Change management is a discipline fundamental to the task of building ever more complex computing systems. Properly managed change provides a means whereby alterations to existing components of a complex artefact and their relationships can be evaluated, managed and evolved. This thesis takes as its example Official RAAF Publications, some of which need to be revised as a result of changes to the system they describe. The thesis develops a model of change propagation providing a set of operations to examine and record the changes to a set of publications. Additional operations enable coping with reversing decisions and handling the unexpected arrival of externally generated amendments. The model is extended to cover a finer granularity of entities (at the page level) to determine whether this greater level of detail would ease some tasks. A further extension provides the notion of relationships between the publications of concern, focusing on a dependency relationship between two publications. This enables exploration of the possibility of improving the process by reducing the risk of missing publications needing revision and providing a means by which some tasks can be partly automated thus speeding up the process. The models presented were developed in Sum, a variant of the Z specification language, to gain greater insight into the essential details of the operations and data structures involved. By ignoring implementation details the essential logical steps of each model can be emphasised and their differences and similarities contrasted. This thesis demonstrates that fine-grained change management is feasible. The thesis develops processes that automatically track the status of changes as they are propagated through a set of documents. The greater knowledge of work done on individual pages allows only the page(s) of concern to be affected. The work also enables recommendations to be made as to the applicability of each model and, by comparing the models, provides insight into the amount of work and resources required for tackling change at different levels of granularity.

Change management is a discipline fundamental to the task of building ever more complex computing systems. Properly managed change provides a means whereby alterations to existing components of a complex artefact and their relationships can be evaluated, managed and evolved. This thesis takes as its example Official RAAF Publications, some of which need to be revised as a result of changes to the system they describe. The thesis develops a model of change propagation providing a set of operations to examine and record the changes to a set of publications. Additional operations enable coping with reversing decisions and handling the unexpected arrival of externally generated amendments. The model is extended to cover a finer granularity of entities (at the page level) to determine whether this greater level of detail would ease some tasks. A further extension provides the notion of relationships between the publications of concern, focusing on a dependency relationship between two publications. This enables exploration of the possibility of improving the process by reducing the risk of missing publications needing revision and providing a means by which some tasks can be partly automated thus speeding up the process. The models presented were developed in Sum, a variant of the Z specification language, to gain greater insight into the essential details of the operations and data structures involved. By ignoring implementation details the essential logical steps of each model can be emphasised and their differences and similarities contrasted. This thesis demonstrates that fine-grained change management is feasible. The thesis develops processes that automatically track the status of changes as they are propagated through a set of documents. The greater knowledge of work done on individual pages allows only the page(s) of concern to be affected. The work also enables recommendations to be made as to the applicability of each model and, by comparing the models, provides insight into the amount of work and resources required for tackling change at different levels of granularity.

Submitted by Aelson Maciera (aelsoncm@terra.com.br) on 2017-08-16T19:31:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDAGP.pdf: 24957220 bytes, checksum: d8c9cd6b22c7e40f1a1f5c7c88deb93a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (bco.producao.intelectual@gmail.com) on 2018-01-30T16:50:04Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDAGP.pdf: 24957220 bytes, checksum: d8c9cd6b22c7e40f1a1f5c7c88deb93a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (bco.producao.intelectual@gmail.com) on 2018-01-30T16:50:13Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDAGP.pdf: 24957220 bytes, checksum: d8c9cd6b22c7e40f1a1f5c7c88deb93a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-01-30T16:57:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissDAGP.pdf: 24957220 bytes, checksum: d8c9cd6b22c7e40f1a1f5c7c88deb93a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-03 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Biomedical devices currently in use (prostheses, implants) have satisfactory performance in many cases. However, sometimes the body reacts to the device insertion and may lead to its rapid replacement. Some of these disadvantages can be solved by the use of titanium and its alloys, due to their excellent combination of corrosion resistance, wear resistance and biocompatibility compared to other competing biomaterials. This work presents the possibility of obtaining near β titanium alloy with ultrafine grains produced by severe plastic deformation. For this, the Ti-13Nb-13Zr alloy was processed by high-pressure torsion processing method. Samples were processed with different loads and number of turns. The samples were evaluated by Vickers microhardness. As-received and deformed samples were analyzed through X-Ray diffraction. The microstructures were observed by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscope and the microtexture and phase mappings of the material evaluated through the ASTAR equipment in the transmission electron microscope. After characterization, it was observed that there is a refinement of the microstructure and increase of the microhardness of the Ti-13Nb-13Zr alloy deformed by HPT. Due to the superior microhardness of the deformed material and the results of phase transformations indicate a potential application as nanostructured biomaterial. / Os dispositivos biomédicos utilizados atualmente (próteses, implantes) possuem desempenho satisfatório em muitos casos. No entanto, às vezes, o corpo reage à inserção destes dispositivos exigindo a sua rápida substituição. Algumas destas desvantagens podem ser resolvidas pelo uso de titânio e suas ligas, devido à sua excelente combinação de resistência à corrosão, resistência ao desgaste e biocompatibilidade em comparação com outros biomateriais concorrentes. Este trabalho apresenta a possibilidade de obtenção de liga de titânio quase β com grãos ultrafinos produzidos por deformação plástica severa para três diferentes condições iniciais de microestrutura. Para isso, a liga Ti-13Nb-13Zr foi processada pelo método de processamento de torção sob alta pressão (High-Pressure Torsion - HPT). As amostras foram processadas com diferentes cargas e número de voltas e avaliadas por meio de microdureza Vickers. Amostras como recebidas e deformadas foram analisadas através de difração de raios X. As microestruturas foram observadas por meio de microscopia óptica e eletrônica de varredura. A microtextura e mapeamentos de fase do material foram avaliados através do equipamento ASTAR no microscópio eletrônico de transmissão. Após a caracterização, foi observado que existe um refinamento da microestrutura e aumento da microdureza da liga Ti-13Nb-13Zr deformada por HPT. A microdureza superior do material deformado e os resultados de transformações de fase apontam para uma potencial aplicação como biomaterial nanoestruturado.

Les applications logicielles sont de plus en plus diversifié et complexe. Avec le développement orageux du Cloud Computing et de ses applications, les applications logicielles deviennent encore plus complexes que jamais. Les applications de cloud computing complexes peuvent contenir un grand nombre de composants logiciels qui nécessitent et consomment une grande quantité de ressources (matériel ou d'autres composants logiciels) répartis en plusieurs niveaux en fonction de la granularité de ces ressources. En outre, ces composants logiciels peuvent être situés sur différents nuages. Les composants logiciels et de leurs ressources requises d'une application Nuage ont des relations complexes dont certains pourraient être résolus au moment de la conception, mais certains sont nécessaires pour faire face au moment de l'exécution. La complexité des logiciels et de l'hétérogénéité de l'environnement Couverture devenir défis que les solutions d'élasticité actuelles ont besoin de trouver des réponses appropriées à résoudre. L'élasticité est l'un des avantages du cloud computing, qui est la capacité d'un système Cloud pour adapter à la charge de travail des changements par des ressources d'approvisionnement et deprovisioning d'une manière autonome. Par conséquent, les ressources disponibles correspondent à la demande actuelle d'aussi près que possible à chaque moment. Pour avoir une solution d'élasticité efficace, qui ne reflète pas seulement la complexité des applications Cloud mais également à déployer et à gérer eux d'une manière autonome, nous proposons une approche d'élasticité roman. Il est appelé à plusieurs niveaux élasticité fine qui comprend deux aspects de la complexité de l'application: plusieurs composants logiciels et la granularité des ressources. Le multi-niveau élasticité fine concerne les objets touchés par les actions d'élasticité et la granularité de ces actions. Dans cette thèse, nous introduisons plateforme Roboconf un système de cloud computing autonome (ACCS) pour installer et reconfigurer les applications complexes ainsi que soutenir le multi-niveau élasticité fine. A cet effet, Roboconf est également un gestionnaire d'élasticité autonome. Merci à cette plate-forme, nous pouvons abstraire les applications cloud complexes et automatiser leur installation et de reconfiguration qui peut être de plusieurs centaines d'heures de travail. Nous utilisons également Roboconf à mettre en œuvre les algorithmes de multi-niveau élasticité fine sur ces applications. Les expériences menées indiquent non seulement l'efficacité de l'élasticité fine multi-niveau, mais aussi de valider les caractéristiques de support de cette approche de la plateforme Roboconf. / Software applications are becoming more diverse and complex. With the stormy development of Cloud Computing and its applications, software applications become even more complex than ever. The complex Cloud applications may contain a lot of software components that require and consume a large amount of resources (hardware or other software components) distributed into multiple levels based on granularity of these resources. Moreover these software components might be located on different clouds. The software components and their required resources of a Cloud application have complex relationships which some could be resolved at design time but some are required to tackle at run time. The complexity of software and heterogeneity of Cloud environment become challenges that current elasticity solutions need to find appropriate answers to resolve. Elasticity is one of benefits of Cloud computing, which is capability of a Cloud system to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and deprovisioning resources in an autonomic manner. Hence, the available resources fit the current demand as closely as possible at each point in time. To have an efficient elasticity solution which not only reflects the complexity of Cloud applications but also deploy and manage them in an autonomic manner, we propose a novel elasticity approach. It is called multi-level fine-grained elasticity which includes two aspects of application’s complexity: multiple software components and the granularity of resources. The multi-level fine-grained elasticity concerns objects impacted by elasticity actions and granularity of these actions. In this thesis, we introduce Roboconf platform an autonomic Cloud computing system (ACCS) to install and reconfigure the complex applications as well as support the multi-level fine-grained elasticity. To this end, Roboconf is also an autonomic elasticity manager. Thanks to this platform, we can abstract the complex Cloud applications and automate their installation and reconfiguration that can be up to several hundred hours of labour. We also use Roboconf to implement the algorithms of multi-level fine-grained elasticity on these applications. The conducted experiments not only indicate efficiency of the multi-level fine-grained elasticity but also validate features supporting this approach of Roboconf platform.

Electronic coarse graining is a technique improving the predictive power of molecular dynamics simulations by representing electrons via a quantum harmonic oscillator. This construction, known as a Quantum Drude Oscillator, provides all molecular long-range responses by uniting many-body dispersion, polarisation and cross interactions to all orders. To demonstrate the predictive power of electronic coarse graining and provide insights into the physics of water, a molecular model of water based on Quantum Drude Oscillators is developed. The model is parametrised to the properties of an isolated molecule and a single cut through the dimer energy surface. Such a parametrisation makes the condensed phase properties of the model a prediction rather than a fitting target. These properties are studied in four environments via two-temperature adiabatic path integral molecular dynamics: a proton ordered ice, the liquid{vapour interface, supercritical and supercooled water. In all these environments, the model predicts a condensed phase in excellent agreement with experiment, showing impressive transferability. It predicts correct densities and pressures in liquid water from 220 K to 647 K, and a correct temperature of maximum density. Furthermore, it predicts the surface tension, the liquid-vapour critical point, density of ice II, and radial distribution functions across all conditions studied. The model also provides insight into the relationship between the molecular structure of water and its condensed phase properties. An asymmetry between donor and acceptor hydrogen bonds is identified as the molecular scale mechanism responsible for the surface orientation of water molecules. The dipole moment is identified as a molecular scale signature of liquid-like and gas-like regions in supercritical water. Finally, a link between the coordination number and the anomalous thermal expansion of the second coordination shell is also presented.

No description available.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2009-04-17Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:06:23Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 andrade_lrm_me_rcla.pdf: 1854084 bytes, checksum: 37c55097ff800285da56aac3723135e2 (MD5) / Os membros Lontras (Formação Campo Mourão) e Rio Segredo (Formação Taciba) constituem uma sucessão marinha de folhelhos e arenitos turbidíticos, que está encaixada entre diamictitos glaciais daquelas formações. O folhelho Lontras tem uma centena de metros na faixa aflorante norte catarinense, contendo em sua porção superior a fácies “folhelho várvico”, na verdade um estrato com gradação de siltito a folhelho (Tde) em escala milimétrica e que é considerado como sendo o turbidito distal da sucessão. O turbidito Rio Segredo tem de 15 a 25 m e consiste de estratos gradacionais portando sequência Bouma em diversas escalas: muito delgado (1 a 3 cm; Tde e Tcde), delgado (3 a 10 cm; Tcde e Tbcde), médio (10 a 30 cm; Tbcde e Tabcde), espesso (30 a 100 cm; Tabc) e muito espesso (acima de 1,0 m; Tabc). Há ainda uma divisão “superior” do Membro Rio Segredo normalmente com 10 a 20 m de espessura, que contém turbiditos areno-argilosos muito delgados (Tcde e Tde). Foram levantados sete perfis faciológicos de detalhe, escala 1:50, de modo a registrar turbiditos com até 5 cm de espessura (1 mm no perfil). Posteriormente, quatro desses perfis foram cronocorrelacionados em uma seção norte-sul: Forcação, Wiegand, Laeisz e Dona Emma, numa extensão de 28 km. A esta seção foi acrescido o perfil Taiózinho, localizado 30 km a oeste do Forcação, entre os dois últimos (semelhança faciológica com o Laeisz). Identificaram-se sete sistemas deposicionais, com uma média de 3 m de espessura por sistema e contidos em três sequências de alta frequência. Os sistemas deposicionais são formados por ciclos turbidíticos de origem marinha, encontrados principalmente nos perfis Laeisz e Taiózinho, com uma organização ascendente de adelgaçamento e granodecrescência. Outros ciclos turbidíticos... / The Lontras shale and overlying Rio Segredo sandstone are members of Campo Mourão and Taciba formations, corresponding to shelf marine and turbidite deposits; they are encased in glacial diamictites of those formations. The Lontras shale is 100 m thick in northern Santa Catarina outcrop belt and it displays a “varved shale” facies in its upper portion. In reality, it represents many mm-scale beds with Bouma sequence Tde, and therefore distal, argillaceous turbidites. The Rio Segredo Member is 15 to 25 m thick and contain beds of different thicknesses: very thin (1 to 3 cm; Tde and Tcde), thin (3 to 10 cm; Tcde and Tbcde), and medium beds (10 to 30 cm; Tbcde and Tabcde). Also, thick (30 to 100 cm) and very thick beds (thicker than 1 m) displays massive or graded sandstones with disperse laminations and cross-laminations resembling Ta, Tb and Tc intervals of Bouma sequence. There is also a Rio Segredo “upper” division with 10 to 20 m thick, consisting of very thin turbidites (Tcde and Tde). Seven detailed facies logs were constructed at 1:50 scale, to represent even 5 cm thin beds (1 mm). Later, four of the logs were put in a north-south stratigraphic section (28 km in length): Forcação, Wiegand, Laeisz and Dona Emma, in a 28 km extension. A fifth log, Taiózinho (distant 30 km west of Forcação), was added to the section between the last two logs, because of its facies similarity with Laeisz log. Seven depositional systems are identified, averaging 3 m thick in, thickness, and they belong to high frequency sequences. The systems are composed of turbidite cycles of marine origin, found mainly in Laeisz and Taiózinho logs: they form thinning- and fining-upward cycles. Turbidite cycles of deltaic origin are observed in Forcação and Dona Emma logs as thickening-up and coarsening-up cycles. In the latter, are included... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Um grande número de rochas de granulação grosseira tem valor agregado muito alto quando usadas como materiais de construção, as chamadas rochas exóticas. No entanto, existem problemas com a utilização desses materiais dado a sua fragilidade, que está relacionada com a sua textura muito heterogênea. No Brasil é empregado empiricamente um reforço (compósito) que utiliza resina epóxi e fibra de vidro para melhorar o desempenho mecânico de tais rochas quando empregadas como materiais de construção. Os objetivos da presente pesquisa foram estudar o reforço tradicional brasileiro (telagem) para determinar sua eficiência e, ao mesmo tempo, propor outras soluções de reforço alternativas e mais eficientes, e avaliá-las através da caracterização mecânica experimental. Foi proposto um critério denominado Declive Global para avaliar as tensões de serviço dos materiais pegmatíticos estudados, quando os reforços propostos foram aplicados. Para validar esse critério foi utilizado um sistema de correlação digital de imagem (CDI) para observar e medir o comportamento de deformação e fratura durante a realização de testes de flexão em 4 pontos. Tanto o critério proposto como a CDI mostraram que a propagação de fissuras ocorre muito antes do material atingir a carga máxima. O reforço alternativo proposto, que emprega resina epóxi e uma fibra de vidro 600 g/m² apresentou o melhor desempenho mecânico, elevando a carga de ruptura até 6x em comparação com as amostras onde nenhum reforço foi aplicado. Os resultados demonstrados pelos reforços propostos são promissores e aumentam a possibilidade de aplicar rochas exóticas frágeis como materiais de construção, além do critério proposto fornecer uma ferramenta importante para a compreensão mecânica prévia de produtos de rocha que utilizam reforços compósitos. / A great number of coarse-grained natural stones have very high added-value when used as building materials, the so called exotic stones. However, problems using these materials arise from its brittleness behavior, which are related to its very heterogeneous texture. Glass fiber-reinforced epoxy composite (GFRC) is being used to improve mechanical performance of such stones when employed as building materials. The objectives of this present investigation it were studying the Brazilian traditional reinforcement to determinate its efficiency and, at the same time, a number of alternative solutions were proposed and evaluated through experimental mechanical characterization. It was proposed a slope-based criterion to evaluate the useful service loads of pegmatitic materials when glass fiber-reinforcement is applied. To validate the proposed criterion, a digital image correlation (DIC) system was employed to observe and measure strain and fracture behavior during the realization of 4-point bending tests. Both proposed criterion and DIC show that crack propagation occurs long before the material reaches maximum load. GFRC acts as a crack inhibitor, raising the breaking load up to 6x in comparison with the specimens where no reinforcement was applied. The results from this study enhance the capability to apply such materials as building materials and provide an important tool to perform prior mechanical understanding of stone products using GFRC.

Abstract Electrostatic interactions are very important in biomolecular systems. Electrostatic forces have received a great deal of attention due to their long-range nature and the trade-off between desolvation and interaction effects. It remains a challenging task to study and to predict the effects of electrostatic interactions in biomolecular systems. Computer simulation techniques that account for such interactions are an important tool for the study of biomolecular electrostatics. This study is largely concerned with the role of electrostatic interactions in biomolecular systems and with developing novel models to estimate the strength of such interactions. First, a novel formulation based upon continuum electrostatics to compute the electrostatic potential in and around two biomolecules in a solvent with ionic strength is presented. Many, if not all, current methods rely on the (non)linear Poisson-Boltzmann equation to include ionic strength. The present formulation, however, describes ionic strength through the inclusion of explicit ions, which considerably extends its applicability and validity range. The method relies on the boundary element method (BEM) and results in two very similar coupled integral equations valid on the dielectric boundaries of two molecules, respectively. This method can be employed to estimate the total electrostatic energy of two protein molecules at a given distance and orientation in an electrolyte solution with zero to moderately high ionic strength. Secondly, to be able to study interactions between biomolecules and membranes, an alternative model partly based upon the analytical continuum electrostatics (ACE) method has been also formulated. It is desirable to develop a method for calculating the total solvation free energy that includes both electrostatic and non-polar energies. The difference between this model and other continuum methods is that instead of determining the electrostatic potential, the total electrostatic energy of the system is calculated by integrating the energy density of the electrostatic field. This novel approach is employed for the calculation of the total solvation free energy of a system consisting of two solutes, one of which could be an infinite slab representing a membrane surface.

Que ce soit dans l’automobile avec des contraintes thermiques ou dans l’aérospatial et lenucléaire soumis à des rayonnements ionisants, l’environnement entraîne l’apparition de fautesdans les systèmes électroniques. Ces fautes peuvent être transitoires ou permanentes et vontinduire des résultats erronés inacceptables dans certains contextes applicatifs. L’utilisation decomposants dits « rad-hard » est parfois compromise par leurs coûts élevés ou les difficultésd’approvisionnement liés aux règles d’exportation.Cette thèse propose une approche conjointe matérielle et logicielle indépendante de la technologied’intégration permettant d’utiliser des composants numériques programmables dans desenvironnements susceptibles de générer des fautes. Notre proposition comporte la définitiond’une Architecture Reconfigurable à Gros Grains (CGRA) capable d’exécuter des codes applicatifscomplets mais aussi l’ensemble des mécanismes matériels et logiciels permettant de rendrecette architecture tolérante aux fautes. Ce résultat est obtenu par l’association de redondance etde reconfiguration dynamique du CGRA en s’appuyant sur une banque de configurations généréepar une chaîne de programmation complète. Cette chaîne outillée repose sur un flot permettantde porter un code sous forme de Control and Data Flow Graph (CDFG) sur l’architecture enobtenant un grand nombre de configurations différentes et qui permet d’exploiter au mieux lepotentiel de l’architecture.Les travaux, qui ont été validés aux travers d’expériences sur des applications du domaine dutraitement du signal et de l’image, ont fait l’objet de publications en conférences internationaleset de dépôts de brevets. / Whether in automotive with heat stress or in aerospace and nuclear field subjected to cosmic,neutron and gamma radiation, the environment can lead to the development of faults in electronicsystems. These faults, which can be transient or permanent, will lead to erroneous results thatare unacceptable in some application contexts. The use of so-called rad-hard components issometimes compromised due to their high costs and supply problems associated with exportrules.This thesis proposes a joint hardware and software approach independent of integrationtechnology for using digital programmable devices in environments that generate faults. Ourapproach includes the definition of a Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Architecture (CGRA) ableto execute entire application code but also all the hardware and software mechanisms to make ittolerant to transient and permanent faults. This is achieved by the combination of redundancyand dynamic reconfiguration of the CGRA based on a library of configurations generated by acomplete conception flow. This implemented flow relies on a flow to map a code represented as aControl and Data Flow Graph (CDFG) on the CGRA architecture by obtaining directly a largenumber of different configurations and allows to exploit the full potential of architecture.This work, which has been validated through experiments with applications in the field ofsignal and image processing, has been the subject of two publications in international conferencesand of two patents.