Slanted Surface Research Articles

Computational and experimental investigations of the vortical flow structures in the near wake region downstream of the Ahmed vehicle model

The present study aims to investigate flow characteristics downstream of the Ahmed vehicle model using both experimental and computational methods. Ahmed vehicle model having ¼ scale and 25° slant angle is employed at Reynolds number of ReH=1.48×104. Investigations are conducted in two parts. In the first part, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) method is used to resolve the flow structures downstream of the Ahmed model, computationally. In the second part, the technique of the particle image velocimetry (PIV) is employed to obtain the flow fields downstream of the Ahmed model. The PIV and LES investigations provides time-averaged and instantaneous velocity field results, such as vorticity contours, streamline topology, velocity profiles and spectral analysis of the flow velocity. Flow features that have been predicted by computational study are in a good harmony with the results predicted by experimental studies both on the slanted surface and in the near wake region downstream of the Ahmed model. Results present that characteristics of flow features that exist on the rear slanted surface and in the near wake region of the Ahmed model exhibit great variations in a very short distance in both stream-wise and vertical direction of the flow.

Energy-based multi-view piecewise planar stereo

The piecewise planar model (PPM) is an effective means of approximating a complex scene by using planar patches to give a complete interpretation of the spatial points reconstructed from projected 2D images. The traditional piecewise planar stereo methods suffer from either a very restricted number of directions for plane detection or heavy reliance on the segmentation accuracy of superpixels. To address these issues, we propose a new multi-view piecewise planar stereo method in this paper. Our method formulates the problem of complete scene reconstruction as a multi-level energy minimization problem. To detect planes along principal directions, a novel energy formulation with pair-wise potentials is used to assign an optimal plane for each superpixel in an iterative manner, where reliable scene priors and geometric constraints are incorporated to enhance the modeling efficacy and inference efficiency. To detect non-principal-direction planes, we adopt a multi-direction plane sweeping with a restricted search space method to generate reliable candidate planes. To handle the multi-surface straddling problem of a single superpixel, a superpixel sub-segmenting scheme is proposed and a robust Pn Potts model-like higher-order potential is introduced to refine the resulting depth map. Our method is a natural integration of pixel- and superpixel-level multi-view stereos under a unified energy minimization framework. Experimental results for standard data sets and our own data sets show that our proposed method can satisfactorily handle many challenging factors (e.g., slanted surfaces and poorly textured regions) and can obtain accurate piecewise planar depth maps.

Effects of boundary-layer separation controllers on a desktop fume hood

ABSTRACTA desktop fume hood installed with an innovative design of flow boundary-layer separation controllers on the leading edges of the side plates, work surface, and corners was developed and characterized for its flow and containment leakage characteristics. The geometric features of the developed desktop fume hood included a rearward offset suction slot, two side plates, two side-plate boundary-layer separation controllers on the leading edges of the side plates, a slanted surface on the leading edge of the work surface, and two small triangular plates on the upper left and right corners of the hood face. The flow characteristics were examined using the laser-assisted smoke flow visualization technique. The containment leakages were measured by the tracer gas (sulphur hexafluoride) detection method on the hood face plane with a mannequin installed in front of the hood. The results of flow visualization showed that the smoke dispersions induced by the boundary-layer separations on the leading edges of the side plates and work surface, as well as the three-dimensional complex flows on the upper-left and -right corners of the hood face, were effectively alleviated by the boundary-layer separation controllers. The results of the tracer gas detection method with a mannequin standing in front of the hood showed that the leakage levels were negligibly small (≤0.003 ppm) at low face velocities (≥0.19 m/s).

An Optical Sensor for Measuring the Position and Slanting Direction of Flat Surfaces.

Automated optical inspection is a very important technique. For this reason, this study proposes an optical non-contact slanting surface measuring system. The essential features of the measurement system are obtained through simulations using the optical design software Zemax. The actual propagation of laser beams within the measurement system is traced by using a homogeneous transformation matrix (HTM), the skew-ray tracing method, and a first-order Taylor series expansion. Additionally, a complete mathematical model that describes the variations in light spots on photoelectric sensors and the corresponding changes in the sample orientation and distance was established. Finally, a laboratory prototype system was constructed on an optical bench to verify experimentally the proposed system. This measurement system can simultaneously detect the slanting angles (x, z) in the x and z directions of the sample and the distance (y) between the biconvex lens and the flat sample surface.

Window-Based Three-Dimensional Aggregation for Stereo Matching

This paper presents a window-based three-dimens-ional (3-D) aggregation technique, which can approximate the surfaces of all kinds of objects, in stereo matching. The 3-D aggregation, which means to aggregate in 3-D surfaces, is implemented by decomposing the adaptive support window into horizontal segments; we allow the disparity to change smoothly in or between segments. Compared to traditional local stereo methods, the 3-D aggregation greatly improves the accuracy of results in slanted surfaces and occlusion areas while keeping excellent performance near depth discontinuities. We also propose an acceleration method that surprisingly improves the accuracy at the same time. The evaluation experiments confirm our achievements.

South Pacific influence on the termination of El Niño in 2014.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of climate variability affecting worldwide extreme weather events; therefore, improving ENSO prediction is an important issue. In this regard, a peculiar time evolution of ENSO in 2014 posed a challenge to the climate science community. Despite the observance of several precursors for a strong El Niño to develop during the summer and autumn, cold sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies appeared unexpectedly to the south of the equatorial cold tongue, which prevented development of an El Niño event in the late summer. Several hypotheses have been raised to explain the unmaterialized El Niño in 2014, but complete understanding of processes responsible for terminating this event has not yet been obtained. Here we show, using observations and extended seasonal prediction experiments with a climate model, that cold off-equatorial subsurface water in the South Pacific Ocean penetrated into the equatorial region along the slanted isopycnal surface via the mean advection, and it prevented the El Niño evolution in 2014. The negative subsurface temperature anomalies in the off-equatorial South Pacific Ocean were persistent throughout the last decade, and additional numerical simulations indicated that they contributed to the suppression of El Niño events during the 2000s.

Recovering stereo vision by squashing virtual bugs in a virtual reality environment.

Stereopsis is the rich impression of three-dimensionality, based on binocular disparity-the differences between the two retinal images of the same world. However, a substantial proportion of the population is stereo-deficient, and relies mostly on monocular cues to judge the relative depth or distance of objects in the environment. Here we trained adults who were stereo blind or stereo-deficient owing to strabismus and/or amblyopia in a natural visuomotor task-a 'bug squashing' game-in a virtual reality environment. The subjects' task was to squash a virtual dichoptic bug on a slanted surface, by hitting it with a physical cylinder they held in their hand. The perceived surface slant was determined by monocular texture and stereoscopic cues, with these cues being either consistent or in conflict, allowing us to track the relative weighting of monocular versus stereoscopic cues as training in the task progressed. Following training most participants showed greater reliance on stereoscopic cues, reduced suppression and improved stereoacuity. Importantly, the training-induced changes in relative stereo weights were significant predictors of the improvements in stereoacuity. We conclude that some adults deprived of normal binocular vision and insensitive to the disparity information can, with appropriate experience, recover access to more reliable stereoscopic information.This article is part of the themed issue 'Vision in our three-dimensional world'.

A moving observer in a three-dimensional world.

For many tasks such as retrieving a previously viewed object, an observer must form a representation of the world at one location and use it at another. A world-based three-dimensional reconstruction of the scene built up from visual information would fulfil this requirement, something computer vision now achieves with great speed and accuracy. However, I argue that it is neither easy nor necessary for the brain to do this. I discuss biologically plausible alternatives, including the possibility of avoiding three-dimensional coordinate frames such as ego-centric and world-based representations. For example, the distance, slant and local shape of surfaces dictate the propensity of visual features to move in the image with respect to one another as the observer's perspective changes (through movement or binocular viewing). Such propensities can be stored without the need for three-dimensional reference frames. The problem of representing a stable scene in the face of continual head and eye movements is an appropriate starting place for understanding the goal of three-dimensional vision, more so, I argue, than the case of a static binocular observer.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Vision in our three-dimensional world’.

Parallel refinement of slanted 3D reconstruction using dense stereo induced from symmetry

Traditional dense stereo estimation algorithms measure photo-similarity to calculate the disparity between image pairs. SymStereo is a new framework of matching cost functions that measure symmetry to evaluate the possibility of two pixels being a match. This article proposes a fully functional real-time parallel 3D reconstruction pipeline that uses dense stereo-based photo-symmetry. The logN variant of SymStereo achieves superior results for images with slanted surfaces, when compared with other algorithms (Antunes and Barreto in Int J Comput Vis 1–22, 2014). This is of particular interest for areas of computer vision such as the processing of datasets for urban scene reconstruction and also for tracking in robotics or intelligent autonomous vehicles. The output results obtained are analyzed by tuning distinct matching cost, aggregation and refinement parameters, targeting the most suitable combinations for slant dominated images. Also, the parallel approach for the aforementioned pipeline consists of a hybrid dual GPU system capable of calculating from 2 up to 132 volumes per second for high- and low-resolution images, respectively.

Gradients of relative disparity underlie the perceived slant of stereoscopic surfaces.

Perceived stereoscopic slant around a vertical axis is strongly underestimated for isolated surfaces, suggesting that neither uniocular image compression nor linear gradients of absolute disparity are very effective cues. However, slant increases to a level close to geometric prediction if gradients of relative disparity are introduced, for example by placing flanking frontal-parallel surfaces at the horizontal boundaries of the slanted surface. Here we examine the mechanisms underlying this slant enhancement by manipulating properties of the slanted surface or the flanking surfaces. Perceived slant was measured using a probe bias method. In Experiment 1, an outlined surface and a randomly textured surface showed similar slant underestimation when presented in isolation, but the enhancement in slant produced by flankers was significantly greater for the textured surface. In Experiment 2, we degraded the relative disparity gradient by (a) reducing overall texture density, (b) reducing flanker width, or (c) adding disparity noise to the flankers. Density had no effect while adding noise to the flankers, or reducing their width significantly decreased perceived slant of the central surface. These results support the view that the enhancement of slant produced by adding flanking surfaces is attributable to the presence of a relative disparity gradient and that the flanker effect can spread to regions of the surface not directly above or below the gradient.

Efficient methods using slanted support windows for slanted surfaces

The frontal-parallel assumption is made by many matching algorithms, but this assumption fails for slanted surfaces. This study proposes a matching algorithm intended to improve the matching results for slanted surfaces. First, a mathematical model is constructed to prove that slanted surfaces in the environment have corresponding slanted disparity surfaces in the disparity space image, and the model is to help find the proper plane parameters of slanted support windows, then improved cost aggregation and post-processing methods are proposed. The algorithm is tested using the Middlebury and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Toyota Technical Institute at Chicago (KITTI) benchmarks. The results demonstrate that the algorithm exhibits good performance and is efficient for slanted surfaces.

Perception of Stand-on-ability: Do Geographical Slants Feel Steeper Than They Look?

Past research has shown that haptically perceived surface slant by foot is matched with visually perceived slant by a factor of 0.81. Slopes perceived visually appear shallower than when stood on without looking. We sought to identify the sources of this discrepancy by asking participants to judge whether they would be able to stand on an inclined ramp. In the first experiment, visual perception was compared to pedal perception in which participants took half a step with one foot onto an occluded ramp. Visual perception closely matched the actual maximal slope angle that one could stand on, whereas pedal perception underestimated it. Participants may have been less stable in the pedal condition while taking half a step onto the ramp. We controlled for this by having participants hold onto a sturdy tripod in the pedal condition (Experiment 2). This did not eliminate the difference between visual and haptic perception, but repeating the task while sitting on a chair did (Experiment 3). Beyond balance requirements, pedal perception may also be constrained by the limited range of motion at the ankle and knee joints while standing. Indeed, when we restricted range of motion by wearing an ankle brace pedal perception underestimated the affordance (Experiment 4). Implications for ecological theory were offered by discussing the notion of functional equivalence and the role of exploration in perception.

A bio-inspired device for drag reduction on a three-dimensional model vehicle

In this paper, we introduce a bio-mimetic device for the reduction of the drag force on a three-dimensional model vehicle, the Ahmed body (Ahmed et al 1984 SAE Technical Paper 840300). The device, called automatic moving deflector (AMD), is designed inspired by the movement of secondary feathers on bird’s wing suction surface: i.e., secondary feathers pop up when massive separation occurs on bird’s wing suction surface at high angles of attack, which increases the lift force at landing. The AMD is applied to the rear slanted surface of the Ahmed body to control the flow separation there. The angle of the slanted surface considered is 25° at which the drag coefficient on the Ahmed body is highest. The wind tunnel experiment is conducted at ReH = 1.0 × 105–3.8 × 105, based on the height of the Ahmed body (H) and the free-stream velocity (U∞). Several AMDs of different sizes and materials are tested by measuring the drag force on the Ahmed body, and showed drag reductions up to 19%. The velocity and surface-pressure measurements show that AMD starts to pop up when the pressure in the thin gap between the slanted surface and AMD is much larger than that on the upper surface of AMD. We also derive an empirical formula that predicts the critical free-stream velocity at which AMD starts to operate. Finally, it is shown that the drag reduction by AMD is mainly attributed to a pressure recovery on the slanted surface by delaying the flow separation and suppressing the strength of the longitudinal vortices emanating from the lateral edges of the slanted surface.

Influence of afterbody rounding on the pressure distribution over a fastback vehicle

Experimental analyzes were performed to understand the drag evolution and the flow field modifications resulting from afterbody rounding on the Ahmed body, a simplified vehicle model with 25 degrees rear slant. Curvature effects were investigated using balance measurements, flow visualizations, wall pressure, and particle image velocimetry measurements. The rear end of the original well-known Ahmed body has sharp connections between the roof and the rear window as well as squared rear pillars. Similarly to previous studies, rounding the roof/backlight intersection was shown to reduce drag up to 16 %. Surprisingly, additional rear curvature associated with side pillar rounding did not further modify the drag. However, the zero net effect was found to result from opposite drag effects on the slanted and vertical surfaces and to hide strong local modifications on the flow field. The tridimensional organization and vorticity transport in the near wake were analyzed and connected to the observed local increase in the pressure drag on the base. Finally, these results were shown to be generic for a realistic rounded-end car shape.

The changes of lumbar muscle flexion-relaxation phenomenon due to antero-posteriorly slanted ground surfaces

Uneven ground surface is a common occupational injury risk factor in industries such as agriculture, fishing, transportation and construction. Studies have shown that antero-posteriorly slanted ground surfaces could reduce spinal stability and increase the risk of falling. In this study, the influence of antero-posteriorly slanted ground surfaces on lumbar flexion-relaxation responses was investigated. Fourteen healthy participants performed sagittally symmetric and asymmetric trunk bending motions on one flat and two antero-posteriorly slanted surfaces (−15° (uphill facing) and 15° (downhill facing)), while lumbar muscle electromyography and trunk kinematics were recorded. Results showed that standing on a downhill facing slanted surface delays the onset of lumbar muscle flexion-relaxation phenomenon (FRP), while standing on an uphill facing ground causes lumbar muscle FRP to occur earlier. In addition, compared to symmetric bending, when performing asymmetric bending, FRP occurred earlier on the contralateral side of lumbar muscles and significantly smaller maximum lumbar flexion and trunk inclination angles were observed.Practitioner Summary: Uneven ground surface is a common risk factor among a number of industries. In this study, we investigated the influence of antero-posteriorly slanted ground surface on trunk biomechanics during trunk bending. Results showed the slanted surface alters the lumbar tissue load-sharing mechanism in both sagittally symmetric and asymmetric bending.

Piecewise-planar reconstruction using two views

The article describes a reconstruction pipeline that generates piecewise-planar models of man-made environments using two calibrated views. The 3D space is sampled by a set of virtual cut planes that intersect the baseline of the stereo rig and implicitly define possible pixel correspondences across views. The likelihood of these correspondences being true matches is measured using signal symmetry analysis [1], which enables to obtain profile contours of the 3D scene that become lines whenever the virtual cut planes intersect planar surfaces. The detection and estimation of these lines cuts is formulated as a global optimization problem over the symmetry matching cost, and pairs of reconstructed lines are used to generate plane hypotheses that serve as input to PEARL clustering [2]. The PEARL algorithm alternates between a discrete optimization step, which merges planar surface hypotheses and discards detections with poor support, and a continuous optimization step, which refines the plane poses taking into account surface slant. The pipeline outputs an accurate semi-dense Piecewise-Planar Reconstruction of the 3D scene. In addition, the input images can be segmented into piecewise-planar regions using a standard labeling formulation for assigning pixels to plane detections. Extensive experiments with both indoor and outdoor stereo pairs show significant improvements over state-of-the-art methods with respect to accuracy and robustness.

Scaled-neighborhood Patches Fusion for Multi-view Stereopsis

In this paper, we present a multi-view stereo reconstruction approach which fuses scaled-neighborhood information. PMVS proposed by Furukawa is one of the most excellent algorithms, and it has a good performance on many datasets both the accuracy and the completeness. However, there are still further improvements on this algorithm. PMVS cannot perform well in the presence of slanted surfaces, which are usually imaged at oblique angles. According to these aspects, on the one hand we propose to estimate the initial normal of every seed patch via fitting quadrics with scaled-neighborhood patches, which greatly improves the accuracy of the normal. On the other hand, we present to compute scaled-window for the further optimization based on texture. And it has been tested that employing the scaled-window will dramatically smooth the surfaces and enhance the reconstruction precision.

Aerodynamic drag reduction of an Ahmed body based on deflectors

The effects of deflectors on the aerodynamic drag and near wake of an Ahmed model with a 25° slant angle were experimentally investigated. Experiments were conducted in a closed circuit low speed wind tunnel at a Reynolds number of 8.7×105, based on the free stream oncoming velocity (U∞) and model length (l). The deflectors were placed at the side edges and leading edge of the slant. The height or width of the deflectors was 1%, 2% and 3% of l. Pressure distribution on the rear slanted surface and the vertical base was measured using pressure scanners. The flow velocities and static pressure were measured by Cobra probe at 0.5l and l downstream in the near wake. Oil film flow visualization technique was deployed to capture the flow structure on the slant. In the absence of control, shear layer separation from the side edges and leading edge of the slant results in remarkable local low pressure regions on the slant, which contribute significantly to the aerodynamic drag. There is a D-shape separation bubble on the slant and the near wake is dominated by one pair of counter rotating trailing vortices. When the height of the deflector placed at the side edges of the slant is 1% of l, its effects on the near wake are negligibly small and the corresponding drag is increased slightly, compared to the uncontrolled case. With the deflector height increased to 2% and 3% of l, the D-shape separation bubble and the trailing vortices were noticeably suppressed, with the drag reduction reaching 3.5% and 7.2%, respectively. The deflector at the leading edge of slant changes the near wake of the model similar to that behind an Ahmed model of larger slant angle (e.g. 30° or 35°), eliminating the D-shape separation bubble on the slant. The corresponding drag reduction reaches 9.3%, 10.7% and 10.9% for the deflector width of 1%, 2% and 3% of l, respectively. For the 25° slant Ahmed model, the deflector placed at the leading edge of the slant is more efficient in reducing drag and suppressing the trailing vortices than those at the side edges of slant.

Palm board and verbal estimates of slant reflect the same perceptual representation.

People verbally overestimate the orientation of slanted surfaces, but accurately estimate or underestimate slanted surfaces using a palm board. We demonstrate a fundamental issue that explains why the two different values typically given for palm board and verbal/visual matching estimates express similar perceptual representations of slanted surfaces. The fundamental problem in studies measuring palm board and verbal estimates is that the "measure"-either (1) reproducing a verbally given angle or the orientation of a slanted surface with an unseen hand or (2) verbally or visually estimating a visually perceived surface-has always been confounded with the "surface"-either using (1) a palm board or (2) a hill or ramp. Although reproduction has exclusively been used with palm boards in these studies, at the same time verbal estimation or visual matching has exclusively been used with hills/ramps. In three experiments, we showed that verbally estimating palm board orientations produces overestimates by a factor of 1.5, whereas reproducing the orientation of the surface of a ramp to verbally given angles produces gains of ~0.6. These values are similar to those seen for verbal overestimates of slanted surfaces, and to palm board gains for near surfaces and the relative palm-board-to-verbal gains for outdoor hills, respectively. Eliminating this confound eliminated the difference previously seen across surfaces. We discuss how and why different measures should produce different results if we overestimate slant in general and perceptually represent slant in the same way, both haptically and visually.

Effects of Uneven Ground Surface on Human Balance

The effect of anteroposteriorly slanted ground surface on human posture control at fully flexed trunk postures was investigated in this study. Custom made wooden apparatus were used to simulate slanted ground surfaces, the slanted were set at -15, 0 and 15 degrees respectively. The flat ground condition was included in the study as a control. Fourteen healthy male subjects were asked to maintain in fully flexed trunk posture while standing on different ground surfaces. The segmental sway motion of C7, T12 and S1 spinal vertebrae in the anteroposterior (AP) and mediolateral (ML) directions were recorded. Results showed that when standing on an anteroposteriorly slanted ground surface and facing downhill (i.e. -15 degree condition) subjects consistently demonstrated the highest sway speeds and reported the highest subjective rating of instability. Therefore, we concluded that, when standing on an anteroposteriorly slanted ground surface in a fully flexed trunk posture facing downhill may result in much higher risk of falling in comparison to facing the opposite direction.