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To retrieve the geometric information contained in CT images, a surface reconstruction method, which is based on the similarity between the corresponding contours of adjacent sections, is presented in this paper. The correspondence of the contours of adjacent sections is determined by incorporating the topological rules and overlaps of the convex hulls of the contours. Then, the similar vertices of the corresponding contours are matched using a two‐phase strategy, consisting of overall matching followed by local matching. Dissimilar portions are extracted to construct the triangulable spatial dissimilar polygons. Finally, triangular meshes interpolating the contours are obtained by triangulating the dissimilar polygons and similar portions separately. The reconstructed surface models can be used in rapid prototyping as well as visualization. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the method in reconstructing the surface from severe dissimilar contours.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the flow and turbulence characteristics of a turbulent wall jet flowing over a surface inclined with the horizontal and to investigate the effect of variation of the angle of inclination of the wall on the flow structure of the wall jet.

The high Reynolds number two-equation κ− model with standard wall function is used as the turbulence model. The Reynolds number considered for the present study is 10,000. The Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations are used for predicting the turbulent flow. A staggered differencing technique employing both contravariant and Cartesian components of velocity has been applied. Results for distribution of wall static pressure and skin friction, decay of maximum streamwise velocity, streamwise variation of integral momentum and energy flux have been compared for the cases of α=0°, 5°, and 10°.

Flow field has been represented in terms of streamwise and lateral velocity contours, static pressure contour, vorticity contour and streamwise velocity and static pressure profiles at different locations along the oblique offset plate. Distribution of Reynolds stresses in terms of spanwise, lateral and turbulent shear stresses, and turbulent kinetic energy and its dissipation rate have been presented to describe the turbulent characteristics. Similarity of streamwise velocity and the velocity parallel to the oblique wall has been observed in the developed region of the wall jet flow. A decaying trend is observed in the variation of total integral momentum flux in the developed region of the wall jet which becomes more evident with increase in oblique angle. Developed flow region has indicated trend of similarity in profiles of streamwise velocity as well as velocity component parallel to the oblique wall. A depression in wall static pressure has been observed near the nozzle exit when the wall is inclined and the depression increases with increase in inclination. Effect of variation of oblique angles on skin friction coefficient has indicated that it decreases with increase in oblique angle. Growth of the outer and inner shear layers and spread of the jet shows linear variation with distance along the oblique wall. Decay of maximum streamwise velocity is found to be unaffected by variation in oblique angle except in the far downstream region. The streamwise variation of spanwise integral energy shows increase in oblique angle and decreases the magnitude of energy flux through the domain. In the developed flow region, streamwise variation of centreline turbulent intensities shows increased values with increase in oblique angle, while turbulence intensities along the jet centreline in the region X<12 remain unaffected by change in oblique angles. Normalized turbulent kinetic energy distribution highlights the difference in turbulence characteristics between the wall jet and reattached offset jet flow. Near wall velocity distribution shows that the inner region of boundary layer of the developed oblique wall jet follows a logarithmic profile, but it shows some difference from the standard logarithmic curve of turbulent boundary layers which can be attributed to an increase in skin friction coefficient and a decrease in thickness of the wall attached layer.

The study presents an in-depth investigation of the interaction between the jet and the inclined wall. It is shown that due to the Coanda effect, the jet follows the nearby wall. The findings will be useful in the study of combined flow of wall jet and offset jet and dual offset jet on oblique surfaces leading to a better design of some mechanical jet flow devices.

The purpose of this paper is to study the application of advanced computer image processing techniques for flaw detection on flexible printed circuit (FPC) solder.

Texture directionality feature is obtained based on texture gradient, contour's position is extracted and directionality information obtained through analyzing the distribution of directionality. Contour similarity function is established to filter out false contour and keep proper contour, and the solder's location work is accomplished based on reversed contour. After that, a combination of grey and texture gradient's value deviation from reference value is utilized to reflect and describe texture on the solder's surface. Flaw can be distinguished from homogeneous texture background.

The method has been applied to the inspecting system and achieved a higher accuracy and a lower false defect rate. It demonstrates that the method can detect flaws efficiently and effectively.

Although the work on FPC solder's location and flaw detection is presented, defective classification is not involved that is also very important content for inspection.

The paper provides a new way to locate solder based on directionality. The method not only extracts contour feature but also gains directional parameters to help realize accurate location, especially for some solders that are deformed to some extent. Entropy statistic based on distribution of grey and texture gradient is proposed to describe and measure solder's surface texture. The new algorithm performs stably and efficiently and is fit for practical application.

This paper aims to propose a system to acquire images automatically for digital reconstruction of heritage artifacts using a six-degree of freedom industrial manipulator.

A virtual environment is created using Robot Studio® software to integrate the trajectory and differential motion of the robot manipulator and the motion of camera while acquiring images. A new area similarity matrix method is proposed to reduce the number of images required for digital reconstruction using Autodesk Recap® software. Real-time experiments have been performed using objects such as minion, ultimaker robot and cube. Evaluation of the digital reconstruction is conducted using the contour area matching method.

The number of images required for reconstruction based on area similarity matrix method is reduced to 63 per cent when compared with the random selection method. Quality parameters such as surface area, volume, number of defect holes, vertices and faces are enhanced for the proposed method.

Digital reconstruction of large-sized heritage artifacts cannot be performed in this setup. But this can be overcome by fixing the manipulator on a mobile platform or overhead crane. This paper does not discuss the reconstruction of partially damaged heritage artifacts, which could be accomplished based on deep learning techniques.

Using this approach, off-the-shelf heritage artifacts and large-scale objects can be reconstructed digitally with a minimum number of images and without compromising the quality of original models.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, area similarity-based approach in 3D digital reconstruction by coupling the kinematics of an industrial manipulator and camera is proposed for the first time. A fully automated digital reconstruction technology to preserve valuable heritage artifacts has been developed. It also highlights the space constraints of the industrial manipulator in digital reconstruction.

Adaptive slicing is a key step in three-dimensional (3D) printing as it is closely related to the building time and the surface quality. This study aims to develop a novel adaptive slicing method based on ameliorative area ratio and accurate cusp height for 3D printing using stereolithography (STL) models.

The proposed method consists of two stages. In the first stage, the STL model is sliced with constant layer thickness, where an improved algorithm for generating active triangular patches, the list is developed to preprocess the model faster. In the second stage, the model is first divided into several blocks according to the number of contours, then an axis-aligned bounding box-based contour matching algorithm and a polygons intersection algorithm are given to compare the geometric information between several successive layers, which will determine whether these layers can be merged to one.

Several benchmarks are applied to verify this new method. Developed method has also been compared with the uniform slicing method and two existing adaptive slicing methods to demonstrate its effectiveness in slicing.

Compared with other methods, the method leads to fewer layers whilst keeping the geometric error within a given threshold. It demonstrates that the proposed slicing method can reach a trade-off between the building time and the surface quality.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel method to design and fabricate aeroelastic wing models for wind tunnel tests based on stereolithography (SL). This method can ensure the structural similarity of both external and internal structures between models and prototypes.

An aluminum wing‐box was selected as the prototype, and its natural modes were studied by FEA and scaled down to obtain the desired dynamic behavior data. According to similarity laws, the structurally similar model was designed through a sequential design procedure of dimensional scaling, stiffness optimization and mass optimization. An SL model was then fabricated, and its actual natural modes was tested and compared with the desired data of the prototype.

The first two natural frequencies of the model presented strong correlation with the desired data of the prototype. Both the external and internal structures of the model matched the prototype closely. The SL‐based method can significantly reduce the total mass and simplify the locating operations of balance‐weights. The cost and time for the fabrication were reduced significantly.

Further investigation into the material properties of SL resins including stiffness and damping behaviors due to layered process is recommended toward higher prediction accuracy. Wind tunnel tests are needed to study the in situ performance and durability of SL models.

Although the paper takes a wing‐box as the study object, structurally similar SL models of entire wings can be obtained conveniently, benefiting from the low‐stiffness material properties of SL resins and the fabrication capacity to build complex structures of SL process. This paper enhances the versatility of using SL and other rapid prototyping processes to fabricate models to predict aeroelastic characteristics of aircraft.

Nowadays, available music information is increasing rapidly from fast growing digital libraries and the Internet. How to effectively retrieve music data is a challenging task and content‐based retrieval of music is a relatively large area. Much work that aims at creating acoustical waveforms of music has been carried out. But to many people, the most important and useful feature of music is the melody. This paper focuses on the melody‐based retrieval of music, which can be regarded as a kind of content‐based retrieval of music but much closer to the actual nature of music. It can be divided into three parts for studying: the extraction of melodic attributes, the melody input methods and the matching methods.

The conventional pedestrian detection algorithms lack in scale sensitivity. The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel algorithm of self-adaptive scale pedestrian detection, based on deep residual network (DRN), to address such lacks.

First, the “Edge boxes” algorithm is introduced to extract region of interests from pedestrian images. Then, the extracted bounding boxes are incorporated to different DRNs, one is a large-scale DRN and the other one is the small-scale DRN. The height of the bounding boxes is used to classify the results of pedestrians and to regress the bounding boxes to the entity of the pedestrian. At last, a weighted self-adaptive scale function, which combines the large-scale results and small-scale results, is designed for the final pedestrian detection.

To validate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed algorithm, some comparison experiments have been done on the common pedestrian detection data sets: Caltech, INRIA, ETH and KITTI. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is adapted for the various scales of the pedestrians. For the hard detected small-scale pedestrians, the proposed algorithm has improved the accuracy and robustness of detections.

By applying different models to deal with different scales of pedestrians, the proposed algorithm with the weighted calculation function has improved the accuracy and robustness for different scales of pedestrians.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the challenges in undertaking occupational pay comparisons and why this matters for evidence-based reward management, union bargaining strategies and perceptions of pay equity.

The paper draws on the extant literature on pay and undertakes detailed quantitative analysis of teachers pay in Scotland relative to teachers elsewhere in the UK, graduates and other professional occupations in the private and public sectors.

The key finding of this paper is that alternative ways of analysing pay comparability produce significantly different outcomes – occupational pay comparisons require the identification of an appropriate comparator and appropriate measures of pay and hours, yet this is not straightforward. Different approaches to comparability may lead to key stakeholders holding widely differing views about pay equity, with employment relations implications.

Quantitative analyses of pay using large-scale survey data are crucial to understanding relative occupational pay. However, quantitative analyses cannot provide in-depth and nuanced understanding of the nature of particular occupations. Moreover, the paper focuses at the occupational level and does not assess individual employee characteristics that may influence pay.

These findings should inform employers (especially HR managers), employees and unions on pay policy, pay settlements and bargaining strategies.

There is relatively little contemporary literature on the importance of, and challenges in undertaking, occupational pay comparisons.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of ill-treatment and bullying experienced by Irish workers and to explore individual and organisational predictors. The most recent national figures available are specific to bullying and predate the economic recession; therefore, this study is timely and investigates a broader range of negative behaviours.

A questionnaire survey study on a national probability sample of Irish employees was conducted (N = 1,764). The study design replicated the methodology employed in the British workplace behaviour study.

The results showed that 43% of Irish workers had experienced ill-treatment at work over the past two years, with 9% meeting the criteria for experiencing workplace bullying. A number of individual and organisational factors were found to be significantly associated with the experience of ill-treatment at work.

This study provides national-level data on workplace ill-treatment and bullying that are directly comparable to British study findings.

The findings indicate that a significant number of Irish workers experience ill-treatment at work, and that workplace bullying does not appear to have decreased since the last national study was conducted in Ireland.

This study is of use to the Irish regulator and persons responsible for managing workplace bullying cases, as it identifies high-risk work situations and contributing individual factors.

This study provides national Irish data on workplace behaviour and ill-treatment following a severe economic recession.