Η ανάδειξη των Ανοιχτών Συστημάτων Υπερκειμένου Βασισμένα σε Ψηφίδες (ΑΣΥ-ΒΨ) έχει σαν στόχο την απελευθέρωση ενός πλαισίου ανάπτυξης εφαρμογών Διαδικτύου και γενικότερα Υπερμέσων από τη μονοκρατορία του μέσου πλοήγησης "σύνδεσμος" ως η αποκλειστική δομική μονάδα. Αντίθετα , ένα σύνολο από ανοιχτές υπηρεσίες, που η κάθε μία παρέχει δομικές αφαιρέσεις ανάλογα με το πεδίο του προβλήματος, προσφέρονται στο σύνολο των εφαρμογών που απαιτούνται σε κάθε περίσταση. Παρόλα αυτά, η απουσία ενός πλαισίου μηχανικής που να περιγράφει κάθε διαδικασία της ανάπτυξης ενός ΑΣΥ-ΒΨ ευθύνεται ως ένα βαθμό για τη μειωμένη αποδοχή της εν λόγω προσπάθειας. Σε αυτή την εργασία γίνεται μια προσπάθεια για την ανάλυση όλων εκείνων των βημάτων, από τη σκοπιά του μηχανικού, που απαιτούνται για την υποστήριξη αυτής της προσπάθειας, δίνοντας έμφαση στην περιγραφή της μεθοδολογίας και των εργαλείων που να καλύπτουν όλες τις φάσεις της ανάπτυξης. Στην εργασία παρουσιάζεται ένας προτεινόμενος κύκλος ζωής για τα ΑΣΥ-ΒΨ, ενώ ιδιαίτερη έμφαση δίνεται στη φάση του σχεδιασμού του συστήματος και στη μεταφορά των εννοιολογικών μοντέλων σε χαμηλότερα επίπεδα (λογικό), χρησιμοποιώντας συγκεκριμένα παραδείγματα. / The emergence of Component-Based Open Hypermedia Systems (CB-OHS) aims at the releasing of hypermedia and web applications from the monocracy of link as an information structuring primitive. Instead, an open set of structure servers, each one providing abstractions and semantics relevant to a specific data-organization domain, are employed by an open set of client applications. Nonetheless, the lack of an engineering framework guiding the development and deployment process of structure servers plays a key role in their limited exploitation. In this paper, an analysis of the characteristics of structure servers from an engineering approach is carried out, through a proposition of a framework and a set of supporting tools, in order to support their development. Furthermore, in this paper a life-cycle for CB-OHSs is proposed, with special focus at the system

A new philosophy in structural health monitoring was explored, with the view to the creation of a smart mining bolt: one which would bear the normal load of any bolt used in South African gold mining tunnels, but at the same time be capable of monitoring its own level of damage. To this end, a survey of various smart materials currently used in structural health monitoring applications, was conducted, and a group known as strain memory alloys isolated as holding the most promise in this regard. Strain memory alloys give an indication of peak strain based on an irreversible transformation from paramagnetic austenite to ferromagnetic martensite, which occurs in direct proportion to the amount of strain experienced by the material. A measurement of magnetic permeability can therefore be correlated to peak strain. An extensive study of the alloying chemistry, material processing and transformation characteristics was therefore carried out, including an analytical model for the quantification of the energy associated with martensitic nucleation, at a dislocation-disclination level. The conditions within typical South African gold mining tunnels were evaluated, and a smart mining bolt design produced, based on the loading and environmental conditions present. Several material formulations were then proposed, melted, tested and evaluated against the relevant strength, corrosion and transformation criteria. A suitable material was selected and further tested. A working prototype bolt has been produced, and in situ tests of complete bolts, are scheduled to take place shortly. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

No description available.

No description available.

Spanwise nonuniformity effects are modeled in the cross-sectional analysis of beam theory. This modeling adheres to an established numerical framework on cross-sectional analysis of uniform beams with arbitrary cross-sections. This framework is based on two concepts: decomposition of the rotation tensor and the variational-asymptotic method. Allowance of arbitrary materials and geometries in the cross-section is from discretization of the warping field by finite elements. By this approach, dimensional reduction from three-dimensional elasticity is performed rigorously and the sectional strain energy is derived to be asymptotically-correct. Elastic stiffness matrices are derived for inputs into the global beam analysis. Recovery relations for the displacement, stress, and strain fields are also derived with care to be consistent with the energy. Spanwise nonuniformity effects appear in the form of pointwise and sectionwise derivatives, which are approximated by finite differences. The formulation also accounts for the effects of spanwise variations in initial twist and/or curvature. A linearly tapered isotropic strip is analyzed to demonstrate spanwise nonuniformity effects on the cross-sectional analysis. The analysis is performed analytically by the variational-asymptotic method. Results from beam theory are validated against solutions from plane stress elasticity. These results demonstrate that spanwise nonuniformity effects become significant as the rate at which the cross-sections vary increases. The modeling of transverse shear modes of deformation is accomplished by transforming the strain energy into generalized Timoshenko form. Approximations in this transformation procedure from previous works, when applied to uniform beams, are identified. The approximations are not used in the present work so as to retain more accuracy. Comparison of present results with those previously published shows that these approximations sometimes change the results measurably and thus are inappropriate. Static and dynamic results, from the global beam analysis, are calculated to show the differences between using stiffness constants from previous works and the present work. As a form of validation of the transformation procedure, calculations from the global beam analysis of initially twisted isotropic beams from using curvilinear coordinate axes featuring twist are shown to be equivalent to calculations using Cartesian coordinates.

Many methods have been developed and studied to detect damage through the change of dynamic response of a structure. Due to its capability to recognize pattern and to correlate non-linear and non-unique problem, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have received increasing attention for use in detecting damage in structures based on vibration modal parameters. Most successful works reported in the application of ANN for damage detection are limited to numerical examples and small controlled experimental examples only. This is because of the two main constraints for its practical application in detecting damage in real structures. They are: 1) the inevitable existence of uncertainties in vibration measurement data and finite element modeling of the structure, which may lead to erroneous prediction of structural conditions; and 2) enormous computational effort required to reliably train an ANN model when it involves structures with many degrees of freedom. Therefore, most applications of ANN in damage detection are limited to structure systems with a small number of degrees of freedom and quite significant damage levels. In this thesis, a probabilistic ANN model is proposed to include into consideration the uncertainties in finite element model and measured data. Rossenblueth's point estimate method is used to reduce the calculations in training and testing the probabilistic ANN model. The accuracy of the probabilistic model is verified by Monte Carlo simulations. Using the probabilistic ANN model, the statistics of the stiffness parameters can be predicted which are used to calculate the probability of damage existence (PDE) in each structural member. The reliability and efficiency of this method is demonstrated using both numerical and experimental examples. In addition, a parametric study is carried out to investigate the sensitivity of the proposed method to different damage levels and to different uncertainty levels. As an ANN model requires enormous computational effort in training the ANN model when the number of degrees of freedom is relatively large, a substructuring approach employing multi-stage ANN is proposed to tackle the problem. Through this method, a structure is divided to several substructures and each substructure is assessed separately with independently trained ANN model for the substructure. Once the damaged substructures are identified, second-stage ANN models are trained for these substructures to identify the damage locations and severities of the structural ii element in the substructures. Both the numerical and experimental examples are used to demonstrate the probabilistic multi-stage ANN methods. It is found that this substructuring ANN approach greatly reduces the computational effort while increasing the damage detectability because fine element mesh can be used. It is also found that the probabilistic model gives better damage identification than the deterministic approach. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to investigate the effect of substructure size, support condition and different uncertainty levels on the damage detectability of the proposed method. The results demonstrated that the detectibility level of the proposed method is independent of the structure type, but dependent on the boundary condition, substructure size and uncertainty level.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2000. / Bibliography : leaves 197-204.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Melbourne, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 344-361).

Thesis (M.App.Sc.) - Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 123-127). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M. App. Sc.)--Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 181-186). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.