Movement of Thumb-Base Joints: In-Vivo anatomy and biomechanics to support Implant Design

The thumb finger is indispensable for an independent daily life. Implant replacement, which aims to restore joint mobility and functionality, is one of the surgical treatments for patients with osteoarthritis at the thumb-base. However, current designs and the biomechanical understanding of the thumb-base joint are inadequate. Small bone size,...

Control of Switched Linear Systems: Adaptation and Robustness

As a special class of hybrid systems, switched systems have attracted a lot of attention in the last decade due to theoretical and practical interests. When controlling switched systems, a ubiquitous problem is the presence of large parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. However, the state of the art on adaptive and robust control...

Capacity Drop on Freeways: Traffic Dynamics, Theory and Modeling

Earlier studies on the traffic flow on freeways reveal that queue discharge rate cannot reach as high as the free-flow capacity. This important phenomenon is called the “Capacity drop”, which indicates that the potential freeway capacity cannot be fully utilized when discharging traffic jams. Even though a majority of empirical and analytical...

Large Strain Analysis of Electro-Osmosis Consolidation for Clays

Consolidation of soft clay creates a lot of problems in foundation engineering, because of the very low clay permeability and high compressibility. Primary consolidation takes a long time to complete if the material is left consolidating under atmospheric evaporation, and traditional dewatering techniques, such as surcharge preloading, vacuum...

Mechanical and vibro-acoustic aspects of composite sandwich cylinders

Designing a fuselage involves many considerations such as strength and stability, fatigue, damage tolerance, fire and lightning resistance, thermal and acoustic insulation, production, inspection, maintenance and repair. In the background of the application of composite sandwich structures on the aircraft fuselage, the focus of the thesis is to...

Lagrangian Multi-Class Traffic State Estimation

Road traffic is important to everybody in the world. People travel and commute everyday. For those who travel by cars (or other types of road vehicles), traffic congestion is a daily experience. One essential goal of traffic researchers is to reduce traffic congestion and to improve the whole traffic system operation and the environment. To...

Coexistence of IEEE 802.11b/g WLANs and IEEE 802.15.4 WSNs: Modeling and Protocol Enhancements

As an emerging short-range wireless technology, IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are increasingly used in the fields of home control, industrial control, consumer electronics, energy management, building automation, telecom services, personal healthcare, etc. IEEE 802.15.4/Zig-Bee WSNs share the same 2.4 GHz license-free...

Distributed Power Flow Controller

In modern power systems, there is a great demand to control the power flow actively. Power flow controlling devices (PFCDs) are required for such purpose, because the power flow over the lines is the nature result of the impedance of each line. Due to the control capabilities of different types of PFCDs, the trend is that mechanical PFCDs are...

Stochastic modelling of train delays and delay propagation in stations

A trade-off exists between efficiently utilizing the capacity of railway networks and improving the reliability and punctuality of train operations. This dissertation presents a new analytical probability model based on blocking time theory which estimates the knock-on delays of trains caused by route conflicts and late transfer connections in...