De nos jours, la gestion des flux de matière autour de la zone decontact représente un des principaux verrous scientifiques pourl'amélioration des simulations des procédés d'usinage comme, parexemple, le procédé FSW. Les méthodes basées sur la mécanique desmilieux continus sont couramment utilisées dans ces simulations maiselles rencontrent de nombreuses difficultés dans les zones decontact. Une explication "physique" à ces difficultés estl'utilisation des équations issues de la mécanique des milieuxcontinus pour décrire des phénomènes discontinus. À ce point, laméthode des éléments discrets s'est révélée être une alternative auxapproches continues pour traiter le problème causé par cesdiscontinuités. Cette méthode est en revanche très gourmande en termede temps de calcul.Une solution à long terme passe par un couplage entre méthodescontinues et discrètes qui requiert une zone de recouvrement où lesdeux approches coexistent. Cette zone est classiquement placée dansune région continue et cela oblige à développer la méthode deséléments discrets pour qu'elle puisse opérer dans ce type derégion. Le travail de thèse présente une méthode pour simuler laconduction de la chaleur et le comportement mécanique des milieuxcontinus élasto-plastiques. Cette méthode peut travailler dans la zonecontinue de recouvrement et, en plus, elle peut être facilementcouplée avec les méthodes discontinues classiques.Le couplage entre l'aspect thermique et l'aspect mécanique estégalement étudié et comparé aux résultats expérimentaux issus de labibliographie.

As optical fiber systems evolve to higher data rates, the importance of polarization control and manipulation steadily increases. Polarization manipulating devices, such as polarization splitters and converters, can be realized by introducing material anisotropy or geometric asymmetry. Compared to active devices, passive polarization converters are more simply fabricated and controlled; therefore they have attracted increasing attention during the past two decades. However, materials employed in previous polarization rotating waveguides are mainly limited to low index-contrast III-V semiconductors such as InP and GaAs. Such III-V devices possess large radiation loss, large curvature loss, and low coupling efficiency to single-mode fibers; in addition, due to the weak optical confinement, the device spacing has to be large, which prevents high-density and large-scale integration in optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEIC) and planar lightwave circuits (PLC). <br /><br /> In this dissertation, the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology is introduced to the design and fabrication of passive polarization rotators (PR). Efficient and accurate full-vectorial finite-element eigenmode solvers as well as propagation schemes for characterizing novel SOI PRs are developed because commercial software packages based on finite-difference techniques are inefficient in dealing with arbitrary waveguide geometries. <br /><br /> A set of general design procedures are accordingly developed to design a series of slanted-angle polarization converters, regardless of the material system (SOI or III-V), outer-slab layer configuration (symmetric or asymmetric), and longitudinal loading (single- or multi-section). In particular, our normalized design charts and simple empirical formula for SOI polarization converters are applicable to a wide range of silicon-guiding-film thickness, e. g. , from 1 to 30 &mu;m, enabling fast and accurate polarization rotator design on most commercial SOI wafers. With these procedures, in principle 100% polarization conversion efficiency can be achieved by optimizing waveguide geometric parameters. <br /><br /> A novel configuration with asymmetric external waveguiding layers is proposed, which is advantageous for fabrication procedure, manufacturing tolerance, single-mode region, and conversion efficiency. By etching along the crystallographic plane, the angled-facet can be perfectly fabricated. Completely removing external waveguiding layer beside the sloped sidewall not only simplifies production procedures but also enhances fabrication tolerances. <br /><br /> To accurately and efficiently characterize asymmetric slanted-angle SOI polarization converters, adaptive mesh generation procedures are incorporated into our finite-element method (FEM) analysis. In addition, anisotropic perfectly-matched-layer (PML) boundary condition (BC) is employed in the beam propagation method (BPM) in order to effectively suppress reflections from the edges of the computation window. For the BPM algorithm, the power conservation is strictly monitored, the non-unitarity is thoroughly analyzed, and the inherent numerical dissipation is reduced by adopting the quasi-Crank-Nicholson scheme and adaptive complex reference index. <br /><br /> Advantages of SOI polarization rotators over III-V counterparts are studied through comprehensive research on power exchange, single-mode condition, fabrication tolerance, wavelength stability, bending characteristics, loss and coupling properties. The performance of SOI PRs is stable for wavelengths in the ITU-T <em>C</em>-band and <em>L</em>-band, making such devices quite suitable for DWDM applications. Due to the flexible cross-section of SOI polarization converters, the coupling loss to laser diodes and single mode fibers (SMF) can be designed to be very small and can be further reduced by a tapered waveguide with cross-sections always satisfying the single-mode criteria. Slanted-angle SOI polarization rotators display asymmetric bending characteristics and permit extremely small curvatures with negligible radiation loss when the angled-facet is located at the outer bend radius. Moreover, SOI polarization rotators can be manufactured with low-price processing techniques that are fully compatible with CMOS integrated circuits (IC) technology, and thus can be integrated on both photonic and electronic chips. <br /><br /> Experimental verifications have shown good agreement with theoretical analysis and have confirmed the promising characteristics of our novel asymmetric SOI polarization converters. Similar asymmetric-outer-slab geometry has recently been employed by peer researchers to fabricate high performance III-V polarization rotators. We therefore believe that results in this dissertation will contribute much to related research fields.

Plastic packaging waste currently forms a significant part of municipal solid waste and as such is causing increasing environmental concerns. Such packaging is largely non-biodegradable and is particularly difficult to recycle or to reuse due largely to its complex compositions. Apart from limited recycling of some easily identifiable packaging wastes that can be separated economically, such as bottles, most packaging waste ends up in landfill sites. In recent years, in an attempt to address this problem in plastic packaging, the development of packaging materials from renewable plant resources has received increasing attention and a wide range of bioplastic materials based on starch are now available. Environmentally these bioplastic materials also reduce reliance on oil resources and have the advantage that they are biodegradable and can be composted upon disposal to reduce the environmental impact. Many food packaging containers are produced by thermoforming processes in which thin sheets are inflated under pressure into moulds to produce the required thin -wall structures. Hitherto these thin sheets have almost exclusively been made of oilbased polymers and it is for these that computational models of thermoforming processes have been developed. Recently, in the context of bioplastics, commercial thermoplastic starch sheet materials have been developed. The behaviour of such materials is influenced both by temperature and, because of the inherent hydrophilic characteristics of the materials, by moisture content. Both of these aspects affect the behaviour of bioplastic sheets during the thermoforming process. This thesis describes experimental work and work on the computational modelling of thermoforming processes for thermoplastic starch sheets using a commercially available material. The experimental work has been carried in order to characterise the deformation behaviour of the material with regard to different temperature, moisture contents and strain rates. Thermoforming of the material was performed and samples produced were used for comparison and verification of the computational modelling of the thermoforming process. In the first attempt to model the thermoforming process, a hyperelastic constitutive equation was established to approximate the material behaviour taking account of the combined effects of temperature and moisture content and a simple ii membrane model with constrained deformation was used to model an axisymmetric case of thermoforming. Simulations with this model showed that moisture content mostly affects the pressure required to push the sheet into the mould while moisture variation during thermoforming has little effect on the final thickness distribution of the product. Considerable discrepancies were found in the thickness distribution between the predictions from the model and the experimental measurements. Further attempts were made to take account of the elasto-plastic behaviour of the material and a more complex three-dimensional FE model was developed using ANSYS/LS-DYNA. Based on the findings in the simpler modelling work, no attempt was made to incorporate the moisture content effect on material behaviour but the material parameters for the elasto-plastic constitutive equation were obtained from high speed tensile tests so that moisture variation during thermoforming could be minimised and neglected. The predictions from this model have led to significant improvements in prediction of the thickness distribution which has become much closer to the experimental measurements in comparison with the hyperelastic model. This work provides some important insights into thermoforming of thermoplastic starch materials: a) Deformation behaviour of such materials depends strongly on the moisture content and the temperature, both of which affect behaviour during thermoforming processes, including the preheating stage; b) moisture variation during the thermoforming process has a significant effect on the pressure required for the deformation. This also leads to variation of moisture content distribution in the final product, which in turn affects the material properties such as ductility or impact strength at different positions in the thermoformed structure; c) thermoforming of thermoplastic starch materials can be simulated more accurately by an elasto-plastic model and the LS-DYNA algorithm in comparison with a hyperelastic membrane model. This work has provided useful information on thermoforming of thermoplastic starch materials with particular reference to the design of thermoforming tools and to the careful control of processing conditions including preheating. It has also laid a solid foundation for future work on how the moisture variation impacts on the formation of defects such as incomplete forming due to material hardening and fracture due to loss of ductility.

Stroke is amongthe leading causes of death worldwide and requires immediate care to prevent death or permanent disability. Unfortunately, the current stateof stroke diagnosis is limited to fixed neuroimaging facilities that do not allow rapid stroke diagnosis. Hence, a portable stroke-diagnosis device could assist in the pre-hospital triage of patients. Moreover, such a portable device could also be useful for bedside stroke monitoring of patients in the Neuro Intensive Care Unit (Neuro-ICU) to avoid unnecessary neuroimaging. Recent animal studies and numerical simulations have supported the idea of implementing Electrical Bioimpedance (EBI) in a portable device, allowing non-invasive assessment as a useful tool for the pre-hospital triage of stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients. Unfortunately, these studies have not reported any results from human subjects in the acute phase of the stroke. The numerical simulations are also based on simple models that sometimes lack necessary details. Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations on a realistic numerical head model as well as experimental Bioimpedance Spectroscopy (BIS) measurements from human subjectsin the acute, subacute and chronic phasesof stroke were used to answer the following research questions: (i) Does stroke modify the electrical properties of brain tissue in a way that is detectable via EBI? (ii) Would it be possible to detect stroke via EBI as early as in the acute and sub-acute phase?(iii) Is EBI sensitive enough to monitor changes caused by stroke pathogenesis? Using FEM to simulate electrical current injection on the head and study the resulting distribution of electrical potential on the scalp, it was shown that Intra-Cranial Hemorrhage (ICH) affects the quasi-symmetric scalp potential distribution,creating larger left-right potential asymmetry when compared to the healthy head model. Proof-of-concept FEM simulations were also tested in a small cohort of 6ICH patients and 10 healthy controls, showing that the left-right potential difference in the patients is significantly (p&lt;0.05) larger than in the controls. Using bioimpedance measurements in the acute,  subacute and chronic phasesof stroke and examining simple features, it was also shown that the head EBI measurements of patients suffering stroke are different from controls, enabling the discrimination of healthy controls and stroke patients at any stage of the stroke. The absolute change in test-retest resistance measurements of the control group (~5.33%) was also found to be significantly (p&lt;0.05) smaller than the EBI measurements of patients obtained 24 hours and 72 hours after stroke onset (20.44%). These results suggested that scalp EBI is sensitive to stroke pathogenesis changesand thususeful for bedside monitoring in the Neuro-ICU. These results suggested that EBI is a potentially useful tool for stroke diagnosis and monitoring. Finally, the initial observations based on a small number of patients, addressing the proposed future work of this thesis, suggested that the average head resistance amplitude of hemorrhagic stroke patients is smaller than in healthy controls, while ischemic stroke patients show a larger resistance amplitude than the controls. Scalp potential asymmetry analysis of healthy, hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke subjects also suggests that these three groups can be separated. However, these results are based on a small number of patients and need to be validated using a larger cohort. Initial observations also showed that the resistance of the EBI measurements of controls is robust between test and retest measurements, showing no significant difference (less than 2% and p&gt;0.05). Subject position during EBI recording (supine or sitting) did not seem to affect the resistance of the EBI measurements (p&gt;0.05). However, age, sex and head size showed significant effects on the resistance measurements. These initial observations are encouraging for further research on EBI for cerebral monitoring and stroke diagnosis. However, at this stage, considering the uncertainties in stroke type differentiation, EBI cannot replace CT but has the potential to be used as a consultation tool. / <p>QC 20151109</p>

Building designing can be made by a powerful tool, BIM-programs. With these programs, you quickly get a view of future design. Elements of the model are intelligent, which means that they are more than just some dashes. These intelligent elements can be analytically studied with programs that make calculations according to finite element methods. This report describes the export of BIM-elements into a calculation program that calculates static using the finite element method. Applications for the method and appropriate project size and complexity is described in the report. The software used in the case studies in the report is the BIM modelling software Tekla Structures 21 and the calculation program FEM-Design 15. To determine if the connection between the chosen applications are possible, two case studies has been made. The case studies have shown that a one-way transfer from Tekla to the FEM-Design is possible and useful. But because the reversal is not possible when the calculations and analysis are completed, the method can't be implemented in an automatized BIM- design.

Eine Absicherung der Maschinendynamik im gesamten Arbeitsraum unter Berücksichtigung des Einflusses der Maschinensteuerung kann nur durch eine mechatronische Analyse der Werkzeugmaschine auf Gesamtsystemebene erfolgen. Derart komplexe Berechnungen erfordern allerdings die Simulation von großen Verfahrbewegungen (MKS) unter Berücksichtigung der Strukturelastizitäten (FEM) sowie der Steuerung (Controls) und sind somit vor allem multi–disziplinären Virtual Prototyping Tools vorbehalten. Die erfolgreiche multi-disziplinäre WZM–Berechnung stellt außerordentlich hohe Anforderungen an die Modellbildungsgüte der einzelnen Maschinenkomponenten inklusive der Validierung des jeweils gewählten Modellierungsansatzes bzw. Detailierungsgrades. Dieses gilt insbesondere für funktionelle Komponenten wie Linearantriebe, Kugelgewindetriebe usw., da diese nicht ohne Weiteres aus einem CAD–Baugruppenmodell abgeleitet und in das Berechnungsmodell übernommen werden können. Das zur Modellierung und Simulation notwendige Expertenwissen ist in einer vordefinierten, parametrischen Komponentenbibliothek – ähnlich einem Baukastenprinzip – implementiert.

Die bruchmechanische Analyse des Bruches einer Königswelle zeigt, dass der Ermüdungsriss von einer Fehlstelle ausging und durch die Betriebsbeanspruchung gewachsen ist. Die errechneten Lebensdauerwerte decken sich mit den tatsächlich erreichten. / The fracture mechanics analysis of the rupture of an upright shaft shows that the fatigue crack originated from a defect was able to grow with the operational stress. The calculated and actual lifetime are the same.

Syfte: Syftet med arbetet är att förbättra dimensioneringsprocessen för knutpunkter i stålstrukturer. Förslag har getts på en förbättrad dimensionsprocess baserad på de BIMrelaterade datorprogrammen SBI Steel Connections och FEM-design. Syftet har brutits ner till följande frågeställningar:  Hur går konsultföretag till väga idag för att beräkna knutpunkter vid stålkonstruktioner?  Hur kan den vanligaste dimensioneringsprocessen för knutpunkter förbättras?  Vilka fördelar blir det vid en sammankoppling av de BIM-relaterade datorprogrammen SBI Steel Connections och FEM-design? Metod: Arbetet grundar sig i en fallstudie och ett flertal metoder användes för att samla in data. Dessa är semistrukturerade intervjuer, litteratursökning, dokumentanalys och beräkningar. Resultat: Genom arbetet framgår det hur dimensioneringsprocessen ser ut för knutpunkter i stål. Resultatet är att processen varierar beroende på företag. Vissa delar i processen kan utföras på olika sätt men grundprincipen är densamma för de flesta företagen som har intervjuats. Vid dimensionering av knutpunkter som kan ske både för hand och med hjälp av ett datorprogram kan det uppstå felslag vid inmatning eller felskrivningar. Denna del av processen kan förbättras med hjälp av en ökad användning av egengjorda mallar. Det sker ett utvecklingsarbete under våren 2015 där målet är att skapa en sammankoppling mellan SBI Steel Connections och FEM-design. Genom denna sammankoppling reduceras några av de fel som anses tillhöra den mänskliga faktorn. Konsekvenser: Undersökningen har medfört en förståelse med både fördelar och nackdelar för olika sätt att dimensionera knutpunkter i stål. En del företag stävar efter en större utveckling, medan andra anser sig jobba bäst på det sätt som de alltid har gjort. Det framgår att den mänskliga faktorn är något som påverkar dimensioneringsprocessen märkbart och dessa fel behöver reduceras. De rekommendationer som framgår i arbetet är att företag ska se över processen och de förnyelsemöjligheter som finns i branschen. Det rekommenderas även en större användning av de datorprogram som används vid dimensioneringsprocessen. Begränsningar: Avgränsningar gjordes utifrån de kunskaper som erhållits i utbildningen för att studien inte skulle bli alltför omfattande. Däremot har ny kunskap bidragit till ett större ämnesdjup som utbildningen inte berört. Studien orienterades kring knutpunkter av stål och en av de vanligaste knutpunkterna studerades. Stålkvalitet och dimensioner på pelare och balk valdes utifrån knutpunktsexemplet i SBI:s handbok publikation 186 (PT3). Rapporten behandlar enbart beräkningsprogrammen SBI Steel Connections och FEM-Design. Detta medförde endast avgränsningar på material, val av knutpunkt, pelar- och balkprofiler samt laster.

A welding procedure specification is the document describing how a weld joint should be constructed. Arc weld processes are characterized by transient thermal behavior, leading to rapid changes in material properties and dynamic interaction between weld and base material. The objective of the project is to explore how the use of an improved CWM-platform affects representative stress and strain fields in order to assess welding procedure qualification records. Forthis project, the accumulated thermal and mechanical influences from the first run to the final run are brought forward, in one and the same meshed geometrical model. Both the thermal and mechanical material model of the platform are designed to be used for modelling of the base- and weld material,promoting the simulation of the intricate combination of the thermal, elastic,and plastic strains on the plastic strain hardening and the formation of residual stress fields. The output of the simulation is mainly weld cooling times, residual stresses, and deformations. This analysis is taken further by examining how residual stresses influence crack driving force under elastic and plastic loading. In addition, the output from the simulations can be used to assess the realism of the proposed welding parameters. The main experimental welding procedure examined comes from the IIW RSDP Round Robin Phase II benchmark project, where the main aim was to benchmark residual stress simulations. This work was found to contain many applicable challenges of a CWM-analysis project.

This thesis has been executed in cooperation with Abetong which is a leading company in the prefabrication of concrete structures. For a prefabricated concrete building the design engineer must take into consideration the connections between the concrete elements in order to make sure that the building will possess a sufficient structural stability. Therefore the structural engineer might have to re-calculate the original structure that often has been designed as an on site-built building. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the forces between elements related to different models to see if the structural engineer has to make a re-design. To get results for this study we have used FEM-design 3D Structure. The results of forces from the program were compared with Abetongs standard forces of point connections and recess lists and showed that the structural engineer can use the original calculation up to around five stories when a prefabricated shall be erected.