Estimating Local Part Thickness in Midplane Meshes for Finite Element Analysis

Within the development of motor vehicles, crash safety (e.g. occupant protection, pedestrian protection, low speed damageability), is one of the most important attributes. In order to be able to fulfill the increased requirements in the framework of shorter cycle times and rising pressure to reduce costs, car manufacturers keep intensifying the use of virtual development tools such as those in the domain of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE). For crash simulations, the explicit finite element method (FEM) is applied. The accuracy of the simulation process is highly dependent on the accuracy of the simulation model, including the midplane mesh. One of the roughest approximations typically made is the actual part thickness which, in reality, can vary locally. However, almost always a constant thickness value is defined throughout the entire part due to complexity reasons. On the other hand, for precise fracture analysis within FEM, the correct thickness consideration is one key enabler. Thus, availability of per element thickness information, which does not exist explicitly in the FEM model, can significantly contribute to an improved crash simulation quality, especially regarding fracture prediction. Even though the thickness is not explicitly available from the FEM model, it can be inferred from the original CAD geometric model through geometric calculations. This paper proposes and compares two thickness estimation algorithms based on ray tracing and nearest neighbour 3D range searches. A systematic quantitative analysis of the accuracy of both algorithms is presented, as well as a thorough identification of particular geometric arrangements under which their accuracy can be compared. These results enable the identification of each technique’s weaknesses and hint towards a new, integrated, approach to the problem that linearly combines the estimates produced by each algorithm.

Banque mondiale et développement. Pertinences scientifiques des discours et pratiques de développement de la Banque mondiale dans les PED des années 80 à nos jours.

RÉSUMÉ « De nos jours, notent Samoff et Carrol, la Banque mondiale doit être considérée à la fois comme une banque, une agence de développement et un institut de recherche » (2004, p9). L’institution de Bretton Woods est en effet devenue notamment dans le cadre du développement des PED, à la fois une banque de prêt et une institution de savoir ; « le laboratoire d’idées sur le développement le plus important au monde », précisent Wilks et Lefrançois (2002). Cependant, si elle reste un partenaire idéologique et financier pour le développement de ces pays, la Banque mondiale est aussi en même temps dans le paysage des relations économiques internationales contemporaines une véritable superpuissance, une figure importante de la dominance mondiale d’aujourd’hui. Les programmes de développement qu’elle professe et met en œuvre dans les PED y sont de ce fait également les discours et pratiques de développement dominants. Mais le discours de développement de la Banque mondiale dans les PED, outre qu’il y soit le savoir dominant du développement, se veut aussi par ailleurs un discours d’érudition : un corps de connaissances savant de développement, qui dans sa formulation comme dans son contenu revendique l’appartenance à une certaine rationalité, vise à une certaine « scientificité ». Partant, la question autour de laquelle s’organise la présente thèse et qui est au cœur de sa problématique est la suivante : le programme de développement que la Banque mondiale destine aux PED dans sa dimension discursive en particulier, est-il pour autant rationnel et raisonnable ? En d’autres termes : de quel crédit scientifique et moral peut jouir ce programme; de quelle cohérence, de quel réalisme, et de quelle adéquation sociale, peut se prévaloir un tel système de pensées et d’actions de développement ? Mais interroger les bien-fondés épistémologiques de son programme de développement dans les PED revient aussi au plans politique et social à questionner cette position de dominance qu’occupe la Banque mondiale dans ces pays. Aussi notre questionnement général s’enchaîne-t-il comme suit: ce pouvoir d’autorité de la Banque mondiale dans les PED, tire t-il sa légitimité d’un fondement rationnel convaincant, capable de résister à la critique, ou plutôt, s’enracine t-il dans une confusion idéologique sciemment instaurée et entretenue ou comme dit Rist, dans le « pouvoir de celui qui parvient à l’imposer» ?

Al Este del Retiro

La zona de Madrid al Este del Retiro ha estado indefectiblemente condicionada en su tardío desarrollo urbano por su posición a espaldas del Real Sitio. La construcción hacia 1640 de las tapias que rodeaban los reales jardines transformó la red de caminos que partían hacia oriente, aisló los terrenos ubicados más al Este de la ciudad, con la que ya sólo se podrían comunicar por las carreteras de Aragón y Valencia, y condenó las expectativas de desarrollo urbano reduciendo los precios de las propiedades, lo cual determinó durante décadas los usos y la arquitectura de la zona. El Anteproyecto de Ensanche de Carlos María de Castro constituye el germen a partir del cual, durante un lento proceso de casi cien años, fue configurándose la ciudad que hoy conocemos. La identificación en el Archivo de Villa del primer plano general del Ensanche trazado por Castro, del cual anteriores trabajos advirtieron de su existencia aunque se desconocía su localización, es la principal aportación de esta investigación. Por un lado, este primer plano general del Ensanche manuscrito es, por sí mismo, un documento de indudable importancia en la historia del urbanismo madrileño. En segundo lugar, el análisis de su contenido arroja nueva luz sobre la propuesta original de Castro, parcialmente censurada por la Dirección General de Obras Públicas antes de la aprobación del plan en 1860. Especialmente en lo referente a la zona de Madrid al Este del Retiro, proyectada como barrio obrero del Ensanche, este documento ha aportado un enfoque desconocido hasta ahora sobre el paisaje urbano concebido por Castro para la más ambiciosa propuesta planteada en mucho tiempo al problema de la vivienda obrera. Finalmente, el análisis de la factura del plano revela la superposición de varias capas de dibujo, evidenciando que durante un tiempo fue un documento vivo, utilizado como plano de trabajo por el equipo de Castro durante aproximadamente diez años, hasta la destitución del ingeniero en 1868. Posteriores análisis del plano sobre otros ámbitos de la ciudad arrojarán sin duda nuevos datos sobre el proceso proyectual del conjunto del Ensanche. Pero la dinámica de lo real, sintetizable en múltiples factores de índole social, económica y legislativa, transformó durante las primeras décadas de andadura del Ensanche la ciudad proyectada por Castro al Este del Retiro. El dibujo de la ciudad, entendido como herramienta de análisis y empleado con éxito en trabajos de investigación realizados por otros autores en la misma línea, ha permitido deducir la reconstitución gráfica del estado de la ciudad en diferentes momentos singulares del desarrollo urbanístico de la zona, así como de la propuesta original de barrio obrero de Castro. No hay que olvidar que, a pesar del escaso interés que suscitaba entre los inversores inmobiliarios el ámbito geográfico de estudio de esta tesis, fue objeto, durante casi un siglo, de numerosas propuestas de ordenación y urbanización que, aunque no llegaron a materializarse, fueron configurando una suerte de desarrollo virtual de la ciudad paralelo al devenir de la realidad. De esta forma, el dibujo se constituye en esta tesis como fuente de información, herramienta de pensamiento y resultado de la investigación en sí mismo, ilustrando y contribuyendo al mejor conocimiento de la forma urbana. ABSTRACT The area of Madrid to the East of the Retiro has been inevitably conditioned in its late urban development by its position behind the Royal Site. The construction of the walls surrounding the royal gardens around 1640 transformed the network of roads departing eastward, isolated land located to the East of the city, with which already only could communicate by roads of Aragon and Valencia, condemned the expectations of urban development by reducing the prices of the properties, and determined for decades uses and architecture of the area. The Carlos María de Castro preliminary design of City Expansion is the germ from which, during a slow process of almost one hundred years, the city which we know today was setting up. The discovery in the City Archive of the City Expansion first drawing traced by Castro, which previous investigations warned of its existence although its location was unknown, is the main contribution of this research. Firstly, this hand drawn general plan of the city expansion is by itself a document of undoubted importance in the history of Madrid urbanism. Secondly, the analysis of its content sheds new light on Castro´s original proposal, partially censored by the Dirección General de Obras Públicas before the approval of the plan in 1860. Especially concerning the area of Madrid to the East of the Retiro, projected as a workingclass district of the City Expansion, this document has provided an unknown up to now approach on the urban landscape designed by Castro for the more ambitious proposal put forward in a long time to the problem of worker housing. Finally, analysis of hand drawn plan reveals the superposition of several layers of drawing, demonstrating that for a time it was a living document, used as a work plan by the Castro team for approximately ten years, until the dismissal of the engineer in 1868. Subsequent analysis of the drawing on other areas of the city will have no doubt new data on the design process of the whole City Expansion. But the dynamics of reality, synthesizable on multiple factors in social, economic and legislative, transformed during the first decades of existence of the City Expansion designed by Castro to the East of the Retiro. Drawing of the city, understood as a tool of analysis and used successfully in research works done by other authors on the same line, has allowed to deduct graphic reconstitution of the city status in different and singular moments in the urban development of the area, as well as the original Castro´s proposal of working-class district. It should not be forgotten that, despite the lack of interest which raised among investors the geographic scope of this thesis study, it was the object, for nearly a century, of numerous proposals for urbanization which, although they didn´t materialize, were setting up a sort of virtual development of the city parallel to the becoming of the reality. In this way, drawing is used in the thesis as a source of information, tool of thought and outcome of the research itself, illustrating and contributing to a better understanding of urban form.

Financial Statement Analysis for Enterprise Network Design

Part 8: Business Strategies Alignment

Virtual Communities of Practice: Design and Development of Support Platforms and Participation Fostering

Mestrado em Engenharia Informática - Área de Especialização em Sistemas Gráficos e Multimédia

Development of a cross-European virtual sample repository and HIV resistance database

BACKGROUND: Several European HIV observational data bases have, over the last decade, accumulated a substantial number of resistance test results and developed large sample repositories, There is a need to link these efforts together, We here describe the development of such a novel tool that allows to bind these data bases together in a distributed fashion for which the control and data remains with the cohorts rather than classic data mergers.METHODS: As proof-of-concept we entered two basic queries into the tool: available resistance tests and available samples. We asked for patients still alive after 1998-01-01, and between 180 and 195 cm of height, and how many samples or resistance tests there would be available for these patients, The queries were uploaded with the tool to a central web server from which each participating cohort downloaded the queries with the tool and ran them against their database, The numbers gathered were then submitted back to the server and we could accumulate the number of available samples and resistance tests.RESULTS: We obtained the following results from the cohorts on available samples/resistance test: EuResist: not availableI11,194; EuroSIDA: 20,71611,992; ICONA: 3,751/500; Rega: 302/302; SHCS: 53,78311,485, In total, 78,552 samples and 15,473 resistance tests were available amongst these five cohorts. Once these data items have been identified, it is trivial to generate lists of relevant samples that would be usefuI for ultra deep sequencing in addition to the already available resistance tests, Saon the tool will include small analysis packages that allow each cohort to pull a report on their cohort profile and also survey emerging resistance trends in their own cohort,CONCLUSIONS: We plan on providing this tool to all cohorts within the Collaborative HIV and Anti-HIV Drug Resistance Network (CHAIN) and will provide the tool free of charge to others for any non-commercial use, The potential of this tool is to ease collaborations, that is, in projects requiring data to speed up identification of novel resistance mutations by increasing the number of observations across multiple cohorts instead of awaiting single cohorts or studies to reach the critical number needed to address such issues.

Identifying Specific Cues and Contexts Related to Smoking Craving for the Development of Effective Virtual Environments

Craving is considered the main variable associated with relapse after smoking cessation. Cue Exposure Therapy (CET) consists of controlled and repeated exposure to drug-related cues with the aim of extinguishing craving responses. Some virtual reality (VR) environments, such as virtual bars or parties, have previously shown their efficacy as tools for eliciting smoking craving. However, in order to adapt this technology to smoking cessation interventions, there is a need for more diverse environments that enhance the probability of generalization of extinction in real life. The main objective of this study was to identify frequent situations that produce smoking craving, as well as detecting specific craving cues in those contexts. Participants were 154 smokers who responded to an ad hoc self-administered inventory for assessing craving level in 12 different situations. Results showed that having a drink in a bar/pub at night, after having lunch/dinner in a restaurant and having a coffee in a cafe or after lunch/dinner at home were reported as the most craving-inducing scenarios. Some differences were found with regard to participants' gender, age, and number of cigarettes smoked per day. Females, younger people, and heavier smokers reported higher levels of craving in most situations. In general, the most widely cited specific cues across the contexts were people smoking, having a coffee, being with friends, and having finished eating. These results are discussed with a view to their consideration in the design of valid and reliable VR environments that could be used in the treatment of nicotine addicts who wish to give up smoking.

A decade of research and development in disability, virtual reality and associated technologies: review of ICDVRAT 1996−2006

The International Conference (series) on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies (ICDVRAT) this year held its sixth biennial conference, celebrating ten years of research and development in this field. A total of 220 papers have been presented at the first six conferences, addressing potential, development, exploration and examination of how these technologies can be applied in disabilities research and practice. The research community is broad and multi-disciplined, comprising a variety of scientific and medical researchers, rehabilitation therapists, educators and practitioners. Likewise, technologies, their applications and target user populations are also broad, ranging from sensors positioned on real world objects to fully immersive interactive simulated environments. A common factor is the desire to identify what the technologies have to offer and how they can provide added value to existing methods of assessment, rehabilitation and support for individuals with disabilities. This paper presents a brief review of the first decade of research and development in the ICDVRAT community, defining technologies, applications and target user populations served.