In the past decade, the grouting industry has made significant technological advancements in real-time monitoring of flow rate and pressure of pumped grout, stable grout mix design, and with grout curtain concepts dealing with placement and orientation. While these practices have resulted in improved construction practices in the grouting industry, current design guidelines for grout curtains are still predominately based on qualitative measures such as engineering judgment and experience or are based on proprietary methods. This research focused on the development of quantitative guidelines to evaluate the effectiveness of a grout curtain in porous media using piezometric and hydraulic flow data. In this study, a laboratory-scale physical seepage model was developed to aid in the understanding and development methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of a grout curtain. A new performance parameter was developed based on a normalization scheme that utilized the area of the grout curtain and the area of the improved media. The normalization scheme combined with model-based Lugeon values that correspond to pore pressure and flow rate measurements at different soil unit weights and grout curtain spacings, produced a mathematical equation that can be used to quantify the effectiveness of a grout curtain. This study found a relationship that takes into account soil unit weight, grout curtain spacing and a new performance parameter that can be used to help predict the effectiveness of a grout curtain.

Linkages between the controls on depressional storage and catchment streamflow response were examined in a wetland dominated basin in the Canadian Prairie Pothole region through a combination of field monitoring and modelling. Snowmelt, surface storage, water table elevation, atmospheric fluxes, and streamflow were monitored during spring snowmelt and summer in a 1 km2 sub-catchment containing a semi-permanent pond complex connected via an intermittent stream. Snow accumulation in the basin in spring of the 2013 study year was the largest in the 24-year record. Rainfall totals in 2013 were close to the long term average, though June was an anomalously wet month. The water budget of the pond complex indicates that there was a significant subsurface contribution to surface storage, in contrast to previous studies in this region. Following snowmelt, subsurface connectivity occurred between uplands and the stream network due to activation of the effective transmission zone in areas where the water table was located near the ground surface, allowing significant lateral movement of water into the stream network. Modelling results suggest there was significant infiltration into upland soils during the study period and that upland ponds are an important consideration for accurately simulating catchment discharge. The flux of groundwater to the wetland complex during periods of subsurface connectivity was also important for maintaining and re-establishing surface connectivity and streamflow. As the observed period of surface and subsurface hydrological connectivity was one of the longest on record in the catchment due to very wet conditions, the results of this study denote observations of the wet extremes of the hydrological regime important for proper understanding, modelling, and prediction of streamflow in the region.

The reliance upon and depletion of fossil fuels as an energy source puts pressure on individuals, communities, energy companies, and policy-makers. Hydraulic fracturing – known colloquially as fracking – as a method of drilling for oil and natural gas temporarily alleviates this pressure since it allows for the extraction previously inaccessible fossil fuels in shale rock deposits deep beneath the Earth’s surface. This has resulted in a nationwide “fracking boom,” which has come with its share of economic benefits. However, the process of fracking can be detrimental to human and environmental health. In reaction to the increasing development of this practice, many communities across the country are mobilizing against fracking. This thesis will focus on the grassroots activism against fracking in New York, where fracking was banned in December 2014, and in California, which is largely slated as the next frontier for the expansion of fracking and thus battleground for the fight against fracking. Using grassroots academic literature, media coverage of fracking and activism in each state, and interviews from organizers working in each state, this thesis will examine the motivations, frameworks, strategies, and tactics used in each grassroots campaign in order to offer lessons in successes and opportunities for improvement within these anti-fracking efforts and others across the country.

As the debate into a changing global climate continues, it is important that coastal engineers and scientists have the most advanced tools to quantify any resulting variation in the coastal environment. This will aid the creation and implementation of effective shoreline management plans to mitigate these changes. This thesis presents a new combined Statistical-Process based Approach (SPA) for modelling storm driven, cross-shore, beach profile variability at a medium-term (annual to decadal) timescale. The methodology presented involves combining the detailed statistical modelling of offshore storm data and a process based morphodynamic model (XBeach), to assess, and quantify, the medium-term morphodynamic response of cross-shore beach profiles. Up until now the use of process-based models has been curtailed at the storm event timescale. This approach allows inclusion of the post-storm recovery period, in addition to individual event impacts, thus allowing longer-term predictions. The use of a process-based model for simulating, both erosion and recovery, expands on previous work on the subject by allowing for the inclusion of antecedent beach profiles within the modelling framework. The XBeach model and the overall SPA procedure were calibrated and validated using measured wave and beach profile data from Narrabeen Beach, NSW, Australia. XBeach was shown to give a good prediction of the post-storm profile for four varying storm events. In addition, by accounting for the hydrodynamic processes that govern accretion, and calibrating parameters accordingly, XBeach was also shown to provide a good representation of berm accretion during recovery periods. The combination of the erosion and accretion models was shown to produce extremely encouraging results at an annual timescale, by successfully following the trends in beach volume and the position of the 0m and 2m beach contours. The simulation of a longer sequence provided comparable medium-term erosion return levels.

This thesis work presents a parametrized integration of the flight control system within RAPID by means of the automation in CATIA V5, using Knowledge Pattern. Nowadays aircraft’s design and development processes are not only time-consuming but also incur high economic cost. In addition, system integration is highly a multi-disciplinary design process which often involves a large number of different discipline teams working at the same time and space. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate how CAD (Computer Aided Design) software can be used in the early design stages to define the flight control system integration. The purpose of this work to improve the functionality of an in house produced aircraft conceptual design tool carried out at the Division of Fluid and Mechatronic Systems, Linköping University. The work consists of preliminary integration of the RAPID flight control system and the hydraulics associated to it. By defining several reusable templates, the automatic definition of a flight control system within the RAPID aircraft has been achieved. Moreover it is a parametrical model which allows the user to modify a high number of features as desired to enhance the design process. For this, a user interface in Microsoft Excel connected to CATIA has also been attained.

Diagnosis of faults associated with hydraulic actuators is essential to avoid accidents or loss of system functionality. This thesis focuses on internal leakage fault diagnosis in valve controlled hydraulic actuation systems (VCA) as well as electrohydrostatic actuation systems (EHA). For the VCA, the hydraulic actuator is driven in a closed loop mode to track a pseudorandom input signal whereas for the EHA, an actuator is driven in an open loop mode to track a sinusoidal input. Motivated by developing a method that does not rely on the model of the system or type of fault, signal processing techniques based on the ratio of metric lengths of pressure signals, autocorrelation of pressure signal, cross correlation between chamber pressure signals, and cross correlation between control signal and piston displacement is employed for internal leakage diagnosis. For the VCA, autocorrelation of pressure signals performed well at lower lags (less than 4) and at a window size of 200 data points; both cross correlation between pressure signals and cross correlation between control signal and piston displacement performed well at higher lags (higher than 8) and at a window size of 100 data points; ratio of metric lengths of pressure signals was found to be more effective at higher lag ratios (more than 16:3). All methods were sensitive to the lowest simulated leakage of 0.047 L/min, though with different level of success; ratio of metric lengths produced 84% sensitivity, autocorrelation 19% sensitivity, cross correlation between pressure signals 25% sensitivity and cross correlation between piston displacement and control signal 20% sensitivity. For the EHA, all methods were capable of identifying small leakage of 0.98 L/min. The ratio of metric lengths produced 6.7% sensitivity, autocorrelation 2.59% sensitivity, cross correlation between pressure signals 9.4% sensitivity and cross correlation between piston displacement and control signal 31.9% sensitivity. The low leakage detection achieved without requiring a model of the actuator or leakage type make these methods very attractive for industrial implementation

Teleoperation of hydraulic manipulators is of potential when the presence of the operator, in a remote location, is inconvenient or dangerous. Augmenting such teleoperated systems using haptic sensation will further enhance performance, safety, and convenience. The advantage of using haptic force becomes more evident when it is employed to compensate for undesirable phenomena such as existence of a delayed and lossy communication channel or excitation of the manipulator base. The focus of this thesis is on haptic-enabled control of base-excited hydraulic manipulators that are controlled through a wireless communication channel. The targeted application is live transmission line maintenance. Both unilateral and bilateral controls of teleoperated hydraulic manipulators are studied. On the unilateral front, position error is shown to be an important issue, especially when the position accuracy of the slave manipulator is violated due to fast motion of the operator’s hand at the master site, lack of responsiveness in actuation system, or poor quality of communication channel. With respect to bilateral control, three main challenges are identified, and solutions to these challenges are investigated: (i) accurate control of the slave manipulator when the communication channel is delayed and/or lossy, (ii) control of the teleoperated system when the slave manipulator is mounted atop a moving platform, and (iii) transparent force feedback to improve the position tracking of the system. First, effects of network quality and slave manipulator base excitation are examined on performance of the teleoperated system. The position error between the haptic device implement and the hydraulic manipulator end-effector is shown to increase when the network is delayed and lossy. Next, excitation of the slave manipulator base deviates the end-effector from its reference trajectory, and the position error therefore becomes larger. To alleviate the position inaccuracy, a position referenced force feedback scheme is proposed. The scheme makes the input dynamics a better match with the slave dynamics. Combined with the virtual fixture force, the virtual fixture is shown to aid the operator in following a predefined virtual fixture trajectory. Due to complexity of dynamics, performance evaluations are mostly conducted using experimental validations on actual system in a laboratory setting.

The process of forest harvesting is highly mechanized in most industrialized countries, with felling and processing of trees performed by technologically advanced forestry machines. However, the maneuvering of the vehicles through the forest as well as the control of the on-board hydraulic boom crane is currently performed through continuous manual operation. This complicates the introduction of further incremental productivity improvements to the machines, as the operator becomes a bottleneck in the process. A suggested solution strategy is to enhance the production capacity by increasing the level of automation. At the same time, the working environment for the operator can be improved by a reduced workload, provided that the human-machine interaction is adapted to the new automated functionality. The objectives of this thesis are 1) to describe and analyze the current logging process and to locate areas of improvements that can be implemented in current machines, and 2) to investigate future methods and concepts that possibly require changes in work methods as well as in the machine design and technology. The thesis describes the development and integration of several algorithmic methods and the implementation of corresponding software solutions, adapted to the forestry machine context. Following data recording and analysis of the current work tasks of machine operators, trajectory planning and execution for a specific category of forwarder crane motions has been identified as an important first step for short term automation. Using the method of path-constrained trajectory planning, automated crane motions were demonstrated to potentially provide a substantial improvement from motions performed by experienced human operators. An extension of this method was developed to automate some selected motions even for existing sensorless machines. Evaluation suggests that this method is feasible for a reasonable deviation of initial conditions. Another important aspect of partial automation is the human-machine interaction. For this specific application a simple and intuitive interaction method for accessing automated crane motions was suggested, based on head tracking of the operator. A preliminary interaction model derived from user experiments yielded promising results for forming the basis of a target selection method, particularly when combined with some traded control strategy. Further, a modular software platform was implemented, integrating several important components into a framework for designing and testing future interaction concepts. Specifically, this system was used to investigate concepts of teleoperation and virtual environment feedback. Results from user tests show that visual information provided by a virtual environment can be advantageous compared to traditional video feedback with regards to both objective and subjective evaluation criteria.

This thesis presents a general simulation framework used for evaluating the performance of bilateral teleoperation systems under consistent and controllable network conditions. A teleoperation system is where an operator uses a master device to control a slave robot through a communication link. The communication link between the master and slave has an important impact on the system performance. Network emulation using ns-2 has been proposed as a way of simulating the communication link. It allows for the network conditions to be controlled and for repeatable results. The proposed setup was used to test the performance of a hydraulic actuator under various conditions of wired and wireless networks. Three control schemes were evaluated using various combinations of time delay and packet loss. The system was also tested simulating wireless communication between the master and slave to determine the effects of transmission power and distance on the performance of the system.

Processes and mechanisms of bank erosion on the non-tidal, navigable River Thames were identified and investigated using site specific monitoring and extensive geomorphic surveys. As a lowland, impounded river the Thames has little potential for bank erosion associated with reach-scale morphological channel adjustments. In fact, erosion is closely related to local conditions at the bank and significant processes and mechanisms include fluvial entrainment, slumping, and weakening and weathering of in situ bank material. Approximately 38.5km of eroding bankline was measured (-10% of the total length). Average rates of bank erosion monitored ranged from 0.05ni/yr to -0.5m/yr. The relative contribution to bank retreat of each process or mechanism depends on local conditions such as the use of the bank, the type of bank material and the bank geometry and the type of vegetation. Analysis of the causes of bank retreat at 147 sites along the River Thames revealed that erosion was generally influenced by a combination of factors. Navigation related activities contribute to the bank erosion at nearly all sites (-90%) but is solely responsible for erosion at only about 12%. Factors related to the use of the bank and adjacent land contribute to erosion along -65% of the total length of eroding bank but are the sole influence at only -5%. Channel planform and geometry contribute to -53% of observed bank erosion, but are the sole influence at less than <1% of the erosion sites. A review of selected of erosion control techniques applied on the River Thames suggested that solutions tend to be over-engineered and that strategies adopted were not necessarily appropriate for the causes and consequences of the bank erosion. Furthermore, whilst mitigation measures are often incorporated into the solutions, environmental enhancements are rarely included. Assessment of the causes and consequences of erosion has led to the development of a bank erosion management strategy for the River Thames based on geomorphological and sustainability principles. The strategy is presented as a transferable tool through which to achieve sustainable river management.