The technology of haptics rendering has greatly enriched development in Multimedia applications, such as teleoperation, gaming, medical and etc., because it makes the virtual object touchable by the human operator(s) in real world. Human head stiffness rendering is significant in haptic interactive applications as it defines the degree of reality in physical interaction of a human avatar created in virtual environment. In a similar research, the haptic rendering approach has two main types: 1) Haptic Information Integration and 2) Deformation Simulation. However, the complexity in anatomic and geometric structure of a human head makes the rendering procedure challenging because of the issues of accuracy and efficiency. In this work, we propose a hybrid method to render the appropriate stiffness property onto a 3D head polygon mesh of an individual user by firstly studying human head's sophisticated deformation behaviour and then rendering such behaviour as the resultant stiffness property on the polygon mesh. The stiffness property is estimated from a semantically registered and shape-adapted skull template mesh as a reference and modeled from soft tissue's deformation behaviour in a nonlinear Finite Element Method (FEM) framework. To render the stiffness property, our method consists of different procedures, including 3D facial landmark detection, models semantic registration using Iterative Closest Point (ICP) technique, adaptive shape modification processed with a modified Weighted Free-Form Deformation (FFD) and FEM Simulation. After the stiffness property is rendered on a head polygon mesh, we perform a user study by inviting participants to experience the haptic feedback rendered from our results. According to the participants' feedback, the head polygon mesh's stiffness property is properly rendered as it satisfies their expectation.

Deep soil mixing to construct stiff columns is one of the methods used today to improve performance of loose ground and remediate liquefaction problems. This research adopts a numerical approach to study seismic performance of soil-cement columnar reinforcements in loose sandy profiles. Different constitutive models were investigated in order to find a model that can properly predict soil behavior during seismic excitations. These models included NorSand, Dafalias-Manzari, Plasticity Model for Sands (PM4Sand) and Pressure-Dependent-Multi-Yield-02 (PDMY02) model. They were employed to predict behavior of soils with different relative densities and under different confining pressures during monotonic and cyclic loading. PDMY02 was identified as the most suitable model to represent soil seismic behavior for the system studied herein. The numerical aspects of the finite element approach were investigated to minimize the unintended numerical miscalculations. The focus was put on convergence tolerance, solver time-step, constraint definition, and, integration, material and Rayleigh damping. This resulted in forming a robust numerical configuration for 3-D nonlinear models that were later used for studying behavior of the reinforced grounds. Nonlinear finite element models were developed to capture the seismic response of columnar reinforced ground during dynamic centrifuge testing. The models were calibrated with results from tests with unreinforced profiles. Thereafter, they were implemented to predict the response of two reinforced profiles during seismic excitations with different intensities and liquefaction triggering. Model predictions were compared with recordings and the possible effects from the reinforcements were discussed. Finally, parametric studies were performed to further evaluate the efficiency of the reinforcements with different extension depths and area replacement ratios. The results collectively showed that the stiff elements, if constructed appropriately, can withstand seismic excitations with different intensities, and provide a firm base for overlying structures. However, the presence of the stiff elements within the loose ground resulted in stronger seismic intensities on the soil surface. The columns were not able to considerably reduce pore water pressure generation, nor prevent liquefaction triggering. The reinforced profiles, comparing to the free-field profiles, had larger settlements on the soil surface but smaller settlements on the columns. The results concluded that utilization of the columnar reinforcements requires great attention as these reinforcements may result in larger seismic intensities at the ground surface, while not considerably reducing the ground deformations. / Ph. D.