Data assimilation for precipitation nowcasting using Bayesian inference

This work introduces a new variational Bayes data assimilation method for the stochastic estimation of precipitation dynamics using radar observations for short term probabilistic forecasting (nowcasting). A previously developed spatial rainfall model based on the decomposition of the observed precipitation field using a basis function expansion captures the precipitation intensity from radar images as a set of ‘rain cells’. The prior distributions for the basis function parameters are carefully chosen to have a conjugate structure for the precipitation field model to allow a novel variational Bayes method to be applied to estimate the posterior distributions in closed form, based on solving an optimisation problem, in a spirit similar to 3D VAR analysis, but seeking approximations to the posterior distribution rather than simply the most probable state. A hierarchical Kalman filter is used to estimate the advection field based on the assimilated precipitation fields at two times. The model is applied to tracking precipitation dynamics in a realistic setting, using UK Met Office radar data from both a summer convective event and a winter frontal event. The performance of the model is assessed both traditionally and using probabilistic measures of fit based on ROC curves. The model is shown to provide very good assimilation characteristics, and promising forecast skill. Improvements to the forecasting scheme are discussed

Deformation microstructure under nanoindentations in Cu using 3D x-ray structural microscopy

We have used a recently developed x-ray structural microscopy technique to make nondestructive, submicron-resolution measurements of the deformation microstructure below a 100mN maximum load Berkovich nanoindent in single crystal Cu. Direct observations of plastic deformation under the indent were obtained using a ~0.5 µm polychromatic microbeam and diffracted beam depth profiling to make micron-resolution spatially-resolved x-ray Laue diffraction measurements. The local lattice rotations underneath the nanoindent were found to be heterogeneous in nature as revealed by geometrically necessary dislocation (GND) densities determined for positions along lines beneath a flat indent face and under the sharp Berkovich indent blade edges. Measurements of the local rotation-axes and misorientation-angles along these lines are discussed in terms of crystallographic slip systems.

Flow field analysis of some mixing and conveying screw element regions, within a closely intermeshing, co-rotating twin-screw extruder.

Grafting of antioxidants and other modifiers onto polymers by reactive extrusion, has been performed successfully by the Polymer Processing and Performance Group at Aston University. Traditionally the optimum conditions for the grafting process have been established within a Brabender internal mixer. Transfer of this batch process to a continuous processor, such as an extruder, has, typically, been empirical. To have more confidence in the success of direct transfer of the process requires knowledge of, and comparison between, residence times, mixing intensities, shear rates and flow regimes in the internal mixer and in the continuous processor.The continuous processor chosen for the current work in the closely intermeshing, co-rotating twin-screw extruder (CICo-TSE). CICo-TSEs contain screw elements that convey material with a self-wiping action and are widely used for polymer compounding and blending. Of the different mixing modules contained within the CICo-TSE, the trilobal elements, which impose intensive mixing, and the mixing discs, which impose extensive mixing, are of importance when establishing the intensity of mixing. In this thesis, the flow patterns within the various regions of the single-flighted conveying screw elements and within both the trilobal element and mixing disc zones of a Betol BTS40 CICo-TSE, have been modelled using the computational fluid dynamics package Polyflow. A major obstacle encountered when solving the flow problem within all of these sets of elements, arises from both the complex geometry and the time-dependent flow boundaries as the elements rotate about their fixed axes. Simulation of the time dependent boundaries was overcome by selecting a number of sequential 2D and 3D geometries, used to represent partial mixing cycles. The flow fields were simulated using the ideal rheological properties of polypropylene and characterised in terms of velocity vectors, shear stresses generated and a parameter known as the mixing efficiency. The majority of the large 3D simulations were performed on the Cray J90 supercomputer situated at the Rutherford-Appleton laboratories, with pre- and postprocessing operations achieved via a Silicon Graphics Indy workstation. A mechanical model was constructed consisting of various CICo-TSE elements rotating within a transparent outer barrel. A technique has been developed using coloured viscous clays whereby the flow patterns and mixing characteristics within the CICo-TSE may be visualised. In order to test and verify the simulated predictions, the patterns observed within the mechanical model were compared with the flow patterns predicted by the computational model. The flow patterns within the single-flighted conveying screw elements in particular, showed good agreement between the experimental and simulated results.

A sensitivity study of the human crystalline lens using finite element analysis

Finite element analysis is a useful tool in understanding how the accommodation system of the eye works. Further to simpler FEA models that have been used hitherto, this paper describes a sensitivity study which aims to understand which parameters of the crystalline lens are key to developing an accurate model of the accommodation system. A number of lens models were created, allowing the mechanical properties, internal structure and outer geometry to be varied. These models were then spun about their axes, and the deformations determined. The results showed the mechanical properties are the critical parameters, with the internal structure secondary. Further research is needed to fully understand how the internal structure and properties interact to affect lens deformation.

Finite element analysis of particle impact problems

Particle impacts are of fundamental importance in many areas and there has been a renewed interest in research on particle impact problems. A comprehensive investigation of the particle impact problems, using finite element (FE) methods, is presented in this thesis. The capability of FE procedures for modelling particle impacts is demonstrated by excellent agreements between FE analysis results and previous theoretical, experimental and numerical results. For normal impacts of elastic particles, it is found that the energy loss due to stress wave propagation is negligible if it can reflect more than three times during the impact, for which Hertz theory provides a good prediction of impact behaviour provided that the contact deformation is sufficiently small. For normal impact of plastic particles, the energy loss due to stress wave propagation is also generally negligible so that the energy loss is mainly due to plastic deformation. Finite-deformation plastic impact is addressed in this thesis so that plastic impacts can be categorised into elastic-plastic impact and finite-deformation plastic impact. Criteria for the onset of finite-deformation plastic impacts are proposed in terms of impact velocity and material properties. It is found that the coefficient of restitution depends mainly upon the ratio of impact velocity to yield Vni/Vy0 for elastic-plastic impacts, but it is proportional to [(Vni/Vy0)*(Y/E*)]-1/2, where Y /E* is the representative yield strain for finite-deformation plastic impacts. A theoretical model for elastic-plastic impacts is also developed and compares favourably with FEA and previous experimental results. The effect of work hardening is also investigated.

The deformation behaviour of the collapsing and destructured soils of the Sana'a area and their response to field treatment

Previous work has indicated the presence of collapsing and structured soils in the surface layers underlying Sana's, the capital of Yemen Republic. This study set out initially to define and, ultimately, to alleviate the problem by investigating the deformation behaviour of these soils through both field and laboratory programmes. The field programme was carried out in Sana'a while the laboratory work consisted of two parts, an initial phase at Sana's University carried out in parallel with the field programme on natural and treated soils and the major phase at Aston University carried out on natural, destructured and selected treated soils. The initial phase of the laboratory programme included classification, permeability, and single (collapsing) and double oedometer tests while the major phase, at Aston, was extended to also include extensive single and double oedometer tests, Scanning Electron Microscopy and Energy Dispersive Spectrum analysis. The mechanical tests were carried out on natural and destructed samples at both the in situ and soaked moisture conditions. The engineering characteristics of the natural intact, field-treated and laboratory destructured soils are reported, including their collapsing potentials which show them to be weakly bonded with nil to severe collapsing susceptibility. Flooding had no beneficial effect, with limited to moderate improvement being achieved by preloading and roller compaction, while major benefits were achieved from deep compaction. From these results a comparison between the soil response to the different treatments and general field remarks were presented. Laboratory destructuring reduced the stiffness of the soils while their compressibility was increasing. Their collapsing and destructuring mechanisms have been examined by studying the changes in structure accompanying these phenomena. Based on the test results for the intact and the laboratory destructured soils, a simplified framework has been developed to represent the collapsing and deformation behaviour at both the partially saturated and soaked states, and comments are given on its general applicability and limitations. It has been used to evaluate all the locations subjected to field treatment. It provided satisfactory results for the deformation behaviour of the soils destructed by field treatment. Finally attention is drawn to the design considerations together with the recommendations for the selection of potential improvement techniques to be used for foundation construction on the particular soils of the Sana's region.

Optimising the clinical analysis of retinal image quality in the human eye

Visual perception is dependent on both light transmission through the eye and neuronal conduction through the visual pathway. Advances in clinical diagnostics and treatment modalities over recent years have increased the opportunities to improve the optical path and retinal image quality. Higher order aberrations and retinal straylight are two major factors that influence light transmission through the eye and ultimately, visual outcome. Recent technological advancements have brought these important factors into the clinical domain, however the potential applications of these tools and considerations regarding interpretation of data are much underestimated. The purpose of this thesis was to validate and optimise wavefront analysers and a new clinical tool for the objective evaluation of intraocular scatter. The application of these methods in a clinical setting involving a range of conditions was also explored. The work was divided into two principal sections: 1. Wavefront Aberrometry: optimisation, validation and clinical application The main findings of this work were: • Observer manipulation of the aberrometer increases variability by a factor of 3. • Ocular misalignment can profoundly affect reliability, notably for off-axis aberrations. • Aberrations measured with wavefront analysers using different principles are not interchangeable, with poor relationships and significant differences between values. • Instrument myopia of around 0.30D is induced when performing wavefront analysis in non-cyclopleged eyes; values can be as high as 3D, being higher as the baseline level of myopia decreases. Associated accommodation changes may result in relevant changes to the aberration profile, particularly with respect to spherical aberration. • Young adult healthy Caucasian eyes have significantly more spherical aberration than Asian eyes when matched for age, gender, axial length and refractive error. Axial length is significantly correlated with most components of the aberration profile. 2. Intraocular light scatter: Evaluation of subjective measures and validation and application of a new objective method utilising clinically derived wavefront patterns. The main findings of this work were: • Subjective measures of clinical straylight are highly repeatable. Three measurements are suggested as the optimum number for increased reliability. • Significant differences in straylight values were found for contact lenses designed for contrast enhancement compared to clear lenses of the same design and material specifications. Specifically, grey/green tints induced significantly higher values of retinal straylight. • Wavefront patterns from a commercial Hartmann-Shack device can be used to obtain objective measures of scatter and are well correlated with subjective straylight values. • Perceived retinal stray light was similar in groups of patients implanted with monofocal and multi focal intraocular lenses. Correlation between objective and subjective measurements of scatter is poor, possibly due to different illumination conditions between the testing procedures, or a neural component which may alter with age. Careful acquisition results in highly reproducible in vivo measures of higher order aberrations; however, data from different devices are not interchangeable which brings the accuracy of measurement into question. Objective measures of intraocular straylight can be derived from clinical aberrometry and may be of great diagnostic and management importance in the future.

Deformation and failure of welded steels used in offshore constructions

Hydrocarbons are the most common form of energy used to date. The activities involving exploration and exploitation of large oil and gas fields are constantly in operation and have extended to such hostile environments as the North Sea. This enforces much greater demands on the materials which are used, and the need for enhancing the endurance of the existing ones which must continue parallel to the explorations. Due to their ease in fabrication, relatively high mechanical properties and low costs, steels are the most widely favoured material for the construction of offshore platforms. The most critical part of an offshore structure prone to failure are the welded nodal joints, particulary those which are used within the vicinity of the splash zones. This is an area of high complex stress concentrations, varying mechanical and metallurgical properties in addition to severe North Sea environmental conditions. The main are of this work has been concerned with the durability studies of this type of steel, based on the concept of the worst case analysis, consisting of combinations of welds of varying qualities, various degrees of stress concentrations and the environmental conditions of stress corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement. The experiments have been designed to reveal significance of defects as sites of crack initiation in the welded steels and the extent to which stress corrosion and hydrogen embrittlement will limit their durability. This has been done for various heat treatments and in some experiments deformation has been forced through the welded zone of the specimens to reveal the mechanical properties of the welds themselves to provide data for finite element simulations. A comparison of the results of these simulations with the actual deformation and fracture behaviour has been done to reveal the extent to which both mechanical and metallurgical factors control behaviour of the steels in the hostile environments of high stress, corrosion, and hydrogen embrittlement at their surface.

Spin transition of 1D, 2D and 3D iron(II) complex polymers - the tug-of-war between elastic interaction and a shock-absorber effect

The structures of linear chain Fe(II) spin-crossover compounds of α,β- and α,ω-bis (tetrazol-1-yl)alkane type ligands are described in relation to their magnetic properties. The first threefold interlocked 3-D catenane Fe(II) spin-transition system, [μ-tris(1,4-bis(tetrazol-1-yl)butane-N1,N1′) iron(II)] bis(perchlorate), will be discussed. An analysis is made among the structures and the cooperativity of the spin-crossover behaviour of polynuclear Fe(II) spin-transition materials.

Shear induced toughening in bonded joints:experiments and analysis

Bonded joint specimens were fabricated from composite adherends and either an epoxy or a urethane adhesive. In mixed-mode fracture experiments, the epoxy bonded specimens generally failed by subinterfacial fracture in the composite, while specimens bonded with urethane failed very close to the adhesive/substrate interface. For the epoxy bonded specimens, fracture toughness did not change significantly with mode-mix, but for urethane bonded joints, fracture toughness increased with increasing shear load. Finite element analysis, which modeled specimens bonded with the two adhesives, showed similar trends. The different toughening behaviors for the two bonded joints can be attributed to dissipation of energy through inelastic deformation, which was insignificant in the epoxy-bonded joints but substantial when the urethane was used as the bonding agent.

Volume strain sensor based on spectra analysis of in-fiber modal interferometer

An optical in-fiber modal interferometer-based volume strain sensor for earthquake prediction is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The sensing element is formed by wrapping a multimode-singlemode-multimode fiber structure onto a polyurethane hollow column. Due to the modal interference between the excited guided modes in the fiber, strong interference pattern could be observed in the transmission spectrum. Theoretical analysis verifies that the resonant wavelength shifts as a result of the volume strain variation caused by the column deformation with square root relationship. Sensitivity > 3.93 pm/με within the volume strain ranging from 0 to 1300 με is also experimentally demonstrated. By taking the response of bidirectional change of volume strain and the sluggish character of the employed sensing material into consideration, the sensing system presents good repeatability and stability. © 2001-2012 IEEE.

2D-3D registration of CT vertebra volume to fluoroscopy projection:a calibration model assessment

This study extends a previous research concerning intervertebral motion registration by means of 2D dynamic fluoroscopy to obtain a more comprehensive 3D description of vertebral kinematics. The problem of estimating the 3D rigid pose of a CT volume of a vertebra from its 2D X-ray fluoroscopy projection is addressed. 2D-3D registration is obtained maximising a measure of similarity between Digitally Reconstructed Radiographs (obtained from the CT volume) and real fluoroscopic projection. X-ray energy correction was performed. To assess the method a calibration model was realised a sheep dry vertebra was rigidly fixed to a frame of reference including metallic markers. Accurate measurement of 3D orientation was obtained via single-camera calibration of the markers and held as true 3D vertebra position; then, vertebra 3D pose was estimated and results compared. Error analysis revealed accuracy of the order of 0.1 degree for the rotation angles of about 1mm for displacements parallel to the fluoroscopic plane, and of order of 10mm for the orthogonal displacement. © 2010 P. Bifulco et al.

Coarse-to-fine skeleton extraction for high resolution 3D meshes

This paper presents a novel algorithm for medial surfaces extraction that is based on the density-corrected Hamiltonian analysis of Torsello and Hancock [1]. In order to cope with the exponential growth of the number of voxels, we compute a first coarse discretization of the mesh which is iteratively refined until a desired resolution is achieved. The refinement criterion relies on the analysis of the momentum field, where only the voxels with a suitable value of the divergence are exploded to a lower level of the hierarchy. In order to compensate for the discretization errors incurred at the coarser levels, a dilation procedure is added at the end of each iteration. Finally we design a simple alignment procedure to correct the displacement of the extracted skeleton with respect to the true underlying medial surface. We evaluate the proposed approach with an extensive series of qualitative and quantitative experiments. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Stochastically forced dislocation density distribution in plastic deformation

The dynamical evolution of dislocations in plastically deformed metals is controlled by both deterministic factors arising out of applied loads and stochastic effects appearing due to fluctuations of internal stress. Such type of stochastic dislocation processes and the associated spatially inhomogeneous modes lead to randomness in the observed deformation structure. Previous studies have analyzed the role of randomness in such textural evolution but none of these models have considered the impact of a finite decay time (all previous models assumed instantaneous relaxation which is "unphysical") of the stochastic perturbations in the overall dynamics of the system. The present article bridges this knowledge gap by introducing a colored noise in the form of an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noise in the analysis of a class of linear and nonlinear Wiener and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes that these structural dislocation dynamics could be mapped on to. Based on an analysis of the relevant Fokker-Planck model, our results show that linear Wiener processes remain unaffected by the second time scale in the problem but all nonlinear processes, both Wiener type and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type, scale as a function of the noise decay time τ. The results are expected to ramify existing experimental observations and inspire new numerical and laboratory tests to gain further insight into the competition between deterministic and random effects in modeling plastically deformed samples.

Development and validation of a computationally efficient pseudo 3D model for planar SOFC integrated with a heating furnace

Efficient numerical models facilitate the study and design of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), stacks, and systems. Whilst the accuracy and reliability of the computed results are usually sought by researchers, the corresponding modelling complexities could result in practical difficulties regarding the implementation flexibility and computational costs. The main objective of this article is to adapt a simple but viable numerical tool for evaluation of our experimental rig. Accordingly, a model for a multi-layer SOFC surrounded by a constant temperature furnace is presented, trained and validated against experimental data. The model consists of a four-layer structure including stand, two interconnects, and PEN (Positive electrode-Electrolyte-Negative electrode); each being approximated by a lumped parameter model. The heating process through the surrounding chamber is also considered. We used a set of V-I characteristics data for parameter adjustment followed by model verification against two independent sets of data. The model results show a good agreement with practical data, offering a significant improvement compared to reduced models in which the impact of external heat loss is neglected. Furthermore, thermal analysis for adiabatic and non-adiabatic process is carried out to capture the thermal behaviour of a single cell followed by a polarisation loss assessment. Finally, model-based design of experiment is demonstrated for a case study.