An extension of the flower pattern diagram for roll forming

The initial process design of a roll forming system is often based on the traditional ‘flower pattern diagram’. In this diagram, the cross sections of the strip at each roll stand are superimposed on a single plane; the diagram is a 2D representation of the 3D process. In the present work, the flower pattern is extended into three dimensions. To demonstrate the method, the forming path or trajectory of a point at the edge of the strip during forming a V-section is considered. The forming path is a surface curve that lies on a cylindrical surface having its axis along the machine axis. This surface is unwrapped to give its plane development and important features of the forming process can be determined and are readily interpreted from this plane curve. It is shown that at any stage in the process, the axial strain and the curvature of the sheet adjacent to the point are dependent on the slope of the trajectory in this plane projection. This new diagram, which apparently has not been used previously, provides a useful initial method of examining the roll forming process and optimising the flower pattern. The model is purely geometric, as is the original flower pattern approach, and does not include the effect of material behaviour. The concept is applied to several cases available in the literature. It shows that the lowest level of shape defect in the part is achieved when the trajectory of the strip edge follows the shortest line length between the start and finish of forming, leading to the least longitudinal strain introduced in the flange. This trend is in agreement with previous experimental observations, suggesting that the analytical model proposed may be applied for early process design and optimisation before time-consuming numerical analysis is performed.

Reasoning with multimedia information using symbolic projection

In many multimedia application systems, it is not the final goal to retrieve the relevant multimedia information from different multimedia information sources. Rather, post-processing of the retrieved multimedia information is needed. For example, the retrieved information is used as “known facts”. The systems will do some reasoning to obtain further conclusions based on these multimedia form “known facts”. We call this reasoning with multimedia information. Most current research work in multimedia information processing is focused on multimedia information retrieval, but post-processing the retrieved information is more or less ignored. This paper explores the way to tackle this problem by using symbolic projection. A case study of reasoning with still image information is presented. Some extensions to symbolic projection- introducing auxiliary pictorial objects in symbolic pictures that need to be processed-are discussed. We expect this paper will stimulate further research on this important but ignored topic.

Conventions of pictorialism (iconic imagery, perceived space and the picture plane) deconstructed and reconstructed as alternative models of perception, embodied in paintings and drawings

This thesis is concerned with conventions of pictorialism, viz. the surface of an artwork or the plane of denotation (in my case paper, canvas or wood); and iconic imagery and the depiction of perceptual space that is connotated by marks, colours and forms upon that surface. Most importantly this thesis is concerned with the relationship between these elements and the deconstruction of them. That the reconstruction of the deconstructed language can create expressive iconic structures that perhaps contain conflicting information and elements, but are simultaneously single and self-contained perceptual models of seeing the world, and the things in it, in another way; is a major focus. The thesis is embodied in the paintings and drawings which are documented in the exegesis that follows.

Characteristics of the deformed and recrystallised grains obtained after hot plane strain compression of a model Fe-30wt%Ni alloy

The development of physically-based models of microstructural evolution during hot deformation of metallic materials requires knowledge of the grain/subgrain structure and crystallographic texture characteristics over a range of processing conditions. A Fe-30wt%Ni based alloy, retaining a stable austenitic structure at room temperature, was used for modelling the development of austenite microstructure during hot deformation of conventional carbon-manganese steels. A series of plane strain compression tests was carried out at a temperature of 950 °C and strain rates of 10 s-1 and 0.1 s-1 to several strain levels. Evolution of the grain/subgrain structure and crystallographic texture was characterised in detail using quantitative light microscopy and highresolution electron backscatter diffraction. Crystallographic texture characteristics were determined separately for the observed deformed and recrystallised grains. The subgrain geometry and dimensions together with the misorientation vectors across sub-boundaries were quantified in detail across large sample areas and the orientation dependence of these characteristics was determined. Formation mechanisms of the recrystallised grains were established in relation to the deformation microstructure.

Touching space : using motion capture and stereo projection to create a virtual haptics of dance

This paper describes the work of a group of artists in Australia who used real-time motion capture and 3D stereo projection to create a large-scale performance environment in which dancers seemed to "touch" the volume. This project re-versions Suzanne Langer's 1950s philosophy of dance as "virtual force" to realize the idea of a "virtual haptics" of dance that extends the dancer's physical agency literally across and through the surrounding spatial volume. The project presents a vision of interactive dance performance that "touches" space by visualizing kinematics as intentionality and agency. In doing so, we suggest the possibility of new kinds of human-computer interfaces that emphasize touch as embodied, nuanced agency that is mediated by the subtle qualities of whole-body movement, in addition to more goal-oriented, task-based gestures such as pointing or clicking.

Plane wave scattering by a spherical di-electric particle in motion : a relativistic extension of the Mie theory

Light scattering from small spherical particles has applications in a vast number of disciplines including astrophysics, meteorology optics and particle sizing. Mie theory provides an exact analytical characterization of plane wave scattering from spherical dielectric objects. There exist many variants of the Mie theory where fundamental assumptions of the theory has been relaxed to make generalizations. Notable such extensions are generalized Mie theory where plane waves are replaced by optical beams, scattering from lossy particles, scattering from layered particles or shells and scattering of partially coherent (non-classical) light. However, no work has yet been reported in the literature on modifications required to account for scattering when the particle or the source is in motion relative to each other. This is an important problem where many applications can be found in disciplines involving moving particle size characterization. In this paper we propose a novel approach, using special relativity, to address this problem by extending the standard Mie theory for scattering by a particle in motion with a constant speed, which may be very low, moderate or comparable to the speed of light. The proposed technique involves transforming the scattering problem to a reference frame co-moving with the particle, then applying the Mie theory in that frame and transforming the scattered field back to the reference frame of the observer.

Aeroplane engines from inside of plane SFX

A sound effect, made on a generator, that mimics the sound of aeroplane engines when sitting inside a plane during embarkation.

Edge detection is a projection

A desirable property of any edge detector is that it be a projection in the mathematical sense, that is, that when it is applied to its own output it produces no further change. This report examines the behaviour of some conventional and some new operators when applied to line-drawings. The Marr-Hildreth and some gradient operators are among the conventional operators examined. Also a class of energy feature detectors is explored. It is shown that the energy feature detector is a true projection and does not proliferate edges when applied to a line-drawing, whereas several of the conventional operators do.

Exploiting side information in locality preserving projection

Even if the class label information is unknown, side information represents some equivalence constraints between pairs of patterns, indicating whether pairs originate from the same class. Exploiting side information, we develop algorithms to preserve both the intra-class and inter-class local structures. This new type of locality preserving projection (LPP), called LPP with side information (LPPSI), preserves the data's local structure in the sense that the close, similar training patterns will be kept close, whilst the close but dissimilar ones are separated. Our algorithms balance these conflicting requirements, and we further improve this technique using kernel methods. Experiments conducted on popular face databases demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms LPP. Further, we show that the performance of our algorithm with partial side information (that is, using only small amount of pair-wise similarity/dissimilarity information during training) is comparable with that when using full side information. We conclude that exploiting side information by preserving both similar and dissimilar local structures of the data significantly improves performance.

Robust learning of discriminative projection for multicategory classification on the Stiefel manifold

Learning a robust projection with a small number of training samples is still a challenging problem in face recognition, especially when the unseen faces have extreme variation in pose, illumination, and facial expression. To address this problem, we propose a framework formulated under statistical learning theory that facilitates robust learning of a discriminative projection. Dimensionality reduction using the projection matrix is combined with a linear classifier in the regularized framework of lasso regression. The projection matrix in conjunction with the classifier parameters are then found by solving an optimization problem over the Stiefel manifold. The experimental results on standard face databases suggest that the proposed method outperforms some recent regularized techniques when the number of training samples is small.