There is a growing interest in cultural heritage preservation. The notion of HyperHeritage highlights the creation of new means of communication for the perception and data processing in cultural heritage. This article presents the Digital Surface HyperHeritage approach, an academic project to identify the topography of art painting surfaces at the scale at which the elementary information of sensorial rendering is contained. High-resolution roughness and imaging measurement tools are then required. The high-resolution digital model of painted surfaces provides a solid foundation for artwork-related information and is a source of many potential opportunities in the fields of identification, conservation, and restoration. It can facilitate the determination of the operations used by the artist in the creative process and allow art historians to define, for instance, the meaning, provenance, or authorship of a masterpiece. The Digital Surface HyperHeritage approach also includes the development of a database for archiving and sharing the topographic signature of a painting.

Surface gradient characterization by light reflectance (SGCLR) is used for the first time for multiscale curvature calculations and discrimination of worn surfaces on six damaged ceramic–metal composites. Measurements are made using reflectance transformation imaging (RTI). Slope and curvature maps, generated from RTI, are analyzed instead of heights. From multiscale decompositions, bootstrapping, and analysis of variance (ANOVA), a strong correlation (R² = 0.90) is found between the density of furrows of Mehlum curvatures, with a band pass filter at 5.4 µm, present in ceramic grains and their mechanical properties. A strong correlation is found between the mean curvatures of the metal and the ceramics, with a high pass filter at 1286 µm.

This two-part paper described the results of the research programme PROCAB (French acronym for PROtection CABine) for train driver protection in rail collisions. In the part I, virtual and physical testing were developed to predict the train driver dynamics and related injuries due to secondary impact with cabin furniture. The conclusion was that the desk represented a hostile secondary impact environment for the locomotive engineer by inducing severe thoracic injuries. Part II included the design, fabrication and testing of an improved command desk. The concept selected was a movable rigid desk with energy-absorbing aluminium honeycomb to slow the desk motion, coupled with knee bolsters. A prototype of the protection device was fabricated and evaluated in a dynamical sled test under a 5 g, 0.1 s deceleration pulse. Preliminary results demonstrated the effectiveness of this concept in reducing the thoracic injury risk without increasing risk in another area (head, neck, chest, femurs and tibias).

This two-part paper described the results of the research programme PROCAB for train driver protection during rail collisions. In Part I, a methodology was proposed to analyse driver survivability in train crash. Appropriate experimental devices and associated numerical models were developed which were able to reproduce the loads and accelerations imparted to the train driver and on the interior elements of the driver's cabin. A full validation programme was realised involving correlation between experimental methods and computer model outputs. Experiments and computer results indicated that during a collision, the driver was likely to strike the desk at the lower chest. Since actual desk was extremely rigid due to maintenance requirements, chest deflection exceeded human tolerance. Part II deals with the development of an interior driver protection.