M.A. / The problem identified as the focus of this study, is the absence of standardized measurement instruments in the Afrikaans Language, for use in social work practice in South Africa. This study focuses on two indices that form part of the "Clinical Measurement Package" by Hudson (1982), namely the General Contentment Scale and the Index of Family Relations. The aims of this study are to translate the indices into Afrikaans and to adapt them to South African circumstances; to determine the construct validity as well as the content validity of each index; to determine the reliability of each index to formulate new items to include in the indices if necessary ...

The subject of this diploma thesis is web services testing with SoapUI. The main objective is to create a methodology for web services testing. The next objective (which is a part of the methodology) is to create a guidance for web services testing using SoapUI. The guidance serves as a manual to web services testing with SoapUI. The theoretical part of the thesis explains basic terms: testing, web service and methodology. This part is also devoted to the introduction of the SoapUI and Eclipse Process Framework Composer. The practical part of the thesis is focused on the methodology for web services testing itself. The methodology is created in Eclipse Process Framework Composer and each element of the methodology is described here. Some of the methodology elements (the guidance, concepts, tools and some templates) are listed as an appendix.

This research serves to evaluate the ability of optical detection techniques to ascertain the lubricity of revenue service track from a moving platform for railroad applications. A literature review is presented that covers the rail vehicle dynamics that drive the need of Top-of-Rail lubrication and directly affect the manner in which the Top-of-Rail Friction Modifiers (TORFM) and flange grease both spread down rail and eventually wear away. This literature review also highlights previous research in the field of rail lubrication and the benefits that rail lubricants, specifically TORFM, provide for the railroads. Finally, the literature review covers the governing optical principals inherent to the synchronous spot radiometer that has been developed for use in the research as a gloss ratio instrument and also addresses the drawbacks and challenges inherent to applying this type of instrument in the railroad industry. The research then overviews previous rail lubricity sensors developed by the Railway Technologies Laboratory (RTL) at Virginia Tech and the lessons learned from their application. The preceding field testing conducting with a modified second generation rail lubricity sensor and a rail push car is briefly summarized with emphasis on the drawbacks and issues that were used to develop the third generation sensor used for this research. The development of the third generation sensor is covered, including the issues that it attempts to solve from its predecessor and the governing optical principals that govern the operation of the sensor. The laboratory evaluations conducting to commission the sensor are also covered in preparation for deploying the new third generation sensor in medium speed, medium distance revenue service testing. This includes a shakedown run on a siding in Riverside, VA prior to conducting mainline in-service testing. Finally, this research thesis covers the in-service testing on revenue track conducted with the new third generation rail lubricity sensor and the accompanying remote-controlled (RC) rail cart. The two components, when combined, create a Lubricity Assessment System which is capable of being operated at speeds upwards of 10 mph remotely from a follow hy-rail truck. The data collected from this field test is analyzed for the lubricity assessments that are able to be drawn from this initial phase of field service testing. The conclusions from this testing affirm the ability of optical methods to determine and evaluate Top-of-Rail (TOR) lubricity from a moving platform. Specifically, the new sensor is able to identify several local phenomena that demonstrate the high potential for errant evaluation of rail lubricity evaluation from spot check based methods that are solved by evaluating the track in a continuous, moving fashion. Based on the continuous moving data collected for this test, several new signal traits such as the spatial frequency (wavenumber) associated with the passing freight cart wheels in the lubricity signal and the phantom applicator effect of transient lubricity conditions at the entrances and exits of curves can be detected and investigated. The success of this research indicates the continued evaluation of lubricity signals from a moving platform is warranted and suggests the potential for introducing one of these systems to various track metrology cars deployed throughout the United States railroads. / Master of Science / The United States railroads have been employing rail lubricants to the rails since the beginning of the industry and have recently, in the past 20 years, introduced another type of lubricant: Top-of-Rail Friction Modifiers (TORFM). TORFM creates a third body layer between the train wheels and the Top-of-Rail surface to minimize asset wear of both the wheel and rail and to increase the train efficiency. As the United States railroads embrace Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), increased train efficiency can allow the railroads to run longer trains with fewer locomotives. This increases the efficiency and capability of the rail network and also decreases the fuel burned and the amount of rail and wheel wear. TORFM has been proven to be effective and is widely adopted, but the railroads are still in need of tools to determine the presence and absence of these thin and often nearly invisible layers of lubricant on the rail surface. This research uses lasers as tool to quantify the level of lubrication of the rail surface. The presence of rail lubricants, such as TORFM, on the rail surface change the amount of light that is reflected and scattered off the shiny steel surface. These changes are often small but can be captured by photodetectors housed in the instrument. By plotting the detected sensor values, trends in the lubricity signal can be tracked and evaluated to determine the presence or absence of rail lubricants and assess the overall quality of lubrication on the rail at specific locations down track. The research in this thesis takes existing methods that were used for single spot inspections and adapts them to a moving platform. The moving platform is able to continuously scan the Top-of-Rail surface as the instrument moves along and generates continuous moving evaluations of rail lubricity. This can be especially important when the lubricity is not uniform and allows for trends in the data to be analyzed to provide more consistent and precise evaluations of the lubricity trends down rail. Optical tools like this sensor, which are by nature non-contact sensors, can easily be adapted to existing track measurement railcars and deployed system wide. This solves a strong need for railroad engineers: to be able to identify the presence of rail lubricants and evaluate the effectiveness of their lubrication practices.

Energy usage evaluation and condition monitoring for electric machines are important in industry for overall energy savings. Traditionally these functions are realized only for large motors in wired systems formed by communication cables and various types of sensors. The unique characteristics of the wireless sensor networks (WSN) make them the ideal wireless structure for low-cost energy management in industrial plants. This work focuses on developing nonintrusive motor-efficiency-estimation methods, which are essential in the wireless motor-energy-management systems in a WSN architecture that is capable of improving overall energy savings in U.S. industry. This work starts with an investigation of existing motor-efficiency-evaluation methods. Based on the findings, a general approach of developing nonintrusive efficiency-estimation methods is proposed, incorporating sensorless rotor-speed detection, stator-resistance estimation, and loss estimation techniques. Following this approach, two new methods are proposed for estimating the efficiencies of in-service induction motors, using air-gap torque estimation and a modified induction motor equivalent circuit, respectively. The experimental results show that both methods achieve accurate efficiency estimates within ¡À2-3% errors under normal load conditions, using only a few cycles of input voltages and currents. The analytical results obtained from error analysis agree well with the experimental results. Using the proposed efficiency-estimation methods, a closed-loop motor-energy-management scheme for industrial plants with a WSN architecture is proposed. Besides the energy-usage-evaluation algorithms, this scheme also incorporates various sensorless current-based motor-condition-monitoring algorithms. A uniform data interface is defined to seamlessly integrate these energy-evaluation and condition-monitoring algorithms. Prototype wireless sensor devices are designed and implemented to satisfy the specific needs of motor energy management. A WSN test bed is implemented. The applicability of the proposed scheme is validated from the experimental results using multiple motors with different physical configurations under various load conditions. To demonstrate the validity of the measured and estimated motor efficiencies in the experiments presented in this work, an in-depth error analysis on motor efficiency measurement and estimation is conducted, using maximum error estimation, worst-case error estimation, and realistic error estimation techniques. The conclusions, contributions, and recommendations are summarized at the end.