Infrastructure Engineering - Research Publications

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    The mechanics of fluid - particle systems: with special reference to agriculture
    Macmillan, R. H. (Ross Macmillan, 2007)
    This monograph and the associated computer program are concerned with the prediction of the trajectory of particles moving relative to fluids. The program is quite general and can be used to plot the trajectory of 'any' particle moving relative to 'any' fluid. However it cannot allow for particle spin or analyse three dimensional problems. The monograph, which assumes a 2nd year level of engineering science, is written particularly for professional agricultural engineering courses but may be of interest in the study of equivalent subjects for chemical or other engineers. It could also form the basis for short courses for practising engineers. The analysis is based on elementary fluid mechanics and provides the reader with a review of the basic theory and its application to the prediction of trajectory in one and two dimensions (Section I, Chapters 2 to 4). The latter develops the algorithms on which the associated computer program is based and presents a validation of the program based on published results. The major parts of the monograph illustrate the application of the program to a number of worked examples of interest in agriculture. Section II (Chapters 5 to 8) deals with examples of four distribution problems (ground and aerial based spreading and spraying) while Section III deals with three cleaning processes (winnowing in the wind and in horizontal and vertical wind tunnels). Section IV uses the program to analyse three other problems, viz, rain, fire and mineral sedimentation. It should be emphasized that these are examples of the application of the program and are not intended to be a complete analysis of the particular problem. Readers who are familiar with fluid - particle mechanics may wish to move directly to Chapter 4. Chapters 9 and 13 are reserved for future use.
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    The mechanics of tractor-implement performance: theory and worked examples: a textbook for students and engineers
    Macmillan, R. H. (R. H. Macmillan, 2002)
    This book, for engineers and engineering students, is about the functional performance of agricultural tractors - how, and how well, they perform the function for which they are designed - pulling loads. It is not about construction, operation or management but about performance and the factors that determine it. Because it treats the tractor in terms of the fundamentals of the subject, it is not limited to any type or size or make. This book is written for professional agricultural engineering courses or equivalent subjects for mechanical engineers. It could also form the basis for short courses for practicing engineers. It assumes a 2nd year level of engineering science. The book develops the subject of tractor performance through the common alternative techniques used in engineering analysis:
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    Presenting spatial information: granularity, relevance, and integration
    (SFB/TR8 and University of Melbourne, 2009)
    This volume collects the papers presented at the International Workshop Presenting Spatial Information: Granularity, Relevance, and Integration, held in conjunction with the Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT, on 21 September 2009 in Aber Wrac'h, France. These papers underwent a thorough peer review: The three papers by Howald, Harrie et al., and Wang & Schwering as full papers, and the two papers by Seifert & Richter and by Dahinden & Sester as abstracts. In recent years, the availability of automatically generated spatial information of various kinds has developed dramatically. Nowadays, virtually any kind of information is obtainable via the Web. Route descriptions of diverse kinds can be obtained from many different sources and across different modalities. Views of maps and geographic information can be accessed in various ways, and local spatial or spatial-related information is provided for diverse interests and in a multitude of ways. Although this is already a fantastic situation in terms of information availability and accessibility, Web users may not always be comfortable with the ways in which the information is presented. Recent research has shown that automatically generated information exhibits fundamentally different features from information provided naturally by humans when asked about spatial information, for example, in route directions. Therefore, it is our contention that substantial work still needs to be done in order to render spatial information services more supportive and cognitively suitable. The workshop addressed issues pertaining to granularity, relevance, and integration. Spatial information is presented to information seekers on various levels of granularity, ranging from coarse high-level information concerning geographic areas to detailed low-level information concerning spatial actions in small-scale space. Not all of this information is relevant for all purposes, and so decisions concerning granularity are directly intertwined with issues of relevance across interaction scenarios. On top of that, web-based services typically present information on one level of granularity at a time, providing access to other granularities or other types of information via various hyperlinks. In contrast, humans manage to present information in an integrated and coherent way, switching flexibly and smoothly between levels of granularity according to the expected relevance for the information seeker. Such processes are substantially supported by dialogic interaction. Each of the papers in this collection contributes to this research field in a different way. Blake Stephen Howald addresses the granularity structure of spatiotemporal information as presented in crime narratives. Tobias Dahinden and Monika Sester assess the relative importance or relevance of geocoded objects in terms of their frequency of mention in Wikipedia. Lars Harrie, Sebastien Mustiere, Heiner Stuckenschmidt and Hanna Stigmar discuss various ways in which the readability of maps presented in geoportals can be improved by automatic methods. Jia Wang and Angela Schwering discuss how automatic sketch map-based querying may be improved by taking systematic cognitive errors into account. Inessa Seifert and Kai-Florian Richter address how the sense of orientation of digital library users, when “navigating” in the virtual data space, can be supported by appropriate visualization. Together, these papers provide a broad and multifarious insight into ongoing research in the exciting area of spatial information presentation.