The complete analysis of problems of solid mechanics must include the nonlinear effects of large deformations, inelastic material behaviour and changing boundary conditions. The finite element analysis of such problems using continuum finite elements is well established. However, the analysis of such problems using structural finite elements such as beams, plates and shells is still subject to restrictions which do not apply to continuum elements. The removal of these restrictions is important because (i) structural finite elements are widely used in current engineering practice (ii) the reduced number of variables associated with these elements leads to greater computational efficiency. The work carried out and reported in this thesis addresses the following areas of finite element analysis; the geometrically nonlinear analysis of two- and three-dimensional beams subject to arbitrarily large displacements and rotations; the elasto-plastic analysis of two- and three-dimensional beams using both multi-fibre and stress resultant approaches; the nonlinear analysis of two-dimensional reinforced concrete beams; the elasto-plastic analysis of shells using both the multi-layer and stress resultant approaches. A wide range of two- and three-dimensional problems have been analysed and the results reported. These problems cover a large number of two-dimensional beam, frame and arch problems including geometric and material nonlinearity. Results are compared with simple beam theory, other analytical solutions such as elliptic integrals, other finite element results and experimentation. Other problems analysed are three-dimensional beams with geometric and material nonlinearity, imperfect steel plates subject to large deformation elasto-plastic behaviour and two sample shell problems of practical application.

GPS has been used to monitor engineering structures for a number of reasons. One important reason for monitoring high rise buildings (and other engineering structures) is their safety assessment in events of extreme loading, such as earthquakes and storms. Decisions must be made as soon as possible, whether to allow re-occupation of such buildings, or to assess them for further damage. The time required to reach such decisions is cost-critical, both for the building owner or manager and for the agency doing the assessment. Peak inter-storey drift ratio and detection of permanent damage are some of the damage assessment parameters recommended by assessment agencies. Traditionally, accelerometers have been used to monitor these parameters. Accelerometers measure accelerations which are double-integrated to get displacements. These double integrated displacements are then used for computing the inter-storey drift ratios and locating permanent damage. Displacements obtained by double-integration and inter-storey drift ratios by subtraction of these displacements, are often erroneous and unreliable and direct measurement of displacement is preferred. Direct measurement of displacement is required at a number of points along the height of the building. For example, for computing inter-storey drift ratios, measurements of displacement at both the floor level and roof level are required. Such points on buildings and other engineering structures of vertical profile are termed as mid-height points in this thesis. While GPS has been used for deformation monitoring of engineering structures and to assist in damage assessment during and after extreme loading events, its use has been limited to roof top installations. / This research is an attempt to measure displacements at mid-height locations of engineering structures of vertical profile using GPS. (For complete abstract open document).

FundaÃÃo Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientifico e TecnolÃgico / The development of cakes with a reduced sugar content is to attain the market for people with restriction sugar, or who choose to healthier products however, the sugar not only exerts the characteristic sweetness, but also controls the main phenomena responsible for the formation of structural cakes, thus reducing their losses because the structure of the cakes. The objective of the study was to investigate the possible causes of internal deformation (formation of holes) in sponge cakes with reduced calorie. Seven formulations were developed with increasing substitution of sugar for sweeteners solutions (sucralose / acesulfame K) and xanthan gum. Were produced without wheat flour, which flour has been replaced entirely of gluten powder to verify that only the starch contributes to the deformations presented. Later cakes were produced using wheat flour, with the objective of evaluating the effects of replacing sugar to sweeteners for solutions of xanthan gum on the thermal properties of starch gelatinization and apparent viscosity of the dough cakes. The results of cake wheat flour without demonstrated that replacement of the sugar and sweeteners solutions of xanthan gum, negatively interfering on the functions of the proteins, ruling out the possibility that the starch is the sole agent to contribute with the observed deformations. The results of cakes produced with wheat flour indicated that the use of sweeteners and xanthan gum as a sugar substitute exhibited a higher capacity than sugar and starch to bind water system, raising the temperature (To and Tp) and enthalpies gelatinization resulting in the decrease of the degree of gelatinization and the appearance of dark zones, which appears to have been caused by the the accumulation of compounds of Maillard reaction. The results of the viscosity demonstrate that the sweeteners does not interfere with the development of the viscous behavior of the mass being attributed to the use of xanthan gum was unable to maintain the function of the sugar cakes, contributing to a low volume and formation of holes in the internal structure of cakes. Further study on the stability of the air cells in solutions of gum and / or with other bulking agents such as emulsifiers is suggested. / O desenvolvimento de bolos com reduzido teor de aÃÃcar visa atingir o mercado de pessoas com restriÃÃo ao aÃÃcar, ou que optam por produtos mais saudÃveis no entanto, o aÃÃcar nÃo exerce apenas a doÃura caracterÃstica, mas tambÃm controla os principais fenÃmenos responsÃveis pela formaÃÃo estrutural dos bolos, portanto sua reduÃÃo causa prejuÃzos a estrutura dos bolos. Objetivou-se investigar as possÃveis causas da deformaÃÃo interna (formaÃÃo de buracos) em bolos tipo esponja com reduzido teor calÃrico. Para tanto desenvolveram-se sete formulaÃÃes com substituiÃÃes crescentes do aÃÃcar por soluÃÃes adoÃantes (sucralose/ acessulfame K) e goma xantana. Foram produzidos sem farinha de trigo farinha que foi substituÃda integralmente por glÃten em pà para verificar se apenas o amido contribui para as deformaÃÃes apresentadas. Depois foram produzidos bolos usando a farinha de trigo, objetivando avaliar os efeitos da substituiÃÃo do aÃÃcar pelas soluÃÃes dos adoÃantes com goma xantana sobre as propriedades tÃrmicas de gelatinizaÃÃo do amido e viscosidade aparente da massa dos bolos. Os resultados dos bolos sem farinha de trigo, demonstraram que a substituiÃÃo do aÃÃcar pelas soluÃÃes dos adoÃantes e da goma xantana, interferiram negativamente nas funÃÃes das proteÃnas, descartando a possibilidade do amido ser o Ãnico agente a contribuir com as deformaÃÃes observadas. Os resultados dos bolos produzidos com farinha de trigo revelaram que o uso dos adoÃantes e goma xantana como substituto do aÃÃcar apresentaram uma capacidade superior ao aÃÃcar e o amido de ligar-se a Ãgua do sistema, elevando as temperaturas (To e Tp) e entalpias de gelatinizaÃÃo resultando no decrÃscimo do grau de gelatinizaÃÃo e o surgimento de zonas escuras, que parece ter sido ocasionado pelo acumulo de compostos da reaÃÃo de maillard. Os resultados referentes a viscosidade demostram que os adoÃantes nÃo interferem no desenvolvimento do comportamento viscoso da massa, sendo atribuÃdo ao uso da goma xantana que nÃo conseguiu suprir a ausÃncia funcional do aÃÃcar nos bolos, contribuindo para o baixo volume e formaÃÃo dos buracos na estrutura interna dos bolos. Sugere-se um estudo mais aprofundado sobre a estabilidade das cÃlulas de ar em soluÃÃes de goma e/ ou associados a outros agentes de volume como os emulsificantes.

Le mécanisme menant à des déformations structurales suivant le bombardement d'échantillons de a-Si d'un faisceau d'ions lourds et rapides est sujet de controverses. Nous nous sommes penchés sur l'hypothèse de la formation d'une zone liquide causée par la déposition d'énergie des ions incidents dans le contexte de la théorie du pic thermique. Des échantillons de silicium amorphe furent préparés dans le but d'observer les indices d'une transition de phase l-Si/a-Si suivant la déposition locale d'énergie sur le parcours d'un ion lourd énergétique dans le a-Si. Les échantillons furent implantés d'impuretés de Cu ou d'Ag avant d'être exposés à un faisceau d'ions Ag12+ de 70 MeV. L'utilisation de l'analyse GISAXS est projetée afin d'observer une concentration locale d'impuretés suivant leur ségrégation sur la trace de l'ion. Des masques d'implantation nanométriques d'oxide d'aluminium ont été fabriqués afin d'augmenter la sensibilité de l'analyse GISAXS et une méthode d'alignement de ces masques selon la direction du faisceau fut développée. Le bombardement d'échantillons au travers de ces masques a donné lieu à un réseau de sites d'impacts isolés presque équidistants. / The machanisms underlying structural deformations following swift heavy ion beam a-Si irradiation are subject of debate. We investigated the hypothesis of the presence of a liquid phase in the wake of the energetic ions in the thermal spike framework. a-Si samples were prepared in order to track a transient liquid phase by implanting Cu or Ag on the a-Si surface and exposing the sample to a 70 MeV Ag12+ beam. Cu and Ag are both very sensitive to segregation in Si and are therefore thought to be capable of keeping track of a molten transient state by concentrating on the ion track. Samples are to be investigated with GISAXS. Nanoscale implantation masks were developed from nanoporous alumina membranes in order to impose a pattern on the ion impact sites and thus improve GISAXS sensitivitity. An alignment method is also developed for the positioning of pores parallel to the ion beam direction. A nearly equidistant impact sites pattern was achieved by irradiating fused silica through these implantation masks.

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The increasing occurrence of structural deformations in the electrodes of the jelly roll has raised quality concerns during battery manufacturing, emphasizing the need to detect them automatically with the advanced techniques. This thesis aims to explore and provide two models based on traditional computer vision (CV) and deep neural network (DNN) techniques using computed tomography (CT) scan images of jelly rolls to ensure that the product is of high quality. For both approaches, electrode peaks as keypoints of anodes and cathodes in prismatic lithium battery jelly rolls are detected to extract the geometric features to identify if a particular jelly roll has some structural deformations. For traditional CV methods, the images undergo some pre-processing steps, extraction of foreground through adaptive thresholding, and morphological operations to extract contour edges, followed by applying Harris corner detector to detect electrode peaks. However, this approach shows limitations in detecting small or negative distance differences in deformed images. Furthermore, this study proposes another approach based on supervised transfer learning using pre-trained deep learning models on annotated data. After exploring different architectures, the VGG19 model pre-trained on ImageNet dataset outperformed as compared to other architectures, even with insufficient training data, achieving a maximum accuracy of 93.13 % for 1-pixel distance, 98.87 % for 5-pixel distance and 99.29 % for 10-pixel distance on test data, where the performance metrics, such as Percentage of Correct Keypoint (PCK), Mean-Square Error and Huber loss are utilized. As a result, this baseline proves to be a valuable tool for detecting structural deformations in jelly rolls. Moreover, a GUI-based executable application is developed using both approaches for raising the OK or NG flags for detecting structural deformations in each jelly roll. / Den ökande förekomsten av strukturella deformationer av elektroderna i så kallade jelly rolls har väckt kvalitetsproblem under batteritillverkning, och betonat behovet av att upptäcka dem automatiskt med avancerade tekniker. Denna avhandling syftar till att utforska och tillhandahålla två modeller baserade på traditionell datorseende (CV) och djupa neurala nätverk (DNN) tekniker med hjälp av bilder från datortomografisk skanning (CT) av jelly rolls för att säkerställa att produkten är av hög kvalitet. För båda metoderna detekteras elektrodtoppar som nyckelpunkter på anoder och katoder i prismatiska litiumbatteriers jelly rolls för att extrahera de geometriska egenskaperna för att identifiera om en viss jelly roll har några strukturella deformationer. För traditionella CV-metoder genomgår bilderna några förbehandlingssteg, extraktion av förgrund genom adaptiv tröskling och morfologiska operationer för att extrahera konturkanter, följt av användning av Harris hörndetektor för att upptäcka elektrodtoppar. Denna metod visar dock begränsningar i att detektera små eller negativa avståndsskillnader i deformerade bilder. Vidare föreslår denna studie en annan metod baserad på övervakad överföringsinlärning med förtränade djupinlärningsmodeller på annoterade data. Efter att ha utforskat olika arkitekturer presterade VGG19-modellen förtränad på ImageNet-datasetet bättre jämfört med andra arkitekturer, även med otillräcklig träningsdata, och uppnådde en maximal noggrannhet på 91,56% för 1-pixels avstånd, 97,49% för 5-pixels avstånd och 98,91% för 10-pixels avstånd på testdata, där prestationsmått som procentandel av korrekta nyckelpunkter (PCK), medelkvadratfel och Huber-förlust används. Som ett resultat visar sig denna grundlinje vara ett värdefullt verktyg för att upptäcka strukturella deformationer i jelly rolls. Dessutom har exekverbar applikation med grafiskt gränssnitt utvecklats med båda metoderna för att höja OK/NG-flaggorna för att upptäcka strukturella deformationer i varje jelly roll.