This thesis presents an efficient, animation production-centric solution to the articulation and animation of computer generated automobiles for creating animations with a high degree of believability. The thesis has two main foci which include an automated and customizable articulation system for automobile models and a vehicle animation system that utilizes minimal simulation techniques. The primary contribution of this thesis is the definition of a computer graphics animation software program that utilizes simulation and key-frame methods for defining vehicle motion. There is an emphasis on maintaining efficiency to prevent long wait times during the animation process and allow for immediate interactivity. The program, when implemented, allows for animation of a vehicle with minimal input and setup. These automated tools could make animating an automobile, or multiple automobiles of varying form and dimensions much more efficient and believable in a film, animation, or game production environment.

The aerodynamical design of a solar race car is presented together with the racing strategy. Dealing with the design and the racing strategy simultaneously offers the advantage of having improvements on both, using the results of each other. Besides these, as a prerequisite of the design, the decision on number of the wheels is discussed. If the three wheel configuration is selected, the requirements for having the desired performance while eliminating the risk of tipping over are inspected. In the aerodynamics analyses, the software packages Gambit and Fluent are utilized. Using the results of the CFD simulations, aerodynamical shape of the body is analyzed to determine weak points of the design, causing early boundary layer detachment and higher drag. The drag coefficient of the body is also obtained from CFD runs at various speeds. It was determined that the selected NACA profile performs well, under racing speeds but the canopy design is open to improvement. The racing strategy is analyzed using the race track information together with the design of the solar car. A program was created to determine the position, velocity, acceleration and power consumption versus time. Also the lap time and total energy consumption can be obtained and these are vital data while determining their sensitivity to mass or to resistances. By the help of this program, the experience gained by completing laps on the circuit can be partially gained without actual laps.

Car dependency which corresponds to excessive and inappropriate usage of the car itself is becoming a major problem all around the world. It shapes urban areas in such a way that the overall urban form as well as individual activities all develop to accommodate cars. However, introducing nonmotorized modes is seen as a remedy to overcome the car dependency. It offers a chance for retrieving healthy urban environments and healthy social lives and also for revitalizing/enhancing public spaces in cities. This means increasing the quality and quantity of pedestrian areas which have been receiving increasing emphasis all around the world. In this thesis, it is intended to show that pedestrianization can be, and should be, a valid transport policy in growing metropolitan areas that are becoming more and more car-oriented, such as Ankara. As a case study, this study assesses potentials and possibilities for creating a pedestrian environment in Ankara, Tunali Hilmi Street. To do so, detailed pedestrian surveys/analyses including v pedestrian counts, pedestrian movement analysis, pedestrian static analysis and pedestrian space analysis throughout the street and questionnaires with potential stakeholders including pedestrians, shop-owners and taxi-drivers are carried out. Through these analyses, it is assessed whether Tunali Hilmi Street is suitable for such an arrangement in terms of pedestrianization or not. As a result, this thesis makes an emphasis on non-motorization and pedestrianization as a method of preventing increasing car-oriented arrangements and revitalizing city centre for the case of Tunali Hilmi Street.

ABSTRACT DESIGN OF A MECHANISM FOR OPENING HACTHBACK CAR BAGGAGE DOOR Duran, Yusuf M.S., Department of Mechanical Engineering Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Eres S&ouml / ylemez September 2009, 65 Pages In this thesis, a new mechanism design for opening hatchback-car baggage door is introduced. Unlike the classical hinged doors used, this new design will include a mechanism so that the door will be opened vertically and thus occupy less space behind the car during the opening. In this fashion even the hatchback doors of closely parked cars may be opened. First, considering type synthesis, different mechanism types are investigated. In dimensional synthesis, with the help of Burmester theory, motion generation is applied. Using the circle and center point curves, considering link dimensions, transmission angle characteristics, branching and some order issues possible solutions that satisfy the position requirements are found. To actuate the mechanism, an appropriate gas-spring is sought. As a case study a prototype is manufactured and mounted on a sample hatchback car to check the mechanism performance.

Land transportation is the main form of transportation around the world. Since the invention of the car land transportation changed drastically. As the cars took a solid part in human lives with the developments in electronics and robotics unmanned land vehicles are the future of both commercial and military land transportation. Today armies want unmanned land vehicles to provide logistical support to the units near threat zones and commercial firms want them to deliver goods more reliably and with less expense. In this thesis, mainly, a 6DoF dynamical model for a four wheeled land vehicle is developed and an autopilot design is presented using PID techniques. For dynamical modeling of the vehicle internal combustion engines, transmissions, tires, suspensions, aero dynamical drag forces and brakes are studied and the model is tested over some scenarios for evaluating its performance.

From 2008, employee stock bonus must debt expense according to national law and policy. How to get balance between employees and shareholders without eroding benefits becomes the most difficult challenge to many enterprises. The employee stock bonus has been implemented in Taiwan for a long time. This system does play a significant role in high-tech industry and make a great contribution to Taiwan¡¦s economics. However, since a series of business scandals starting with Enron case in 2001, this unique system has been broadly discussed and caused serious debates. One of the most controversial arguments claims that employee stock bonus will weaken the stock price and hurt equity. The study is based on pooled time-series data during 1998-2007 from the IC industry corporations trading on the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation and Over-The-Counter market. The purpose is to examine the impact of employee stock bonus on Taiwan stock market by analyzing the variation in Cumulative Average Abnormal Revenue (CAR). The empirical results are summarized as follows: 1.With the factor of employee stock bonus, the ex-dividend effects still existed in IC industry of Taiwan stock market. The negative CAR was particular in evidence on the three days prior to the ex-date. There were no obvious trends of ex-dividend effects during this decade. Both employee stock bonus and dividends were declined year by year which represented that corporation had adjusted their policy with a downward tendency. 2.Before the ex-date, the group of moderate employee stock bonus was beneficial to the CAR and created better performance of stock price with the least dilution effect. On the contrary, the group of low employee stock bonus came out the worst performance. After the ex-date, the group of high employee stock bonus exhibited the best ex-dividend effects and sustained the performance longer. But the group of low employee stock bonus still performed poorly with the most negative CAR. Base on above findings, employee stock bonus not really hurt the stock price but benefit equity if corporations use this system adequately. High employee stock bonuses maybe deliver a positive signal which implicates a bright future.

The present paper describes the construction of a premium system for automobile liability insurance, under the restriction that risks with small expected claim amounts should pay small premiums, whereas risks with high expected claim amounts should pay high premiums. / Die vorliegende Arbeit beschreibt die Entwicklung eines Tarifes in der Kraftfahrthaftpflichtversicherung unter der Restriktion, dass von Risiken mit geringen erwarteten verursachten Schadenzahlungen niedrige Prämien und von Risiken, die hohe Schadenzahlungen erwarten lassen, hohe Prämien gefordert werden.

<p>This thesis consists of two parts. The first part analyzesthe accessibility, generation and license holding effects incar ownership models. The second part develops a route choicemodeling framework with an attempt to address the differencesin drivers' route choice behavior. These two parts of work areboth based on the discrete choice theory - the car ownershipmodels are built up on the standard logit model, whereas theroute choice models are formulated in a mixed logit form.</p><p>The study result of the first part shows that measuring theaccessibility by the monetary inclusive value reasonably wellcaptures the mechanism of the accessibility impact. Otheraccessibility proxies such as the parking costs, parking typeand house type are correlated with the accessibility but not toa great extent. Both young and old households are less likelyto have a car. The reduction of the propensity to own a car issignificant for households with average birth year before 1920,whereas this reduction is moderate for households with birthyear between 1920 and 1945. It is also demonstrated thatdriving license holding choice is conditional on the carownership level choice, and that these two choices need to bemodeled in a dynamic framework.</p><p>The second part of the work investigates the performance ofthe mixed logit model using both simulated data and empiricalroute switching data. The empirical study mainly focused on theimpacts of information and incident related factors on drivers'route switching behavior.</p><p>The result shows that using mixed logit gives a significantimprovement in model performance as well as a more sensitiveexplanation of drivers' decision-making behavior. For apopulation with greatly varying tastes, simply using thestandard logit model to analyze its behavior can yield veryunrealistic results. However, care must be taken when settingthe number of random draws for simulating the choiceprobability of the mixed logit model in order to get reliableestimates.</p><p>The empirical results demonstrate that incident relatedfactors such as delay and information reliability havesignificant impacts on drivers' route switching, where themagnitude of the response to the change in the delay is shownto vary significantly between individuals. Other factors, suchas confidence in the estimated delay, gender, frequency of cardriving and attitude towards congestion, also make majorcontributions. In addition, it is found that individual's routeswitching behavior may differ depending on the purpose of thetrip and when the choice is made, i.e. pre-trip oren-route.</p><p><b>Keywords</b>: car ownership, accessibility, logit model,route choice, heterogeneity, mixed logit model</p>

<p>The purpose of this project is to continue the work on a vehicle model developed in ADAMS/Car and applied with the concept of ACM (Autonomous Corner Module). The project is divided up in two parts. The objective of the first part is to setup a co-simulation environment between ADAMS/Car and MATLAB/Simulink, and evaluate the vehicle model. In the second part a yaw controller is developed using only the rear wheel steering possibilities. The controller will be evaluated when it is applied on the vehicle model. </p><p>The approach is to develop two models, one simpler in MATLAB/Simulink and one more complex in ADAMS/Car, and verify that they show similar behavior. The models will then be linearized and the control design will be based on the most appropriate linear model. Most of the work has been developing and evaluating the two vehicle models in ADAMS/Car and MATLAB/Simulink. </p><p>The result was a working co-simulation environment where an evaluation of two different controllers was made. Due to linearization of the ADAMS model was nsuccessful, the controllers were based on the simpler linear Simulink model. Both controllers show similar results. Tests on the ADAMS model showed that it is hard to control both the yaw rate and body slip only by rear wheel steering.</p>

Le cycle cellulaire des entérovirus est connu grâce aux nombreux travaux publiés portant sur les<br />poliovirus. Il reste néanmoins de nombreuses interrogations concernant les premières étapes de<br />l'infection correspondant à l'attachement et à l'entrée du virus dans la cellule. Elles constituent pourtant des cibles potentielles pour de futurs antiviraux. Nous nous sommes donc intéressés aux étapes précoces de l'infection par echovirus 6, un des nombreux sérotypes du genre Enterovirus. A partir d'une souche isolée chez un patient, deux populations virales se distinguant par leur capacité à hémagglutiner (HAE6 et NHAE6) ont été sélectionnées par passages successifs sur cellules PLC et HeLa. L'utilisation de composés chimiques et de formes mutées de protéines impliquées dans l'endocytose ont permis de caractériser leurs voies d'entrée. HAE6 semble pénétrer dans la cellule par un sous-type de radeaux lipidiques, les caveolae, alors que NHAE6 a recours aux puits tapissés de clathrine. La comparaison des séquences codant pour les 4 protéines de capside a ensuite révélé 4 substitutions d'acides aminés localisées dans des régions très exposées de la capside virale impliquées dans la liaison du virus à son récepteur cellulaire, suggérant l'utilisation de récepteurs différents. Ainsi, une affinité 4 fois supérieure pour DAF, une protéine présente dans les radeaux lipidiques, orienterait l'endocytose de HAE6 vers les caveolae. Parmi les autres candidats potentiels évalués, ni les acides sialiques, ni l'intégrine VLA-2, ni CAR, le récepteur des coxsackie et adénovirus, interviennent dans l'infection par echovirus 6 tandis que les sulfates d'héparanes joueraient simplement le rôle de récepteurs d'attachement. Finalement, seule la co-expression de DAF et de CAR a permis l'infection productive par HAE6 et NHAE6 de cellules CHO démontrant pour la première fois le rôle de CAR comme récepteur pour un echovirus. Ces données montrent qu'une souche virale isolée d'un patient est en fait constituée d'un mélange de quasi-espèces susceptibles d'entrer dans la cellule par différentes voies d'endocytose conférant au virus une capacité d'adaptation majeure aux multiples environnements rencontrés au cours de l'infection.