Philosophiae Doctor - PhD

The Irish peace process is heralded as a success among insurgencies that attempt transitions toward peaceful resolution of conflict. After thirty years of armed struggle, pitting Irish republicans against their loyalist counterparts and the British State, the North of Ireland has a reconfigured political landscape with a consociational governing body where power is shared among several parties that hold divergent political objectives. The Irish Republican Movement, whose main components are the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a covert guerilla armed organization, and Sinn Fein, the political party of Irish republicans, initiated peace that led to all-inclusive talks in the 1990s and that culminated in the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998, setting out the parameters for a non-violent way forward. Given the traditional intransigence of the IRA to consider any route other than armed conflict, how did the leadership of the Irish Republican Movement secure the support of a majority of republicans for a peace initiative that has held now for more than fifteen years? This dissertation explores the dynamics of leadership in this group, and in particular, focuses on the prisoner resistance waged by its incarcerated activists and volunteers. It is the contention here, that various prisoner resistance tactics enabled a wide-ranging group of captives to develop the skill set necessary to persuade their community to back the peace initiative, engage in electoral politics, mobilize their supporters to invest in attaining a united Ireland by peaceful negotiations, and put down their arms in a permanent and unequivocal manner. In this dissertation, the work of Paulo Freire is explored in order to capture the processes inherent the resistance-leadership continuum.

Hemingway claims in Green Hills of Africa that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." If this basic idea is applied to his own work, elements of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn appear in some of Hemingway's Nick Adams stories and his novel The Old Man and the Sea. All major characters and several minor characters in these works share the quality of natural innocence, composed of their primitivism, sensibility, and active morality. Hemingway's Nick, Santiago, and Manolin, and Twain's Huck Finn and Jim reflect their authors' similar backgrounds and experiences and themselves come from similar environments. These environments are directly related to their continued possession and expression of their natural innocence.

This thesis is concerned with ABS algorithm project for commercial vehicles. In the first part the reader is introduced to the history and first usage of the anti-blocking system, its principles and main functions. There are also driving algorithms and functionality system control. The second part is dedicated to the dynamic model, programs and ADAMS Car and MATLAB Simulink interfaces. It also contains the description of the algorithm, its parameters and basic functionality assay. Simulation, program interlink, testing and tuning are also described. The concluding part deals with results and their assessment.

The object of this master thesis is testing of vehicle using four post rig. The main goal is to make a research about testing and tuning vehicle characteristics on four post rig in order to implement them for testing of TU Brno Racing’s Formula Student racecar. The main method of testing, input signals and measurement description are presented in this thesis. The different methods of analysis of testing data to find best tuning of damper and spring stiffness for different race disciplines are described. In the last part of this work, quarter car model and multibody model in MSC Adams Car is created. Input parameters of model are based on measurements from real car/ component testing, including damper characteristics and static tire radial stiffness for best fit with the characteristics of real vehicle. The measurements themselves were also described in separate chapter of this thesis. The last but not the least goal was to compare these simulations with measurements, made od real four post rig in order to decide whether car model is suitable for racecar development.

The diploma thesis is focused on the measurement of forces acting between the tire and the road. There is an outline of tire and tire models problematic in the opening part. In the following part, the rear right suspension of the formula student car was mounted with strain gauges and the data logging system was described. There is also a multi-body model of the rear axle created in Adams/Car and SAMS software, that is able to calculate forces acting between the tire and the road, taking the measured forces in the suspension, rocker position, and throttle position into consideration. After a series of calibrations and verification measurements, the measurement on the test track was made, with data analysis focused on forces acting between the tire and the road.

This diploma thesis deals with the design of a virtual twin of cross table MCV 754 QUICK from the Czech manufacturer Kovosvit MAS. The research part describes the basic principles of predictive maintenance methodology and virtual twin technology. The practical part includes a simplification of the initial cross table model. This model was then transferred to the simulation software MSC Adams, where it was optimized so that its behavior corresponds as closely as possible to the physical device. Several simulations were subsequently performed on the model. Then a concept for a predictive method for calculating the remaining service life of individual sections of the ball screw was presented. Simulations performed on a virtual twin served as a source of data to test the proposed method.

The aim of the master´s thesis is analysis of limits of tail test exercise in practice for certification of dampening quality of wheel hitches of vehicles using virtual simulation. The goal is to create virtual model of front axle of Skoda Roomster 1.4 TDi using program Adams/View, MSC Software and follow-up simulation of tail test of wheel hitch.

Thesis is dedicated to evaluation of roundoff impact on numerical integration methods accuracy and effectivity. Contains theoretical expectations taken from existing literature, implementation of chosen methods, experimental measurement of attained accuracy under different circumstances and their comparison with regard to time complexity. Library contains Runge-Kutta methods to order 7 and Adams-Bashforth methods to order 20 implemented using C++ templates which allow optional arbitrary-precision arithmetic. Small models with known analytic solution were used for experiments.

This master‘s thesis contains a design of multi-spindle automatic lathe spindles for the work of the rods maximum diameter of 7 mm. The work deals with a new concept of the drive spindle, where the spindles are driven by external asynchronous motor through the gears with internal teeth attached to the outside of the spindle drum instead of the current method of driven by central coaxial shaft. The thesis research of multi-spindle lathes including a description of the main nodes, design, strength calculations, bearing durability and a simulation model for simulation acceleration and load drives and spindles from the cutting process.