Engineering Commons^™

The Effects Of Intraspecific, Interspecific, And Intergeneric Grafting On The Growth And Development Of Fraxinus Excelsior Scions, John Mcnamara [Thesis]

Masters

Fraxinus excelsior (common ash) is a hardwood tree, native to Ireland which has demonstrated adaptability to growing in a wide range of sites. In 2013, there was a total of over 20,000 hectares recorded under ash in Ireland. From an economic, ecological and carbon aspect ash is also a very important tree species. Since the arrival of Chalara disease, which has the potential to prove fatal to c.97% of the ash population there is an urgent need to consider how to preserve the remaining resistant trees and propagate new resistant lines. Grafting is the suggested method which has the capacity …

Multiphase Cfd Modelling And Piv Validation Of A Uasb Reactor, Camila D' Bastiani, Jéferson Luis Alba, Gabriel Tomazzoni Mazzarotto, Severino Rodrigues De Farias Neto, Lademir Luiz Beal, Anthony Reynolds, David Kennedy

Conference Papers

Upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactors stand out as a feasible option for treating wastewaters while generating a valuable amount of biogas. It is known that the efficiency of UASB reactors is closely linked to its hydrodynamics. Therefore, understanding the role of each phase (solids, liquid and gas) in the mixing conditions inside the reactor and having validated numerical models for predicting the flow behavior has become fundamental for the design and optimization of UASB reactors. In this context this work aims to develop and validate a three phase Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of an UASB reactor. Eulerian-Eulerian laminar …

Evaluation Of Hydrometric Network Efficacy And User Requirements In The Republic Of Ireland Via Expert Opinion And Statistical Analysis, Paul Hynds, Ahmed Nasr, Jean O'Dwyer

Articles

Decreased funding and shifting governmental priorities have resulted in a contraction of hydrometric measurement in many regions over the past two decades. Moreover, concerns exist with respect to appropriate data usage and (transboundary) exchange, in addition to the compatibility and extent of existing hydrometric datasets. These issues are undoubtedly magnified due to enhanced data demands and increased financial pressures on network managers, thus requiring new approaches to optimising the societal benefits and overall efficacy of hydrometric information for future socio-hydrological resilience. The current study employed a quantitative cross-sectional expert elicitation of 203 respondents to collate, analyse and assess hydrometric network …

Intellectual Output 1 (I01): Skillsfocus 2030: A Model Of Skills And Attributes Needed For Engineers To Achieve The Sdgs, Una Beagon, Brian Bowe, Klara Kövesi, Christiane Gillet, Brad Tabas, Bente Nørgaard, Claus Spliid, Riitta Lehtinen

Reports

No abstract provided.

Background And Design Of A Qualitative Study On Globally Responsible Decision-Making In Civil Engineering, Shannon Chance, Ines Direito, Rob Lawlor, Katie Cresswell-Maynard, Jon Pritchard, Nick Tyler, John Mitchell

Conference papers

Organizations that regulate civil engineering have been pressing for integration of 'global responsibility' into higher education curricula since around 2006, with a goal of achieving environmental sustainability and social justice. In an effort led by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 2007, 2009), a global vision for civil engineering was identified. Within the UK, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has been leading the way alongside non-governmental organizations (Bourn & Neal, 2008). Via the in-progress study reported here, a UK-based research team is now studying the effects of ACSE and ICE initiatives. The team seeks to benchmark how global …

A Phenomenographic Study To Investigate What We Mean By The Term “Professional Skills” – Preliminary Findings, Una Beagon, B. Bowe

Conference papers

Recent calls for reform of engineering education have highlighted the importance of treating the engineering education system holistically; not only looking at developing curriculum components nor proposing new teaching pedagogies to enhance graduate skills. One aspect of this holistic view, which has not been given due cognisance is the impact that academic conceptions can have on the experience of the student in the educational system. The authors propose that academics teaching on engineering programmes do not share a common understanding of what we mean by “professional skills”, nor assume the same teaching and learning processes which develop these skills. It …

Impact Of Loss Of Generation On Bus Voltage Frequency And Rocof, Damien Doheny, Michael Conlon

Conference papers

This study investigates how the loss of a generator impacts bus voltage RoCoF post-disturbance. The results show that the fastest bus voltage RoCoFs will occur close to generators impacted the most by the disturbance but this may not be the closest generator to the disturbance. The study also demonstrates a simple method that can be used to identify the generator that will be impacted most after a disturbance and hence the network location that will experience the fastest RoCoF.

Sns Optical Fiber Structure Sensor For Direct Detection Of The Phase Transition In C18h38 N-Alkane Material, Wei Han, Marek Rebow, Xiaokang Lian, Dejun Liu, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Yuliya Semenova

Articles

A singlemode-no-core-singlemode (SNS) fiber structure optical sensor for detecting the solid-liquid phase change in a phase change material: C18H38 n-alkane material (n-octadecane) is proposed and demonstrated. The transmission-type sensor probe consists of a short section of no-core fiber sandwiched between two sections of a singlemode fiber. Phase changes in n-octadecane are accompanied by large step-like variations of its refractive index (RI). Such a large discontinuous change of the n-octadecane’s RI during its phase transition, leads to the corresponding step-like change in the transmitted optical power that can reliably indicate the phase change of the sample in the vicinity of the …

Qoe Enhancement In Next Generation Wireless Ecosystems: A Machine Learning Approach, Eva Ibarrola, Mark Davis, Camille Voisin, Ciara Close, Leire Cristobo

Articles

Next-generation wireless ecosystems are expected to comprise heterogeneous technologies and diverse deployment scenarios. Ensuring quality of service (QoS) will be one of the major challenges on account of a variety of factors that are beyond the control of network and service providers in these environments. In this context, ITU-T is working on defining new Recommendations related to QoS and users' quality of experience (QoE) for the 5G era. Considering the new ITU-T QoS framework, we propose a methodology to develop a global QoS management model for next generation wireless ecosystems taking advantage of big data and machine learning (ML). The …

Double Deadbeat Plus Repetitive Control Scheme For Microgrid System, Sreedhar Madichetty, Malabika Basu, Sukumar Mishra, Josep M. Guerrero

Articles

Parallel connection of converters is a convenient choice when system capacity is to be increased. Parallel-connected voltage source converters, especially neutral point clamped converters, are one of the best choices for its range. However, with the parallel connectivity, the converter possesses a circulating current in its legs, which consequently threatens the safe operation of the system. To alleviate this circulating current problem, in this paper, a double deadbeat (DD) plus repetitive control (RC) scheme is proposed. The RC scheme is employed to mitigate the circulating currents and the DD loop control scheme is employed to achieve a high operating bandwidth …

Influence Of The Local Field And Dipole-Dipole Interactions On The Spectral Characteristics Of Simple Metals And Their Nanoparticles, I. I. Shaganov, Kevin Berwick, T. S. Perova

Articles

The effect of dipole-dipole interactions of free electrons on the spectral characteristics of simple metals and their nanoparticles is analyzed using Drude theory and the model of the Lorentz local field. It is established that accounting for the dispersion of a local field under conditions of one-dimensional (1D) confinement based on the optical constants of the bulk metal allows the determination of its spectral micro-characteristics in the frequency region of the longitudinal collective motions of the free electrons. This corresponds to the spectra of the dielectric losses of bulk plasma oscillations. A similar procedure for three-dimensional (3D) confinement produces the …

Assessing The Grit And Mindset Of Incoming Engineering Students With An Emphasis On Gender, Inês Direito, Shannon Chance, Emanuela Tilley, John E. Mitchell

Conference papers

Engineering programs can be very demanding, particularly in the first years where students encounter new forms of highly challenging coursework. To better prepare and support students, educators must acknowledge non-academic factors, such as the role of self-beliefs and personal attributes. Education research suggests that students are more likely to give up and disengage from their studies when they lack grit or assume a fixed mindset. Previous studies suggest that female students are generally grittier but less confident when compared to male students. This paper presents the initial work of an ongoing study to explore self-confidence and motivations to study engineering …

Tracking Hand Trajectory As A Preliminary Study For Hand Hygiene Stages, Rashmi Bakshi, Jane Courtney, Damon Berry, Graham Gavin

Session 5: Medical and Biomedical Imaging

The process of hand washing involves complex hand movements. There are six principal sequential steps for washing hands as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines. In this work, a preliminary analysis was undertaken in order to develop an automated image processing system for tracking and classification of two-handed dynamic gestures involved in hand washing. To facilitate this study, videos of healthcare workers who were engaged in washing hands were sourced from the internet. The videos were analysed in order to extract the unique features of two-handed gestures associated with all hand hygiene (HH) stages. The combination of these unique …

Bluetooth Tracking Approach For User Assistance Based In Sequential Patterns Analysis., Aitor Arribas Velasco, John Mcgrory, Damon Berry

Conference Papers

As a civilization, we are drowning in a raging torrent of data, of our own making, that is being harvested by our collective technologies and systems (e.g. Fitbit, phones). However, data itself is of no utility unless it is converted into beneficial knowledge. Design patterns have been shown to be a pragmatic solution to control and manage information flows and provide order and mean-ing to data within a given context. Assisting users within their daily activities has become a key aspect for modern Artificial Intelligence Systems. Neverthe-less, although the GPS technologies work well for outside location, indoor posi-tioning is still …

Development Of Poly-Vinyl Alcohol Stabilized Silver Nanofluids For Solar Thermal Applications, James Walshe, George Amarandei, Hind Ahmed, Sarah Mccormack, John Doran

Articles

Nanofluids offer the potential to address the low thermal conductivities found in conventional heat transfer fluids, through their unique electrical, optical and thermal properties, but their implementation remains restricted due to absorption and stability limitations. Here, we characterize and exploit the distinctive plasmonic properties exhibited by polyvinyl-alcohol stabilized silver nanostructures by tuning their absorption and thermal properties through controlling the nanoparticle size, morphology and particle-size distribution configuration at the synthesis stage. The photo-thermal efficiency of different water-based silver nanofluids under a standard AM1.5G weighted solar spectrum were explored, the influence of each of these components on the resulting fluids performance …

A New Era For Reuse Social Enterprises In Ireland? The Capacities Required For Achieving Sustainability, Gerard Doyle

Articles

The conventional linear relationship between production and consumption is no longer sustainable. A key component of the transition towards a more sustainable society is the continuation in use of products for longer and the development of a repair and reuse culture. Reuse social enterprises contribute to addressing a range of environmental, economic and social issues facing urban areas. This paper is concerned with, firstly, the motivations for citizens to establish reuse social enterprises in Ireland. Secondly, the paper examines the factors that contribute to reuse social enterprises in Ireland becoming sustainable.

The research points to the necessity of reuse social …

The Expanding Business Of The Entrepreneurial University: Job Creation, Mike Murphy, Michael Dyrenfurth

Books/Book chapters

This chapter explores the role of universities in job creation. It does this by taking two approaches. The first is to look at how the university sees its role as expanding from traditional first and second mission activities to encompass third mission activities including industry engagement and how this supports job creation and economic development. The second approach is to examine how new jobs are created in a geographic region or country, and the role that the university can play in support of this. Typical third mission activities such as incubators, technology transfer, and science parks are also examined; including …

Business In Engineering Education: Issues, Identities, Hybrids, And Limits, Mike Murphy, Pat O'Donnell, John Jameson

Books/Book chapters

This chapter explores how engineering students are broadened in their education through the teaching of non-engineering subjects, such as business subjects, in order to develop critical thinking skills and self-knowledge of what it means to be an engineer. The goal of the chapter is to provide a commentary on the level of interaction, from design of courses to design of curricula, between business faculty and engineering faculty, and the results of that interaction. This chapter sets out to (i) explore whether there appears to be a place in engineering education curricula for reflective critique of assumptions related to business thinking, …

International Observations: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (Sdgs) And Digitalisation, Mike Murphy

Presentations

•Superficial thoughts on SDGs and Digitalisation •International Observations: –Skills and competences –Networking •Including a word about the EU –Broadening the Curriculum

Spatial Coherency In Colourisation, Sean Mullery, Paul F. Whelan

Session 6: Applications, Architecture and Systems Integration

Automatic colourisation is the function of inferring colour information from a grey-scale prior and then combining the colour with the grey-scale to form a colourised version of the image. We identify Spatial Coherence as a particular weakness in methods that use Convolutional Neural Networks for colourisation. Generated colours do not adhere to semantic edges and are not consistent within boundaries where we would expect uniform colour. Spatial Coherence, while often evident to the human eye, does not yet have an objective metric. We show, by segmentation of the combined ab channels of the CIEL*a*b* colour space, that a segmentation based …

Neuromorphic Event-Based Action Recognition, S. Harrigan, S. Colman, D. Kerr, P. Yogarajah, Z. Fang, C. Wu

Session 6: Applications, Architecture and Systems Integration

An action can be viewed as spike trains or streams of events when observed and captured by neuromorphic imaging hardware such as the iniLabs DVS128. These streams are unique to each action enabling them to be used to form descriptors. This paper describes an approach for detecting specific actions based on space-time template matching by forming such descriptors and using them as comparative tools. The developed approach is used to detect symbols from the popular RoShambo (rock, paper and scissors) game. The results demonstrate that the developed approach can be used to correctly detect the motions involved in producing RoShambo …

Synthetic Positron Emission Tomography Using Conditional-Generative Adversarial Networks For Healthy Bone Marrow Baseline Image Generation, Patrick Leydon, Martin O'Connell, Derek Greene, Kathleen Curran

Session 6: Applications, Architecture and Systems Integration

A Conditional-Generative Adversarial Network has been used for a supervised image-to-image transla- tion task which outputs a synthetic PET scan based on real patient CT data. The network is trained using only data of patients with healthy bone marrow metabolism. This allows for a patient specific synthetic healthy baseline scan to be produced. This can be used by a clinician for comparison to real PET data in the absence of a baseline scan or to aid in the diagnosis of conditions such as Multiple Myeloma which manifest as changes in bone marrow metabolism.

Development Of A Nanodrop Shape Analysis Tool For Installation In A Novel Nanodrop Spectrophotometer, Colin Monaghan, Jane Courtney

Session 6: Applications, Architecture and Systems Integration

The rapid identification of liquid composition is an important task integral to a wide range of industries including medical, pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and vinification. To aid in this identification spectroscopy can be utilised, however specialised instrumentation must be developed to deliver quantitative information. A spectrophotometer uses spectral data to identify chemical composition of droplets. However, to accurately perform this function, prior knowledge of the size and shape of the droplet is essential to understand chemical quantity. Whilst image data can be easily captured with a high definition camera, the image analysis to translate images into a relevant region of interest (ROI) …

Place Recognition In Challenging Conditions, Saravanabalagi Ramachandran, John Mcdonald

Session 2: Deep Learning for Computer Vision

Place recognition in a visual SLAM system helps build and maintain a map from multiple traversals of the same environment while closing loops to correct drift accumulated over time. Despite the marked success in visual place recognition research over the past decade, it remains a challenging problem in the context of variations caused due to different times of the day, weather, lighting and seasons. In this paper, we address this problem by progressively training convolutional neural networks in a siamese fashion to generate embeddings that encode semantic and visual features for sequence-aligned image pairs taken at different timescales and viewpoints. …

Mouldingnet: Deep-Learning For 3d Object Reconstruction, Tobias Burns, Barak Pearlmutter, John B. Mcdonald

Session 2: Deep Learning for Computer Vision

th the rise of deep neural networks a number of approaches for learning over 3D data have gained popularity. In this paper, we take advantage of one of these approaches, bilateral convolutional layers to propose a novel end-to-end deep auto-encoder architecture to efficiently encode and reconstruct 3D point clouds. Bilateral convolutional layers project the input point cloud onto an even tessellation of a hyperplane in the (d Å1)-dimensional space known as the permutohedral lattice and perform convolutions over this representation. In contrast to existing point cloud based learning approaches, this allows us to learn over the underlying geometry of the …

Comparing Data Augmentation Strategies For Deep Image Classification, Sarah O'Gara, Kevin Mcguinness

Session 2: Deep Learning for Computer Vision

Currently deep learning requires large volumes of training data to fit accurate models. In practice, however, there is often insufficient training data available and augmentation is used to expand the dataset. Historically, only simple forms of augmentation, such as cropping and horizontal flips, were used. More complex augmentation methods have recently been developed, but it is still unclear which techniques are most effective, and at what stage of the learning process they should be introduced. This paper investigates data augmentation strategies for image classification, including the effectiveness of different forms of augmentation, dependency on the number of training examples, and …

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks For Estimating Lens Distortion Parameters, Sebastian Lutz, Mark Davey, Aljosa Smolic

Session 2: Deep Learning for Computer Vision

In this paper we present a convolutional neural network (CNN) to predict multiple lens distortion parameters from a single input image. Unlike other methods, our network is suitable to create high resolution output as it directly estimates the parameters from the image which then can be used to rectify even very high resolution input images. As our method it is fully automatic, it is suitable for both casual creatives and professional artists. Our results show that our network accurately predicts the lens distortion parameters of high resolution images and corrects the distortions satisfactory.

Influence Of Limit Equilibrium Methods In The Design Of Contiguous Cantilever Sheet Pile Walls Through Reliability-Based Analysis, Alvaro J. Mattos, Juan Camilo Viviescas, Juan Pablo Osorio

Conference papers

In geotechnical engineering the design of bored- pile walls is commonly performed in terms of the embedment length (D) defined according to the limit equilibrium methods (also known as balance methods) formulated by Krey, Blum, Rowe, Hansen and the empirical method of Look in sandy soils. The limit equilibrium methods are calculations associated with the shape of the earth pressures distributions in the shaft, earth pressures theories, geotechnical properties and safety factors, while the empirical criteria establish that the relationship between embedment and the free height (H) is of the order of D/H = 1.5. These design methods are complemented …

Ultrabroadband Mid-Infrared Emission From Cr 2+ -Doped Infrared Transparent Chalcogenide Glass Ceramics Embedded With Thermally Grown Zns Nanorods, Xiaosong Lu, Zhiqiang Lai, Runan Zhang, Haitao Guo, Jing Ren, Lukas Strizik, Tomas Wagner, Gerald Farrell, Pengfei Wang

Articles

We report, for the first time to our knowledge, an ultrabroadband mid-infrared (MIR) emission in the range of 1800–2800 nm at room temperature from a Cr2+-doped chalcogenide glass ceramic embedded with pure hexagonal (wurtzite) β-ZnS nanorods and study the emission-dependent properties on the doping concentration of Cr2+. A new family of chalcogenide glasses based on (100 − x) Ge1.5As2S6.5 – x ZnSe (in mol.%) was prepared by melt-quenching method. The Cr2+: β-ZnS nanorods of ˜150 nm in diameter and ˜1 μm in length were grown in the Cr2+-doped glass after thermal annealing. The compositional variations of glass structures and optical …

Bc(A)R Compliance - The Colander Effect, Seamus Harrington

Other Resources

The Building Control (Amendment) Regulations of 2014 has sought to leave the days of self-regulation in the past. However, the opt-out clause has created a two-tiered regulatory structure that questions if the regulations are fit for purpose?

This presentation takes an in depth look at the current regulatory structure and questions if there is a requirement for the introduction of a top-down Local Authority lead approach to Building Regulation Control, similar to that currently utilised throughout the UK and Northern Ireland in respect of all building projects?