Effects of temperature (23, 26, 29°C) and salinity (0, 5, 10, 15, 20 ppt) on hatch success, growth, development, and survival of bigmouth sleeper Gobiomorus dormitor yolk sac larvae were determined. Hatch success was greater at lower temperatures (23°C) and salinities (0-10 ppt), while larval survival and growth were greater at 26°C and 0 ppt. Larvae reared at 29°C- 0 ppt developed rapidly but rarely survived 48-h post hatch, while larvae at 23°C- 0 ppt survived 120-h post hatch, developed slower. Salinity adversely affected larval survival and size at hatch, larvae reared at salinities 5 ppt or greater died within 12-h post hatch and larvae set at 0 ppt were significantly larger than larvae hatched at salinities 5 ppt or greater. The exogenously feeding larval stage was not achieved; however, this study provides valuable insight of the bigmouth sleeper early ontogeny and provides several techniques for improving future propagation attempts.

This thesis aims at systematically studying the possibilities of minimising devastatingconsequences of high-speed derailments by appropriate measures and features in thetrain design, including the running gear. The course of events immediately afterderailments is studied with respect to whether the train stays upright and close to thetrack centre line or deviates laterally with probably serious consequences. There is abelief in the railway community that some trains can better cope with derailment thenothers, although this superiority is apparently hard to quantify.Firstly, an empirical database has been established containing as much relevantinformation as possible of past incidents and accidents occurred at higher speeds due tomechanical failure close to the interface between the running gear and the track, as wellas other causes that ultimately brought the train into a derailed condition. Although nevertwo derailments are the same, certain patterns appeared to crystallise after analysing thecourse of events immediately after the failure based on the descriptions available in eachincident or accident report. Ultimately, this led to that several critical vehicle parameterscould be distinguished as capable to influence the outcome of a derailment.Secondly, two of the critical vehicle features found in the first stage have been subject todetailed analysis by means of multi-body system (MBS) simulations. The first phase ofthe computer simulation program focused on studying the tendency of a wheelset toderail as a result of an axle journal failure on the outside of the wheel. The prederailmentcomputer simulation model has been validated with good results for twoauthentic Swedish events of axle journal failure.Thereafter, one of the newly found critical vehicle feature, the wheelset mechanicalrestrictions relative to the bogie frame, have been extensively studied on an X 2000power unit and trailer car model. The results show that a vertical mechanical restrictionof the wheelset relative to the bogie frame of approximately 50 to 60 mm is capable ofkeeping the wheelsets on the rails after an axle journal failure, for the studied conditions.An axle mounted brake disc constitutes the second critical vehicle feature that has thepotential to favourably influence the sequence of events in cases of wheel flangeclimbing. A minimal range of geometrical parameters for which the rail would safely fillthe gap between the brake disc and the wheel has been calculated.The third and last part of the thesis establishes the prerequisites necessary in order tostudy the remaining of the critical vehicle parameters found in the first part, whichrequires complete MBS simulations of derailed vehicles rolling on track structures, i.e.concrete sleepers. To accomplish this task, hysteresis data for the force as function ofconcrete material indentation, are aimed to be acquired by means of finite element (FE)simulations. Therefore, the intended FE model of wheel-concrete sleeper impact issubjected to a tentative validation procedure. A good agreement is observed whencomparing the FE model results with an authentic accident in terms of concrete sleeperindentation. Furthermore, preliminary results in terms of a wheelset tendency to reboundafter concrete sleeper impact are presented. / QC 20101125

A tese apresenta os aspectos relevantes que emergiram de pesquisa qualitativa e de abordagem fenomenológica e observacional a respeito da adequação do design de interiores de cabines-leito de caminhões semipesados e pesados aos usuários no Brasil, com enfoque nas atividades relacionadas ao habitar, com base na percepção de usuários, na observação da pesquisadora e na avaliação de especialistas. Aspectos socioculturais, comportamentais, necessidades e hábitos dos usuários brasileiros em relação às cabines-leito, bem como adaptações e customizações realizadas para adequá-las às atividades ali realizadas, foram levantados em campo, por meio de observação e registros de imagens de vinte e cinco cabines-leito em uso, bem como entrevistas semiestruturadas com seus usuários. Os levantamentos foram realizados em locais de parada e concentração de caminhões nos estados de São Paulo e Pernambuco e contemplaram caminhões provenientes das regiões Sudeste, Sul, Nordeste e Centro-Oeste. Foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas com seis especialistas de empresas fabricantes de caminhões, com o objetivo de investigar como é avaliada por eles a adequação de cabines-leito desenvolvidas para o mercado global ao contexto e aos usuários no Brasil, bem como os métodos de pesquisa com usuários utilizados no desenvolvimento de cabines-leito nas principais empresas. Foram entrevistados também dois profissionais de empresas que realizam adaptações e customizações dos interiores de cabines-leito. O objetivo geral desta tese é apresentar aspectos relevantes sobre o uso de interiores de cabines-leito de caminhões semipesados e pesados no Brasil como habitações temporárias. Pretende-se, assim, fornecer contribuições e parâmetros para o desenvolvimento de cabines-leito de caminhões que atendam às necessidades dos usuários no contexto brasileiro. / This thesis presents relevant aspects that emerged from qualitative research, with a phenomenological and observational approach, on the suitability of the interior design of sleeper cabins in semi-heavy and heavy trucks to users in Brazil, focusing on activities related to their living based on user perception, in observation of the researcher and expert evaluation. Socio-cultural and behavioral aspects, needs and habits of Brazilian users in relation to sleeper cabins, as well as adjustments and customizations made to suit the activities carried out by such users, were raised in the research field through observation and records of twenty-five sleeper cabins in use, as well as semistructured interviews with their users. The surveys were conducted at rest areas and truck stops in the States of São Paulo and Pernambuco and included trucks traveling from the Southeastern, Southern, Northeastern and Midwestern regions. Semistructured interviews were conducted with six truck manufacturer experts aiming at investigating how they evaluate the adequacy of sleeper cabins designed for the global market context and for users in Brazil, as well as the user research methods used in the development of sleeper cabins in major companies. Two professionals from companies that perform adjustments and customizations of the interior of sleeper cabins were also interviewed. The general objective of this thesis is to present relevant aspects on the use of sleeper cabin interiors in semi-heavy and heavy trucks in Brazil as temporary housing. Hence, it aims at providing contributions and parameters for the development of truck sleeper cabins that meet the needs of users in the Brazilian context.

A tese apresenta os aspectos relevantes que emergiram de pesquisa qualitativa e de abordagem fenomenológica e observacional a respeito da adequação do design de interiores de cabines-leito de caminhões semipesados e pesados aos usuários no Brasil, com enfoque nas atividades relacionadas ao habitar, com base na percepção de usuários, na observação da pesquisadora e na avaliação de especialistas. Aspectos socioculturais, comportamentais, necessidades e hábitos dos usuários brasileiros em relação às cabines-leito, bem como adaptações e customizações realizadas para adequá-las às atividades ali realizadas, foram levantados em campo, por meio de observação e registros de imagens de vinte e cinco cabines-leito em uso, bem como entrevistas semiestruturadas com seus usuários. Os levantamentos foram realizados em locais de parada e concentração de caminhões nos estados de São Paulo e Pernambuco e contemplaram caminhões provenientes das regiões Sudeste, Sul, Nordeste e Centro-Oeste. Foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas com seis especialistas de empresas fabricantes de caminhões, com o objetivo de investigar como é avaliada por eles a adequação de cabines-leito desenvolvidas para o mercado global ao contexto e aos usuários no Brasil, bem como os métodos de pesquisa com usuários utilizados no desenvolvimento de cabines-leito nas principais empresas. Foram entrevistados também dois profissionais de empresas que realizam adaptações e customizações dos interiores de cabines-leito. O objetivo geral desta tese é apresentar aspectos relevantes sobre o uso de interiores de cabines-leito de caminhões semipesados e pesados no Brasil como habitações temporárias. Pretende-se, assim, fornecer contribuições e parâmetros para o desenvolvimento de cabines-leito de caminhões que atendam às necessidades dos usuários no contexto brasileiro. / This thesis presents relevant aspects that emerged from qualitative research, with a phenomenological and observational approach, on the suitability of the interior design of sleeper cabins in semi-heavy and heavy trucks to users in Brazil, focusing on activities related to their living based on user perception, in observation of the researcher and expert evaluation. Socio-cultural and behavioral aspects, needs and habits of Brazilian users in relation to sleeper cabins, as well as adjustments and customizations made to suit the activities carried out by such users, were raised in the research field through observation and records of twenty-five sleeper cabins in use, as well as semistructured interviews with their users. The surveys were conducted at rest areas and truck stops in the States of São Paulo and Pernambuco and included trucks traveling from the Southeastern, Southern, Northeastern and Midwestern regions. Semistructured interviews were conducted with six truck manufacturer experts aiming at investigating how they evaluate the adequacy of sleeper cabins designed for the global market context and for users in Brazil, as well as the user research methods used in the development of sleeper cabins in major companies. Two professionals from companies that perform adjustments and customizations of the interior of sleeper cabins were also interviewed. The general objective of this thesis is to present relevant aspects on the use of sleeper cabin interiors in semi-heavy and heavy trucks in Brazil as temporary housing. Hence, it aims at providing contributions and parameters for the development of truck sleeper cabins that meet the needs of users in the Brazilian context.

In the Swedish railway network there are about 12000 units of track switches and crossings, which at 13000 Km, make up about 5.5 percent of the total track length. However, the maintenance cost for S&C is more than 13 percent of the total maintenance cost which is high in comparison with their proportion. The aim of the project is to conduct research into classification of the different modes of failure in S&C components and to perform a statistical analysis to converge the data in order to determine the most important failures that occur in turnouts.

This thesis aims at systematically studying the possibilities of minimizing devastating consequences of high-speed rail vehicle derailments by appropriate measures and features in the train design including the running gear. Firstly, an empirical database is established containing as much relevant information as possible of past incidents and accidents that have occurred at substantial running speeds due to mechanical failure close to the interface between the running gear and the track. Other causes that ultimately brought the train in a derailed condition are also covered. Although various accidental circumstances make each derailment a unique event, certain patterns appear to emerge which lead to several critical vehicle parameters capable of influencing the outcome of a derailment or preventing a derailment to occur. Secondly, the possibility of preventing wheel climbing derailments after an axle journal failure is studied by implementing mechanical restrictions between wheelsets and bogie frame. In this respect, a multi body system (MBS) computer model is developed to account for such an axle failure condition, which is successfully validated on the basis of two authentic passenger car events. In order to study the overall post-derailment vehicle behaviour, in particular the wheelsets’ vertical motion and lateral deviation on sleepers, a comprehensive MBS post-derailment module is developed and implemented in the commercially available software GENSYS. The model detects wheel-sleeper impact conditions and applies valid force resultants calculated through linear interpolation based on a pre-defined look-up table. The table was constructed through exhaustive finite element (FE) wheel to concrete sleeper impact simulations utilising the commercially available software LS-DYNA. The MBS post-derailment module has been validated successfully in several stages, including a correct prediction of the derailing wheelset’s trajectory over ten consecutive sleepers in comparison with an authentic passenger vehicle derailment event. An extensive simulation analysis on the feasibility of utilizing alternative substitute guidance mechanisms attached to the running gear on rail vehicles is presented, as means of minimizing the lateral deviation. Three low-reaching guidance mechanisms attached onto the running gear (bogie frame, brake disc and axle journal box) are analysed in terms of geometrical parameters for a successful engagement with the rail in order to prevent large lateral deviations after twelve different derailment scenarios. Three conventional coupled passenger trailing cars are investigated in terms of lateral deviation and vehicle overturning tendency after derailments on tangent and curved track. This is performed as a function of various vehicle design features and parameters such as: maximum centre coupler yaw angle, carbody height of centre of gravity, coupler height and additional running gear features. In a similar manner, the articulated train concept is investigated in terms of the post-derailment vehicle behaviour as a function of different inter-carbody damper characteristics and running gear features. / QC 20100701

Author´s name: Bc. Jan Hajniš School: Technical University - VUT, Brno Faculty of Civil Engineering Veveří 331/95, 602 00 Brno Program: Construction and Transportation Engineering Title: The Analysis of dynamic effects acting on the turnout with a focus on structural condition Consultant: Prof. Ing. Jaroslav Smutný, Ph.D. Number of pages: about 100 + attachments Number of attachments: about 340 Year: 2014 This work describes the size and the process of dynamic effect – vibrations and shift – cockles in crossing panel and switch panels of the turnout constructions on steel and concrete sleepers in time and frequency domain. It compares the results of the measurement between these turnout constructions. Dynamic effects are undesirable physical phenomena for operation each train. It is therefore necessary to eliminate these phenomena as much as possible. The result of this test will by means of software programm and measuring set help to determine precisely the advantages and disadvantages of using both turnout constructions, or even to propose their improvements or dimensions.

Crack, a typical term most people know, is a common form of distress or damage in road pavements and railway sleepers. It poses significant challenges to their structural integrity, safety, and longevity. Over the years, researchers have developed various data-driven technologies for image-based crack detection in road and sleeper applications. The image-based crack detection has become a promising field.  Many researchers use ensemble learning to win the Road Damage Detection Challenge. The challenge provides a street view dataset from several countries from different perspectives. The version of the dataset is 2020, which contains images from Japan, India, and Czech. Thus, the dataset inherits a domain shift problem. Current solutions use ensemble learning to deal with such a problem. Those solutions require much computational power and challenge adaptability in real-time applications. To mitigate the problem, the thesis experiments with various data augmentation techniques that could improve the base model performance. The main focuses are erasing a crack from an image using generative AI (Erase), implementing road segmentation by using the Panoptic Segmentation (RS) and injecting a perspective-aware synthetic crack (InjectPa) into the segmented road surface in the image. The results show that compared to the base model, the Erase + RS techniques improve the model's F1 score when trained only on Japan in the dataset rather than when trained on three countries simultaneously. Moreover, the InjectPa technique does not help improve the base model in both scenarios. Then, the experiment moved to the SBB dataset containing close-up images of sleepers from cameras mounted in front of the diagnostic vehicle. This section follows the same techniques but changes the segmentation model to the Segment Anything Model (SAM) because the previous segmentation model was trained on a street view dataset, making it vulnerable to close-up images. The Erase + SAM techniques show improvement in bbox/AP and validation loss. Nevertheless, it does not improve the F1 score significantly compared to the base model.  This thesis also applies the explainable AI name D-RISE to determine which feature most influences the model decision. D-RISE shows that the augmentation model can pay attention to the damage type pothole for road pavements and defect type spalling for sleepers than other types. Finally, the thesis discusses the results and suggests a strategy for future study. / Sprickor, en typisk term som de flesta känner till, är en vänlig form av skador i vägbeläggningar och järnvägsslipers. Det innebär betydande utmaningar för strukturella integritet, säkerhet och livslängd. Under årens lopp har olika datadrivna tekniker utvecklats för bildbaserade sprickdetektering i vägbeläggningar och järnvägsslipers applikationer. Den bildbaserade sprickdetekteringen har blivit ett lovande område. Många forskare använder ensembleinlärningsmodeller för att vinna den Road Damage Detection Challenge (Vägbeläggningar Detektering Utmaning). Utmaningen ger en Gatuvy dataset från flera länder från olika perspektiv. Versionen av datasetet är 2020 som innehåller bilder från Japan, Indien och Tjeckien. Därför ärver datasetet  ett domänskiftproblem. Nuvarande lösningar använder ensembleinlärning för att hantera ett sådant problem. Dessa lösningar kräver mycket datorkraft och utmanar anpassningsförmågan i realtidsapplikationer. För att mildra problemet, denna avhandling prover många tekniker för dataökningar som kan förbättra basmodellens prestanda. Huvudfokusen är att radera en spricka från en bild via en generativ AI (Erase), implementera vägyta segmentering via den Panoptic Segmentation (RS), lägga en persective-aware syntetik spricka (InjectPa) till segmenterade vögytan in bilden. Resultaten visar att den Erase + RS ökningsteknikerna förbättrar modellens F1 score när den tränas på Japan i datasetet i stället för att tränas alla länder samtidigt. Dessutom förbättrar den InjectPa tekniken inte basmodellen på båda fallen.  Därefter flyttades experimentet till SBB-datasetet som innehåller närbilder av järnvägsslipers från kameror monterades framför ett diagnosfordon. Denna section följer de samma teknikerna men ändra segmentering modellen till den Segment Anything Model (SAM) eftersom förra segmentering modellen tränades på en Gatuvy dataset vilket gör den sårbar för närbilder. Den Erase + SAM ökningsteknikerna visar förbättringar på bbox/AP och validering. Ändå förbättrade den inte F1 score avsevört jämfört med basmodellen.  Denna avhandling tillämpar också Förklarbar AI-namnet D-RISE för att avgöra vilken funktion som mest påverkar modellbeslutet. D-RISE visar att modellen som har dataökning kan uppmärksamma skadetypen potthål för vägbeläggningar och defekttypen spjälkning för järnvägsslipers än andra typer. Slutligen diskuterar avhandlingen resultaten och föreslår en strategi för framtida arbetsinsatser.

Sleeper populations are established populations of a non-native species whose population growth is limited by one or more abiotic or biotic conditions, such as climate change. While the northeastern US is predicted to be a hotspot for future invasions, identifying potential sleeper populations before they become invasive can inform proactive, climate-smart invasive species management. I focused on 169 introduced species that are established in one or more northeastern states. I used the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa (EICAT) framework to systematically identify and review the peer-reviewed literature for these candidate species to quantify their negative ecological and socioeconomic impacts. I identified 49 plants with ‘major’ impacts linked to the decline of multiple native species or loss of community diversity. Using high negative ecological impact, habitat suitability, and climate suitability as selection criteria, I highlight 37 species as high priority for management in the North Atlantic –Appalachian Region.

The masters thesis is about operational testing on selected constructions of a railway track „in situ“. There were selected two sections with and without under sleeper pads on a railway track for measurement. These measurements were evaluated then. The result is an assessment of the suitability or unsuitability for under sleeper pads for a rail transport.