Mechanical vibration characteristics of bell-type pump maintings

This thesis describes an analytical and experimental study to determine the mechanical characteristics of the pump mounting, bell housing type. For numerical purposes, the mount was modelled as a thin circular cylindrical shell with cutouts, stiffened with rings and stringers; the boundary conditions were considered to be either clamped-free or clamped-supporting rigid heavy mass. The theoretical study was concerned with both the static response and the free vibration characteristics of the mount. The approach was based on the Rayleigh-Ritz approximation technique using beam characteristic (axial) and trigonometric (Circumferential) functions in the displacement series, in association with the Love - Timoshenko thin shell theory. Studies were carried out to determine the effect of the supported heavy mass on the static response, frequencies and mode shapes; in addition, the effects of stringers, rings and cutouts on vibration characteristics were investigated. The static and dynamic formulations were both implemented on the Hewlett Packard 9845 computer. The experimental study was conducted to evaluate the results of the natural frequencies and mode shapes, predicted numerically. In the experimental part, a digital computer was used as an experiment controller, which allowed accurate and quick results. The following observations were made: 1. Good agreements were obtained with the results of other investigators. 2. Satisfactory agreement was achieved between the theoretical and experimental results. 3. Rings coupled the axial modal functions of the plain cylinder and tended to increase frequencies, except for the torsion modes where frequencies were reduced. Stringers coupled the circumferential modal functions and tended to decrease frequencies. The effect of rings was stronger than that of stringers. 4. Cutouts tended to reduce frequencies; in general, but this depends on the location of the cutouts; if they are near the free edge then an increase in frequencies is obtained. Cutouts coupled both axial and circumferential modal functions. 5. The supported heavy mass had similar effects to those of the rings, but in an exaggerated manner, particularly in the reduction of torsion frequencies. 6. The method of analysis was found to be a convenient analytical tool for estimating the overall behaviour of the shell with cutouts.

Investigation of the neural correlates of recognition memory using magnetoencephalography

Neuroimaging literature has identified several regions involved in encoding and recognition processes. A review of the literature illustrated considerable variations in the precise location and mechanisms of these processes, and it was these variations that were investigated in the studies in this thesis. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used as the neuroimaging tool and a preliminary study identified Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry (SAM) and not a traditional dipole fitting technique, as an appropriate tool for identifying the multiple cortical regions involved in recognition memory. It has been suggested that there is hemispheric asymmetry in encoding and recognition processes. There are two main hypotheses: the first suggesting that there is task-specificity, the second that this specificity is determined by stimulus modality. A series of experiments was completed with two main aims: first to produce consistent and complementary recognition memory data with MEG, and second to determine whether there exists any hemispheric asymmetry in recognition memory. The results obtained from five experiments demonstrated activation of prefrontal and middle temporal structures, which were consistent with those reported in previous neuroimaging studies. It was suggested that this diverse activation may be explained by the involvement of a semantic network during recognition memory processes. In support of this, a subsequent study involving a semantic encoding task demonstrated that category-specific differences in cortical activation also existed in the recognition memory phase. Controlling for the involvement of such semantic processes produced predominantly bilateral activation. It was suggested that the apparent hemispheric asymmetry findings reported in the literature may be due to the 'coarse' temporal analysis available with earlier imaging techniques, which over-simplified the networks reported by being unable to recognise the early complex processes associated with semantic processing which these MEG studies were able to identify. The importance of frequency-specific activations, specifically theta synchronisation and alpha desynchronisation, in memory processes was also investigated.