In recent years, digitization of cultural heritage objects, for the purpose of creating virtual museums, is becoming increasingly popular. Moreover, cultural institutions use modern digitization methods to create three-dimensional (3D) models of objects of historical significance to form digital libraries and archives. This research aims to suggest a method for protecting these 3D models from abuse while making them available on the Internet. The proposed method was applied to a sculpture, an object of cultural heritage. It is based on the digitization of the sculpture altered by adding local clay details proposed by the sculptor and on sharing on the Internet a 3D model obtained by digitizing the sculpture with a built-in error. The clay details embedded in the sculpture are asymmetrical and discreet to be unnoticeable to an average observer. The original sculpture was also digitized and its 3D model created. The obtained 3D models were compared and the geometry deviation was measured to determine that the embedded error was invisible to an average observer and that the watermark can be extracted. The proposed method simultaneously protects the digitized image of the artwork while preserving its visual experience. Other methods cannot guarantee this.

As the electrification of the transport sector progresses, an abundance of lithium-ion batteries inside electric vehicles (EVs) will reach their end-of-life (EoL). The cells inside battery packs will age differently depending on multiple factors during their use. Currently, there is limited publicly available research on the degradation of the individual cells recovered from real-world EV usage. Once they have been recovered from the vehicle, large-format pouch cells are challenging to characterise, measure their internal structure and determine state-of-health (SoH). Here, large-format (261 x 216 x 7.91 mm) Nissan Leaf cells are harvested from an EV and four complementary non-destructive techniques are used to distinguish the ageing of cells arranged in varying orientations and locations within the pack. The measurement suite includes infrared thermography, ultrasonic mapping, X-ray computed tomography, and synchrotron X-ray diffraction, and represents a unique combination of characterisation techniques. We found that each of the non-destructive diagnostic techniques corroborated each other yet provide different complementary insights. The influence of orientation and location of the cells is significant, with the rotated/vertically aligned cells differing significantly from the flat/horizontally aligned cells in mode and degree of ageing. These insights provide new information on cell degradation that can help to influence pack design and illustrates how rapid and relatively inexpensive technology can provide sufficient information for practical assessment compared to costly synchrotron studies. Such an approach can inform decision support at EoL and more efficient battery production reducing the wastage of raw materials.

This paper describes and explains the synthesis of an astronomical clock mechanism which displays the mean position of the Sun, the Moon, the lunar node and zodiac circle as well as the Moon phases and their motion during the year as seen from the Earth. The clock face represents the stereographic projection of the celestial equator, celestial tropics, zodiac circle (ecliptic) and horizon for the latitude of Belgrade from the north celestial pole to the equator plane. The observed motions of celestial objects are realized by a set of clock gear trains with properly calculated gear ratios. The method of continued fraction is applied in the computation of proper and practically applicable gear ratios of the clock gear trains. The fully operational 3D model of the astronomical clock is created and the motion study of its operation is accomplished by using the SolidWorks 2016 application. The simulation results are compared with the ephemeris data and the detected differences are used to evaluate the long-term accuracy of the astronomical clock operation. The presented methods of the clock mechanism synthesis can be useful for the design, maintenance and conservation of large-scale city astronomical clocks since these clocks represent a precious historical and cultural heritage of European civilization.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) exhibit sudden non-linear degradation (known as the cell knee point) in operating use, but a quick, simple, and industrially applicable method of predicting knee point failure remains elusive. Addressing this gap, we show for the first time that the Warburg coefficient (readily obtainable from EIS measurement) can predict electrolyte-based knee point failure, well before extreme capacity degradation, in retired electric vehicle pouch cells. The technique is found to be effective across a wide range of battery states of charge (SOC), and the information can be extracted from the pouch cells in only 10 seconds. In principle this enables early detection of electrolyte-based knee point failure within commercial electric vehicle cells if applied ex situ through offline diagnosis (energy storage system) within second life battery application systems, thus allowing greater predictability with regard to the remaining lifetime of the battery.