48 research outputs found
Digital Archive from Archaeological Fieldwork at Bradgate Park Lawns, Leicestershire September 2021
No full textThis collection comprises reports, images and spreadsheet data from a field survey conducted on the Lawns in Bradgate Park in September 2021 as a component of a National Lottery Heritage Fund-funded collaborative project linking three Late Upper Palaeolithic sites in the East Midlands: at Farndon Fields, Bradgate Park and Creswell Crags. The survey was led by Lynden Cooper and Daryl Garton for the charity Ice Age Insights and aimed to model the superficial deposits on the floodplain, assess the potential for Late Upper Palaeolithic activity, and build a new skillset within the pool of volunteers who regularly contribute to other roles at Bradgate Park
Predictive modelling of multiperiod geoarchaeological resources at a river confluence: a case study from the Trent-Soar, UK
No full textThis research project developed a terrace sequence model of alluvial landscape development to aid the management of the geoarchaeological resource within a temperate valley floor threatened by aggregate extraction. The model was created using the remote sensing techniques of light detection and ranging (lidar) and ground-penetrating radar (GPR), dovetailed with other archaeological and geological data sets within a geographical information system (GIS). Lidar first pulse (FP), last pulse (LP) and intensity models were used in a combination of ways to characterize the landscape. The topographic LP model was particularly effective at defining the major alluvial landforms, such as the higher terraces and palaeochannels. Lidar intensity data defined the palaeochannels, in response to the surface sediments' ability to absorb/reflect the lidar laser pulse. The three-dimensional architecture of the sediments infilling the valley floor was elucidated and modelled by GPR survey along geospatially referenced transect lines. These surveys had their time-slices calibrated through gouge coring along the transect lines, allowing depth slicing of the sediment stratigraphy. The GPR surveys accurately defined the depth of silty clay alluvium overlying the sands and gravels. Internal structure was revealed within the terrace gravels and at the margins of palaeochannels, allowing identification of bounding surfaces and construction of relative landform chronologies. However, GPR penetration into fine-grained palaeochannel fills was generally shallow, with little internal channel stratigraphy revealed. The lidar data sets and the GPR depth slices were integrated within ArcGIS and ArcScene. The distribution of the known and sometimes visible archaeological remains is considered in context of the geomorphology. It is demonstrated that erosion and sedimentation have geologically filtered the archaeological resource and that some areas that have previously been considered archaeologically barren have high potential for both cultural and environmental archaeological remains
The Hunter-Gatherers of Leicestershire and Rutland
No full textThe Hunter-Gatherers of Leicestershire and Rutlan
Offshore Wind Installation Vessels: Generating insight about the driving factors behind the future design
No full textOffshore wind plays a major role in the transition of conventional energy towards sustainable energy sources. To keep up with the increasing installation demand in this sector new offshore wind installation vessels are needed. There is a need for more certainty and predictability regarding the requirements of the future offshore wind installation vessels. To translate the market developments towards input variables for future vessel concept designs, the methods ’needs analysis’ and ’concept exploration’ from the systems engineering framework are applied. Epoch-era analysis is selected as scenario modelling method to capture the uncertain and the fast changing market by generating various future possibilities each posing different vessel requirements. A parametric model is created to determine the performance of a set of vessels defined by their length, beam, depth, crane capacity, speed, and transport strategy.The case study shows that the application of Epoch-era analysis and parametric modelling is capable of generating insights in important aspects for designing future offshore wind installation vessels. The strength of this method is that it has the flexibility to select different key performance indicators but also provides the opportunity to incorporate the importance of short term against long term goals. It can therefore be tailor-made to a stakeholders strategy. Applying their wishes while analysing many different options results in robust input variables for the concept vessel design.Marine Technology | Ship Design, Production and Operation
MUPETS: A Multi-Regime Plasma Equilibrium Transport Solver for Predicting Ambipolar Plasma Thruster Behaviour and Performance
No full textThis study addresses the challenge of accurately modeling the multi-regime plasma flow through Ambipolar Plasma Thrusters (APTs), a type of Electric Propulsion (EP) system. Despite their advantages, understanding the behavior of plasma within APTs is complex due to the presence of two different flow regimes: the fluid regime inside the thruster’s source chamber and the kinetic regime inside the thruster’s magnetic nozzle. To enhance the precision of APT modeling, this thesis introduces a novel coupling methodology between fluidic and kinetic solvers, resulting in the MUlti-regime Plasma Equilibrium Transport Solver (MUPETS). MUPETS employs two models, the continuum OpenFOAM code for the fluidic regime and the Particlein- Cell (PIC) Starfish code for the kinetic regime, coupled through a closed-loop iterative coupling scheme. This approach allows for a self-consistent prediction of plasma transport within the entire thruster domain, including the interface between the numerical domains of each model. At this interface, which often coincides with the thruster outlet, the model’s iterative loop self-corrects the interfacing boundary conditions of each numerical domain, removing imposed boundary conditions such as assumed velocities. This has reduced plasma species discontinuities across the models’ interface to less than 4% for electrons and less than 1% for ions. The performance of MUPETS was validated against experimental measures from a laboratory thruster at the University of Padova, showing less than a 19% difference in predicted propulsive performance. The MUPETS code requires minimal alteration of the separate solvers, allowing for the fluid or kinetic solvers to be swapped out with higher-fidelity models or numerically better performing models as required. This flexibility enables the comparison of previously developed and validated models from literature to investigate their suitability for describing the plasma flow across the regime change. The study concludes that the developed coupling method presents an improvement to the state of multiregime plasma flow modeling while providing similar accuracy when used for predicting the propulsive performance of APTs.Aerospace Engineerin
Shelf life
No full textThis thesis was scanned from the print manuscript for digital preservation and is copyright the author.
Researchers can access this thesis by asking their local university, institution or public library to
make a request on their behalf. Monash staff and postgraduate students can use the link in the References field
Re-Visioning Reality: Quantum Superposition in Visual Art
No full textThe counterintuitive phenomenon of quantum superposition requires a radical review of our ideas of reality. The author suggests that translations of quantum concepts into visual art may assist in provoking such a revision. This essay first introduces the concept of quantum superposition and points out its divergence from conventional perceptions of reality. The author then discusses how visual art might provide insight into quantum superposition. Finally she discusses the visual representation of quantum superposition by contemporary artists Jonathon Keats, Julian Voss-Andreae, Antony Gormley and Daniel Crooks; the problematic and paradoxical nature of such representations; and how these works might provoke a revision of our views of physical reality.Arts, Education & Law Group, Queensland College of ArtFull Tex
Violent relaxation in phase-space
No full textThe problem of violent relaxation mechanism in collisionless systems from the point of view of the distribution function (DF) in μ-space is reviewed. The literature run starts from the seminal paper of Lynden-Bell [Lynden-Bell, D., 1967. MNRAS 136, 101] and is closed by that of the same author [Arad, I., Lynden-Bell, D., 2005. MNRAS 361, 385]. After some introductive sections on the stellar dynamical equilibria and on the Shannon’s information theory, the different approaches follow each accompanied with its criticism on the previous works. Different coarse-grained DFs proposed by different authors have been taken into account. It appears that for a collisionless gas of a unique mass specie there is not significant discrepancies among the different approaches which converge to the same DF at the end of relaxation process. The main problem is to avoid the non observed mass segregation in the case of multi-species composition, e.g., in a star-dominated galaxy component. On this topic the results are very different and are depending on the shape and size one chooses for μ-space tiles. A great effort has been spent into the visualization of the different partitions in phase-space in order to understand clearly from what the differences arise
