published_or_final_version / Mechanical Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Layered manufacturing plays important role in industry. Conventional pro-cess planning takes polygon soup as input and has high quality requirements on these polygonal model such as no self-intersection, no degenerate polygon et al. A growing number of models, especially for those in complex shape are acquired from reverse engineering. Implicit representation always serves as intermediate representation and ¯nally need to be tesselated into polygonal mesh for layered manufacturing applications. However, the present tessellation techniques have difficulties to provide topologically faithful and self-intersection free polygonal mesh from implicit model. On the other hand, implicit representation are mathematically compact and robust, which is important for presenting complex freeform models. / I develop a robust and efficient approach to directly slicing implicit solids. Different from prior slicing techniques that reconstruct contours on the slicing plane by tracing the topology of intersected line segments, which is actually not robust, I generate contours through a topology guaranteed contour extraction on binary images sampled from given solids and a subsequent contour simplification algorithm which has the topology preserved and the geometric error controlled. The resultant contours are free of self-intersection, topologically faithful to the given r-regular solids and with shape error bounded; therefore, correct objects can be fabricated from them by layered manufacturing. Moreover, since I do not need to generate the tessellated B-rep of given solids, my direct slicing approach is memory efficient - only the binary image and the finest contours on one particular slicing plane need to be stored in-core. My method is general and can be applied to any implicit representations of solids. / Moreover, I also investigate techniques for support generation for layered manufacturing in image space. Region subtraction is a crucial operation for support generation. I develop a robust and reliable region subtraction method on implicit solid slicing. Compared with the conventional approach in which support regioncontours are produced from part slicing contours by polygonal operations, my approach calculates reasonable support region on binary image for each layer. I investigate a conservative growing-swallow technique to remove as much as possible the support material for self-support region while still guarantee the safety of building process. My region subtraction can serve as core technique for many layered manufacturing processes. In my research, I demonstrate region subtraction technique in both Fused Decomposition Modeling(FDM) and Stereolithography(SLA). A region cleaning technique which can reduce topology complexity of calculated support structure region is developed to fulfil specific requirement of FDM. With all the operations involved being discrete on binary image, my approach is more robust compared with the polygonal operations which are based on numerical computation. Moreover, processing on binary image makes my approach highly parallelizable. My self-intersection free contour extraction technique used in direct slicing can also be adopted to extract support structure contour on binary image if necessary. / Huang, Pu. / "October 2012." / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-84). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract --- p.i / Chinese Abstract --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.iv / List of Figures --- p.vii / List of Tables --- p.ix / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Contribution --- p.4 / Chapter 1.3 --- Organization --- p.5 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.7 / Chapter 2.1 --- Direct Slicing on Implicit Solid --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2 --- Slicing based Support Generation --- p.9 / Chapter 3 --- Problem Definition --- p.10 / Chapter 4 --- Topologically Faithful Slicing Contour Generation --- p.12 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.12 / Chapter 4.2 --- Sampling and Contour Generation --- p.15 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Sampling --- p.16 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Topologically faithful contouring --- p.17 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- r-Regularity and Accuracy in Layered Manufacturing --- p.19 / Chapter 4.3 --- Constrained Smoothing --- p.20 / Chapter 4.4 --- Contour Simplification --- p.24 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Variational segmentation --- p.25 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Topology and distortion verification --- p.27 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Hausdorff Error Analysis --- p.31 / Chapter 4.5 --- Results and Discussion --- p.33 / Chapter 5 --- Reliable and Robust Region Subtraction for Support Generation --- p.43 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.43 / Chapter 5.2 --- Preliminary --- p.46 / Chapter 5.3 --- Region Subtraction --- p.48 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Binary Image Grid-width and Self-support Feature Threshold --- p.48 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Conservative Growing-swallow Method --- p.50 / Chapter 5.4 --- Region Cleaning Technique for FDM --- p.53 / Chapter 5.5 --- Anchor Support Generation for SLA --- p.57 / Chapter 5.6 --- Result and Discussion --- p.60 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion --- p.71 / Chapter 6.1 --- Summary and Discussion --- p.71 / Chapter 6.2 --- Future Work --- p.73 / Chapter A --- Inconsistent Contouring Problem Analysis --- p.76 / Bibliography --- p.80

published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

M.Ing. / This investigation explores the applicability of an adapted formal computational model for rapid synthesis of complete UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) systems in a single unified environment. The proposed framework termed XPDS (Cross-Platform Data Server) incorporates principles from a variety of similar, successful languages such as Giotto and Esterel. Application of such models has been shown to be advantageous in the UAV control system domain. The proposed solution extends the principles to the complete generic crafts/ground station problem and provides a unified framework for the development of distributed, scalable, and predictable solutions. The core of the framework is a hybrid FLET (Fixed Logical Execution Time) computational model which formalises the timing and operation of a number of concurrent processes or tasks. Three mechanisms are built upon the computational model – a design environment, simulation extensions, and code generation functionality. A design environment is proposed which permits a user to operate through an intuitive interface. The simulation extensions provide tight integration into established software such as Mathwork’s MatLab and Austin Meyer’s X-Plane. The code generation framework allows XPDS programs to be potentially converted into source for a variety of target systems. The combination of the three mechanisms and the formal computational model allow stakeholders to incrementally construct, test, and verify a complete UAV system. An implementation of the proposed framework is constructed to verify the proposed design. Initially, the implementation is subjected to a number of experiments that show that it is a valid representation of the specification. A simplified helicopter stability control system, based upon the problem statement from the initial literature review, is then presented as a test case and the solution is subsequently developed in XPDS. The scenario is successfully constructed and tested through the framework, demonstrating the validity of the proposed solution. The investigation demonstrates that it is both possible and beneficial to develop UAV systems in a single, unified environment. The incorporation of a formal computational model leads to rapid development of predictable solutions. The numerous systems are also easily integrated and benefit from features such as modularity and reusability.