Publications

Bohnen, F, Stolpe, M, Deuse, J & Morik, K 2013, 'Using a Clustering Approach with Evolutionary Optimized Attribute Weights to Form Product Families for Production Leveling' in Lecture Notes in Production Engineering, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 189-202.
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Eigner, M, Ernst, J, Roubanov, D, Deuse, J, Schallow, J & Erohin, O 2013, 'Product Assembly Information to Improve Virtual Product Development' in Lecture Notes in Production Engineering, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 303-313.
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Gürtler, MR & Lindemann, U 2013, 'Using Boolean operators for modeling complex logical dependencies in matrices', pp. 117-123.
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The success of Open Innovation mainly depends on the right choice of external partners and the right way to integrate them into the company's innovation process. Situative Open Innovation supports companies by analyzing their specific situation, suitable external actors and deriving efficient Open Innovation methods. Due to various inter-dependencies between the key-criteria for determining the situation, actors and methods an appropriate notation is necessary to depict the inherent logical connections. This paper presents a matrix-based approach using Boolean operators to model these inter-dependencies. The approach combines a numerical encoding of Boolean operator types and a path domain for depicting distinct dependencies.

Konrad, B, Lieber, D & Deuse, J 2013, 'Striving for Zero Defect Production: Intelligent Manufacturing Control Through Data Mining in Continuous Rolling Mill Processes' in Lecture Notes in Production Engineering, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 215-229.
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Mahabaleswar, US & Saha, SC 2013, 'Analytical solution of a walters’ liquid b flow over a linear stretching sheet in a porous medium' in Focus on Porous Media Research, pp. 121-130.
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This Chapter represents the analytical solution of a two-dimensional linear stretching sheet problem involving a non-Newtonian liquid and suction by (a) invoking the boundary layer approximation and (b) using this result to solve the stretching sheet problem without using boundary layer approximation. The basic boundary layer equations for momentum, which are non-linear partial differential equations, are converted into non-linear ordinary differential equations by means of similarity transformation. The results reveal a new analytical procedure for solving the boundary layer equations arising in a linear stretching sheet problem involving a non-Newtonian liquid (Walters’ liquid B). The present study sheds light on the analytical solution of a class of boundary layer equations arising in the stretching sheet problem.

Peynot, T, Fitch, R, McAllister, R & Alempijevic, A 2013, 'Resilient Navigation through Probabilistic Modality Reconfiguration', Springer Verlag, Berlin, Germany, pp. 75-88.
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This paper proposes an approach to achieve resilient navigation for indoor mobile robots. Resilient navigation seeks to mitigate the impact of control, localisation, or map errors on the safety of the platform while enforcing the robot's ability to achieve its goal. We show that resilience to unpredictable errors can be achieved by combining the benefits of independent and complementary algorithmic approaches to navigation, or modalities, each tuned to a particular type of environment or situation. In this paper, the modalities comprise a path planning method and a reactive motion strategy. While the robot navigates, a Hidden Markov Model continually estimates the most appropriate modality based on two types of information: context (information known a priori) and monitoring (evaluating unpredictable aspects of the current situation). The robot then uses the recommended modality, switching between one and another dynamically. Experimental validation with a SegwayRMP-based platform in an office environment shows that our approach enables failure mitigation while maintaining the safety of the platform. The robot is shown to reach its goal in the presence of: 1) unpredicted control errors, 2) unexpected map errors and 3) a large injected localisation fault. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

Piyathilaka, L & Kodagoda, S 2013, 'Human Activity Recognition for Domestic Robots.' in Alvarez, LM, Corke, PI & Roberts, JM (eds), Field and Service Robotics - Results of the 9th International Conference, December 9-11, 2013, Brisbane, Australia, Springer, Springer, pp. 395-408.
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Ward, P, Liu, D, Waldron, K & Hasan, M 2013, 'OPTIMAL DESIGN OF A MAGNETIC ADHESION FOR CLIMBING ROBOTS' in Waldron, KJ & Tokhi, MO (eds), Nature-Inspired Mobile Robotics, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, pp. 375-382.
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© 2013 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Designing a magnetic adhesion system for climbing robots requires careful selection of design parameters to achieve a feasible solution. There are many considerations which must be taken into account, such as, size constraints for the intended environment and robot configuration, the maximum load that can be supported by the climbing robot, and the expected air gaps during operation. With consideration of the design challenges, an optimal design for a magnetic adhesion system is presented. Based on the optimal design a prototype footpad has been constructed for use on an inchworm climbing robot and experimental results are presented.

Abeywardena, D, Kodagoda, S, Dissanayake, G & Munasinghe, R 2013, 'Improved State Estimation in Quadrotor MAVs A Novel Drift-Free Velocity Estimator', IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 32-39.
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In this article, we presented a novel state estimator for quadrotor MAVs, where clear improvements in estimates stemming from the incorporation of quadrotor-specific dynamical constraints were demonstrated. Our design is based on an EKF and is capable of estimating both roll and pitch angles of the attitude, in addition to X and Y components of the body frame translational velocities within a bounded error. This estimator is applied to inertial data gathered from real-world flight experiments. The resulting attitude and velocity estimates obtained match closely with the ground truth and are drift free.

Al-Zubaydi, AY 2013, 'Building Models Design And Energy Simulation With Google Sketchup And Openstudio', Journal of Advanced Science and Engineering Research, vol. 3, no. 4.
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The necessity to approach the zero net building design and the improving of building thermal performance augmented the need to use the energy simulation programmes in order to estimate the building energy consumption and virtually modify the structure and the construction material. Energy Plus software from the US Department of Energy introduced a plug-in for Google SketchUp drawing software known as Open Studio, this tool can be considered as a free licences powerful simulation tool available for all engineers to estimate and modify the buildings energy consumption. In this paper we presented a step by step simulation procedure to explain the software capability and encourage the use of the tool by engineers interested in energy efficiency calculations

Benesch, N, Hartung, J, Schallow, J, Deuse, J & Ferstl, H 2013, 'Unternehmenskooperationen in der Digitalen Fabrik', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 108, no. 5, pp. 295-299.
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Kurzfassung Mit zunehmender Etablierung von Unternehmenskooperationen steigt auch die Forderung nach einer effizienten Produktionsplanung in den entstehenden Netzwerken. Eine strukturierte Kooperation im Bereich der Digitalen Fabrik, wie etwa die Produktionsplanung, ist ein wesentlicher Erfolgsfaktor, stellt jedoch Unternehmen derzeit noch vor große Herausforderungen. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt ein Konzept zur Integration der verteilten Produktionsplanung in Unternehmenskooperation im Rahmen der Digitalen Fabrik vor.

Blamires, SJ & Spencer, R-J 2013, 'Influence of Habitat and Predation on Population Dynamics of the Freshwater TurtleMyuchelys georgesi', Herpetologica, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 46-57.
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Blamires, SJ, Hou, C, Chen, L-F, Liao, C-P & Tso, I-M 2013, 'Three-dimensional barricading of a predatory trap reduces predation and enhances prey capture', Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, vol. 67, no. 5, pp. 709-714.
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Blamires, SJ, Wu, C-C, Wu, C-L, Sheu, H-S & Tso, I-M 2013, 'Uncovering Spider Silk Nanocrystalline Variations That Facilitate Wind-Induced Mechanical Property Changes', Biomacromolecules, vol. 14, no. 10, pp. 3484-3490.
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Bohnen, F, Buhl, M & Deuse, J 2013, 'Systematic procedure for leveling of low volume and high mix production', CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 53-58.
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The application of conventional leveling approaches is limited to large scale production. This paper presents a systematic procedure for leveling of low volume and high mix production. It employs clustering techniques to group product types into product families. After that, a family-based leveling pattern is created which describes a repetitive sequence of capacity slots considering all families. According to the leveling pattern, each family is manufactured within a periodic interval. The paper provides a brief overview of the systematic procedure. It focuses on the creation of the leveling pattern using operations research methods and presents a real life application. © 2012 CIRP.

Brunner, C, Peynot, T, Vidal‐Calleja, T & Underwood, J 2013, 'Selective Combination of Visual and Thermal Imaging for Resilient Localization in Adverse Conditions: Day and Night, Smoke and Fire', Journal of Field Robotics, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 641-666.
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Long‐term autonomy in robotics requires perception systems that are resilient to unusual but realistic conditions that will eventually occur during extended missions. For example, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) need to be capable of operating safely in adverse and low‐visibility conditions, such as at night or in the presence of smoke. The key to a resilient UGV perception system lies in the use of multiple sensor modalities, e.g., operating at different frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, to compensate for the limitations of a single sensor type. In this paper, visual and infrared imaging are combined in a Visual‐SLAM algorithm to achieve localization. We propose to evaluate the quality of data provided by each sensor modality prior to data combination. This evaluation is used to discard low‐quality data, i.e., data most likely to induce large localization errors. In this way, perceptual failures are anticipated and mitigated. An extensive experimental evaluation is conducted on data sets collected with a UGV in a range of environments and adverse conditions, including the presence of smoke (obstructing the visual camera), fire, extreme heat (saturating the infrared camera), low‐light conditions (dusk), and at night with sudden variations of artificial light. A total of 240 trajectory estimates are obtained using five different variations of data sources and data combination strategies in the localization method. In particular, the proposed approach for selective data combination is compared to methods using a single sensor type or combining both modalities without preselection. We show that the proposed framework allows for camera‐based localization resilient to a large range of low‐visibility conditions.

Cagno, E & Trianni, A 2013, 'Exploring drivers for energy efficiency within small- and medium-sized enterprises: First evidences from Italian manufacturing enterprises', Applied Energy, vol. 104, pp. 276-285.
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Cagno, E, Worrell, E, Trianni, A & Pugliese, G 2013, 'A novel approach for barriers to industrial energy efficiency', Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, vol. 19, pp. 290-308.
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Cai, B, Huang, S, Liu, D, Yuan, S, Dissanayake, G, Lau, H & Pagac, D 2013, 'Multiobjective Optimization for Autonomous Straddle Carrier Scheduling at Automated Container Terminals', IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON AUTOMATION SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 711-725.
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A multiobjective optimization model is presented in this paper for the Autonomous Straddle Carriers Scheduling (ASCS) problem in automated container terminals, which is more practical than the single objective model. The model considers three objectives [ i.e., Straddle Carriers (SCs) traveling time, SC waiting time and finishing time of high-priority container-transferring jobs], and their weighted sum is investigated as the representative example. The presented model is formulated as a pickup and delivery problem with time windows in the form of binary integer programming. An exact algorithm based on Branch-and-Bound with Column Generation (BBCG) is employed for solving the multiobjective ASCS problem. Based on the map of an actual fully automated container terminal, simulation results are compared with the single-objective scheduling to demonstrate the effectiveness and flexibility of the presented multiobjective model, as well as the efficacy of the BBCG algorithm for autonomous SC scheduling. © 2012 IEEE.

Cai, K, Qin, QH, Luo, Z & Zhang, AJ 2013, 'Robust topology optimisation of bi-modulus structures', Computer-Aided Design, vol. 45, no. 10, pp. 1159-1169.
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This study proposes a robust topology optimisation method for the design of bi-modulus structures under uncertain multiple loading conditions (MLC). The objective of the design optimisation is to minimise the standard deviation of the weighted structural compliance. The gradient-based method is applied to perform a sensitivity analysis for the identification of optimal design variables. A material replacement method is used to overcome difficulty in the sensitivity analysis due to the stress-dependent behaviour of the original bi-modulus material. In the material replacement operation, two new isotropic materials are identified to replace the original bi-modulus material according to its two moduli. To reduce the side effects of the material replacement operation on the final design, the local stiffness is modified in terms of the stress state. Typical numerical examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method to the final design, including the load uncertainty on the optimal bi-modulus layout, as well as other factors, such as loading direction and the ratio between the two moduli of the bi-modulus material. The comparison between layouts of isotropic and bi-modulus materials also shows that the final bi-modulus material distribution is sensitive to loading directions in practical designs.

Carmichael, MG & Liu, D 2013, 'Estimating Physical Assistance Need Using a Musculoskeletal Model', IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 60, no. 7, pp. 1912-1919.
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Technologies that provide physical assistance during tasks are often required to provide assistance specific to the task and person performing it. An example is robotic rehabilitation in which the assistance-as-needed (AAN) paradigm aims to provide operators with the minimum assistance required to perform the task. Current approaches use empirical performance-based methods which require repeated observation of the specific task before an estimate of the needed assistance can be determined. In this paper, we present a new approach utilizing a musculoskeletal model (MM) of the upper limb to estimate the operator's assistance needs with respect to physical tasks. With capabilities of the operator defined at the muscular level of the MM, an optimization model is used to estimate the operator's strength capability. Strength required to perform a task is calculated using a task model. The difference or gap between the operator's strength capability and the strength required to execute a task forms the basis for the new AAN paradigm. We show how this approach estimates the effects of limb pose, load direction, and muscle impairments on a person's ability to perform tasks. © 1964-2012 IEEE.

Cheng, XW, Jiang, ZY, Wei, DB, Hao, L, Zhao, JW, Peng, JG, Lu, SZ & Jiang, LZ 2013, 'Effect of Water Vapor on Oxidation of Ferritic Stainless Steel 21Cr-0.6Mo-Nb-Ti in Simulated Reheating Environment', Advanced Materials Research, vol. 690-693, pp. 280-289.
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High temperature oxidation of ferritic stainless steel 21Cr-0.6Mo-Nb-Ti was carried out isothermally at 1100 oC under different water vapour content conditions in an electrical furnace. Water vapour does accelerate the formation of oxide scale of stainless steel 21Cr-0.6Mo-Nb-Ti, however, it is not significant. Some oxide grains consist of spinel crystal structure, which should be spinel Manganese Chromite. In dry air atmosphere, the grain of the spinel is more and bigger than that in wet air. No breakaway oxidation occurs in the experiment indicating that 21Cr-0.6Mo-Nb-Ti has very high oxidation resistance, which might be contributed by the formation of MnCr2O4and compact protective chromia. In addition, continuous silica formed along and accumulated at the oxide metal interface performs like a diffusion barrier.

Davidson, PL, Wilson, SJ, Chalmers, DJ, Wilson, BD, Eager, D & McIntosh, AS 2013, 'Analysis of Energy Flow During Playground Surface Impacts', Journal of Applied Biomechanics, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 628-633.
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The amount of energy dissipated away from or returned to a child falling onto a surface will influence fracture risk but is not considered in current standards for playground impact-attenuating surfaces. A two-mass rheological computer simulation was used to model energy flow within the wrist and surface during hand impact with playground surfaces, and the potential of this approach to provide insights into such impacts and predict injury risk examined. Acceleration data collected on-site from typical playground surfaces and previously obtained data from children performing an exercise involving freefalling with a fully extended arm provided input. The model identified differences in energy flow properties between playground surfaces and two potentially harmful surface characteristics: more energy was absorbed by (work done on) the wrist during both impact and rebound on rubber surfaces than on bark, and rubber surfaces started to rebound (return energy to the wrist) while the upper limb was still moving downward. Energy flow analysis thus provides information on playground surface characteristics and the impact process, and has the potential to identify fracture risks, inform the development of safer impact-attenuating surfaces, and contribute to development of new energy-based arm fracture injury criteria and tests for use in conjunction with current methods.

Dietz, C, Richter, R & Deuse, J 2013, 'Variantenmanagement im Simultaneous Engineering', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 108, no. 5, pp. 325-329.
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Kurzfassung Viele Unternehmen verfolgen im Produktentstehungsprozess voneinander getrennte Initiativen im Variantenmanagement sowie im Simultaneous Engineering. Eine integrierte Betrachtung wurde bisher jedoch noch nicht umgesetzt. Das hier vorgestellte Vorgehen verbindet die externen Anforderungen des Marktes mit der internen Umsetzung auf Produkt- und Fertigungsebene, um ein konsistentes System bestehend aus der Produktstruktur und dem Fertigungssystem zur Herstellung von Varianten zu ermöglichen.

Eager, DB, Scarrott, C, Nixon, J & Alexander, K 2013, 'Injury survey of a non-traditional 'soft-edged' trampoline designed to lower equipment hazards', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INJURY CONTROL AND SAFETY PROMOTION, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 42-49.
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In Australia trampolines contribute one quarter of all childhood play equipment injuries. The objective of this study was to gather and evaluate injury data from a non-traditional, 'soft-edged', consumer trampoline, where the design aimed to minimise injuries from the equipment and from falling off. The manufacturer of the non-traditional trampoline provided the University of Technology Sydney with their Australian customer database. The study involved surveys in Queensland and New South Wales, between May 2007 and March 2010. Initially injury data was gathered by a phone interview pilot study, then in the full study, through an email survey. The 3817 respondents were the carers of child users of the 'soft-edge' trampolines. Responses were compared with Australian and US emergency department data. In both countries the proportion of injuries caused by the equipment and falling off was compared with the proportion caused by the jumpers to themselves or each other. The comparisons showed a significantly lower proportion resulted from falling-off or hitting the equipment for this design when compared to traditional trampolines, both in Australia and the US. This research concludes that equipment-induced and falling-off injuries, the more severe injuries on traditional trampolines, can be significantly reduced with appropriate trampoline design. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Gao, XJ, Zhang, Q, Wei, DB, Jiao, SH & Jiang, ZY 2013, 'Dry Sliding Wear of As-Cast and Thermomechanically Processed Low Chromium White Cast Iron', Advanced Materials Research, vol. 797, pp. 725-730.
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This investigation attempts to improve the wear resistance of low chromium white cast iron (LCCI) by thermomechanical treatment. The thermomechanical treatment of the brittle LCCI with crack-free was successfully carried out by bonding it with a ductile low carbon steel firstly. Afterwards the dry sliding wear behavior of as-cast (LCCI-A) and thermomechanically processed (LCCI-B) samples was studied using a pin-on-disc apparatus under different test conditions. The microstructural examination shows that the refined supercooled austenite and plenty of secondary carbides in LCCI-B replaced the original microstructure of martensite and retained austenite with network carbide in LCCI-A. This significant evolution is beneficial to form and stabilise the oxide layer on the substrate, which makes the oxidational wear rather than abrasive wear or delamination dominating the wear process so that the improvement of the wear resistance of LCCI was achieved by hot working.

Gao, XJ, Zhang, Q, Wei, DB, Jiao, SH & Jiang, ZY 2013, 'Effects of thermal and thermomechanical treatments on sliding wear of graphite crystallised white cast iron', Wear, vol. 301, no. 1-2, pp. 656-662.
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The effects of thermal and thermomechanical treatments on sliding wear of graphite crystallised white cast iron (GWCI) were studied. Due to the inherent embrittlement of GWCI, a laminated metal in which the GWCI is cladded by low carbon steel was prepared for this study. Three cylindrical samples (GWCI-A, GWCI-B and GWCI-C) were machined from the same laminate. GWCI-A was kept in as-cast state while GWCI-B and GWCI-C underwent the thermal and thermomechanical treatments, respectively. The pin-on-disc type sliding wear tests were performed on the GWCI layers at room temperature. The microstructures and wear mechanisms were analysed by optical microscope, scanning electron microscope and the Vickers hardness test. Experimental results demonstrated that the GWCI, after laminating with ductile steel, can be deformed at high temperature with crack-free. The thermomechanical treatment produced a finer microstructure and crushed primary carbides in GWCI-C. Both GWCI-B and GWCI-C displayed plenty of secondary carbides in supercooled austenitic matrix, which was more favourable to squeeze the graphite and form the oxide layers than the matrix of martensite plus retained austenite in GWCI-A. The wear resistance of GWCI-C was superior to that of GWCI-A and GWCI-B because the oxidational wear rather than delamination dominated the sliding wear process.

Hao, L, Di, HS, Gong, DY, Wei, DB & Jiang, ZY 2013, 'Advanced Flatness Control Strategies for Multivariable Optimisation Flatness Control System of Foil Rolling Mill', Advanced Materials Research, vol. 655-657, pp. 1450-1455.
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In cold strip or foil rolling, flatness control is an integral part of modern mill. This paper introduces two typical flatness control systems, pattern recognisation flatness control system and multivariable flatness control. It is found that the latter is effective and has wider application fields. The FEM models of its core parameters, flatness actuator efficiency, are constructed. Influencing factors, such as the rolling force, bending force as well as the tilting force are discussed. Control strategies are proposed for foil rolling. The results demonstrate that the control strategies can reduce flatness error and improve flatness quality.

Hasan, MN, Saha, SC & Gu, YT 2013, 'Mixed Convection Over a Horizontal Plate With Streamwise Non-Uniform Surface Temperature Distribution', Journal of Heat Transfer, vol. 135, no. 7.
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Numerical investigation on mixed convection of a two-dimensional incompressible laminar flow over a horizontal flat plate with streamwise sinusoidal distribution of surface temperature has been performed for different values of Rayleigh number, Reynolds number and frequency of periodic temperature for constant Prandtl number and amplitude of periodic temperature. Finite element method adapted to rectangular nonuniform mesh elements by a nonlinear parametric solution algorithm basis numerical scheme has been employed. The investigating parameters are the Rayleigh number, the Reynolds number and frequency of periodic temperature. The effect of variation of individual investigating parameters on mixed convection flow characteristics has been studied to observe the hydrodynamic and thermal behavior for while keeping the other parameters constant. The fluid considered in this study is air with Prandtl number 0.72. The results are obtained for the Rayleigh number range of 102 to 104, Reynolds number ranging from 1 to 100 and the frequency of periodic temperature from 1 to 5. Isotherms, streamlines, average and local Nusselt numbers are presented to show the effect of the different values of aforementioned investigating parameters on fluid flow and heat transfer.

Hasselmann, V-R, Maschek, T, Bohnen, F & Deuse, J 2013, 'Taktgebundene Fließmontage in der Großgerätemontage', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 108, no. 1-2, pp. 32-36.
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Kurzfassung Die Vorgehensweise einer taktgebundenen Montage im Einzelstückfluss hat sich als Konzept zur Organisation von Produktionsabläufen in der Serienfertigung bewährt. In der Großgerätemontage kommt das Prinzip einer taktgebundenen Montage im Einzelstückfluss angesichts der vorherrschenden Randbedingungen bislang nur selten bzw. eingeschränkt zum Einsatz. Dieser Beitrag diskutiert Produkt- und Mitarbeiterfluss als Form der Montageorganisation und stellt diese anhand eines reifegradorientierten Implementierungsleitfadens vor.

Hill, J, Kirby, R & Williams, P 2013, 'Improving the design of dissipative silencers used in HVAC and gas turbine applications', Acoustics Bulletin, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 43-46.
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James Hill, AAF, Ray Kirby and Paul Williams from School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, discuss how efforts are being made to improve the design of dissipative silencers used in HVAC and gas turbine applications. Two Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) projects have been undertaken jointly by Brunel University and Caice Acoustic Air Movement Ltd., and Brunel University and AAF Ltd., to assess the suitability of these traditional design methods in a modern engineering environment. AAF and Caice have commissioned test rigs in accordance with ISO 7235 to achieve these objectives. AAF has utilized a reverberation room as the termination condition and measurement location whereas Caice has used an in-duct measurement with anechoic termination. is a significant undertaking to design and construct a test rig conforming to ISO 7235, with many tests needing to be performed and a large amount of work tweaking the design to meet the criteria set out in ISO 7235.

Hossain, MA, Saleem, M, Saha, SC & Nakayama, A 2013, 'Conduction-radiation effect on natural convection flow in fluid-saturated non-Darcy porous medium enclosed by non-isothermal walls', Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 687-702.
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Kersten, W, Skirde, H & Lammers, T 2013, 'Komplexitätscontrolling in Logistiksystemen', Controlling, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 90-95.
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In this paper we show a methodology to derive recommendations for the optimization and controlling of complexity in logistics systems, taking the example of the distribution. Based on an assessment and a visualization of the complexity, a structured deduction of multiple approaches is conducted and subsequently applied in the case study of a 3rd party logistics provider.

Khushaba, RN, Kodagoda, S, Lal, S & Dissanayake, G 2013, 'Uncorrelated fuzzy neighborhood preserving analysis based feature projection for driver drowsiness recognition', FUZZY SETS AND SYSTEMS, vol. 221, no. 1, pp. 90-111.
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Driver drowsiness is reported as one of the main causal factors in many traffic accidents as it progressively impairs the driver's awareness about external events. Drowsiness detection can be approached through monitoring physiological signals while driving to correlate drowsiness with the change in the corresponding patterns of the Electroencephalogram (EEG), Electrooculogram (EOG), and Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. The main challenge in such an approach is to extract a set of features that can highly discriminate between the different drowsiness levels. This paper proposes a new Fuzzy Neighborhood Preserving Analysis (FNPA) feature projection method that is used to extract the discriminant information relevant to the loss of attention caused by drowsiness. Unlike existing methods, FNPA considers the fuzzy memberships of the input measurements into the different classes while constructing the graph Laplacian. Thus, it is able to identify both the discriminant and the geometrical structure of the input data while accounting for the overlapping nature of the drowsiness patterns. Furthermore, in order to address the singularity problem that occurs in many real world problems, the singular value decomposition (SVD), and later the QR-Decomposition, are utilized to extract a set of statistically uncorrelated features presenting the Uncorrelated FNPA (UFNPA). In the current preliminary study with datasets collected from 31 subjects only, while performing a driving simulation task, the proposed method is capable of accurately classifying the drowsiness levels using a small number of features with an average accuracy of 93%93%. On the other hand, the possibility of developing a subject-independent drowsiness recognition system is also investigated when the problem is converted into a binary classification task, as imposed by the number of drowsiness levels exhibited by the drivers, with accuracies ranging from 82%-to-84%.

Khushaba, RN, Kodagoda, S, Liu, D & Dissanayake, G 2013, 'Muscle computer interfaces for driver distraction reduction', COMPUTER METHODS AND PROGRAMS IN BIOMEDICINE, vol. 110, no. 2, pp. 137-149.
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Driver distraction is regarded as a significant contributor to motor-vehicle crashes. One of the important factors contributing to driver distraction was reported to be the handling and reaching of in-car electronic equipment and controls that usually requires taking the drivers' hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. To minimize the amount of such distraction, we present a new control scheme that senses and decodes the human muscles signals, denoted as Electromyogram (EMG), associated with different fingers postures/pressures, and map that to different commands to control external equipment, without taking hands off the wheel. To facilitate such a scheme, the most significant step is the extraction of a set of highly discriminative feature set that can well separate between the different EMG-based actions and to do so in a computationally efficient manner. In this paper, an accurate and efficient method based on Fuzzy Neighborhood Discriminant Analysis (FNDA), is proposed for discriminant feature extraction and then extended to the channel selection problem. Unlike existing methods, the objective of the proposed FNDA is to preserve the local geometrical and discriminant structures, while taking into account the contribution of the samples to the different classes. The method also aims to efficiently overcome the singularity problems of classical LDA by employing the QR-decomposition. Practical real-time experiments with eight EMG sensors attached on the human forearm of eight subjects indicated that up to fourteen classes of fingers postures/pressures can be classified with <7% error on average, proving the significance of the proposed method. © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Khushaba, RN, Wise, C, Kodagoda, S, Louviere, J, Kahn, BE & Townsend, C 2013, 'Consumer neuroscience: Assessing the brain response to marketing stimuli using electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye tracking', EXPERT SYSTEMS WITH APPLICATIONS, vol. 40, no. 9, pp. 3803-3812.
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Kuhlang, P, Hempen, S, Edtmayr, T, Sihn, W & Deuse, J 2013, 'Systematische Verbesserung von Wertströmen', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 108, no. 1-2, pp. 15-19.
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Kurzfassung Wertstromdesign und die kurzzyklische Verbesserungsroutine werden im Zuge des Modells des Wertstromorientierten Prozessmanagements in den organisatorischen Rahmen des Prozessmanagements eingebettet, um eine systematische Verbesserung von Wertströmen in verschiedenen Betrachtungsebenen und Detaillierungsgraden methodisch zu unterstützen. Somit wird eine vertiefte und nachhaltigere Umsetzung des kontinuierlichen Verbesserungsprozesses ermöglicht.

Kuhlang, P, Hempen, S, Sihn, W & Deuse, J 2013, 'Systematic improvement of value streams - fundamentals of value stream oriented process management', International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1-1.
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Improving processes is a daily base challenge for enterprises. In particular improvement attempts occur in various different levels of detail and are commonly not linked methodically. Process management systems in general are suitable approaches to manage process improvements. A systematic routine to improve processes and value stream mapping (VSM) are integrated into the organisational framework of process management in order to enable a methodically fostered improvement of value streams in different levels of detail. The outlined approach to systematise the application of VSM is the conjunction of volatile and short-cyclic improvements of a value stream and the determination of target-conditions in order to develop the value stream towards an ideal-state which is specified by productivity and quality criteria. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Li, F, Luo, Z, Sun, G & Zhang, N 2013, 'An uncertain multidisciplinary design optimization method using interval convex models', Engineering Optimization, vol. 45, no. 6, pp. 697-718.
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This article proposes an uncertain multi-objective multidisciplinary design optimization methodology, which employs the interval model to represent the uncertainties of uncertain-but-bounded parameters. The interval number programming method is applied to transform each uncertain objective function into two deterministic objective functions, and a satisfaction degree of intervals is used to convert both the uncertain inequality and equality constraints to deterministic inequality constraints. In doing so, an unconstrained deterministic optimization problem will be constructed in association with the penalty function method. The design will be finally formulated as a nested three-loop optimization, a class of highly challenging problems in the area of engineering design optimization.An advanced hierarchical optimization scheme is developed to solve the proposed optimization problem based on the multidisciplinary feasible strategy, which is a wellstudied method able to reduce the dimensions of multidisciplinary design optimization problems by using the design variables as independent optimization variables. In the hierarchical optimization system, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II, sequential quadratic programming method and GaussSeidel iterative approach are applied to the outer, middle and inner loops of the optimization problem, respectively. Typical numerical examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Li, H, Jiang, Z, Wei, D & Zhang, X 2013, 'Microtexture based analysis of surface asperity flattening behavior of annealed aluminum alloy in uniaxial planar compression', Tribology International, vol. 66, pp. 282-288.
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During the uniaxial planar compression of annealed aluminum alloy, a novel approach to determine surface asperity flattening (roughness R-a) is employed by analyzing the evolution of surface microtexture. With an increase in gauged reduction, surface asperity tends to be flattened, and strain hardening increases. Lubrication can constrain the surface asperity flattening process. Development of surface asperity features shows the obvious dependency on [111] orientation. In-grain slips contribute significantly to the evolution of surface microtexture. Influence of deformation twins (brass orientation) on the evolution of microtexture is not obvious under our current experimental conditions.

Li, HJ, Jiang, ZY & Wei, DB 2013, 'Study on effect of strain rate on 3D surface asperity flattening in uniaxial planar compression by crystal plasticity finite element modelling', Wear, vol. 301, no. 1-2, pp. 11-18.
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As an important parameter of surface quality for metal manufacturing products, surface roughness is affected by the following parameters: original roughness, friction, grain size, grain orientation, stress-strain state, and work hardening. Previously, effects of friction and gauged reduction and wavelength on surface roughness have already been studied by a 2D surface asperity model in uniaxial planar compression. On the basis of previous results, a 3D surface asperity model is developed by employing rate-dependent crystal plasticity constitutive model in finite element software ABAQUS. Results from electron back scatter diffraction(EBSD) and atomic force microscope(AFM) experiments have also been input into the 3D model. Influences of strain rate and texture have been discussed in this paper. The calculated results show a good agreement with experimental results. With an increase of reduction, the surface asperity flattening under a lower strain rate tends to accelerate; grain size and roughness decrease while hardness and stress increase. Under the same reduction, surface roughness with higher strain rate 0.01 s(-1) has a larger flattening rate (lower roughness R-a) than that of surface roughness with lower strain rate 0.001 s(-1). In this study, increased strain rate has no obvious effect on texture.

Lieber, D, Erohin, O & Deuse, J 2013, 'Wissensentdeckung im industriellen Kontext', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 108, no. 6, pp. 388-393.
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Kurzfassung Die effektive Nutzung der Ressource Wissen zur Entscheidungsunterstützung in Produktions- und Planungsprozessen ist heute für den Unternehmenserfolg von höchster Bedeutung. Moderne Informationstechnologien ermöglichen eine strukturierte digitale Speicherung großer Datenmengen, ihre effiziente Auswertung zwecks Wissensentdekkung wird jedoch selten fokussiert. Im Beitrag wird ein systematisches Vorgehen zur Wissensentdeckung im Kontext industrieller Produktion dargestellt und anhand von Anwendungsbeispielen erläutert.

Lu, HN, Wei, DB, Jiang, ZY, Liu, XH & Manabe, K 2013, 'Modelling of size effects in microforming process with consideration of grained heterogeneity', Computational Materials Science, vol. 77, no. 1, pp. 44-52.
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Size effect is a special phenomenon in metal micro-forming process. As the deformation process is scale down to micro/mesoscale, the characteristics of single grain involved in the deformed region play a significant role on the material mechanical behaviours resulting in the invalidation of classical theories in microforming. This paper presents a newly developed material model in microscale on the basis of the grained heterogeneity (e.g. grain size, shape and deformability) and specimen dimension. Voronoi tessellation has been employed to describe the polycrystalline aggregate. The grain shape is controlled by the centroidal-voronoi algorithm to drive grains into steady state. Hardness of the grains obtained from Nano-indentation is used to identify the scatter of the grained deformability. Applying the new material model, the micro-compression test of pure copper is numerically simulated by finite element method (FEM). The influences of grain size and feature size on the deformation behaviours are discussed. The numerical simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental results in terms of the flow stress curves and profile of deformed parts. Based on the novel material model, a FE model of microcross wedge rolling is established and the obtained results show the strain of specimen core region increases with the magnification of grain size.

Luo, Q & Tong, L 2013, 'Adaptive pressure-controlled cellular structures for shape morphing I: design and analysis', Smart Materials and Structures, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 055014-055014.
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Luo, Q & Tong, L 2013, 'Adaptive pressure-controlled cellular structures for shape morphing: II. Numerical and experimental validation', Smart Materials and Structures, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 055015-055015.
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Luo, Z, Zhang, N, Wang, Y & Gao, W 2013, 'Topology optimization of structures using meshless density variable approximants', International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, vol. 93, no. 4, pp. 443-464.
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SUMMARYThis paper proposes a new structural topology optimization method using a dual‐level point‐wise density approximant and the meshless Galerkin weak‐forms, totally based on a set of arbitrarily scattered field nodes to discretize the design domain. The moving least squares (MLS) method is used to construct shape functions with compactly supported weight functions, to achieve meshless approximations of system state equations. The MLS shape function with the zero‐order consistency will degenerate to the well‐known ‘Shepard function’, while the MLS shape function with the first‐order consistency refers to the widely studied ‘MLS shape function’. The Shepard function is then applied to construct a physically meaningful dual‐level density approximant, because of its non‐negative and range‐restricted properties. First, in terms of the original set of nodal density variables, this study develops a nonlocal nodal density approximant with enhanced smoothness by incorporating the Shepard function into the problem formulation. The density at any node can be evaluated according to the density variables located inside the influence domain of the current node. Second, in the numerical implementation, we present a point‐wise density interpolant via the Shepard function method. The density of any computational point is determined by the surrounding nodal densities within the influence domain of the concerned point. According to a set of generic design variables scattered at field nodes, an alternative solid isotropic material with penalization model is thus established through the proposed dual‐level density approximant. The Lagrangian multiplier method is included to enforce the essential boundary conditions because of the lack of the Kronecker delta function property of MLS meshless shape functions. Two benchmark numerical examples are employed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, in particular its applicabili...

Mondal, RN, Islam, S, Uddin, K & Hossain, A 2013, 'Effects of aspect ratio on unsteady solutions through curved duct flow', Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, vol. 34, no. 9, pp. 1107-1122.
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The effects of the aspect ratio on unsteady solutions through the curved duct flow are studied numerically by a spectral based computational procedure with a temperature gradient between the vertical sidewalls for the Grashof number 100 ≤ Gr ≤ 2 000. The outer wall of the duct is heated while the inner wall is cooled and the top and bottom walls are adiabatic. In this paper, unsteady solutions are calculated by the time history analysis of the Nusselt number for the Dean numbers Dn = 100 and Dn = 500 and the aspect ratios 1 ≤ γ ≤ 3. Water is taken as a working fluid (Pr = 7.0). It is found that at Dn = 100, there appears a steady-state solution for small or large Gr. For moderate Gr, however, the steady-state solution turns into the periodic solution if γ is increased. For Dn = 500, on the other hand, it is analyzed that the steady-state solution turns into the chaotic solution for small and large Gr for any γ lying in the range. For moderate Gr at Dn = 500, however, the steady-state flow turns into the chaotic flow through the periodic oscillating flow if the aspect ratio is increased. © 2013 Shanghai University and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Oberst, S, Lai, JCS & Marburg, S 2013, 'Guidelines for numerical vibration and acoustic analysis of disc brake squeal using simple models of brake systems', Journal of Sound and Vibration, vol. 332, no. 9, pp. 2284-2299.
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Paul, G, Kwok, N & Liu, D 2013, 'A novel surface segmentation approach for robotic manipulator-based maintenance operation planning', AUTOMATION IN CONSTRUCTION, vol. 29, pp. 136-147.
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This paper presents a novel approach to segmenting a three-dimensional surface map by considering the task requirements and the movements of an industrial robot manipulator. Maintenance operations, such as abrasive blasting, that are performed by a field robot manipulator can be made more efficient by exploiting surface segmentation. The approach in this paper utilises an aggregate of multiple connectivity graphs, with graph edges defined by task constraints, and graph vertices that correspond to small, maintenance-specific target surfaces, known as Scale-Like Discs (SLDs). The task constraints for maintenance operations are based on the characteristics of neighbouring SLDs. The combined connectivity graphs are analysed to find clusters of vertices, thus segmenting the surface map into groups of related SLDs. Experiments conducted in three typical bridge maintenance environments have shown that the approach can reduce garnet usage by 10%-40% and reduce the manipulator joint movements by up to 35%. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Peng, P, Blamires, SJ, Agnarsson, I, Lin, H-C & Tso, I-M 2013, 'A Color-Mediated Mutualism between Two Arthropod Predators', Current Biology, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 172-176.
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Ruppert, MG & Moheimani, SOR 2013, 'A novel self-sensing technique for tapping-mode atomic force microscopy', Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 84, no. 12, pp. 125006-125006.
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This work proposes a novel self-sensing tapping-mode atomic force microscopy operation utilizing charge measurement. A microcantilever coated with a single piezoelectric layer is simultaneously used for actuation and deflection sensing. The cantilever can be batch fabricated with existing micro electro mechanical system processes. The setup enables the omission of the optical beam deflection technique which is commonly used to measure the cantilever oscillation amplitude. Due to the high amount of capacitive feedthrough in the measured charge signal, a feedforward control technique is employed to increase the dynamic range from less than 1 dB to approximately 35 dB. Experiments show that the conditioned charge signal achieves excellent signal-to-noise ratio and can therefore be used as a feedback signal for atomic force microscopy imaging.

SAURET, E, SAHA, SC & GU, Y 2013, 'NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF PARTICLE DEPOSITION IN METAL FOAM HEAT EXCHANGERS', International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Engineering, vol. 02, no. 03n04, pp. 1350016-1350016.
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Australia is a high-potential country for geothermal power with reserves currently estimated in the tens of millions of petajoules, enough to power the nation for at least 1000 years at current usage. However, these resources are mainly located in isolated arid regions where water is scarce. Therefore, wet cooling systems for geothermal plants in Australia are the least attractive solution and thus air-cooled heat exchangers are preferred. In order to increase the efficiency of such heat exchangers, metal foams have been used. One issue raised by this solution is the fouling caused by dust deposition. In this case, the heat transfer characteristics of the metal foam heat exchanger can dramatically deteriorate. Exploring the particle deposition property in the metal foam exchanger becomes crucial. This paper is a numerical investigation aimed to address this issue. Two-dimensional (2D) numerical simulations of a standard one-row tube bundle wrapped with metal foam in cross-flow are performed and highlight preferential particle deposition areas.

Schneider, S, Bellmann, A, Fallböhmer, M, Sousanabady, RJ & Deuse, J 2013, 'Agiler Ansatz für eine globale Prozessplanung', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 108, no. 5, pp. 310-314.
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Kurzfassung In einer globalen Produktion erfolgt die Prozessplanung zumeist in verteilten Planungsteams. Die hierdurch entstehenden Anforderungen an den Planungsprozess sind eine gesteigerte Kommunikation, erhöhte Transparenz, reduzierte Komplexität sowie ein verstärkter Wissenstransfer. Als geeigneten Lösungsansatz stellt dieser Beitrag die neu entwickelte Methodik der Agilen Prozessplanung im Produktentstehungsprozess (APP) vor und beschreibt die Ergebnisse der Erprobung in der betrieblichen Praxis.

Schuba, C, Elsässer, G, Eickelmann, M & Deuse, J 2013, 'Investitionsermittlung für hochflexible Verbundfertigungssysteme', Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb, vol. 108, no. 6, pp. 421-425.
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Kurzfassung Auf Grund erhöhtem Zeit– und Kostendruck verlagern produzierende Unternehmen zunehmend die Planungsaktivitäten und -entscheidungen in die frühen Phasen der Produktentstehung. Insbesondere die stark wachsende Varianz und Komplexität von Produkten führt zu steigenden Anforderungen an die Gestaltung von Produktionssystemen. Eine wesentliche Komponente zur Unterstützung von Entscheidungsprozessen in der Produktentstehung ist die prospektive Ermittlung von Investitionskosten für die Integration neuer Varianten in bestehende Fertigungsstrukturen. Dieser Beitrag beschreibt eine Methodik zur Ermittlung von Investitionskosten in frühen Phasen der Produktentstehung.

Shi, L & Kodagoda, S 2013, 'Towards generalization of semi-supervised place classification over generalized Voronoi graph', Robotics and Autonomous Systems, vol. 61, no. 8, pp. 785-796.
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With the progress of humanrobot interaction (HRI), the ability of a robot to perform high-level tasks in complex environments is fast becoming an essential requirement. To this end, it is desirable for a robot to understand the environment at both geometric and semantic levels. Therefore in recent years, research towards place classification has been gaining in popularity. After the era of heuristic and rulebased approaches, supervised learning algorithms have been extensively used for this purpose, showing satisfactory performance levels. However, most of those approaches have only been trained and tested in the same environments and thus impede a generalized solution. In this paper, we have proposed a semisupervised place classification over a generalized Voronoi graph (SPCoGVG) which is a semi-supervised learning framework comprised of three techniques: support vector machine (SVM), conditional random field (CRF) and generalized Voronoi graph (GVG), in order to improve the generalizability. The inherent problem of training CRF with partially labeled data has been solved using a novel parameter estimation algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated through extensive analysis of data collected in international university environments.

Sick, N, Golembiewski, B & Leker, J 2013, 'The influence of raw material prices on renewables diffusion', Foresight, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 477-491.
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Purpose: There are several approaches trying to explain the diffusion of renewable energy technologies (RET). The most commonly used instruments are learning and experience curves, followed by further economic, policy- and barrier-related analyses. In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding, additional influence factors on RET diffusion have to be studied. This paper aims to contribute to research on RET diffusion by adding the raw material price perspective. Design/methodology/approach: The authors develop a regression model to test the influence of raw material prices on RET diffusion, using investments in RET capacities as indicators of diffusion, and crude oil and natural gas prices as well as public R&D subsidies as main independent variables. The model is then applied to emerging RET (wind and solar power) for electricity generation in 18 OECD-countries. Findings: In the case of wind power, the model shows an adequate fit and a highly significant impact of oil as well as gas prices on investments in RET capacity. In the case of solar power, the impact of raw material prices proves to be highly significant as well, but the weak model fit demands further adjustments of the parameters. Originality/value: Theoretical implications include the expansion of existing RET diffusion models to a raw material price component. From a practical point of view, the authors provide a starting basis for the systematic integration of raw material price developments into companies' planning and forecasting processes. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Siddiqa, S, Hossain, MA & Saha, SC 2013, 'Natural Convection Flow in a Strong Cross Magnetic Field With Radiation', Journal of Fluids Engineering, vol. 135, no. 5.
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The problem of magnetohydrodynamic natural convection boundary layer flow of an electrically conducting and optically dense gray viscous fluid along a heated vertical plate is analyzed in the presence of strong cross magnetic field with radiative heat transfer. In the analysis radiative heat flux is considered by adopting optically thick radiation limit. Attempt is made to obtain the solutions valid for liquid metals by taking Pr ≪1. Boundary layer equations are transformed in to a convenient dimensionless form by using stream function formulation (SFF) and primitive variable formulation (PVF). Nonsimilar equations obtained from SFF are then simulated by implicit finite difference (Keller-box) method whereas parabolic partial differential equations obtained from PVF are integrated numerically by hiring direct finite difference method over the entire range of local Hartmann parameter, ξ. Further, asymptotic solutions are also obtained for large and small values of local Hartmann parameter ξ. A favorable agreement is found between the results for small, large and all values of ξ. Numerical results are also demonstrated graphically by showing the effect of various physical parameters on shear stress, rate of heat transfer, velocity, and temperature.

Siddiqa, S, Hossain, MA & Saha, SC 2013, 'Natural Convection Flow with Surface Radiation Along a Vertical Wavy Surface', Numerical Heat Transfer, Part A: Applications, vol. 64, no. 5, pp. 400-415.
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Skinner, B, Yuan, S, Huang, S, Liu, D, Cai, B, Dissanayake, G, Lau, H, Bott, A & Pagac, D 2013, 'Optimisation for job scheduling at automated container terminals using genetic algorithm', COMPUTERS & INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 511-523.
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Abstract This paper presents a genetic algorithm (GA)-based optimisation approach to improve container handling operations at the Patrick AutoStrad container terminal located in Brisbane Australia. In this paper we focus on scheduling for container transfers and encode the problem using a two-part chromosome approach which is then solved using a modified genetic algorithm. In simulation experiments, the performance of the GA-based approach and a sequential job scheduling method are evaluated and compared with different scheduling scenarios. The experimental results show that the GA-based approach can find better solutions which improve the overall performance. The GA-based approach has been implemented in the terminal scheduling system and the live testing results show that the GA-based approach can reduce the overall time-related cost of container transfers at the automated container terminal. Crown Copyright © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sojoudi, A & C. Saha, S 2013, 'Shear Thinning and Shear Thickening Non- Newtonian Confined Fluid Flow over Rotating Cylinder', American Journal of Fluid Dynamics, vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 117-121.
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Sojoudi, A, Saha, SC, Gu, YT & Hossain, MA 2013, 'Steady Natural Convection of Non-Newtonian Power-Law Fluid in a Trapezoidal Enclosure', Advances in Mechanical Engineering, vol. 5, pp. 653108-653108.
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Numerical investigation of free convection heat transfer in a differentially heated trapezoidal cavity filled with non-Newtonian Power-law fluid has been performed in this study. The left inclined surface is uniformly heated whereas the right inclined surface is maintained as uniformly cooled. The top and bottom surfaces are kept adiabatic with initially quiescent fluid inside the enclosure. Finite-volume-based commercial software FLUENT 14.5 is used to solve the governing equations. Dependency of various flow parameters of fluid flow and heat transfer is analyzed including Rayleigh number (Ra) ranging from 105 to 107, Prandtl number (Pr) from 100 to 10,000, and power-law index ( n) from 0.6 to 1.4. Outcomes have been reported in terms of isotherms, streamlines, and local Nusselt number for various Ra, Pr, n, and inclined angles. Grid sensitivity analysis is performed and numerically obtained results have been compared with those results available in the literature and were in good agreement.

Steffen, M, Frye, S & Deuse, J 2013, 'Diversity learning factory', WT Werkstattstechnik, vol. 103, no. 3, pp. 233-239.
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Learning factories are innovative learning environments for education and training in Industrial Engineering. Participants create work systems in realistic production environments in order to gain practical experience and knowledge. Besides universities, this opportunity is used by manufacturing enterprises or consulting firms who also establish learning factories. Most previous publications describe individual implementation concepts. Therefore, this paper presents the morphology to compare learning factories.

Teng, PSP, Leong, KF, Kong, PW, Halkon, BJ & Huang, PY 2013, 'The use of rapid prototyping in the design of a customised ankle brace structure for ACL injury risk reduction', Virtual and Physical Prototyping, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 241-247.
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Rapid prototyping, or additive manufacturing, is becoming more useful in creating functional prototypes, especially when customisation is required. This paper explores the use of three-dimensional (3D) printing in designing a customised ankle brace structure for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury risk reduction. A new process is proposed to obtain ankle flexion angles and the corresponding foot surface strain associated with high ACL injury risks through motion analysis. This data is used in the design of the customised ankle brace structure and printed using rapid prototyping. One customised ankle brace structure was printed and tested to demonstrate this proposed framework. The ankle flexion range of motion (ROM) was significantly reduced in the high-risk ankle positions with the ankle brace structure. Rapid prototyping could thus be used to design customised ankle brace structures and this is useful in reducing fabrication time and complexity of customisation. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Thollander, P, Backlund, S, Trianni, A & Cagno, E 2013, 'Beyond barriers – A case study on driving forces for improved energy efficiency in the foundry industries in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Sweden', Applied Energy, vol. 111, pp. 636-643.
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Trianni, A, Cagno, E & Worrell, E 2013, 'Innovation and adoption of energy efficient technologies: An exploratory analysis of Italian primary metal manufacturing SMEs', Energy Policy, vol. 61, pp. 430-440.
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Trianni, A, Cagno, E, Thollander, P & Backlund, S 2013, 'Barriers to industrial energy efficiency in foundries: a European comparison', Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 40, pp. 161-176.
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Trianni, A, Cagno, E, Worrell, E & Pugliese, G 2013, 'Empirical investigation of energy efficiency barriers in Italian manufacturing SMEs', Energy, vol. 49, pp. 444-458.
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Wang, H, Huang, S, Frese, U & Dissanayake, G 2013, 'The nonlinearity structure of point feature SLAM problems with spherical covariance matrices', AUTOMATICA, vol. 49, no. 10, pp. 3112-3119.
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This paper proves that the optimization problem of one-step point feature Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is equivalent to a nonlinear optimization problem of a single variable when the associated uncertainties can be described using spherical covariance matrices. Furthermore, it is proven that this optimization problem has at most two minima. The necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of one or two minima are derived in a form that can be easily evaluated using observation and odometry data. It is demonstrated that more than one minimum exists only when the observation and odometry data are extremely inconsistent with each other. A numerical algorithm based on bisection is proposed for solving the one-dimensional nonlinear optimization problem. It is shown that the approach extends to joining of two maps, thus can be used to obtain an approximate solution to the complete SLAM problem through map joining. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Wang, Y-Q, He, J-J, Luo, Z & Kang, Z 2013, 'An adaptive method for high-resolution topology design', Acta Mechanica Sinica, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 840-850.
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For the purpose of achieving high-resolution optimal solutions this paper proposes a nodal design variable-based adaptive method for topology optimization of continuum structures. The analysis mesh-independent density field, interpolated by the nodal des

Wei, D, Jiang, Z & Han, J 2013, 'Modelling of the evolution of crack of nanoscale in iron', Computational Materials Science, vol. 69, no. 1, pp. 270-277.
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Metal owns the ability of self-healing to some extent, and the ability of the internal crack healing is most desirable for improving the reliability of metal. A molecular dynamics simulation has been further developed to investigate the evolution of a nanoscale crack in body centred cubic Fe crystal under the conditions of heating or compressive pressure. When system temperature drops, the evolution of the crack that was at elevated temperature has been studied for the first time. N-body potential according to the embedded atom method has been adopted. The original nanoscale crack is expressed by removing some atoms in the centre of the cell, and the minimum vertical distance between the atoms on the top and bottom crack surfaces has been defined as Dm for assessing the process of crack evolution. The results show that a crack healing process can be accelerated significantly with an increase of temperature. When the system temperature decreases, Dm of the crack that was in healing process does not change significantly but fluctuates in a narrow range. This means that the crack healing is the result of Fe atoms diffusing into the crack area but not the thermal stress incurred in the simulation cell at elevated temperature. The pre-compressive pressure under the condition of both biaxial and uniaxial loadings can help promote the crack healing significantly and results in more uniform distribution of defects after healing.

Wu, H, Liu, H & Liu, D 2013, 'Two-Dimensional Direction Recognition Using Uniaxial Tactile Arrays', IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 13, no. 12, pp. 4897-4903.
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To allow intuitive communication in human-robot cooperation through tactile information, this paper presents a method to recognize human intended direction in 2-D using a handlebar equipped with uniaxial tactile arrays. The method first extracts various features from the tactile images aiming to reduce computation complexity and increase recognition robustness. A support vector machines classifier was implemented for classifying the intended direction of humans using the extracted features. The algorithm efficiency of using different combinations of features has been investigated and compared through human user studies. In total, five human users in the project team were involved in this research. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve 91.7% recognition accuracy if both the training data and validation data contain tactile images from all the users. The method could still achieve 77.5% recognition accuracy when the training and validation data share no common user. © 2013 IEEE.

Wu, J, Luo, Z, Zhang, Y, Zhang, N & Chen, L 2013, 'Interval uncertain method for multibody mechanical systems using Chebyshev inclusion functions', International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, vol. 95, no. 7, pp. 608-630.
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SUMMARYThis study proposes a new uncertain analysis method for multibody dynamics of mechanical systems based on Chebyshev inclusion functions The interval model accounts for the uncertainties in multibody mechanical systems comprising uncertain‐but‐bounded parameters, which only requires lower and upper bounds of uncertain parameters, without having to know probability distributions. A Chebyshev inclusion function based on the truncated Chebyshev series, rather than the Taylor inclusion function, is proposed to achieve sharper and tighter bounds for meaningful solutions of interval functions, to effectively handle the overestimation caused by the wrapping effect, intrinsic to interval computations. The Mehler integral is used to evaluate the coefficients of Chebyshev polynomials in the numerical implementation. The multibody dynamics of mechanical systems are governed by index‐3 differential algebraic equations (DAEs), including a combination of differential equations and algebraic equations, responsible for the dynamics of the system subject to certain constraints. The proposed interval method with Chebyshev inclusion functions is applied to solve the DAEs in association with appropriate numerical solvers. This study employs HHT‐I3 as the numerical solver to transform the DAEs into a series of nonlinear algebraic equations at each integration time step, which are solved further by using the Newton–Raphson iterative method at the current time step. Two typical multibody dynamic systems with interval parameters, the slider crank and double pendulum mechanisms, are employed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The results show that the proposed methodology can supply sufficient numerical accuracy with a reasonable computational cost and is able to effectively handle the wrapping effect, as cosine functions are incorporated to sharpen the range of non‐monotonic interval functions. Copyright © 2013 ...

Wu, J, Zhang, Y, Chen, L & Luo, Z 2013, 'A Chebyshev interval method for nonlinear dynamic systems under uncertainty', Applied Mathematical Modelling, vol. 37, no. 6, pp. 4578-4591.
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This paper proposes a new interval analysis method for the dynamic response of nonlinear systems with uncertain-but-bounded parameters using Chebyshev polynomial series. Interval model can be used to describe nonlinear dynamic systems under uncertainty with low-order Taylor series expansions. However, the Taylor series-based interval method can only suit problems with small uncertain levels. To account for larger uncertain levels, this study introduces Chebyshev series expansions into interval model to develop a new uncertain method for dynamic nonlinear systems. In contrast to the Taylor series, the Chebyshev series can offer a higher numerical accuracy in the approximation of solutions. The Chebyshev inclusion function is developed to control the overestimation in interval computations, based on the truncated Chevbyshev series expansion. The Mehler integral is used to calculate the coefficients of Chebyshev polynomials. With the proposed Chebyshev approximation, the set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) with interval parameters can be transformed to a new set of ODEs with deterministic parameters, to which many numerical solvers for ODEs can be directly applied. Two numerical examples are applied to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, in particular its ability to effectively control the overestimation as a non-intrusive method. © 2012 Elsevier Inc.

Yang, L, Deuse, J & Jiang, P 2013, 'Multi-objective optimization of facility planning for energy intensive companies', Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1095-1109.
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Because of the energy shortage and energy price rise, energy efficiency becomes a worldwide hot spot problem. It is not only a problem about cost reduction, but also a great contribute to the environmental protection. However, the energy efficiency was always ignored in the past decades. In order to gain more benefit and become more competitive in the market, energy efficiency should be considered as an essential factor in early planning phase. To overcome these problems, a new approach, which introduces energy efficiency as a key criterion into the planning process, is presented in this article. An energy recovery network is built according to the analysis of process and product demands. Afterwards the energy loss of the whole system, transport performance and space demand are simultaneously taken into account with the purpose of finding good facility planning from both energy and economic aspects. Finally, a practical expanding case is used to validate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.

Yang, L, Deuse, J & Jiang, P 2013, 'Multiple-attribute decision-making approach for an energy-efficient facility layout design', The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, vol. 66, no. 5-8, pp. 795-807.
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Due to the trends of energy shortage and energy price rise, energy efficiency, which was always ignored over the past decades, becomes a worldwide hot issue and also a significant challenge for most factories. Therefore, it is necessary to incorporate energy-relevant criterion as a key criterion with traditional criteria in the layout planning phase. As a multiattribute decision-making (MADM) problem, the evaluation and selection of facility layout alternatives are often difficult and time consuming since the criteria generally have different units and conflicting features. In this article, a MADM approach which incorporates the advantages of rough set theory, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is proposed to solve the facility layout design problem with considering both traditional layout criteria and energy relevant criteria. At first, rough set theory is integrated with AHP to determine the weights for each criterion of alternatives. Then, TOPSIS is applied to get the final alternative ranking. Besides, sensitivity analysis for both decision weights and production rates is performed, and a comparison among different decision-making approaches for the same problem is also studied to demonstrate the rationality of the final decision. Finally, a practical expanding case is studied to validate the proposed approach. © 2012 Springer-Verlag London Limited.

Yang, SN, Jiang, ZY & Wei, DB 2013, '3D Coupled Thermo-Mechanical FE Analysis of Surface Defects in Continuously Casting Slab', Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 275-277, pp. 2214-2220.
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The behaviour of the surface defects on the continuous casting slab during hot rolling is investigated using the commercial FE-code LS-DYNA. The thermo-elastic-plastic material model is chosen in the simulation models, and the material implemented in the simulation is the austenitic stainless steel 304. The numerical results show the significant morphological changes of the surface defects during hot rolling and afford valuable indications for a deeper understanding of the underlying process. An accelerated crack growth and propagation are observed for the edge cracks, and the closure behaviour is found in the transverse and longitudinal cracks. The effect of temperature is significant on both the roll and the strip in hot rolling process. The developed models consider different types of mesh and element, thermal conditions, and rolling schedules. The predicted relationship between rolling conditions, the temperature distribution of crack, and the full history of temperature variation are discussed in this study.

Yu, X, Jiang, Z, Wei, D, Zhou, C, Huang, Q & Yang, D 2013, 'Tribological properties of magnetite precipitate from oxide scale in hot-rolled microalloyed steel', Wear, vol. 302, no. 1-2, pp. 1286-1294.
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Nano-magnetite (Fe3O4) particles have a potential to lead to the formation of lubrication tribofilm that reduces the friction and wear in hot steel strip rolling. In this paper, an attempt to fabricate the oxide film with magnetite precipitates from thermally-grown wustite (Fe1-xO) layer during isothermal cooling of low carbon microalloyed steel, was obtained. The precipitation behaviors were investigated on Gleeble 3500 thermo-mechanical simulator under the humid air with water vapour content of 19.5 vol%. Several types of magnetite precipitates were examined using scanning electron microscope (SEM) with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The tribological properties of magnetite precipitates were investigated in pin-on-disc configuration. It was found that the dispersed magnetite particles originate from either the pro-eutectoid precipitation above 570 degrees C or the partial decomposition of wustite below 570 degrees C. The oxide film on the presence of free particles during eutectoid precipitation could be a lubricant and consequently resist wear, particularly for the oxide scale with a typical thickness in the range of 8 to 11 mu m in dry air and moisture atmosphere. Furthermore, characterisation and precipitation process of the oxide scale are discussed, with respect to a probable mechanism to explain the lubricated properties has been proposed.

Yu, XL, Jiang, ZY, Zhao, JW, Wei, DB & Zhou, CL 2013, 'Effect of Cooling Rate on Oxidation Behaviour of Microalloyed Steel', Applied Mechanics and Materials, vol. 395-396, pp. 273-278.
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Oxidation characteristics of a microalloyed low carbon steel were investigated by a hot rolling mill combined with acceleration cooling system over the cooling rate range from 20 to 70°C/s. The effects of cooling rate after hot rolling on microstructure and phase composition of oxide scale were examined. The results showed that the increase of the cooling rate has a significant influence on the decrease of the grain size and surface roughness of oxide scale. A higher cooling rate promotes the formation of retain wustite and primary magnetite precipitation while suppression of eutectoid α-iron precipitates. This provides the possibility to enhance potential contribution of magnetite precipitates with preferable ductility, and hence fabricates a desired oxide-scale structure under continuous post cooling conditions considering a suitable cooling rate.

Yuan, S, Skinner, B, Huang, S & Liu, D 2013, 'A new crossover approach for solving the multiple travelling salesmen problem using genetic algorithms', European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 228, no. 1, pp. 72-82.
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This paper proposes a new crossover operator called two-part chromosome crossover (TCX) for solving the multiple travelling salesmen problem (MTSP) using a genetic algorithm (GA) for near-optimal solutions. We adopt the two-part chromosome representation technique which has been proven to minimise the size of the problem search space. Nevertheless, the existing crossover method for the two-part chromosome representation has two limitations. Firstly, it has extremely limited diversity in the second part of the chromosome, which greatly restricts the search ability of the GA. Secondly, the existing crossover approach tends to break useful building blocks in the first part of the chromosome, which reduces the GA's effectiveness and solution quality. Therefore, in order to improve the GA search performance with the two-part chromosome representation, we propose TCX to overcome these two limitations and improve solution quality. Moreover, we evaluate and compare the proposed TCX with three different crossover methods for two MTSP objective functions, namely, minimising total travel distance and minimising longest tour. The experimental results show that TCX can improve the solution quality of the GA compared to three existing crossover approaches. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Zhang, Q, Jiang, ZY, Wei, DB, Xie, GL & Han, JT 2013, 'Friction Evolution in Running-In of Sliding Wear of Cast Iron Processed in Gleeble', Advanced Materials Research, vol. 797, pp. 713-718.
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As limited results were reported in terms of the evolution of sliding friction with growth of oxide layer in thickness during running-in, a pin-on-disc wear test was carried out in this study. 4.8Ni-1.5Cr cast iron as core layer and low carbon steel as outer layers, were thermo-mechanically processed via three different routes. For samples with lower hardness due to their predominantly austenitic or martensite retarded matrices, we found that initially rapid increase of thickness of oxide layer continually lowers the sliding friction. However, after the oxide layer was beyond a certain thickness, the sliding friction began to increase consecutively. After a fluctuation of friction caused by the break-down of oxide, a mild equilibrium wear with roughly constant friction followed.

Zhang, Q, Jiang, ZY, Wei, DB, Zhu, HT, Chen, ZX, Han, JT & Xie, GL 2013, 'Interface adhesion during sliding wear in cast iron after hot deformation', Wear, vol. 301, no. 1-2, pp. 598-607.
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Interface adhesion between cast iron substrate and oxide layer formed during dry unidirectional sliding wear was studied by using thermo-mechanically processed 4.8Ni-1.5Cr cast iron. The purpose of the present work is to reveal the difference of the adhesion behaviour between martensitic matrix with a higher hardness and austenitic matrix with low hardness. The 4.8Ni-1.5Cr alloy was sandwiched as a middle layer with low carbon steel as outer layers and thermo-mechanically processed via (1) hot rolling (HR), (2) hot rolling and heat treatment (HT), and (3) hot rolling, heat treatment and hot compression (HC), respectively. The applied normal loads were 20 and 40 N, and the sliding speeds were 45 and 78 mm/s in sliding wear test. The durations of the wear test were 2 and 7 min, respectively for different testing rounds. It was found that the wear after running-in was always mild under the conditions of 20 N and 45 mm/s or 20 N and 78 mm/s for all the tested samples. Prior to the transition into mild oxidational wear, negative displacements of pins were observed for HT and HC samples when the applied load was raised to 40 N at the sliding speed of 78 mm/s. No similar response was observed for HR sample under the same testing condition. The possible mechanisms for the negative displacement of pin in the test are discussed in terms of the microstructure and phases of the testing samples. The effect of the hardness of the substrate on the growth and integrity of the oxide film formed during the sliding and the interface adhesion between the oxide film and substrate are also discussed.

Zhao, JW, Jiang, ZY & Wei, DB 2013, 'Analysis of Elemental Segregation in a Microalloyed Cast Steel', Advanced Materials Research, vol. 652-654, pp. 2465-2468.
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Quantitative investigation is made on the elemental segregation in different zones of a heavy microalloyed cast steel by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. It is demonstrated that C shows serious segregation tendency than that of Mn and Si, and the degree of C segregation in the surface zone is higher than that in the central zone. C enrichment is generally observed at both dendrite arm and grain boundaries, and more C segregation at dendrite arm boundary in contrast to that at grain boundary is found in this steel. The distribution of C concentration shows a decreased trend from root to tip along the dendrite arm boundary. The C concentration at trigeminal boundary intersection shows higher level than that at other position of the grain boundaries.

Zhao, JW, Jiang, ZY, Wei, DB & Lee, CS 2013, 'Process Design Strategies for Producing Heavy Section Steel with Improved Quality', Advanced Materials Research, vol. 652-654, pp. 988-991.
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Uniformity of microstructure and mechanical properties is required for the heavy section steel. In the present work, a heavy section wind tower flange was manufactured by controlled ring-rolling. Post-rolling heat treatment was employed to optimize the microstructure and mechanical properties. The chemical composition, microstructure and mechanical properties in different zones of the flange were investigated. The results showed that the chemical composition and microstructure were uniformly distributed in the flange. The tensile strength showed similar values in different sampling locations. The strain and impact energies of specimens prepared along the longitudinal direction were higher than that prepared along both the radius and thickness directions. Notch direction did not have noticeable effect on the impact energy. It is demonstrated that the designed process is effective for producing heavy section steel with improved quality.

Zheng, W, Wang, G, Zhao, G, Wei, D & Jiang, Z 2013, 'Modeling and analysis of dry friction in micro-forming of metals', Tribology International, vol. 57, pp. 202-209.
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The Tabor friction model was modified by introducing the friction factor. Based on the multi-region model, the micro-uniaxial compression process was simulated to study the size effect considering dry friction. It was found that the grain-boundary has little effect on the dry friction behavior. The mechanical properties of individual grains either in the contact area or in the non-contact area have a significant influence on the friction behavior. With decrease of specimen"s size, the average friction coefficient did not vary much but the value of friction coefficient of each random grain orientation distribution becomes more dispersive. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abeywardena, D, Wang, Z, Kodagoda, S, Dissanayake, G & IEEE 1970, 'Visual-Inertial Fusion for Quadrotor Micro Air Vehicles with Improved Scale Observability', 2013 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, Karlsruhe-Germany, pp. 3148-3153.
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This paper presents a novel algorithm for fusing monocular vision and inertial information for quadrotor Micro Air Vehicles by incorporating the unique dynamic characteristics of that platform into the state estimation process. The dynamics of a quadrotor is unique in that a dual axis accelerometer mounted parallel to the propeller plane provides measurements that are directly proportional to vehicle velocities in that plane. By exploiting these dynamic characteristics, we show that all vehicle states, including the absolute scale, become observable in all motion patterns. This distinguishes our method with other visual-inertial fusion methods, which either assume zero accelerometer bias, or require sufficiently exciting motion, such as non-zero acceleration, to ensure observability of the scale. The advantages of our method over existing visual-inertial fusion algorithms are proved through a theoretical analysis using Lie Derivatives and verified by extensive simulations and experiments.

Alempijevic, A, Fitch, R, Kirchner, N & IEEE 1970, 'Bootstrapping Navigation and Path Planning Using Human Positional Traces', 2013 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, Karlsruhe, Germany, pp. 1242-1247.
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Navigating and path planning in environments with limited a priori knowledge is a fundamental challenge for mobile robots. Robots operating in human-occupied environments must also respect sociocontextual boundaries such as personal workspaces. There is a need for robots to be able to navigate in such environments without having to explore and build an intricate representation of the world. In this paper, a method for supplementing directly observed environmental information with indirect observations of occupied space is presented. The proposed approach enables the online inclusion of novel human positional traces and environment information into a probabilistic framework for path planning. Encapsulation of sociocontextual information, such as identifying areas that people tend to use to move through the environment, is inherently achieved without supervised learning or labelling. Our method bootstraps navigation with indirectly observed sensor data, and leverages the flexibility of the Gaussian process (GP) for producing a navigational map that sampling based path planers such as Probabilistic Roadmaps (PRM) can effectively utilise. Empirical results on a mobile platform demonstrate that a robot can efficiently and socially-appropriately reach a desired goal by exploiting the navigational map in our Bayesian statistical framework. © 2013 IEEE.

Aljabri, A, Jiang, ZY, Wei, DB, Wang, XD & Tibar, H 1970, 'Modeling of Thin Strip Profile during Cold Rolling on Roll Crossing and Shifting Mill', 8th Pacific Rim International Congress on Advanced Materials and Processing 2013, PRICM 8, Pacific Rim International Congress on Advanced Materials and Processing, Springer International Publishing, Waikoloa, Hawaii, USA, pp. 3001-3007.
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Strip profile control in cold rolling of thin strip is a difficult and challenge problem found in industry. Currently using the novel type of strip rolling mill, such as the work roll crossing and shifting is the one of the main methods to control the strip profile quality in cold rolling. In this paper, 3-D finite element simulation models of the thin strip profile in cold rolling for the work roll crossing and shifting system were successfully developed. The strip profile and edge drop are discussed considering both crossing angle and shifting value of the work rolls. The research shows that the combination of the work rolls crossing and shifting can effectively improve the strip profile. The developed 3D-finite element model has been verified with the measured values. The obtain result are applicable to control the rolled thin strip profile during cold rolling process.

Ang, K & Aubrey, TA 1970, 'Shelf-life of post-graduate engineering education: relevance and currency in an age of dynamic industry expectations', 24th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE2013), Australasian Association of Engineering Education (AAEE) Conference 2013, Australasian Association of Engineering Education (AAEE), Sunshine Coast.
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BACKGROUND In response to the changing environment, industry requirements and the underpinning AQF specifications for higher education awards, UTS Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT) has embarked on a research project to review their Masters programs to ensure that the commitment to practice-based fields in both Engineering and Information Technology (EIT) education remains relevant. Both fields share synergies for teaching and research, and both professions are constantly evolving in a dynamic environment. For context, postgraduate courses in this study are the Masters of Enginering (ME), Engineering Studies (MES), Engineering Management (MEM), Internetworking (MSc.I) and Information Technology (MIT). This paper draws on research insights that form part of a larger project that entails stakeholder consultations (students/graduates, industry and academics) as part of the 3 yearly Faculty Masters review and renewal process. The research completed to date includes quantitative and qualitative perspectives of current students and recent graduates regarding their learning and professional expectations and actual experiences, including relevance and currency in industry. PURPOSE The key purpose of this paper is to present the insights based on research conducted with stakeholder perspectives centred on their needs, expectations and actual experience. Consequently the purpose is to evaluate the currency, relevance and value of current postgraduate program contributions to industry and the Engineering and IT profession; and more importantly in addressing future industry needs to ensure that Engineering and IT education programs remains robust, relevant and sustainable in dynamic industry environments where rapid change is the norm. DESIGN/METHOD The study utilised a mixed-methodology with quantitative and qualitative perspectives. 308 students and graduates were surveyed online to gauge their attitudes with regards to the relevance and ...

Baro, EN, Oberst, S, Lai, JCS & Evans, TA 1970, 'A signal processing method for extracting vibration signals due to ants' activities', 42nd International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering 2013, INTER-NOISE 2013: Noise Control for Quality of Life, International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, Innsbruck, Austria, pp. 3631-3640.
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Many software algorithms have been developed to track ants by analysing recorded videos. On the other hand, the feasibility of using vibrations measured at the substrate to classify ants' behaviour has not been examined before. A method is developed to separate vibrations owing to ants' activities from the substrate's response through a filtering/de-convolution procedure. This involves estimating the frequency response of the substrate and applying wavelet analysis to the measured vibrations. A number of responses due to ants' behaviours have been observed: Ants shaking, falling, carrying stones, walking, scratching/biting, tapping hind legs, grooming, and antennation/feeding. Vibrations produced by ants falling, carrying stones, walking and scratching/biting are measurable (i.e, above background noise levels). The proposed method is shown to be successful in classifying activities due to ants falling, ants carrying stones and to a lesser extent ants' scratching/biting. With further refinement, it seems feasible to use vibrations and the proposed algorithm to measure ants' behaviours in bioassays. Copyright© (2013) by Austrian Noise Abatement Association (OAL).

Best, G, Moghadam, P, Kottege, N & Kleeman, L 1970, 'Terrain classification using a hexapod robot', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA.
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The effectiveness of a legged robot's gait is highly dependent on the ground cover of the terrain the robot is traversing. It is therefore advantageous for a legged robot to adapt its behaviour to suit the environment. In order to achieve this, the robot must be able to detect and classify the type of ground cover it is traversing. We present a novel approach for ground cover classification that utilises position measurements of the leg servos to estimate the errors between commanded and actual positions of each joint. This approach gives direct insight into how the robot is interacting with the terrain. These position sensors are usually built into the actuators and therefore our approach has the advantage of not requiring any additional sensors. We employ a multi-class Support Vector Machine with a 660-dimensional feature space consisting of features in gait-phase and frequency domains. We implemented our algorithm in the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework for real time classification and also developed a MATLAB implementation for extensive offline testing. Both implementations perform multi-class ground cover classification with high accuracy across five classes.

Cao, W, Jiang, PY, Sauser, J & Deuse, J 1970, 'RFID-Driven Graphical Method for Describing the Time-Sensitive State and Position Changes of WIP Material Flows in a Job-Shop Floor', Applied Mechanics and Materials, Trans Tech Publications, Ltd., pp. 97-102.
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The purpose of this work is to develop a graphical method for describing the work-in- progress (WIP) material flow of a workpiece in order to realize RFID-driven real-time data sampling and support following-up Auto-ID computing. Firstly, various processes in a job-shop floor are formalized graphically by using different types of state-blocks, which depend on RFID detecting spaces and tag detections. And then an event set is deduced from the connecting relations among state blocks and is used for creating the event-driven graphical model in the context of the WIP material flow of a workpiece. To verify the feasibility of the proposed method, a description case is given.

Carmichael, MG & Dikai Liu 1970, 'Admittance control scheme for implementing model-based assistance-as-needed on a robot', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 870-873.
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A model-based assistance-as-needed paradigm has been developed to govern the assistance provided by an assistive robot to its operator. This paradigm has advantages over existing methods of providing assistance-as-needed for applications such as robotic rehabilitation. However, implementation of the model-based paradigm requires a control scheme to be developed which controls the robot so as to provide the assistance calculated by the model-based paradigm to its operator. In this paper an admittance control scheme for providing model-based assistance-as-needed is presented. It is developed considering its suitability for human-robot interaction, and its role within the model-based assistance-as-needed framework. Results from the control implemented on an example robot showed it is capable of providing the operator with the desired level of assistance as governed by the model-based paradigm. This is an essential requirement for the paradigm to be capable of providing efficacious assistance-as-needed in applications such as robotic rehabilitation. © 2013 IEEE.

Carmichael, MG & Dikai Liu 1970, 'Experimental evaluation of a model-based assistance-as-needed paradigm using an assistive robot', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 866-869.
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In robotic rehabilitation a promising paradigm is assistance-as-needed. This is because it promotes patient active participation which is essential for neuro-rehabilitation. A model-based assistance-as-needed paradigm has been developed which utilizes a musculoskeletal model representing the subject to calculate their assistance needs. In this paper we experimentally evaluate this model-based paradigm to control an assistive robot and provide a subject with assistance-as-needed at the muscular level. A subject with impairments defined in specific muscle groups performs a number of upper limb tasks, whilst receiving assistance from a robotic exoskeleton. The paradigm is evaluated on its ability to provide assistance only as the subject needs, depending on the tasks being performed and the impairments defined. Results show that the model-based assistance-as-needed paradigm was relatively successful in providing assistance when it was needed. © 2013 IEEE.

Clemon, L, Sudradjat, A, Jaquez, M, Krishna, A, Rammah, M & Dornfeld, D 1970, 'Precision and Energy Usage for Additive Manufacturing', Volume 2A: Advanced Manufacturing, ASME 2013 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, San Diego, CA.
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Market pressures on manufacturing enterprises incentivize minimum resource consumption while maintaining part quality. Facilities with advanced manufacturing tools often utilize rapid prototyping for production of complicated or specialty parts. Additive manufacturing offers an alternative to traditional production methods which are often time and resource expensive. This study aims to explore part quality and energy usage for additive manufacturing through a focused study of Fused Deposition Modeling and Photopolymer Jetting technologies. A control part is developed for maintaining test consistency across different machines. The control part design consists of various positive and negative features including width varied slots and walls, ramps, and curved features so that the manufacturing of different surfaces may be investigated. Several different machine models are tested to evaluate precision for a variety of applications. Part quality is quantified by measuring the surface roughness in two directions for the control test part printed on each machine. Qualitatively, part quality is assessed by positive and negative feature resolution. High quality machines resolve features closely to design specifications. Lower quality machines do not resolve some features. In addition to exploring the effects of advertised print precision, layup density is varied on two machines. Advertised print resolution does not well represent the achievable feature sizes found in this study. Energy usage is quantified by measuring electricity demands while printing the control part on each of the five different machines. Power consumption in additive manufacturing is found to follow a distinct pattern comprised of standby, warm up, printing and idle phases. Measurement and analysis suggest a relationship between the precision of these machines and their respective energy demand. Part quality is found to generally improve with increased initial and process resource in...

Dantanarayana, L, Ranasinghe, R & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'C-LOG: A Chamfer Distance Based Method for Localisation in Occupancy Grid-maps', 2013 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS), IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 376-381.
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In this paper, the problem of localising a robot within a known two-dimensional environment is formulated as one of minimising the Chamfer Distance between the corresponding occupancy grid map and information gathered from a sensor such as a laser range finder. It is shown that this nonlinear optimisation problem can be solved efficiently and that the resulting localisation algorithm has a number of attractive characteristics when compared with the conventional particle filter based solution for robot localisation in occupancy grids. The proposed algorithm is able to perform well even when robot odometry is unavailable, insensitive to noise models and does not critically depend on any tuning parameters. Experimental results based on a number of public domain datasets as well as data collected by the authors are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Deuse, J, Konrad, B & Bohnen, F 1970, 'Renaissance of Group Technology: Reducing Variability to Match Lean Production Prerequisites', IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Elsevier BV, pp. 998-1003.
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Although Group Technology was invented to transfer benefits of economies of scale to job-shop production during the 1960s, its underlying methodologies are still relevant for modern production, which follows the lean production paradigm. This paper discusses how Group Technology has developed towards an essential tool in industrial engineering in the last decades and how it is applied in the context of Lean Production. Moreover, the authors present two examples of current research in the field of Group Technology and Lean Production: Levelling of low volume, high mix production and mixed-model assembly line balancing. © IFAC.

Erohin, O, Schallow, J, Deuse, J, Klinkenberg, R & GmbH, RI 1970, 'Application of data mining to predict assembly time in early phases of product emergence', Proceedings of International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering, CIE, pp. 205-216.
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Since the 1990s manufacturing industry has faced the challenge of increasing product and process complexity as well as growing cost and time pressure. To deal with this issue research activities focus on the development of new methods and IT tools for virtual product emergence. In the field of industrial engineering various IT applications supporting stronger parallelisation and frontloading of product and process planning arose in recent years. In the future an intelligent, comprehensive analysis of relevant manufacturing data and information will be essential to support planning or decision-making processes within virtual product emergence. Therefore, utilisation of industrial databases by applying data mining techniques is necessary to discover implicit manufacturing knowledge. An essential planning and decision-making basis is provided by manufacturing and assembly time data. Different time determination methods can be applied to determine assembly time with required accuracy. However, currently used methods in early planning phases are in many cases based on 'Comparative Estimating'. The transfer of these estimated time data to new planning processes is often realised experience-based and without intelligent utilisation of existing digital databases, e.g. of work schedules data. This paper presents potentials and application of data mining methods to discover timerelevant knowledge in industrial databases and describes preconditions and characteristics of predictive data mining in industrial environments. In addition, it illustrates the utilisation of discovered knowledge in early phases of product emergence in order to predict assembly time. As a result, data-based determined assembly time supports an effective realisation of simultaneous engineering projects and provides a relevant planning and decision-making fundament in early phases of product emergence.

Fang, G, Kwok, NM & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Skin Colour Detection Using the Statistical Decision Theory', MANUFACTURING PROCESS AND EQUIPMENT, PTS 1-4, International Conference on Manufacturing Science and Engineering, Scientific.net, Dalian, China, pp. 1891-1895.
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Skin colour is an important attribute that can be used to detect human presence in an image. In this paper, a new method is introduced to detect skin pixels in an image based on statistical decision theory. The proposed method uses a parametric model to

Ghaffari Jadidi, M, Valls Miro, J, Valencia, R, Andrade-Cetto, J & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Exploration in Information Distribution Maps', Robotics Science and Systems - Workshop on Robotic Exploration, Monitoring and Information Collection, Workshop of Robotics: Systems and Science, Technische Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1-8.
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In this paper, a novel solution for autonomous robotic exploration is proposed. The distribution of information in an unknown environment is modeled as an unsteady diffusion process, which can be an appropriate mathematical formulation and analogy for expanding, time-varying, and dynamic environments. This information distribution map is the solution of the diffusion process partial differential equation, and is regressed from sensor data as a Gaussian Process. Optimization of the process parameters leads to an optimal frontier map which describes regions of interest for further exploration. Since the presented approach considers a continuous model of the environment, it can be used to plan smooth exploration paths exploiting the structural dependencies of the environment whilst handling sparse sensors measurements. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated through simulation results in the well-known Freiburg and Cave maps.

Gürtler, MR & Lindemann, U 1970, 'Situative open innovation - A model for selecting the right external actors and involving them in an efficient way', Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED, 19th International Conference on Engineering Design 2013 (ICED13), Seoul, pp. 259-268.
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Open Innovation describes the opening of companies' innovation process towards their environment (e.g. customers, suppliers, even competitors). Besides other benefits described in literature, companies profit by more radical innovations, shorter time-to-market and better satisfaction of customers' needs. In the context of an explorative interview study with several German large enterprises from different industries we surveyed the application and the transfer of Open Innovation from research into practice, regarding benefits and potential impediments. Besides the overall positive experience of companies using Open Innovation, the majority of them stated that it is still a big challenge to select and involve the right extern actors, fitting to the specific company's situation/condition and issue, as well as to select an appropriate way of involvement. To fulfill this demand, the paper presents a guideline methodology for selecting the right external actors for a specific company's situation and issue, and for selecting the right method for involvement. The concept combines Open Innovation with elements from Requirements Engineering and stakeholder analysis into a holistic approach.

Gürtler, MR & Lindemann, U 1970, 'Using boolean operators for modeling complex logical dependencies in matrices', 15th International Dependency and Structure Modelling Conference, DSM 2013, 15th International Dependency and Structure Modelling Conference (DSM), CARL HANSER VERLAG, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, pp. 117-123.
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The success of Open Innovation mainly depends on the right choice of external partners and the right way to integrate them into the company's innovation process. Situative Open Innovation supports companies by analyzing their specific situation, suitable external actors and deriving efficient Open Innovation methods. Due to various inter-dependencies between the key-criteria for determining the situation, actors and methods an appropriate notation is necessary to depict the inherent logical connections. This paper presents a matrix-based approach using Boolean operators to model these inter-dependencies. The approach combines a numerical encoding of Boolean operator types and a path domain for depicting distinct dependencies.

Gürtler, MR & Lindemann, U 1970, 'Using Boolean operators for modeling complex logical dependencies in matrices', Reducing Risk in Innovation - Proceedings of the 15th International Dependency and Structure Modelling Conference, DSM 2013, pp. 117-123.
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The success of Open Innovation mainly depends on the right choice of external partners and the right way to integrate them into the company's innovation process. Situative Open Innovation supports companies by analyzing their specific situation, suitable external actors and deriving efficient Open Innovation methods. Due to various inter-dependencies between the key-criteria for determining the situation, actors and methods an appropriate notation is necessary to depict the inherent logical connections. This paper presents a matrix-based approach using Boolean operators to model these inter-dependencies. The approach combines a numerical encoding of Boolean operator types and a path domain for depicting distinct dependencies.

Gürtler, MR, Kain, A & Lindemann, U 1970, 'Bridging the Gap: From Open Innovation to an Open Product-Life-Cycle by Using Open-X Methodologies', ICoRD’13, Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering, International Conference on Research into Design ICoRD'13, Springer India, Chennai, pp. 1331-1343.
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Open-X methodologies describe the application of Open Innovation to different stages of the Product-Life-Cycle (PLC). Open Innovation deals with involving external players in a company’s innovation process. Those can provide ideas from any stage of the PLC, such as lead users in the development stage or product-users in the utilization stage. These ideas themselves can initiate innovations in any PLC stage. However, this typically affects the development of new products. This means that ideas collected are incorporated into early PLC stages only. There is significant potential in using ideas not only for early stages but also for later stages, which means for existing products. Open-Utilization, as one form of the Open-X methodologies, can create innovations in the form of upgrades or new services for a product. Because respective PLC stages are not equally suitable for Open-X methodologies, this paper presents an assessment concept for evaluating each PLC stage regarding their Open-X capabilities and possible constraints. To illustrate the utility of the assessment concept, this paper identifies two PLC stages which demonstrate exemplary capacity for Open-X methodologies.

Hao, L, Jiang, Z, Wei, D & Chen, X 1970, 'Finite element analysis of roll bit behaviors in cold foil rolling process', AIP Conference Proceedings, THE 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NUMERICAL METHODS IN INDUSTRIAL FORMING PROCESSES: NUMIFORM 2013, AIP, Shenyang, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 478-483.
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To investigate roll bite behaviors in cold foil rolling process, a 2D elasto-plastic finite model is established using FEM software ABAQUS. Contact pressure distribution and roll contour in roll bite are also presented, which demonstrate that foil rolling process is different from conventional strip rolling process. The contact area is composed of entry elastic zone, entry plastic zone, an extensive neutral zone, exit plastic zone and exit elastic zone. It conforms to the results of Fleck foil rolling theory. Elastic deformation and work hardening of foil in roll bite are taken into account. The effect of rolling parameters, such as friction coefficient, entry thickness and reduction rate on distribution of contact pressure and vertical displacement are also discussed.

Hu, G, Khosoussi, K & Shoudong Huang 1970, 'Towards a reliable SLAM back-end', 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2013), IEEE, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 37-43.
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In the state-of-the-art approaches to SLAM, the problem is often formulated as a non-linear least squares. SLAM back-ends often employ iterative methods such as Gauss-Newton or Levenberg-Marquardt to solve that problem. In general, there is no guarantee on the global convergence of these methods. The back-end might get trapped into a local minimum or even diverge depending on how good the initial estimate is. Due to the large noise in odometry data, it is not wise to rely on dead reckoning for obtaining an initial guess, especially in long trajectories. In this paper we demonstrate how M-estimation can be used as a bootstrapping technique to obtain a reliable initial guess. We show that this initial guess is more likely to be in the basin of attraction of the global minimum than existing bootstrapping methods. As the main contribution of this paper, we present new insights about the similarities between robustness against outliers and robustness against a bad initial guess. Through simulations and experiments on real data, we substantiate the reliability of our proposed method. © 2013 IEEE.

Islam, MS & Mondal, RN 1970, 'Effects of Curvature on Unsteady Solutions through a Curved Square Duct Flow', Procedia Engineering, Elsevier BV, pp. 217-224.
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Jadidi, MG, Miró, JV, Valencia, R, Andrade-Cetto, J & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Exploration using an information-based reaction-diffusion process', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Australian Robtocis and Automation Association, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-10.
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In this paper, a novel solution for autonomous robotic exploration is proposed. We model the distribution of information in an unknown environment as an unsteady diffiusion process, which can be an appropriate mathematical for- mulation and analogy for expanding, time- varying, and dynamic environments. This in- formation distribution map is the solution of the diffusion process partial diffierential equa- tion, and is regressed from sensor data as a Gaussian Process. Optimization of the pro- cess parameters leads to an optimal frontier map which describes regions of interest for fur- ther exploration. Since the presented approach considers a continuous model of the environ- ment, it can be used to plan smooth exploration paths exploiting the structural dependencies of the environment whilst handling sparse sensor measurements. The performance of the ap- proach is evaluated through simulation results in the well-known Freiburg and Cave maps.

Jiang, Z, Wei, D & Li, H 1970, 'Finite element modelling of surface roughness transfer and oxide scale micro deformation in metal manufacturing process', AIP Conference Proceedings, THE 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NUMERICAL METHODS IN INDUSTRIAL FORMING PROCESSES: NUMIFORM 2013, AIP, Shenyang, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 254-261.
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In the paper, the micro deformation of oxide scale in hot strip rolling has been investigated with considering the friction effect. The finite element simulation of the micro deformation of oxide scale has been successfully conducted, and the calculated surface roughness is compared with the measured value, which shows a good agreement. A crystal plasticity finite element method (CPFEM) model was also successfully developed to analyse the surface roughness transfer during metal manufacturing. The simulation results show a good agreement with the experimental results in the flattening of surface asperity, and the surface roughness decreases significantly with an increase of reduction. This study also indicates that the lubrication can delay surface asperity flattening.

Khushaba, RN, Wise, C, Kodagoda, S & Louviere, JJ 1970, 'Integrating Eye-Tracking and Wireless Electroencephalogram (EEG) in Consumer Neuroscience', The 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC13), International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 6925-6928.
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Consumer neuroscience addresses marketing relevant problems through the integration and application of neuroscientific theories, concepts, findings and methods to the research discipline of consumer behavior. The key contribution of this paper is to complement the advancement of traditional consumer research through the investigation of the patterns of interdependency between the Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from the different brain regions while participants undertook a choice task designed to elicit preferences for a marketing product (crackers). Specifically, the task required participants to choose their preferred crackers described by shape (square, triangle, round), flavor (wheat, dark rye, plain) and topping (salt, poppy, no topping).We analyze the Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals collected from the different brain regions using the commercially available 14 channel Emotiv EPOC wireless EEG headset and relate the EEG data to the specific choice options with a Tobii X60 eye tracker. Fifteen participants were recruited for this experiment and were shown 57 choice sets; each choice set described three choice options. The patterns of cortical activity were obtained in the five principal frequency bands, Delta (0 - 4 Hz), Theta (3 - 7 Hz), Alpha (8 - 12 Hz), Beta (13 - 30 Hz), and Gamma (30 - 40 Hz). Our results indicate significant phase synchronization between the left and right frontal and occipital regions indicating interhemispheric communications during the choice task. Our experimental results also show that participants spent more time looking at the non-preferred items in each choice set at the beginning of the experiment (exploration mode), while reducing that time progressively to indicate significant amount of cognitive processing assigned to preferred items (exploitation mode).

Kim, YS, Zhang, N, Ji, JC, Yuen, WYD & ASME 1970, 'THE EFFECT OF ROLLING SPEED AND FRICTION ON COLD ROLLING MILL STABILITY', INTERNATIONAL MECHANICAL ENGINEERING CONGRESS AND EXPOSITION - 2012, VOL 12, International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, ASME, USA, pp. 291-299.
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In order to investigate the validity of a coupled mill vibration model presented in the dynamic rolling formulation, this paper presents the results of dynamic characteristics examining rolling force variations in response to rolling parameters. Under the given steady state rolling condition, the unstable vibrational modes with corresponding frequencies are identified and stability analysis is also performed to demonstrate that the proposed model is highly dependent on the rolling speed and friction coefficient with an assumed negative gradient of friction coefficient. To further find the transient characteristics and the direct influences of the friction coefficient and rolling speed on the mill chatter, the derived equations of motion of the system are solved using Runge- Kutta numerical integration method. Simulations are carried out to reveal the chatter sources, which gives rise to unstable rolling vibrations. Copyright © 2012 by ASME.

Kirby, R, Williams, PT & Hill, J 1970, 'The effect of temperature on the acoustic performance of splitter silencers', 42nd International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering 2013, INTER-NOISE 2013: Noise Control for Quality of Life, International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, Innsbruck, Austria, pp. 5826-5833.
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In gas turbine exhaust systems dissipative silencers are normally used to attenuate broadband noise emanating from the turbine. These silencers often consist of parallel baffles packed with fibrous porous materials such as basalt wool. In gas turbine exhausts, temperatures can reach up to 700 °C and this can significantly affect silencer performance. Accordingly, the influence of elevated temperatures on silencer insertion loss is investigated here for one third octave bands up to a frequency of 8 kHz. Values for silencer insertion loss are generated using a theoretical model based on the finite element method and point collocation. Predictions draw on experimental data obtained for the bulk acoustic properties of basalt wool at temperatures of up to 500 °C. It is shown here that temperature significantly affects silencer performance and this effect should be compensated for when attempting to quantify silencer performance in high temperature applications.

Kodagoda, S, Alempijevic, A, Huang, S, de la Villefromoy, M, Diponio, M & Cogar, L 1970, 'Moving away from simulations: Innovative assessment of Mechatronic subjects using remote laboratories', 2013 12th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET), 2013 12th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training (ITHET), IEEE, Antalya, Turkey, pp. 1-5.
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In response to the rapid growth of online teaching and learning, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has been developing a number of remotely accessible laboratories. In this paper, we present our newly developed remote lab robotic rig that uniquely addresses challenges in Mechatronic courses. The rig contains a mobile robotic platform equipped with various sensory modules placed in a maze with a pantograph power system enabling continuous use of the platform. The software architecture employed allows users to develop their simulations using the Player/Stage simulator and subsequently upload the code in the robotic rig for real-time testing. This paper presents the motivation, design concepts and analysis of students' feedback responses to their use of the remote lab robotics rig. Survey results of a pilot study shows the participants highly agreeing that the remote lab contributes to, 'deeper understanding of the subject matter', 'flexible learning process' and 'inspire research in robotics'. © 2013 IEEE.

Kodagoda, S, Alempijevic, A, Huang, S, De La Villefromoy, MJ, Diponio, M & Cogar, LJ 1970, 'Innovative Assessment of Mechatronic Subjects Using Remote Laboratories', International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, IEEE, Antalya, Turkey, pp. 1-5.
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In response to the rapid growth of online teaching and learning, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) has been developing a number of remotely accessible laboratories. In this paper, we present our newly developed remote lab robotic rig that uniquely addresses challenges in Mechatronic courses. The rig contains a mobile robotic platform equipped with various sensory modules placed in a maze with a pantograph power system enabling continuous use of the platform. The software architecture employed allows users to develop their simulations using the Player/Stage simulator and subsequently upload the code in the robotic rig for real-time testing. This paper presents the motivation, design concepts and analysis of students' feedback responses to their use of the remote lab robotics rig. Survey results of a pilot study shows the participants highly agreeing that the remote lab contributes to, deeper understanding of the subject matter, flexible learning process and inspire research in robotics.

Kuhlang, P, Hempen, S, Edtmayr, T, Deuse, J & Sihn, W 1970, 'Systematic and Continuous Improvement of Value Streams', IFAC Proceedings Volumes, Elsevier BV, pp. 993-997.
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Within the framework of "Value stream oriented process management" value stream mapping and the short-cyclic improvement routine are integrated into the organizational framework of process management in order to enable a methodically fostered improvement of value streams in different levels of detail. Therefore an advanced and sustainable continuous improvement process is enabled. © IFAC.

Kuhlang, P, Hempen, S, Sihn, W & Deuse, J 1970, 'Improving processes on the basis of a short cyclic improvment routine, value stream mapping and a process management system', 22nd International Conference on Production Research, ICPR 2013.
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A Process Management System in general represents is a suitable approach to improve processes in the broadest sense. For this improvement a lot of established concepts and methods are applied practically and are depicted in literature. In most cases these improvement attempts between the different levels are not linked methodically. This paper presents and combines three - broadly practically applied and theoretically well described - approaches out of the broad variety of concepts and methods to improve value streams. Within this framework value stream mapping and the short-cyclic improvement routine are integrated into the organisational framework of process management in order to enable a methodically fostered improvement of value streams in different levels of detail. Therefore an advanced and sustainable continuous improvement process is enabled. Hence the objective of this paper is to link these industrially applied concepts for managing and improving value streams usefully, and to depict this linkage in an extended model and a practical assembly example.

Lei Shi, Kodagoda, S & Piccardi, M 1970, 'Towards simultaneous place classification and object detection based on conditional random field with multiple cues', 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2013), IEEE, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 2806-2811.
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Lieber, D, Stolpe, M, Konrad, B, Deuse, J & Morik, K 1970, 'Quality Prediction in Interlinked Manufacturing Processes based on Supervised & Unsupervised Machine Learning', Procedia CIRP, Elsevier BV, pp. 193-198.
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In the context of a rolling mill case study, this paper presents a methodical framework based on data mining for predicting the physical quality of intermediate products in interlinked manufacturing processes. In the first part, implemented data preprocessing and feature extraction components of the Inline Quality Prediction System are introduced. The second part shows how the combination of supervised and unsupervised data mining methods can be applied to identify most striking operational patterns, promising quality-related features and production parameters. The results indicate how sustainable and energy-efficient interlinked manufacturing processes can be achieved by the application of data mining. © 2013 The Authors.

Lu, HN, Wei, DB, Jiang, ZY, Wu, D & Zhao, XM 1970, 'Study on the influence of temperature on the surface asperity in micro cross wedge rolling', AIP Conference Proceedings, THE 11TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NUMERICAL METHODS IN INDUSTRIAL FORMING PROCESSES: NUMIFORM 2013, AIP, Shenyang, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 1032-1037.
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When the common deformation processes are scaled down to micro/meso dimensions, size effect is the particular phenomena in microforming, which is related to the dominant influence of single grains inside the micropart. The conventional cross wedge rolling (CWR) is introduced into the micro scale in order to take the advantages of CWR. The micro cross wedge rolling (MCWR) has to confront with the phenomena of size effect that occurs in the common microforming processes inevitably. One of the approaches to compensate size effect is to increase the deforming temperature. An increased formability is achieved because more slip systems of polycrystal metal are activated at the elevated temperature. This reduces the anisotropic material behavior resulting in a more homogeneous forming with improved reproducibility. In this study, a YAG laser beam is applied to heat the workpiece. Finite element model (FEM) associated with a material constitutive formulation considering dislocation mechanics is set up to simulate the MCWR of pure copper utilizing the laser heating. The surface asperity as an indication of material heterogeneity in micro scale is quantitatively analysed. The simulation results show a good agreement with experimental results in terms of the surface asperity.

Miro, JV, Black, R, Andonovski, B & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Development of a novel evidence-based automated powered mobility device competency assessment', 2013 IEEE 13th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), 2013 IEEE 13th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2013), IEEE, Seattle, WA, USA, pp. 1-8.
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This paper describes the outcomes of a clinical study to assess the validity of a stand-alone sensor package and algorithms to aid the assessment by an occupational therapist (OT) whether a person has the capacity to safely and effectively operate a powered mobility device such as a wheelchair in their daily activities. The proposed solution consists of a suite of sensors capable of inferring navigational characteristics from the platform it is attached to (e.g. trajectories, map of surroundings, speeds, distance to doors, etc). Such information presents occupational therapists with the ability to augment their own observations and assessments with correlated, quantitative, evidence-based data acquired with the sensor array. Furthermore, OT reviews can take place at the therapist's discretion as the data from the trials is logged. Results from a clinical evaluation of the proposed approach, taking as reference the commonly-used Power-Mobility Indoor Driving Assessment (PIDA) assessment, were conducted at the premises of the Prince of Wales (PoW) Hospital in Sydney by four users, showing consistency with the OT scores, and setting the scene to a larger study with wider targeted participation. © 2013 IEEE.

Mondal, RN & Islam, MS 1970, 'Numerical Prediction of Unsteady Heat and Fluid Flow through a Curved Rectangular Duct of Large Aspect Ratio', Procedia Engineering, Elsevier BV, pp. 489-496.
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Mondal, RN, Islam, MS & Uddin, MK 1970, 'Unsteady Solutions with Convective Heat Transfer through a Curved Duct Flow', Procedia Engineering, Elsevier BV, pp. 141-148.
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Mondal, RN, Islam, MZ & Islam, MS 1970, 'Transient Heat and Fluid Flow through a Rotating Curved Rectangular Duct: The Case of Positive and Negative Rotation', Procedia Engineering, 5th Bangladesh-Society-of-Mechanical-Engineers (BSME) International Conference on Thermal Engineering (ICTE), Elsevier BV, Islam Univ Technol, Dhaka, BANGLADESH, pp. 179-186.
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Norouzi, M, Miro, JV, Dissanayake, G & IEEE 1970, 'A Statistical Approach for Uncertain Stability Analysis of Mobile Robots', 2013 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, Germany, pp. 191-196.
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Stability prediction is an important concern for mobile robots operating in rough environments. Having the capacity to predict areas of instability means pro-actively being able to plan safer traversable paths. The most influential tip-over stability measures are based on two criteria, the robot's center of mass (CM) and the supporting polygon (SP) defined by the convex area spanned between the ground contact-points. However, there is significant uncertainty associated with many parameters in the planning pipe-line: the actual robot kino-dynamic model, its localisation in the ground, and the terrain models, particularly in uneven terrain. This article proposes a statistical analysis of stability prediction to account for some of the uncertainties. This is accomplished using the force angle (FA) stability measure for a reconfigurable multi-tracked vehicle fitted with flippers, a manipulator arm and a sensor head. Probability density function (PDF) of contact-points, CM and the FA stability measure are numerically estimated, with simulation results performed on the open dynamics engine (ODE) simulator based on uncertain parameters. Two techniques are presented: a conventional Monte Carlo scheme, and a structured unscented transform (UT) which results in significant improvement in computational efficiency. Experimental results on maps obtained from a range camera fitted on the sensor head while the robot traverses over a ramp and a series of steps are presented that confirms the validity of the proposed probabilistic stability prediction method. © 2013 IEEE.

Norouzi, M, Valls Miro, J & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Planning stable and efficient paths for articulated mobile robots on challenging terrains', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Australasian Robotics and Automation Association, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-10.
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An analytical strategy to generate stable paths for a reconfigurable vehicle while also meeting additional navigational objectives is herein proposed. The work is motivated by robots traversing over challenging terrains during search and rescue operations, such as those equipped with manipulator arms and/or flippers. The proposed solution looks at minimizing the length of the traversed path and the energy expenditure in changing postures, yet also accounts for additional constraints in terms of sensor visibility (i.e arm configurations close to those orthogonal to the horizontal global plane which can afford a wider sensor view) and traction (i.e. flipper angles that provide the largest trackterrain interaction area). The validity of the proposed planning approach is evaluated with a multitracked robot fitted with flippers and a range camera at the end of a manipulator arm while navigating over two challenging 3D terrain data sets: one in a mock-up urban search and rescue arena (USAR), and a second one from a publicly available quasi-outdoor rover testing facility (UTIAS).

Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 1970, 'The role of pad-mode instabilities in disc brake squeal', 20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration 2013, ICSV 2013, International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Bangkok, Thailand, pp. 2861-2868.
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Automotive disc brake squeal remains an economically significant and technically challenging problem to solve, owing to customer complaints' associated warranty costs and the many interacting parameters. While industrial practice aims at identifying unstable vibration modes using complex eigenvalue analysis, in this paper, we show how to identify pad-mode instabilities using vibration forced response analysis complemented by acoustic radiation calculations for simplified brake systems in the form of a pad-on-plate model. Our recent results indicate that pad-mode instabilities might trigger so-called instantaneous mode squeal without the necessity of mode coupling. Pad-mode instabilities, which complex eigenvalue analysis fails to detect, are revealed by the dissipated energy spectrum at frequencies where the dissipated energy is negative (i.e. providing energy instead of dissipating energy). Pad-modes seem to radiate locally higher sound pressure depending on the phase shift between the structural vibration and the sound pressure while exciting the underlying plate's or disc's modes. Pad-mode instabilities are shown to be one mechanism of brake squeal. In order to identify pad-mode instabilities, it is beneficial to perform a full range of vibration analysis which includes complex eigenvalue value analysis, forced response and dissipated energy spectra as well as acoustic radiation calculations for a range of different parameters such as friction coefficient, operating pressure, temperature and contact conditions.

Oberst, SM & Lai, J 1970, 'The role of pad-modes and nonlinearity in instantaneous mode squeal', Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, ICA 2013 Montreal, ASA.
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Disc brake squeal is a major source of customer dissatisfaction and related warranty costs for automobile manufacturers. Although mode coupling is recognised as a mechanism often found in squealing brakes, recent research results show that friction induced pad-mode instabilities could be the cause of instantaneous mode squeal reported in the literature. In this paper, the nonlinear characteristics of instantaneous mode squeal initiated by pad-mode instabilities are studied by analysing phase space plots of vibrations and sound pressure for a numerical model of a pad-on-plate system as the friction coefficient increases. Results show tat as the friction coefficient increases from 0.05 to 0.65, attractors of vibration in the phase space transits from limit cycle to quasi-periodic, showing signs of approaching chaotic behaviour. It is shown here that the correlation of the sound pressure behaviour in the phase-space with structural vibration is crucial to understanding the role of pad modes and nonlinearity in instantaneous mode squeal. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.

Patten, T, Fitch, R & Sukkarieh, S 1970, 'Large-scale near-optimal decentralised information gathering with multiple mobile robots', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ARAA, Sydney, New South Wales.
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Information gathering at large spatial scales can be addressed with teams of decentralised robots. Many existing methods search over a limited time horizon and do not provide strong performance guarantees. Near-optimal methods that exploit submodular objective functions have been proposed, given a fixed time budget. We propose a revised problem formulation that seeks to near-optimally maximise information gain quickly. We present a novel, near-optimal polynomial-time decentralised algorithm for multiple robots and analyse the expected path length with respect to the number of robots, the size of the area, and the number of observations. Our approach is based on area partitioning and is practically beneficial in that it allows for superlinear speedup in the time required to maximise the submodular objective function, is decentralised, and is easy to implement. We show extensive simulation results that compare the performance of our algorithm to existing sequential allocation methods.

Perrin, R, Hamdan, S, Halkon, B & Swallowe, GM 1970, 'Studies with a small gamelan gong', Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics, pp. 337-344.

Piyathilaka, L & Kodagoda, S 1970, 'Gaussian mixture based HMM for human daily activity recognition using 3D skeleton features', 2013 IEEE 8th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), 2013 IEEE 8th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA 2013), IEEE, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, pp. 567-572.
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Ability to recognize human activities will enhance the capabilities of a robot that interacts with humans. However automatic detection of human activities could be challenging due to the individual nature of the activities. In this paper, we present human activity detection model that uses only 3-D skeleton features generated from an RGB-D sensor (Microsoft Kinect). To infer the human activities, we implemented Gaussian Mixture Modal (GMM) based Hidden Markov model(HMM). GM outputs of the HMM were effectively able to capture multimodel nature of 3D positions of each skeleton joint. We tested our model in a publicly available data-set that consists of twelve different daily activities performed by four different people.The proposed model recorded recognition recall accuracy of 84% with previously seen people and 78% with previously unseen people.

Quin, P, Paul, G, Alempijevic, A, Liu, D, Dissanayake, G & IEEE 1970, 'Efficient Neighbourhood-Based Information Gain Approach for Exploration of Complex 3D Environments', 2013 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, Karlsruhe, Germany, pp. 1343-1348.
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This paper presents an approach for exploring a complex 3D environment with a sensor mounted on the end effector of a robot manipulator. In contrast to many current approaches which plan as far ahead as possible using as much environment information as is available, our approach considers only a small set of poses (vector of joint angles) neighbouring the robot's current pose in configuration space. Our approach is compared to an existing exploration strategy for a similar robot. Our results demonstrate a significant decrease in the number of information gain estimation calculations that need to be performed, while still gathering an equivalent or increased amount of information about the environment. © 2013 IEEE.

Quin, P, Paul, G, Liu, D & Alempijevic, A 1970, 'Nearest neighbour exploration with backtracking for robotic exploration of complex 3D environments', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Australian Robotics & Automation Association, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-8.
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This paper presents an extension to an ex- ploration strategy called Nearest Neighbour (NN) Exploration to reduce required explo- ration time. The new approach, called Nearest Neighbours with Backtracking (NNB) involves keeping track of all neighbours at each time step throughout exploration in a tree structure. This strategy is shown through simulations to improve exploration time.

Ruppert, MG, Fairbairn, MW & Moheimani, SOR 1970, 'Multi-mode resonant control of a microcantilever for Atomic Force Microscopy', 2013 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, 2013 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), IEEE.
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Rushton-Smith, D, To, AW, Paul, G & Liu, D 1970, 'An Accurate and Reliable Approach to Calibration of a Robot Manipulator-Mounted IR Range Camera for Field Applications', International Symposium on Robotics and Mechatronics, International Symposium on Robotics and Mechatronics, Research Publishing, Singapore, pp. 335-344.

Ryu, K, Furukawa, T, Antol, S & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Grid-Based Scan-to-Map Matching for Accurate Simultaneous Localization and Mapping: Theory and Preliminary Numerical Study', Volume 6B: 37th Mechanisms and Robotics Conference, ASME 2013 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Portland, Oregon, USA.
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This paper presents a grid-based scan-to-map matching technique for accurate simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). At every acquisition of a new scan, the proposed technique estimates the relative position from which the previous scan was taken, and further corrects its estimation error by matching the new scan to the globally defined map. In order to achieve best scan-to-map matching at each acquisition, the map to match is represented as a grid map with multiple normal distributions (NDs) in each cell. Additionally, the new scan is also represented by NDs, developing a novel ND-to-ND matching technique. The ND-to-ND matching technique has significant potential in the enhancement of the global matching as well as the computational efficiency. Experimental results first show that the proposed technique successfully matches new scans to the map generating very small position and orientation errors, and then demonstrates the effectiveness of the multi-ND representation in comparison to the single-ND representation.

Sato, H, Manabe, K-I, Wei, D & Jiang, Z 1970, 'Analysis of Axisymmetric Cup Forming of Metal Foil and Micro Hydroforming Process', Volume 10: Micro- and Nano-Systems Engineering and Packaging, ASME 2013 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, San Diego, California, USA.
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A novel forming method “micro hydromechanical deep drawing (MHDD)” is focused to improve the tribological property and forming limit. In this study, a theoretical model for MHDD is developed to investigate the size effect on deformation behavior in micro hydromechanical deep drawing. The effects of fluid pressure, the difference of friction coefficients at inner pockets and outer pockets are considered in the investigation on the size effect of tribological property. The friction force decreases as the scale factor decreases in MHDD process. It is also found that the tribological property in micro scale can be improved by applying the fluid pressure. The forming limit decreases as the relative punch diameter increases. However, it is clarified that the forming limit can be improved by decreasing the friction force in MHDD.

Sato, H, Manabe, K-I, Wei, D & Jiang, Z 1970, 'Numerical modeling of size effect in micro hydromechanical deep drawing', AIP Conference Proceedings, NUMISHEET 2014: The 9th International Conference and Workshop on Numerical Simulation of 3D Sheet Metal Forming Processes: Part A Benchmark Problems and Results and Part B General Papers, AIP, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, pp. 926-929.
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Sehestedt, S, Paul, G, Rushton-Smith, D & Liu, D 1970, 'Prior-knowledge assisted fast 3D map building of structured environments for steel bridge maintenance', 2013 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE), 2013 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE 2013), IEEE, Madison, WI, USA, pp. 1040-1046.
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Practical application of a robot in a structured, yet unknown environment, such as in bridge maintenance, requires the robot to quickly generate an accurate map of the surfaces in the environment. A consistent and complete map is fundamental to achieving reliable and robust operation. In a real-world and field application, sensor noise and insufficient exploration oftentimes result in an incomplete map. This paper presents a robust environment mapping approach using prior knowledge in combination with a single depth camera mounted on the end-effector of a robotic manipulator. The approach has been successfully implemented in an industrial setting for the purpose of steel bridge maintenance. A prototype robot, which includes the presented map building approach in its software package, has recently been delivered to industry. © 2013 IEEE.

Udeshi, A, Halkon, B & Coupland, J 1970, 'An Alternative Technique for Investigating Fluid flow Around the Hand During Front Crawl', Procedia Engineering, 6th Asia-Pacific Congress on Sports Technology (APCST), Elsevier BV, Hong Kong, PEOPLES R CHINA, pp. 176-181.
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This paper presents the novel application of a technique for measuring flow around the hand during a simulated swim stroke with a view to enable a better understanding of propulsion generation in swimming. The technique relies on the instantaneous, non-intrusive, volumetric measurement of 3D velocity fields using a commercially available optical measurement system. A hand and forearm model was towed through a water tank to replicate the pull phase with fluid flow data being captured at regular intervals in a fixed volume through which the model moved. The measurement system included a single body, three-sensor probe for capturing pairs of images which were then processed to determine particle velocities and to characterise the flow. The results were used to investigate changes in mean velocity for six experimental cases based on three different angles of attack and two towing speeds. The results showed that the V3V system could be used to capture velocity data around the hand and for a 45° increase in angle of attack, the velocity magnitude of the flow reduced by half, indicating the presence of lift forces. © 2013 The Authors.

Van Nguyen, L, Kodagoda, S, Ranasinghe, R & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Locational optimization based sensor placement for monitoring Gaussian processes modeled spatial phenomena', 2013 IEEE 8th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA), 2013 IEEE 8th Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA 2013), IEEE, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1-6.
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This paper addresses the sensor placement problem associated with monitoring spatial phenomena, where mobile sensors are located on the optimal sampling paths yielding a lower prediction error. It is proposed that the spatial phenomenon to be monitored is modeled using a Gaussian Process and a variance based density function is employed to develop an expected-value function. A locational optimization based effective algorithm is employed to solve the resulting minimization of the expectedvalue function. We designed a mutual information based strategy to select the most informative subset of measurements effectively with low computational time. Our experimental results on realworld datasets have verified the superiority of the proposed approach.

Velani, N, Harland, AR & Halkon, BJ 1970, 'The development of a test methodology for the determination of cricket batting helmet performance when subjected to ballistic impacts', 2013 IRCOBI Conference Proceedings - International Research Council on the Biomechanics of Injury, pp. 424-430.
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The study presented in this paper was conducted in support of the development of a proposed revision to a cricket helmet certification test standard. Helmets were impacted between the peak and faceguard by 'projecting' balls at them at velocities up to 80 mph. The velocity at which the balls penetrated between the peak and the faceguard (or grille) for the various permissible peak-grille gap settings for each helmet was recorded. The study progressed to compare these penetration velocities against the equivalent found when 'game-aligned' alternate (drop) test methodologies were used. The results demonstrate that the penetration velocities are considerably lower than those that might be observed in play. As peak-grille gap settings were reduced, penetration velocities increased as expected but, significantly, balls were able to penetrate despite gap settings, on occasion being considerably smaller than the ball diameter. The penetration velocity was also found, as expected, to vary with the stiffness of the ball with increased ball stiffness leading to reduced penetration velocities. When comparing penetration velocities against those found using the alternate methodologies, significant differences were found, suggesting that such methodologies cannot be used to reliably evaluate the performance of helmets to ball impacts occurring in this particular region.

Wang, H, Hu, G, Huang, S & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'On the Structure of Nonlinearities in Pose Graph SLAM', Robotics: Science and Systems, The MIT Press, pp. 425-432.
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Pose graphs have become an attractive representation for solving Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problems. In this paper, we analyze the structure of the nonlinearities in the 2D SLAM problem formulated as the optimizing of a pose graph. First, we prove that finding the optimal configuration of a very basic pose graph with 3 nodes (poses) and 3 edges (relative pose constraints) with spherical covariance matrices, which can be formulated as a six dimensional least squares optimization problem, is equivalent to solving a one dimensional optimization problem. Then we show that the same result can be extended to the optimizing of a pose graph with 'two anchor nodes' where every edge is connecting to one of the two anchor nodes. Furthermore, we prove that the global minimum of the resulting one dimensional optimization problem must belong to a certain interval and there are at most 3 minima in that interval. Thus the globally optimal pose configuration of the pose graph can be obtained very easily through the bisection method and closed-form formulas.

Wijerathna, B, Vidal-Calleja, T, Kodagoda, S, Zhang, Q & Valls Miro, J 1970, 'Multiple defect interpretation based on Gaussian processes for MFL technology', SPIE Proceedings, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, SPIE, San Diego, USA, pp. 1-12.
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Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) technology has been used in non-destructive testing for more than three decades. There have been several publications in detecting and sizing defects on metal pipes using machine learning techniques. Most of these literature focus on isolated defects, which is far from the real scenario. This study is towards the generalization of interpretation of the leakage flux in the presence of multiple defects based on simulation models, together with data-driven inference methodologies, such as Gaussian Process (GP) models. A MFL device has been simulated using both COMSOL Multiphysics and ANSYS software followed by prototyping the same device for experimental validations. Multiple defects with different geometrical configurations were introduced on a cast iron pipe sample and both radial and axial components of the leakage field have been measured. It was observed that both axial and radial components differ with different defect configurations. We propose to use GP to solve the inverse model problem by capturing such behaviors, i.e. to recover the profille of a cluster of defects from the measurements of a MFL device. The data was used to learn the non-parametric GP model with squared exponential covariance function and automatic relevance determination to solve this regression problem. Extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluations are presented using simulated and experimental data that validate the success of the proposed non-parametric methodology for interpreting the profiling of clusters of defects with MFL technology. © 2013 SPIE.

Williams, PT, Kirby, R, Malecki, C & Hill, J 1970, 'Measurement of the bulk acoustic properties of rock wool at high Temperatures', 42nd International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering 2013, INTER-NOISE 2013: Noise Control for Quality of Life, International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, Innsbruck, Austria, pp. 4188-4197.
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The acoustic absorption characteristics of fibrous materials have been the subject of many studies at room temperature and it is well known that the bulk acoustic properties may be measured using an impedance tube and expressed in the form of Delany and Bazley coefficients. However, many applications of fibrous materials take place at high temperatures, for example in gas turbines, and here little work has been done to investigate the effect of temperature on the bulk acoustic properties. Accordingly, the high temperature performance of rock wool is investigated here using a regular impedance tube modified to produce stable and uniform internal temperatures between 20°C and 500°C. Delany and Bazley coefficients are then derived from these measurements and it is shown that these coefficients do not depend on temperature provided the temperature dependence of the flow resistivity and properties of air are accounted for. Therefore, it is shown that the bulk acoustic properties of rock wool can be characterised using Delany and Bazley's empirical formulae obtained at low temperatures and then extrapolated to higher temperatures using a straightforward modification of the material flow resistivity. Copyright© (2013) by Austrian Noise Abatement Association (OAL).

Zainudin, Z, Kodagoda, S, Dissanayake, G & IEEE 1970, 'Mutual Information Based Data Selection in Gaussian Processes for 2D Laser Range Finder Based People Tracking', 2013 IEEE/ASME INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ADVANCED INTELLIGENT MECHATRONICS (AIM): MECHATRONICS FOR HUMAN WELLBEING, IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, IEEE, Wollongong, Australia, pp. 477-482.
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In general, a model to describe human motion patterns should have a capability of enhancing tracking performance even with long term occlusions. One way of effectively learn these patterns is to apply Gaussian Processes (GP). However, with the increase of the amount of training data with time, the GP becomes computationally expensive. In this work, we have proposed a Mutual Information (MI) based technique along with the Mahalanobis Distance (MD) measure to keep the most informative data while discarding the least informative data. The algorithm is tested with data collected in an office environment with a Segway robot equipped with a laser range finder. It leads to more than 90% data reduction while keeping the limit of Average Route Mean Square Error (ARMSE). We have also implemented a GP based Particle filter tracker for long term people tracking with occlusions. The comparison results with Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) based tracker shows the superiority of the proposed approach.

Zhang, Z, Oberst, S & Lai, JCS 1970, 'Application of polynomial chaos expansions to analytical models of friction oscillators', Annual Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society 2013, Acoustics 2013: Science, Technology and Amenity, Annual Conference of the Australian Acoustical Society, Victor Harbor, Australia, pp. 408-414.
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Despite past substantial research efforts, the prediction of brake squeal propensity remains a largely unresolved problem. The standard practice to predict the brake squeal propensity is to analyse dynamic instabilities using the complex eigenvalue analysis. However, it is well known that not every predicted unstable vibration mode will lead to squeal and vice-versa. Owing to nonlinearity and problem complexity (e.g. operating conditions), treating brake squeal with uncertainty seems appealing. Another indicator of brake squeal propensity, not often used, is based on negative dissipated energy. In this study, uncertainty analysis induced by polynomial chaos expansions is examined for 1-dof and 4-dof friction models. Results are compared with dissipated energy calculations and standard complex eigenvalue analysis. The potential of this approach for the prediction of brake squeal propensity is discussed. © (2013) by the Australian Acoustical Society.

Zhao, L, Huang, S & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Linear SLAM: A Linear Solution to the Feature-based and Pose Graph SLAM based on Submap Joining', 2013 IEEE/RSJ INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTELLIGENT ROBOTS AND SYSTEMS (IROS), IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IEEE, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 24-30.
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This paper presents a strategy for large-scale SLAM through solving a sequence of linear least squares problems. The algorithm is based on submap joining where submaps are built using any existing SLAM technique. It is demonstrated that if submaps coordinate frames are judiciously selected, the least squares objective function for joining two submaps becomes a quadratic function of the state vector. Therefore, a linear solution to large-scale SLAM that requires joining a number of local submaps either sequentially or in a more efficient Divide and Conquer manner, can be obtained. The proposed Linear SLAM technique is applicable to both feature-based and pose graph SLAM, in two and three dimensions, and does not require any assumption on the character of the covariance matrices or an initial guess of the state vector. Although this algorithm is an approximation to the optimal full nonlinear least squares SLAM, simulations and experiments using publicly available datasets in 2D and 3D show that Linear SLAM produces results that are very close to the best solutions that can be obtained using full nonlinear optimization started from an accurate initial value. The C/C++ and MATLAB source codes for the proposed algorithm are available on OpenSLAM. © 2013 IEEE.

Al-Zubaydi, AY 2013, 'Architectural modifications : performance assessment of the solar cooling system for a small size office building'.
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Across the world, governments, organisations and individuals are seeking to obtain the most effective, cheapest and environmentally clean power sources. During the last decade, air conditioning systems that use renewable energies have undergone significant development. This expansion has been driven, in large part, by successive periods of extreme solar heat and increased demand for the comfort of summer air conditioning in residential and commercial buildings. Most of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions (about 50%) come from the burning of fossil fuels for energy (e.g., for electricity and transport). For this reason, looking for a reduction in the energy used in buildings as well as looking for alternative power sources to fossil fuels should be explored. This project presents approaches to increasing the performance of a solar cooling system by improving the energy efficiency of the building for a typical small-sized Australian office building in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW). Solar cooling systems with a thermally driven LiBr-H2O single-effect absorption chiller that utilises the solar thermal energy provided through evacuated tube solar thermal collectors and thermal back-up is a popular system among solar cooling applications around the world. In this study, the performance of a similar system is evaluated and compared with a conventional cooling system in terms of energy, economic and environmental aspects. The aim of this project was to examine a solar air conditioning system with absorption chiller contributions in a small office building cooled in different thermal efficiency scenarios by demonstrating and evaluating specific architectural improvements to the basic model of the building. These improvements took the form of double-glazed windows, overhanging window shades, and a combination of double-glazed windows and overhanging shades in the environment of Sydney, NSW. TRNSYS and OpenStudio/EnergyPlus software with the graphical interferen...

Sun, Y & Zhao, L 2013, 'L2-SIFT: SIFT Feature Extraction and Matching for Large Images in Large-scale Aerial Photogrammetry C/C++ source code'.
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C/C++ source code

Zhao, L, Huang, S & Dissanayake, G 2013, 'Linear SLAM: A Linear Solution to the Feature-based, Pose Graph and D-SLAM based on Submap Joining MATLAB and C/C++ source code', OpenSLAM.
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MATLAB and C/C++ source code

Zhao, L, Huang, S, Sun, Y & Dissanayake, G 2013, 'ParallaxBA: Bundle Adjustment using Parallax Angle Feature Parametrization C/C++ source code', OpenSLAM.
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C/C++ source code