FEM-design användes för att modellera, dimensionera och analysera en referensbyggnad placerad på Gävle Strand i Gävle. Fokuset ligger på hur materialen förhåller sig som ett bärande material och dess skillnad. Forskningen tar inte hänsyn till energi, fukt-, ljud- eller brandkrav. Analys av de båda materialen visar att betongen har fördelar, speciellt gällande nedböjning och tjocklek. Resultatet för KL-trä visar att det är möjligt att bygga ett flervåningshus. Däremot kan det kräva högre dimensioner och ger större nedböjning jämfört med betong. Resultatet visar att ytterväggarna av KL-trä behöver vara 80 mm tjockare än betongväggarna och nedböjningen är i det värsta fallet 4,8 mm för KL-trä respektive 1,8 mm för betong. Resultatet visar att den totala vikten för byggnaden med väggar av KL-trä är 74 % av den totala vikten för byggnaden med betongväggar. Vikten för en byggnad med väggar av KL-trä har stora fördelar och gynnar miljön och är tack vare av dess låga vikt enklare att arbete med. Då KL-trä är det bättre alternativet för miljön bör fler byggherrar ha i åtanke att använda lösningar med trä som stomme för att främja ett hållbart byggande. / Climate change has a negative impact on the world. In the year 2015, the Paris agreement was presented to fight the climate crisis, which put greater demands on the construction sector. The construction sector accounts for a large part of both total energy use and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, which must be reduced to meet the environmental requirements defined in the Paris Agreement. Cross-laminated timber, also known as CLT, is a construction material on the market that promotes sustainable construction compared to the currently dominating material concrete since the climate footprint for wood materials is less. The purpose of this research is to specify the difference between CLT and concrete walls. The study was developed through an experiment where the modeling program StruSoft FEM design was used to model, design, and analyze a reference building located at Gävle strand in Gävle. The focus is on how these structural materials behave as load-carrying elements and their differences. The research does not take energy, moisture, sound, or fire requirements into account. Analysis of both materials shows that concrete has advantages, especially regarding deflection and thickness. The results of CLT show that it is possible to build a multi-story house. However, CLT requires larger dimensions and gives greater deflections compared to concrete. The results show that the external walls need an 80 mm greater thickness than the concrete walls and the translational displacement is in the worst case 4,8 mm for CLT respective 1,8 mm for concrete. The results show that the total weight of the building with walls of CLT is 74 % of the total weight of the building with concrete walls. The weight of a building with CLT walls has great advantages and benefits both the environment and because of the lighter weight easier to work with. Since CLT is the better alternative for the environment, more builders should keep in mind to look at solutions with wood as a skeleton to promote sustainable construction.

In public opinion, protection against asteroids impact has always been on the agenda of space engineering. Actually it started from 1994 when Shoemaker Levy stroke Jupiter. This protection works in two steps: detection of threat and deflection. Some space agencies and foundations monitor the sky and set up scenario. Although the sky is nowadays well monitored and mapped, there is no global plan nowadays against this threat. This paper focuses on the deflection step, and aims at forecasting which variables are involved and their consequences on the deflection mission. In fact the result depends on several factors, like the time before hazardous moment, the accuracy of detection tools, the choice of deflection method, but the most unpredictable are human factors. This study shows a strategy and so tries to give some new response parts to the global deflection problem.

A mathematical dynamic model is derived for the compliant constant-force mechanism, based on the pseudo-rigid-body model simplification of the device. The compliant constant-force mechanism is a slider mechanism incorporating large-deflection beams, which outputs near-constant-force across the range of its designed deflection. The equation of motion is successfully validated with empirical data from five separate mechanisms, comprising two configurations of compliant constant-force mechanism. The dynamic model is cast in generalized form to represent all possible configurations of compliant constant-force mechanism. Deriving the dynamic equation from the pseudo-rigid-body model is useful because every configuration is represented by the same model, so a separate treatment is not required for each configuration. An unexpected dynamic trait of the constant-force mechanism is discovered: there exists a range of frequencies for which the output force of the mechanism accords nearer to constant-force than does the output force at static levels.

This thesis quantifies the flexural behavior (strength, stiffness and failure) of IsoTruss®-reinforced concrete beam-columns for use in deep foundation pile applications. Four-point bending tests were performed in the laboratory on two instrumented carbon/epoxy IsoTruss® reinforced concrete piles (IRC piles) and two instrumented steel reinforced concrete piles (SRC piles). The piles were approximately 14 ft (4.3 m) in length and 14 in (36 cm) in diameter and were loaded to failure while monitoring load, deflection, and strain data. The steel and IsoTruss®® reinforcement cages were designed to have equal flexural stiffness to permit a relative strength comparison. Moment curvature diagrams reveal that the stiffness values were indeed close, verifying the design objective. At failure, the IsoTruss®-reinforced concrete beams held nearly twice the bending moment as the steel-reinforced concrete beams [1,719 kip-in vs. 895 kip-in (194 kN-m vs.101 kN-m)], although the failure modes were quite different. The SRC piles exhibited the traditional ductile failure behavior, as expected, while the IRC piles lacked ductility. The IRC pile deflections remained linear to failure, while the SRC piles yielded significantly. At 35 kips (165 kN), the maximum load on the SRC piles, the ductility of the SRC piles was twice that of the IRC piles (0.0084 and 0.0042, respectively). Toughness measurements reveal that due to the lack of ductility in the IRC piles, the SRC piles absorbed approximately twice as much energy as the IRC piles. Further investigations are required to explain the absence of ductility in the IRC piles, since ductility has been observed in other IsoTruss®-reinforced concrete structures in flexure. Even with this low level of ductility, the IRC piles are substantially stronger than the SRC piles and provide an alternative for use in deep foundation environments. Not only is the IRC pile strong enough for the job, but the IsoTruss® reinforcement is approximately 62% lighter, more rigid, and more corrosion resistant than the steel reinforcement.

This thesis presents research on the force and deflection behavior of beams with rectangular cross-sections undergoing lateral torsional buckling. The large 3-D deflection path of buckling beam tips was closely approximated by circular arcs in two planes. A new chain algorithm element was created from pseudo-rigid-body segments and used in a chain calculation that accurately predicted the force deflection relationship of beams with large 3-D deflections.

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a nonspecific and persistent ailment that entails many physiological, psychological, social, and economic consequences for individuals and societies. Although there is a plethora of treatments available to treat CLBP, each treatment has varying efficacy for different patients, and it is currently unknown how to best link patients to their ideal treatment. However, it is known that biopsychosocial influences associated with CLBP affect the way that we move. It has been hypothesized that identifying phenotypes of spinal motion could facilitate an objective and repeatable method of determining the optimal treatment for each patient. The objective of this research was to develop an array of high deflection strain gauges to monitor spinal motion, and use that information to identify spinal-motion phenotypes. The high deflection strain gauges used in this endeavor exhibit highly nonlinear electrical signal due to their viscoelastic material properties. Two sub-models were developed to account for these nonlinearities: the first characterizes the relationship between quasistatic strain and resistance, and the second accounts for transient electrical phenomena due to the viscoelastic response to dynamic loads. These sub-models are superimposed to predict and interpret the electrical signal under a wide range of applications. The combined model accurately predicts sensor strain with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 1.4% strain and strain rate with an MAE of 0.036 mm/s. Additionally, a multilayered architecture was developed for the strain gauges to provide mechanical support during high strain, cyclic loads. The architecture significantly mitigates sensor creep and viscoplastic deformation, thereby reducing electrical signal drift by 74%. This research also evaluates the effects of CLBP on patient-reported outcomes. An exploratory factor analysis revealed that there are five primary components of well-being: Pain and Physical Limitations, Psychological Distress, Physical Activity, Sleep Deprivation, and Pain Catastrophizing. The presence of CLBP has adverse effects on all these components. It was also observed that different patient reported outcomes are highly correlated with each other, and the presence of CLBP is a significant moderating factor in many of these relationships. Arrays of high-deflection strain gauges were used to collect spinal kinematic data from 274 subjects. Seven phenotypes of spinal motion were identified among study participants. Statistical analyses revealed significant differences in the patient-reported outcomes of subjects who exhibited different phenotypes. This is a promising indication that the phenotypes may also provide important information to clinicians who treat patients suffering from CLBP. Future research will be conducted to develop and identify the optimal treatments for patients according to their phenotypes, which has the potential to reduce medical costs, expedite recovery, and improve the lives of millions of patients worldwide.

One of the key areas that have attracted attention in the construction industry today is Structural Health Monitoring, more commonly known as SHM. It is a concept developed to monitor the quality and longevity of various engineering structures. The incorporation of such a system would help to continuously track health of the structure, indicate the occurrence/presence of any damage in real time and give us an idea of the number of useful years for the same. Being a recently conceived idea, the state of the art technique in the field is straight forward - populating a given structure with sensors and extracting information from them. In this regard, instrumenting with too many sensors may be inefficient as this could lead to superfluous data that is expensive to capture and process. This research aims to explore an alternate SHM technique that optimizes the data acquisition process by eliminating the amount of redundant data that is sensed and uses this sufficient data to detect and locate the fault present in the structure. Efficient data acquisition requires a mechanism that senses just the necessary amount of data for detection and location of fault. For this reason Compressive Sensing (CS) is explored as a plausible idea. CS claims that signals can be reconstructed from what was previously believed to be incomplete information by Shannon's theorem, taking only a small amount of random and linear non - adaptive measurements. As responses of many physical systems contain a finite basis, CS exploits this feature and determines the sparse solution instead of the traditional least - squares type solution.As a first step, CS is demonstrated by successfully recovering the frequency components of a simple sinusoid. Next, the question of how CS compares with the conventional Fourier transform is analyzed. For this, recovery of temporal frequencies and signal reconstruction is performed using the same number of samples for both the approaches and the errors are compared. On the other hand, the FT error is gradually minimized to match that of CS by increasing the number of regularly placed samples. Once the advantages are established, feasibility of using CS to detect damage in a single degree of freedom system is tested under unforced and forced conditions. In the former scenario, damage is indicated when there is a change in natural frequency of vibration of the system after an impact. In the latter, the system is excited harmonically and damage is detected by a change in amplitude of the system's vibration. As systems in real world applications are predominantly multi-DOF, CS is tested on a 2-DOF system excited with a harmonic forcing. Here again, damage detection is achieved by observing the change in the amplitude of vibration of the system. In order to employ CS for detecting either a change in frequency or amplitude of vibration of a structure subjected to realistic forcing conditions, it would be prudent to explore the reconstruction of a signal which contains multiple frequencies. This is accomplished using CS on a chirp signal. Damage detection is clearly a spatio-temporal problem. Hence it is important to additionally explore the extension of CS to spatial reconstruction. For this reason, mode shape reconstruction of a beam with standard boundary conditions is performed and validated with standard/analytical results from literature. As the final step, the operation deflection shapes (ODS) are reconstructed for a simply supported beam using CS to establish that it is indeed a plausible approach for a less expensive SHM. While experimenting with the idea of spatio-temporal domain, the mode shape as well as the ODS of the given beam are examined under two conditions - undamaged and damaged. Damage in the beam is simulated as a decrease in the stiffness coefficient over a certain number of elements. Although the range of modes to be examined heavily depends on the structure in question, literature suggests that for most practical applications, lower modes are more dominant in indicating damage. For ODS on the other hand, damage is indicated by observing the shift in the recovered spatial frequencies and it is confirmed by the reconstructed response.

Structural design of piles with respect to buckling in Sweden is commonlymade in accordance with the calculation model from the Commission ofPile Research, PKR. A prerequisite for this model is that the elasticbuckling length of the pile is shorter than the physical length. For shortpiles this assumption might not be valid, meaning that anotherappropriate calculation model may be used instead. This situation occurswhen designing end-bearing piles in typical geological conditions foreastern Sweden, consisting of soft clay and shallow bedrock.This thesis compared the PKR-model with alternative models for thedesign of short piles. One of the alternate calculation models was a finiteelement model where Winkler springs represented the soil. It was used tosimulate cases with various diameters and undrained shear strengths.Furthermore, the results using the PKR- and FEM-model was comparedto calculations according to Eurocode 3 considering the pile as a freestandingcolumn. By the help of the FEM-model, a method to considergreater initial deflections in the Eurocode 3-model was also developed.In conclusion, the PKR-model was non-conservative for some of thetested cases. With some precautions taken for those cases, the model wasvalid to use for elastic buckling lengths up to two times the physicallength of the pile. The results from the Eurocode 3-model were bothconservative and non-conservative depending on the pile- and soilconditions. It was seen that the analytical models were not comparablesince they handle prerequisites and design assumptions in different ways.A sensitivity analysis was also made which resulted in suggestions forfurther research on the topic.

This work has been done in collaboration with Northpower Stålhallar AB. The work is concentrating on column buckling, wind load and deflection of steel columns made of VKR profiles. VKR profiles are steel profiles that are hot-rolled structural pipes having a rectangular section. The analysis is made according to Eurokod 3 and with the finite element program Abaqus. A comparison has been made between these to see whether they differ in result or not regarding buckling curves and interaction formulas. In addition, the company wanted calculation templates in Excel. A proposal for a spreadsheet for different deflection limits are presented in Excel that the company can use, as well as a calculation template for wind loads where all municipalities in Sweden are included. The report contains theoretical background on how to design columns with respect to buckling, wind loading and deflection according to Eurokod 3.The work with Abaqus includes linear and non-linear analysis of column buckling. The analyses also include geometric imperfections, residual stresses, and plastic behavior of steel. The result showed a slight difference between Eurokod and Abaqus analyses but it was not a considerable deviation.