The production and assembly of large engineering structures, many requiring tight tolerances, demand accurate long-distance measurements. This poses a major challenge for metrologists across industries such as energy, aviation, automotive, and machinery. Contact measurements provide high accuracy but are slow, as tactile probes must be moved over large distances. Optical methods are much faster, yet their effective range is usually limited to a few meters, and they generally offer lower accuracy. Measurements of large-scale components are further complicated by varying environmental conditions (e.g., temperature gradients) and the accumulation of different error sources, making high-accuracy measurements difficult to achieve. These challenges motivated the authors to develop hybrid measurement systems (HMS) and methods for improving their accuracy. This paper describes the steps taken to build an HMS combining a large-volume, high-accuracy coordinate measuring machine with a structured-light scanner. It also presents a dedicated method for determining measurement uncertainty in HMS, based on a multiple-measurement strategy. A series of tests were performed on material standards with various shapes, dimensions, and geometric features, using both contact and optical systems. The measurement uncertainties were then evaluated using the developed method. Finally, the method was validated through tests conducted on a selected large-scale engineering object.
The presented project sets out to examine playing cards in a longitudinal media-historical study. These paper things thus appear as paradigmatic interfaces between legibility and playability: On the one hand, playing cards are toys - namely artefacts that allow for certain operations - and on the other they are cultural sign systems, from which meaning is extracted from in varying ways. This calls for a systematic ludology that has been conceptualized as scientific research into playful cultural techniques. The aim is to establish an independent academic perspective on games and game design that is not merely orientated towards existing disciplines, but develops from the materiality and logic of the game itself. Within the agenda of digital humanism, this project seeks to understand the relationship of computer science and digital culture of our age with regard to the ongoing rapid transformations and innovations. These technological advances need to be mediated to the individual ways of handling knowledge. Thus, there is a need to understand and critically examine the materiality and functionality of interfaces and media, their playful (mis-)use and hacks that are part of the actual transformation of our knowledge society. Games and play are entities in their own right that need to be discussed with regards to the complex social, psychological/biological and media-technological aspects at once, without favouring one of those aspects for methodological reasons. This short paper aims at presenting some results of the funded INTRA-research project of the university of applied arts ("Ludological Investigations. Game Design in Terms of Cultural Techniques"), while explaining why it matters and presenting an outlook of potential upcoming research focussing on the prototypical playing card. It stood out as a special artifact of high ludicity, exemplifying the ludic potential as a special appeal, but also a liberating force for empowering autonomy against bureaucratic oppression. We're looking forward to adapting in this early stage to the issues, topics and major problems pointed out in the field of digital humanism.
The article determined the value of the flow coefficient C for two types of orifices with the same ratio of orifice diameter to pipe diameter of 50 mm based on the results of experiments and numerical simulations. Equations were also proposed to determine the value of this coefficient in an engineering manner (with an accuracy not exceeding 1.5%) in the range of Reynolds numbers from 10,000 to 20,000.
The Extended Cross-Float method introduced in this paper offers a faster and simpler route to calibrating pressure balances than the classical cross-float technique. Where the conventional method requires locating a hydrostatic equilibrium point through laborious, iterative mass adjustment, the proposed method removes that bottleneck entirely: it determines the effective area of the piston-cylinder assembly directly from the change in piston fall velocity, measured by laser sensors before and after a shut-off valve is opened. The measurement setup is the same standard and device-under-test arrangement already familiar to calibration laboratories, so the method is inexpensive to adopt and easy to integrate into existing workflows. Experimental validation on two purpose-built assemblies over a 10 bar to 60 bar range confirmed the working principle and demonstrated strong practical potential, both as a fast preselection tool that markedly shortens the search for the equilibrium point and as an independent check of calibration readiness. The approach is simple, low-cost, and quickly executed, and it opens a promising new route toward faster and more accessible pressure-balance calibration.
