Free body diagrams of an Asphalt Roller were designed for several load cases and used for an optimisation study. Assumptions for the load calculations for each load case were carried out in MATLAB®. The Roller was built in I-DEAS® and the results were compared with the theoretical results / F.B.D av en Asfalt Vältar designerades för olika last fall och användas för en optimisation studier. Antagandena för de olika last beräkningarna utfördas i MATLAB. Vältar byggdes i I-DEAS och resultaten jämfördes med de teoretiska. / Kungsmarks vägen 97 37144 Karlskrona - Sweden Telefon 045510316

This research emerges from an observation that Douglas Adams’s Hitch Hiker Series is not merely characterised by light-hearted comedy, but is underpinned by intricate philosophical ideas, especially those of twentieth century Existentialism and the related notion of absurdity. The study also investigates the interlaced functions of Adams’s fantasy and landscapes of alterity. Paradoxically, Adams’s fantastical creatures serve to illuminate the human condition and the follies and monstrosities that lurk at the heart of humanity. Not only does Adams’s fantasy mirror the maladies of twentieth century society, thus serving a satirical function, but it is also a mechanism for constructing meaning in the shape of alternative realities. Concepts related to alterity, such as simulation (Baudrillard), the structure of ‘reality’, dreaming (Descartes) and parallel universes are investigated as building blocks of Adams’s fantastic story space. Furthermore, the ideas of Sartre, Camus and other originators of Existentialism, a philosophy which considers the futility of existence and the compulsion to construct subjective meaning, are elucidated and explored in relation to Adams’s work. Existentialist concepts such as facticity and angst, as well as the Beckettian universe and the Theatre of the Absurd, are also discussed in the light of the Hitch Hiker series. Adams’s extensive satirical comment is also emphasised in this study. Adams’s satire does not merely castigate the evils of twentieth century society such as capitalism and bureaucracy, it also unmasks universal human vices such as pomposity and grandiosity, vices that are rooted in the rejection of objective morality. Although Adams comments on the folly at the heart of society, he also presents the reader with an alternative: the subjective reconstruction of one’s inner world in an attempt to spin individual webs of meaning from the nothingness at the world’s core. This study also investigates the ambiguous concept of madness as a subjective reality born of the necessity to construct meaning, and analyses Adams’s alternative landscapes based on the suggestion that ‘much madness is divinest sense’ (Emily Dickenson, in Ferguson et al., 1996: 1015). / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / English / MA / unrestricted

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В магистерской диссертации определены закономерности изменения тягово-эксплуатационных свойств и конструктивной безопасности автопоезда при модернизации тягово-сцепного устройства, уточнены методики определения параметров опорно-поворотного устройства с наклонной поворотной платформой, предложены конструкции тягово-сцепных устройств и представлены результаты испытаний масштабной модели автопоезда на ленточной конвейерной дорожке. / This master thesis the regularities of the change of traction and the performance and structural safety of the trains when upgrading trailer hitch, refined methods of determining the parameters of support-rotating device with a tilted turntable and the proposed design of the hitch and the results of tests of scale model train on a conveyor track.