Pathline glyphs

Visualization of pathlines is common and highly relevant for the analysis of unsteady flow. However, pathlines can intersect, leading to visual clutter and perceptual issues. This makes it intrinsically difficult to provide expressive visualizations of the entire domain by an arrangement of multiple pathlines, in contrast to well‐established streamline placement techniques. We present an approach to reduce these problems. It is inspired by glyph‐based visualization and small multiples: we partition the domain into cells, each corresponding to a downscaled version of the entire domain. Inside these cells, a single downscaled pathline is drawn. On the overview scale, our pathline glyphs lead to emergent visual patterns that provide insight into time‐dependent flow behavior. Zooming‐in allows us to analyze individual pathlines in detail and compare neighboring lines. The overall approach is complemented with a context‐preserving zoom lens and interactive pathline‐based exploration. While we primarily target the visualization of 2D flow, we also address the extension to 3D. Our evaluation includes several examples, comparison to other flow visualization techniques, and a user study with domain experts.     

Conceptual and basic designs of the Mobile Harbor crane based on topology and shape optimization

The Mobile Harbor (MH) has been recently proposed as a novel maritime cargo transfer system that can move to a container ship anchored in the deep sea and handle containers directly at sea with the aid of a stabilized MH crane. Because this system operates under at-sea conditions, the MH crane must be designed to support an inertia load and wind force, as well as its self-weight. The wave-induced motions of the MH, e.g. rolling, pitching, and heaving, generate a significant amount of inertia load, which has not been considered in the design of conventional quayside cranes installed on stable ground. Wind force is also a critical design factor due to the higher wind velocity in the open sea. In addition to the aforementioned structural rigidity, mass minimization is also important in the structural design of MH cranes because it reduces the overturning moment and therefore enhances ship stability. In this paper, the sensitivities of the design-dependent loads (i.e. self-weight, inertia load, and wind force) are derived with respect to the design variables, and then a topology optimization is conducted with the derived sensitivities in order to obtain a conceptual design. Then, the conceptual design is elaborated into a three-dimensional basic design through shape optimization with design regulations for offshore cranes. Through the integrated design process with the topology and shape optimizations, a conceptual and basic design is successfully obtained for the MH crane.     

Cure kinetics of high performance epoxy resin systems

Summary Isothermal cure kinetics ofEPON HPT 1071/DDS system have been performed by means of differential scanning calorimetry. The maximum cure rate and the extent of conversion at various DDS concentrations were studied as a function of cure temperature. Maximum cure rate increases with increasing cure temperature and DDS concentration. At various DDS concentrations, the maximum cure rate occured between 19–22% conversion. In order to evaluate the kinetic parameters, numerical calculations by means of a Newton-Raphson technique and experimental results obtained from the peak of reaction rate curve were undertaken.     

Synthesis and physicochemical characterization of amphiphilic block copolymer self‐aggregates formed by poly(ethylene glycol)‐block‐poly(ϵ‐caprolactone)

Diblock copolymers with different poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL) block lengths were synthesized by ring‐opening polymerization of ε‐caprolactone in the presence of monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol) (mPEG‐OH, MW 2000) as initiator. The self‐aggregation behaviors and microscopic characteristics of the diblock copolymer self‐aggregates, prepared by the diafiltration method, were investigated by using ¹H NMR, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and fluorescence spectroscopy. The PEG–PCL block copolymers formed the self‐aggregate in an aqueous environment by intra‐ and/or intermolecular association between hydrophobic PCL chains. The critical aggregation concentrations of the block copolymer self‐aggregate became lower with increasing hydrophobic PCL block length. On the other hand, reverse trends of mean hydrodynamic diameters were measured by DLS owing to the increasing bulkiness of the hydrophobic chains and hydrophobic interaction between the PCL microdomains. The partition equilibrium constants (K_v) of pyrene, measured by fluorescence spectroscopy, revealed that the inner core hydrophobicity of the nanoparticles increased with increasing PCL chain length. The aggregation number of PCL chain per one hydrophobic microdomain, investigated by the fluorescence quenching method using cetylpyridinium chloride as a quencher, revealed that 4–20 block copolymer chains were needed to form a hydrophobic microdomain, depending on PCL block length. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 99: 3520–3527, 2006     

Sulfonated polyimide and poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate based semi‐interpenetrating polymer network membranes for fuel cells

Semi‐interpenetrating polymer network (semi‐IPN) membranes based on novel sulfonated polyimide (SPI) and poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) have been prepared for the fuel cell applications. SPI was synthesized from 1,4,5,8‐naphthalenetetracarboxylic dianhydride, 4,4′‐diaminobiphenyl 2,2′‐disulfonic acid, and 2‐bis [4‐(4‐aminophenoxy) phenyl] hexafluoropropane. PEGDA was polymerized in the presence of SPI to synthesize semi‐IPN membranes of different ionic contents. These membranes were characterized by determining, ion exchange capacity, water uptake, water stability, proton conductivity, and thermal stability. The proton conductivity of the membranes increased with increasing PEGDA content in the order of 10^?1 S cm^?1 at 90°C. These interpenetrating network membranes showed higher water stability than the pure acid polyimide membrane. This study shows that semi‐IPN SPI membranes based on PEGDA which gives hydrophilic group and structural stability can be available candidates comparable to Nafion® 117 over 70°C. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2007     

Object tracking based on an online learning network with total error rate minimization

This paper presents a visual object tracking system which is tolerant to external imaging factors such as illumination, scale, rotation, occlusion and background changes. Specifically, an integration of an online version of total-error-rate minimization based projection network with an observation model of particle filter is proposed to effectively distinguish between the target object and the background. A re-weighting technique is proposed to stabilize the sampling of particle filter for stochastic propagation. For self-adaptation, an automatic updating scheme and extraction of training samples are proposed to adjust to system changes online. Our qualitative and quantitative experiments on 16 public video sequences show convincing performances in terms of tracking accuracy and computational efficiency over competing state-of-the-art algorithms.     

Nonparametric approach for uncertainty-based multidisciplinary design optimization considering limited data

Uncertainty-based multidisciplinary design optimization (UMDO) has been widely acknowledged as an advanced methodology to address competing objectives and reliable constraints of complex systems by coupling relationship of disciplines involved in the system. UMDO process consists of three parts. Two parts are to define the system with uncertainty and to formulate the design optimization problem. The third part is to quantitatively analyze the uncertainty of the system output considering the uncertainty propagation in the multidiscipline analysis. One of the major issues in the UMDO research is that the uncertainty propagation makes uncertainty analysis difficult in the complex system. The conventional methods are based on the parametric approach could possibly cause the error when the parametric approach has ill-estimated distribution because data is often insufficient or limited. Therefore, it is required to develop a nonparametric approach to directly use data. In this work, the nonparametric approach for uncertainty-based multidisciplinary design optimization considering limited data is proposed. To handle limited data, three processes are also adopted. To verify the performance of the proposed method, mathematical and engineering examples are illustrated.     

Quantification model of proper curvature for large‐sized curved TVs

We present a feasible modeling method to estimate the proper curvature for large‐sized curved TVs. We especially focused on two factors – preference and perceived distortion – to be considered to determine the proper curvature. The preference includes a number of advantages that people expect to fulfill the possibilities of a more immersive image and sense of realism from curved display. On the other hand, the perceived distortion means the side effects that people can notice uncomfortable feeling caused by the shape of a curved one. In order to find out how two factors would be different as a number of conditions like curvature, size, and viewing angle change, a series of subjective assessments were conducted. The evaluation results show that both the preference and perceived distortion vary with the conditions considerably. We performed the statistical analysis based on the results and proposed the quantification model of proper curvature, which has higher preference and less perceived distortion, for various‐sized curved TVs.     

Move blocking strategy applied to re-entrant manufacturing line scheduling

Model predictive control (MPC)-based approach to fab-wide scheduling has been suggested to solve constraint-aware production optimization and in-process inventory level control simultaneously at each scheduling instance. However, application of this approach to real fab suffers from computational difficulties brought by the need to solve a huge optimization problem on-line as real fab scheduling problems are characterized by long cycle times, multiple product types, hundreds of machines/processing steps and re-entrant product flows. This study explores the use of an offset-blocking strategy combined with a modified recursive least square (RLS) estimation in the fab-wide scheduler, in order to alleviate the difficulty. The strategy is tested on a modified version of published case study called Intel Mini-Fab (IMF) problem. Despite its simplicity, the blocking strategy showed excellent performance in the face of realistic demand changes and plant/model mismatch.     

Note: High speed optical profiler based on a phase-shifting technique using frequency-scanning lasers

We present a high speed optical profiler (HSOP) using frequency-scanning lasers for three-dimensional profile measurements of microscopic structures. To improve upon previous techniques for implementing the HSOP, we developed frequency-scanning lasers and a compact microscopic interferometer. The controller of the HSOP was also modified to generate proper phase-shifting steps. For measurements of step height specimens, the HSOP showed results comparable with a commercial optical profiler, even with much higher measurement speeds (up to 30 Hz). The typical repeatability of step height measurement was less than 1 nm. We also present measurements of microscopic structures to verify the HSOP's ability to perform high speed inline inspection for the semiconductor and flat-panel display industries.