Leaf venation is a showcase of plant diversity, ranging from the grid-like network in grasses, to a wide variety of dendritic systems in other angiosperms. A principal function of the venation is to deliver water; however, a hydraulic significance has never been demonstrated for contrasting major venation architectures, including the most basic dichotomy, "pinnate" and "palmate" systems. We hyp...

It has often been cited that a water distribution system (WDS) hydraulic model needs to be highly accurate before it may be used in combination with a water quality model (WQM) to simulate the dispersion and decay of a residual disinfectant. However, even a well-calibrated WDS hydraulic model may not have data relating to the specific water demands during a given period, which may impede WQM ca...

Most field soils exhibit soil spatial variability as well as soil structure. The challenge is to account adequately for both types of spatial heterogeneity in simulation models. A numerical finite element code was used to compare singleand dual-permeability approaches for modeling variably saturated flow and transport in two-dimensional heterogeneous soil systems. The code was based on the Rich...

The rational distribution of water in a water supply network (WSN) is a complex problem, especially for systems of large scale. Its complexity is continually increasing from the point of view of technical management. The division of WSN into hydraulic zones is a partition of the supply network into subsystems with controlled inputs and outputs, building smaller independent networks. This soluti...

Bond Graphs provide a notation for describing dy-namical systems occurring in most branches of engineering including: electrical, mechanical, hydraulic and thermodynamic. As such, they provide basis for computer aided design of engineering systems and their corresponding control systems. The paper gives an overview of current research within the Centre for Systems and Control.

This work contributes a modeling framework to characterize the effect of cyber-physical attacks (CPAs) on the hydraulic behavior of water distribution systems. The framework consists of an attack model and a MATLAB toolbox named epanetCPA. The former identifies the components of the cyber infrastructure (e.g., sensors or programmable logic controllers) that are potentially vulnerable to attacks...

Imagine the scenario in which an electric motor company came to the (correct) conclusion that the power density of hydraulic pumps and motors is much higher than that of electric generators and motors. Then imagine that the board of this company gave the (wrong) instruction to the R&D department to utilize the concept of hydrostatic machines to develop electric generators and pumps with the sam...

This paper is a synopsis of an 80-page work entitled The THERMOSIM® Package for Simulating Thermodynamic, Hydraulic and Other Engineering Systems, A Users’ Manual[1]. This package employs a new user-friendly graphical interface to help model and simulate a wide variety of engineering and physical systems. It employs several thousand lines of code. Its primary focus, for which it has no bond-gra...

Energetic autonomy of a hydraulic-based mobile robot requires a power source capable of both hydraulic and electrical power generation. The hydraulic power is used for locomotion and the electric power is used for the control computer, sensors and other peripherals. In addition, the power source must be lightweight and quiet. This study presents several designs of internal combustion engine-bas...