Anaerobic digestion of excess sludge by cascade digesters

The management and disposal of excess sludge is one of the main challenges for wastewater treatment facilities across the world. Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a widely accepted treatment method for stabilizing excess sludge due to its robustness, ability to reduce pathogens, and capacity to convert the biochemical energy enclosed in organic...

Pitch-Matched Integrated Transceiver Circuits for High-Resolution 3-D Neonatal Brain Monitoring

This thesis presents the design and implementation of integrated ultrasound transceivers for use in transfontanelle ultrasonography (TFUS). Two generations of ultrasound transceiver ASICs integrated with PZT transducer arrays intended for TFUS are presented. In the first generation, a novel AFE design that combines an LNA with the continuous TGC...

Alternative Representations and Techniques for Accelerated Realistic Image Synthesis: Improved Sampling, Reconstruction and Modelling Methods

Realism has always been a major goal in visual content creation - from oil painting to motion pictures, from graphic arts to scientific data visualization. Computer graphics creates a virtual reality with digital representations. Trading between accuracy and speed, realistic rendering either creates photorealistic renders that follow strict...

Bringing classical mechanical resonators towards the quantum regime: A journey on developing integrated optomechanical devices and exploring experiments at high temperature

The work in this thesis focuses on potential ways to bring a macroscopic mechanical<br/>resonator in a classical environment into the quantum regime with integrated cavity<br/>optomechanics...

Application of new materials and elements to railway ballasted track for performance improvement

Dissolution and Electrochemical Reduction of Rare Earth Oxides in Fluoride Electrolytes

Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 metallic elements, including 15 lanthanides, scandium and yttrium, which have remarkably similar chemical and physical properties. Nowadays, rare earth metals are widely used in such fields as electronics, petroleum, and metallurgy. Rare earth elements are considered as vitamin to modern industry and...

Dynamic, Stochastic, and Coordinated Optimization for Synchromodal Matching Platforms

With the increasing volumes of containers in global trade, efficient global container transport planning becomes more and more important. To improve the competitiveness in global supply chains, stakeholders turn to collaborate with each other at vertical as well as horizontal level, namely synchromodal transportation. Synchromodality is the...

Image quality assessment and image fusion for electron tomography

Electron tomography is a powerful tool in materials science to characterize nanostructures in three dimensions (3D). In scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), the sample under study is exposed to a focused electron beam and tilted to obtain twodimensional (2D) projections at different angles; many imaging modes are available such as...

Light-induced Charge Carrier Dynamics in Metal Halide Perovskites

Metal halide perovskites (MHPs) are interesting candidates for application in photovoltaic devices. During the past decade the efficiency of perovskite solar cells has improved enormously exceeding now values over 24%. In an MHP absorber layer, charge carriers are generated on optical excitation, and decay by band-to-band recombination or by...

Distributed heterogeneous systems for large-scale graph processing

Graph processing is increasingly popular in a variety of scientific and engineering domains. Consequently, graphs and graph-processing algorithms have become increasingly more diverse. Following the big data trend in every computer-related domain, graphs have also become increasingly larger. Processing graphs is requiring more sophisticated...

Isogeometric analysis for thin-walled composite structures

The conceptual ideas behind isogeometric analysis (IGA) are aimed at unifying computer aided design (CAD) and finite element analysis (FEA). Isogeometric analysis employs the non-uniform rational B-spline functions (NURBS) used for the geometric description of a structure to approximate its physical response in an isoparametric sense. Due to the...

Modeling estuarine morphodynamics under combined river and tidal forcing

Estuarine morphodynamics are of broad importance to estuaries’ functions related to navigation, human settlement and ecosystems. Inspired by the Yangtze River estuary (YRE), this study aims to explore the impact of river discharge, tides and their interaction on long-term estuarine morphodynamics. Use is made of 1D and 2D process-based models....

Simple, Reliable, Scalable and Energy Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless communication and networking technology has facilitated people to be connected with each other closely. Cellular network is evolving now from the third generation to the fourth generation. In the meanwhile we are experiencing the demand for wireless networks which can facilitate the communication between humans and environment, human...

Computational modelling of rubber-like materials under monotonic and cyclic loading

The simulation of rubber-like material behaviour by means of the finite element method has been described in this study. Proper material models for the numerical description of static hyper-elasticity, the ideal Mullins effect and the Mullins effect with permanent deformation were proposed, respectively. The second focus of this study was the...