Supporting Focus and Context Awareness in 3D Modelling Tasks Using Multi‐Layered Displays

Most 3D modelling software have been developed for conventional 2D displays, and as such, lack support for true depth perception. This contributes to making polygonal 3D modelling tasks challenging, particularly when models are complex and consist of a large number of overlapping components (e.g. vertices, edges) and objects (i.e. parts). Research has shown that users of 3D modelling software often encounter a range of difficulties, which collectively can be defined as focus and context awareness problems. These include maintaining position and orientation awarenesses, as well as recognizing distance between individual components and objects in 3D spaces. In this paper, we present five visualization and interaction techniques we have developed for multi‐layered displays, to better support focus and context awareness in 3D modelling tasks. The results of a user study we conducted shows that three of these five techniques improve users' 3D modelling task performance.     

Measuring height of high-voltage transmission poles using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery

Aerial imagery is important in remote sensing applications. Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has a wide range of applications in remote sensing and presents a substantial cost-effective solution when monitoring objects on the earth’s surface. Moreover, object detection and classification are important aspects of global information system, especially for remote sensing applications and power line monitoring, which are essential for the proper distribution of electricity to consumers. Manual inspection consumes much time and involves risk, especially in remote areas that host dangerous wildlife; hence, UAV-based approaches are more feasible for such monitoring. The authors propose an UAV approach that utilises a digital surface model and incorporates a stereo matching algorithm based on UAV stereo images. The proposed algorithm was based on a graph-cut (GC) algorithm that measured the disparity map. Results were compared with well-known algorithms; including, for example, global and local stereo matching algorithms. The proposed solution introduces and integrates ordering constraints along with a submodular energy minimisation function to/with the GC algorithm to enhance performance. The authors measured sensitivity and recall for all parameters against ground truth data for differently cropped images of 16 power poles. Results showed that the proposed model performed more accurately compared to extant methods.     

A High Performance of ENi–P Coatings on Mechanical and Tribological Properties with Influence of Bath pH on AZ91 Magnesium Alloy

Electroless nickel–phosphorus (ENi–P) coating was carried out on AZ91 magnesium alloy substrates by varying the bath solutions pH. The ENi–P coating process was carried out with sodium hydroxide as the pH adjuster. The effect of bath pH values on surface characteristics and wear resistance properties were investigated after deposition on AZ91 magnesium alloy substrates. Three suitable bath compositions with different pH were prepared for coating the substrates. Encouraging results for ENi–P deposit were obtained when the bath pH value was maintained at 6.5. A smooth and uniform microstructure was observed in the deposit obtained from bath B (6.5 pH). It also enhanced the microhardness and wettability, while the surface roughness of the ENi–P deposit reduced considerably, thereby resulting in better wear resistance and also preventing regular or early failures, and improving service life.     

Analysis of nanocontact problems of layered viscoelastic solids with surface energy effects under different loading patterns

Surface stresses have a remarkable effect on nanocontact response of layered viscoelastic solids, especially under specific loading patterns. In the framework of nonlinear viscoelastic contact mechanics, a numerical model is developed to investigate the quasistatic nanocontact response of elastically layered viscoelastic solids under different loading patterns. The developed model accounts for surface energy effects by adopting the complete Gurtin–Murdoch surface elasticity model. The Schapery’s constitutive viscoelastic creep model is used for the stress, strain, and time relationships. The transient term in the creep compliance is expressed by Prony’s series. Frictionless contact condition is assumed throughout the contact interface. The equilibrium contact configuration, in which the contact constraints are exactly satisfied without any need for an appropriate value for the penalty parameter, is obtained by using the Lagrange multiplier method in the framework of the Newton–Raphson procedure. The developed model is applied to study and analyze the quasistatic nanocontact response of two different problems under different loading patterns. Results show the significant effect of the type of loading pattern and its rate on the nanocontact response of elastically layered viscoelastic solids.     

Synthesis and optical properties of europium doped zinc silicate prepared using low cost solid state reaction method

This paper presents a study on synthesis and optical properties of Zn₂SiO₄:1 wt% Eu³⁺ at different heat treatments. The objective of the research is to synthesize Zn₂SiO₄:1 wt% Eu³⁺ phosphor by using low cost solid state reaction method with recycled waste bottle glasses as the silicate source. The X-ray diffraction results showed that the prepared Zn₂SiO₄:1 wt% Eu³⁺ phosphors have a sharp diffraction peak as the heat treatment temperatures were increased from 600 to 1000 °C. Furthermore, the morphology from the Field emission scanning electron microscope analysis were shown the formation of well crystalline samples with dense packed grains due to the increment of heat treatment temperatures. Fourier transform infrared spectra has confirmed the present elements in Zn₂SiO₄:1 wt% Eu³⁺ phosphors while the narrow width of Raman line spectra were observed at temperatures ranging from 700 to 1000 °C indicates good homogeneity and crystallinity of synthesized powders. In addition, the energy band gap of europium doped zinc silicate increased dramatically up to 3.62 eV at temperature of 1000 °C. Photoluminescence measurements has also exhibited the red emission corresponding to the ⁵D₀ → ⁷F₂ (600 nm) when viewed under blue excitation.     

Experimental Evaluation of Trilateration-Based Outdoor Localization with LoRaWAN

Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) in the Internet of Things (IoT) domain has been the subject of interest for researchers. There is an increasing demand to localize these IoT devices using LoRaWAN due to the quickly growing number of IoT devices. LoRaWAN is well suited to support localization applications in IoTs due to its low power consumption and long range. Multiple approaches have been proposed to solve the localization problem using LoRaWAN. The Expected Signal Power (ESP) based trilateration algorithm has the significant potential for localization because ESP can identify the signal’s energy below the noise floor with no additional hardware requirements and ease of implementation. This research article offers the technical evaluation of the trilateration technique, its efficiency, and its limitations for the localization using LoRa ESP in a large outdoor populated campus environment. Additionally, experimental evaluations are conducted to determine the effects of frequency hopping, outlier removal, and increasing the number of gateways on localization accuracy. Results obtained from the experiment show the importance of calculating the path loss exponent for every frequency to circumvent the high localization error because of the frequency hopping, thus improving the localization performance without the need of using only a single frequency.     

Triacylglycerols responsible for the onset of nucleation during clouding of palm olein

This paper discusses the results of an investigation to identify triacylglycerols that induce clouding of refined bleached deodorized (RBD) palm olein, which occurred within 24 h after fractionation. The experiments were conducted in a jacketed glass vessel in which the liquid sample was cooled from 70 to 23°C at a predetermined rate. Clouding began at around 28.5°C. The presence of three different types of saturated triglycerides, namely tripalmitin, dipalmitoyl-myristoylglycerol and dipalmitoyl-stearoyl-rac-glycerol, is critical in the formation of nuclei and thus clouding of the RBD palm olein. This conclusion is based on the significant increase in the relative concentration of these components in the nuclei as compared to the mother oil.     

Mullite formation from ethyl silicate and aluminium chlorides

The formation of mullite via gels prepared from technical ethyl silicate and aluminium chlorides has been studied. Normally, gels prepared specifically with the oxide stoichiometry of mullite (3Al₂O₃·2SiO₂) do not form the mineral mullite on firing to 1200° C in the absence of a mineralizer. However, when the stoichiometric gel is homogeneous (achieved by acidic or neutral catalysts during the gel preparation) firing at 1200° C can lead to an almost quantitative yield of mullite. For a homogeneous gel, the presence of strontium or caesium salts, or an organo-tin compound such as dibutyltin diacetate or dibutyltin oxide during the gel preparation promotes almost quantitative conversion to mullite at about 1000° C. There is a threshold concentration under which conversion to mullite is incomplete, some cristobalite being formed. For the organo-tin compounds, the type of aluminium chloride is unimportant and the way in which water for the hydrolysis step is added is also unimportant. When the gel is non-homogeneous, the product obtained on firing contains cristobalite and-alumina or-alumina, with little mullite, even if strontium or caesium salts, or organ-otin compounds are present. A ceramic bond is formed from alumina and some other refractory grains during firing.     

Synthesis of α-alumina powder with internal nanostructures from Al13-cluster

Nanostructured α-alumina powder was synthesized by precipitation and calcination of Al₁₃-clusters that were formed by the hydrolysis of Al³⁺ions with hydroxide. The Al₁₃-clusters were precipitated with oxalic acid by two-stage and one-stage precipitation techniques. The precipitates were calcined in air at 1100 °C. The resulting α-alumina particles were characterized using particle size analyzer, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). The pH and precipitation technique were found to influence the microstructural features of the α-alumina powder produced. Alumina with more extensive nanostructures inside the grain can be produced through the two-stage precipitation technique.