An investigation into the light scattering properties of Saharan dust grains is presented. An electrodynamic trap has been used to levitate single dust particles. By adjusting the trap parameters, partial randomisation of the particle orientation has been introduced. While levitated, the particles were illuminated by a laser, and a rotating half-wave retarder enabled selection of vertically or horizontally polarized incident light. A laser diffractometer and linear photodiode array have been used to measure intensity at scattering angles between 0.5° and 177°. Combining these measurements with Fraunhofer diffraction as calculated for a range of appropriately-sized apertures allows the calculation of the phase function and degree of linear polarization. The phase functions and degree of linear polarisation for four case study particles are presented - the phase functions are found to be featureless across most of the scattering region, with none of the halo features or rainbow peaks associated with regularly shaped particles such as hexagonal columns or spheres. Particle models comprised of large numbers of facets have been constructed to resemble the levitated particles. Utilizing Gaussian random sphere methods, increasing levels of roughness have been added to the surfaces of these models. A Geometric Optics model and a related model, Ray Tracing with Diffraction on Facets, have been modified to calculate scattering on these particle reconstructions. Scattering calculations were performed on each of these reconstructions using a range of refractive indices and two rotation regimes – one where the orientations of the reconstructed particle were limited to match those observed when the particle was levitated, and one where the orientation was not limited. Qualitative comparisons are performed on the phase functions and degree of linear polarization, where it is observed that the addition of roughness to the modelled spheroids causes the computed phase functions to increasingly resemble those from the levitated particles. Limiting the orientation of the particles does not affect the scattering noticeably. The addition of a very small absorption coefficient does not change the comparisons considerably. As the absorption coefficient is increased, however, the quality of the comparisons decreases rapidly in all cases but one. The phase functions are quantitatively compared using RMS errors, and further comparison is performed using the asymmetry parameter.

L'un des objectifs lors du développement d'un produit industriel est d'obtenir un prototype numérique valide et réaliste. Cette thèse a pour objectif d'améliorer la qualité des simulations dans le contexte d'un processus de production. Ces processus impliquent souvent un rendu de type "walkthrough", avec une géométrie fixe mais un déplacement continu de l'observateur. Nous nous intéresserons donc plus précisément aux méthodes de rendu physiquement réaliste de scènes complexes pour un scénario "walkthrough". Durant le rendu, l'utilisateur doit pouvoir mesurer précisément la radiance d'un point ou d'une zone donnée, ainsi que modifier en temps réel la puissance des sources lumineuses. Fondée sur la méthode du photon mapping, nos travaux montrent les modifications à apporter aux algorithmes afin d'améliorer à la fois la qualité des images et le temps de calcul du processus de rendu. / One of the goals when developing the product is to immediately obtain a real and valid prototype. This thesis provide new rendering methods to increase the quality of the simulations during the upstream work of the production pipeline. The latter usually requires a walkthrough rendering. Thus, we focuses on the physically-based rendering methods of complex scenes in walkthrough. During the rendering, the end-users must be able to measure the illuminate rates and to interactively modify the power of the light source to test different lighting ambiances. Based on the original photon mapping method, our work shows how some modifications can decrease the calculation time and improve the quality of the resulting images according to this specific context.

This work deals with ray tracing technique, focused to rendering of chess scene with procedural texture materials. Based on this knowledge, program that displays specified chess set is designed.

Pour répondre à des impératifs croissants de fiabilité et de sûreté, les procédés mis en œuvre dans le cadre du contrôle non destructif sont en constante évolution. Au vu de la complexité des techniques utilisées, la simulation prend une part importante dans leur développement. Nous présentons des travaux ayant abouti à un outil rapide de simulation du champ émis par un traducteur ultrasonore plan quelconque dans des configurations complexes de contrôle non destructif impliquant des géométries maillées sans arêtes saillantes, des matériaux isotropes ou anistropes, homogènes ou hétérogènes et des trajectoires d'ondes pouvant comporter des rebonds et des transmissions. Les fronts d'ondes ultrasonores sont approximés à l'aide d'interpolateurs polynomiaux locaux à des pinceaux de rayons ultrasonores. Ceux-ci sont obtenus au moyen d'un algorithme de recherche de surface par lancer de pinceaux et subdivisions successives. Ils permettent le calcul des grandeurs utiles à la constitution de la réponse impulsionnelle en chaque point d'un échantillonnage du traducteur respectant le critère de Shannon. De cette façon, nous pouvons calculer une réponse impulsionnelle qui, convoluée au signal d'excitation du traducteur, donne le champ ultrasonore. Les performances des simulations ont été accrues par l'exploitation du parallélisme de tâches et des instructions SIMD dans les parties les plus coûteuses du calcul. Enfin, un outil de calcul progressif continu a été développé pour permettre une visualisation interactive d'images de champ. Il exploite une méthode de reconstruction d'images et ordonnance les calculs de champ de manière à accélérer la convergence des images produites / In order to fulfill increasing reliability and safety requirements, non destructive testing techniques are constantly evolving and so does their complexity. Consequently, simulation is an essential part of their design. We developed a tool for the simulation of the ultrasonic field radiated by any planar probes into non destructive testing configurations involving meshed geometries without prominent edges, isotropic and anisotropic, homogeneous and heterogeneous materials, and wave trajectories that can include reflections and transmissions. We approximate the ultrasonic wavefronts by using polynomial interpolators that are local to ultrasonic ray pencils. They are obtained using a surface research algorithm based on pencil tracing and successive subdivisions. Their interpolators enable the computation of the necessary quantities for the impulse response computation on each point of a sampling of the transducer surface that fulfills the Shannon criterion. By doing so, we can compute a global impulse response which, when convoluted with the excitation signal of the transducer, results in the ultrasonic field. The usage of task parallelism and of SIMD instructions on the most computationally expensive steps yields an important performance boost. Finally, we developed a tool for progressive visualization of field images. It benefits from an image reconstruction technique and schedules field computations in order to accelerate convergence towards the final image

"A well-known challenge in estimating the distance of the antenna pair in time-of-arrival (ToA) based RF localization systems is the problem of obstruction of the direct path (DP) between transmitter and receiver. The absence of DP component in received channel profile creates undetected direct path (UDP) conditions. UDP condition, in turn, will cause occurrence of unexpected large ranging errors which pose serious challenge to precise indoor localization. Analysis of the behavior of the ranging error in such conditions is essential for the design of precise ToA-based indoor localization systems. This dissertation discusses two open problems in ToA-based indoor localization systems. The first contribution of this dissertation discusses the problem of modeling of dynamic behavior of ranging error. We propose a novel analytical framework for analysis of dynamic spatial variations of ranging error observed by a mobile user based on an application of Markov chain. The model relegates the behavior of ranging error into four main categories associated with four states of Markov process. Parameters of distributions of ranging error in each Markov state are extracted from empirical data collected from a measurement-calibrated ray tracing algorithm simulating a typical office environment. The analytical derivation of parameters of the Markov model employs the existing path-loss models for first detected path and total multipath received power in the same office environment. Results of simulated errors from the Markov model and actual errors from empirical data show close agreement. The second contribution of this dissertation discusses the problem of identification of UDP condition given an unknown channel profile. Existing of UDP condition in a channel profile poses serious degradation to ranging estimate process. Therefore, identification of occurrence of UDP condition is of our subsequent concern. After identification, the second step is to mitigate ranging errors in such conditions. In this dissertation we present two methodologies, based on binary hypothesis testing and an application of artificial neural network design, to identify UDP conditions and mitigate ranging error using statistics extracted from wideband frequency-domain indoor measurements conducted in typical office building. "

Mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptops continue to increase in memory and processor speed at a rapid pace. In recent years it has become common for users to check their email, browse the internet, or play music and movies while traveling. The performance gains are also making mobile graphics renderers more viable applications. However, the underlying battery technology that powers mobile devices has only tripled in capacity in the past 15 years whereas processor speeds have seen a 100-fold increase in the same period. Photon mapping, an extension of ray-tracing, is a robust global illumination algorithm used to produce photorealistic images. Photon mapping, like ray-tracing, can render high-quality specular highlights, transparent and reflective materials, and soft shadows. Complex effects such as caustics, participating media, and subsurface scattering can be rendered more efficiently using photon mapping. This work profiles the energy use of a photon-mapping based renderer to first establish what aspects require the most energy. Second, the effect several photon mapping settings have on image quality is measured. Reasonable tradeoffs between energy savings and moderately diminished image quality can then be recommended, making photon mapping more viable on mobile devices. Our results show that image quality is affected the least as settings corresponding to final gather computations are adjusted. This implies that a user can trade a modest decrease in image quality for significant gains in energy efficiency. Suggestions are made for using energy more efficiently when rendering caustics. Results also show that, although overall energy use is higher with larger image resolutions, per-pixel energy costs are cheaper.

The non-hydrostatic dynamical core ENDGame (Even Newer Dynamics for the General Atmospheric Modelling of the Environment) is extended into the thermosphere to test its feasability as a whole-atmosphere dynamical core that can simulate the large scale fluid dynamics of the whole atmosphere from the surface to the top of the thermosphere at 600km. This research may have applications in the development of a Sun-to-Earth modelling system involving the Met Office Unified Model, which will be useful for space weather forecasting and chemical climate modelling. Initial attempts to raise the top boundary of ENDGame above ∼100km give rise to instabilities. To explore the potential causes of these instabilities, a one dimensional column version of ENDGame: ENDGame1D, is developed to study the effects of vertically propagating acoustic waves in the dynamical core. A 2D ray-tracing scheme is also developed, which accounts for the numerical effects on wave propagation. It is found that ENDGame’s numerics have a tendency towards the excessive focussing of wave energy towards vertical propagation, and have poor handling of large amplitude waves, also being unable to handle shocks. A key finding is that the physical processes of vertical molecular viscosity and diffusion prevent the excessive growth of wave amplitudes in the thermosphere in ENDGame, which may be crucial to improving ENDGame’s stability as it is extended upwards. Therefore, a fully implicit-in-time implementation of vertical molecular viscosity and diffusion is developed in both ENDGame1D and the full three-dimensional version of ENDGame: ENDGame3D. A new scheme is developed to deal with the viscous and diffusive terms with the dynamics terms in a fully coupled way to avoid time-splitting errors that may arise. The combination of a small amount of off-centring of ENDGame’s semi-implicit formulation and the inclusion of vertical molecular viscosity and diffusion act to make ENDGame significantly more stable, as long as the simulation is able to remain stable up to the molecularly diffused region above an altitude of ∼130km.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2017-04-19T16:40:27Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Patricia Scalco_.pdf: 2617305 bytes, checksum: 329172a91dc38579cc85445e7b13abf1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-04-19T16:40:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Patricia Scalco_.pdf: 2617305 bytes, checksum: 329172a91dc38579cc85445e7b13abf1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-01-22 / CNPQ – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / O estudo de diferentes fontes de energia é de extrema importância, tanto em termos econômicos e sociais, como no âmbito ambiental. Assim, o uso da energia solar para a geração de calor para alimentar processos que necessitam de temperaturas em torno de 300 ºC aparece como uma alternativa para suprir o uso de combustíveis fósseis em ambientes industriais, seja de forma parcial ou total. Para atingir essa faixa de temperatura, devem ser utilizados equipamentos de alto desempenho e que possam concentrar ao máximo a radiação solar. Assim, é utilizada a tecnologia de refletores Fresnel lineares, que se baseia no princípio de concentração solar, onde os raios solares incidem em espelhos que refletem essa radiação para um receptor. O receptor é composto por um tubo absorvedor e por uma segunda superfície refletora, conhecida como concentrador secundário, que tem como função maximizar a quantidade de raios absorvidos pelo receptor. Esse tipo de instalação tem se mostrado competitiva diante de outros tipos de concentração solar devido à sua estrutura simples, custo reduzido e fácil manutenção. Assim, neste trabalho serão analisados aspectos ópticos e térmicos do conjunto do receptor, tanto para o concentrador secundário do formato trapezoidal como para o CPC. Para isso, o estudo foi dividido em duas etapas. Na primeira etapa foi feito o traçado de raios para as duas geometrias do concentrador secundário estudadas afim de determinar o fator de interceptação e as perdas ópticas envolvidas neste processo. Além disso, foi analisada a influência da inserção de uma superfície de vidro na base do receptor. A segunda etapa consistiu na análise térmica, onde foi feito o estudo da transferência de calor no receptor com a finalidade de determinar a eficiência do sistema, bem como os fatores que influenciam no desempenho do mesmo. Na análise geométrica, o fator de interceptação para a concentrador secundário do tipo trapezoidal foi de 36% para o receptor aberto e 45% para o receptor com o fechamento de vidro. Para o concentrador secundário do tipo CPC, os resultados foram de 44% para o receptor aberto e 56% para o receptor isolado com vidro. Através da análise térmica, foi possível estabelecer a eficiência do sistema que, para a melhor condição de trabalho, DNI de 1000 W/m², foi de 80%. / The study of different energy sources is extremely important, both in economic and social scope, as well as in the environmental field. Thus, the use of solar energy for the generation of heat to feed processes that require temperatures around 300 ºC appears as an alternative to supply the use of fossil fuels in industrial environments, either partially or totally. To reach this temperature range, high-performance equipment must be used that can concentrate solar radiation to the maximum. Thus, Fresnel linear reflector technology is used, which uses the principle of solar concentration, where the solar rays focus on mirrors that reflect this radiation to the receiver. The receiver is composed of an absorber tube and a second reflecting surface whose function is to maximize the number of rays absorbed by the receiver. This type of installation has been competitive in comparison to other types of solar concentration because of its simple structure, low cost and easy maintenance. Thus, in this work will be analyzed optical and thermal aspects of the receiver set for the trapezoidal and the CPC secondary concentrator. For this, the study was divided into two stages. In the first stage the ray tracing was done for the two geometries of the secondary concentrator studied in order to determine the interception factor and the optical losses involved in this process. In addition, the influence of insertion of a glass surface on the base of the receptor was isolated by isolating it from the environment. The second stage consisted of the thermal analysis, where the heat transfer study was carried out in the receiver in order to determine the efficiency of the system as well as the factors that influence the performance of the system. In the geometric analysis, the interception factor for the trapezoidal secondary concentrator was 36% for the open receptor and 45% for the receptor with the glass enclosure. For the CPC secondary concentrator, the results were 44% for the open receptor and 56% for the receptor with the glass enclosure. Through the thermal analysis, it was possible to establish the efficiency of the system, which, for the best working condition, DNI of 1000 W/m², was 80%.

Orientador: João Francisco Galera Monico / Resumo: A tecnologia Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) tem sido amplamente utilizada em posicionamento, desde as aplicações cotidianas (acurácia métrica), até aplicações que requerem alta acurácia (poucos cm ou dm). Quando se pretende obter alta acurácia, diferentes técnicas devem ser aplicadas a fim de minimizar os efeitos que o sinal sofre desde sua transmissão, no satélite, até sua recepção. O sinal GNSS ao se propagar na atmosfera neutra (da superfície até 50 km), é afetado por gases hidrostáticos e vapor d’água. A variação desses constituintes atmosféricos causa uma refração no sinal que gera um atraso. Esse atraso pode ocasionar erros na medida de no mínimo 2,5 m (zenital) e superior a 25 m (inclinado). A determinação do atraso na direção inclinada (satélite-receptor) de acordo com o ângulo de elevação é realizada pelas funções de mapeamento. Uma das técnicas para o cálculo do atraso é o traçado de raio (ray tracing). Essa técnica permite mapear o caminho real que o sinal percorreu e modelar a interferência da atmosfera neutra sobre esse sinal. Diferentes abordagens podem ser usadas para obter informações que descrevem os constituintes da atmosfera neutra. Dentre as possibilidades pode-se citar o uso de medidas de radiossondas, modelos de previsão do tempo e clima (PNT), medidas GNSS, assim como modelos teóricos. Modelos de PNT regionais do Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC) do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE) apresentam-se como um... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) technology has been widely used in positioning, from day-to-day applications (metric accuracy) to applications that require high accuracy (few cm or dm). For high accuracy, different techniques may be applied to minimize the effects that the signal suffers from its transmission on the satellite to its reception. GNSS signal when propagating in the neutral atmosphere (from surface up to 50km) is influenced by hydrostatic gases and water vapor. The variation of these atmospheric constituents causes a refraction in the signal that generates a delay. This delay may cause errors of at least 2.5 m (zenith) and greater than 25 m (slant). The determination of the delay in the slanted direction (satellite-receiver) according to the elevation angle is performed by the mapping functions. One of the techniques for calculating the delay is raytracing. This technique allows us to map the actual path that the signal has traveled and to model the interference of the neutral atmosphere on it. Different approaches can be used to obtain information describing the neutral atmosphere constituents - temperature, pressure and humidity. The possibilities include the use of radiosonde measurements, weather and climate models (NWP), GNSS measurements, as well as theoretical models. Regional NWP models from the Center Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC) of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) are a good alternative to provide atmospheri... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

This thesis presents a procedure to optimise the shape of a coaxial transducer ultrasonic flow meter. The technique uses separate numerical simulations of the fluid flow and the ultrasound propagation within a meter duct. A new flow meter geometry has been developed, having a significantly improved (smooth and monotonic) calibration curve. In this work the complex fluid flow field and its influence on the propagation of ultrasound in a cylindrical flow meter duct is investigated. A geometric acoustics (ray tracing) propagation model is applied to a flow field calculated by a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package. The simulation results are compared to measured calibration curves for a variety of meter geometries having varying lengths and duct diameters. The modelling shows reasonable agreement to the calibration characteristics for several meter geometries over a Reynolds number range of 100...100000 (based on bulk velocity and meter duct diameter). Various CFD simulations are validated against flow visualisation measurements, Laser Doppler Velocimetry measurements or published results. The thesis includes software to calculate the acoustic ray propagation and also to calculate the optimal shape for the annular gap around the transducer housings in order to achieve desired flow acceleration. A dimensionless number is proposed to characterise the mean deflection of an acoustic beam due to interaction with a fluid flow profile (or acoustic velocity gradient). For flow in a cylindrical duct, the 'acoustic beam deflection number' is defined as M g* (L/D)^2, where: M is the Mach Number of the bulk velocity; g* is the average non-dimensionalised velocity gradient insonified by the acoustic beam (g* is a function of transducer diameter - typically g* = 0.5...4.5); L is the transducer separation; and D is the duct diameter. Large values of this number indicate considerable beam deflection that may lead to undesirable wall reflections and diffraction effects. For a single path coaxial transducer ultrasonic flow meter, there are practical limits to the length of a flow meter and to the maximum size of a transducer for a given duct diameter. The 'acoustic beam deflection number' characterises the effect of these parameters.