Welcome to Research Commons

Research Commons is the University of Waikato's open access research repository, housing research publications and theses produced by the University's staff and students.

Communities in Research Commons

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Recent Submissions

Supporting interactive system testing with interaction sequences
(ACM, 2017) Turner, Jessica; Bowen, Judy; Reeves, Steve
In software engineering testing is an important part of the development process. In interactive systems human input introduces the possibility of human error, which increases the testing requirements. In safety-critical systems user or system error can result in injury or death to a user. We propose using interaction sequences as a way of supporting interactive system testing to help address these issues.
Finite element study on the flexural behaviour and edge-stiffening effect of cold-formed steel C-channel beams with elongated web holes
(The University of Waikato, 2026-09-23) Lei, Junhong; Fang, Zhiyuan (Arthur)
Cold-formed steel (CFS) channel beams are commonly provided with web openings to allow building services to pass through the member. In practice, larger openings are often preferred because they provide more space for services. However, increasing the opening size may reduce the flexural resistance of the beam, especially when elongated web holes are used. This thesis investigates the flexural behaviour of CFS channel beams with elongated web holes under four-point bending. The main aim is to examine whether larger web openings can be introduced while maintaining an acceptable level of moment capacity. The effectiveness of edge stiffening around elongated web holes is also evaluated. A nonlinear elasto-plastic finite element model was developed in Abaqus. The modelling approach was first validated against published experimental and numerical results for CFS channel beams with web holes. After validation, a parametric study including 282 finite element models was carried out. Two section sizes, C240 and C290, were considered. Their no-hole moment capacities were 13.591 kN·m and 20.058 kN·m, respectively. The main parameters included hole radius, elongated-hole aspect ratio, number of holes, clear spacing between adjacent holes, edge stiffening, and lip angle. Three hole radii of 70, 75, and 80 mm were examined. The elongated-hole aspect ratio was varied from 1.25 to 2.00. One-hole, two-hole, and three-hole arrangements were included, with clear spacings of 50 and 100 mm for the multi-hole models. For the edge-stiffened models, the stiffener depth and fillet radius were kept as 13 mm and 4 mm, respectively. The results show that increasing the web opening area generally reduced the moment capacity of the unstiffened-hole beams. For the more severe practical cases, the strength retention ratio decreased to about 0.78–0.85. By contrast, edge stiffening was able to recover a considerable part of the lost strength. The maximum stiffening efficiency obtained in this study was approximately 26.6%. In several edge-stiffened three-hole models, the strength retention ratio remained above 0.85 even when the opening ratio exceeded 12%. The lip-angle study also showed that the flange-lip inclination can affect the flexural response. Among the investigated C290 EH1-HS80-ab15 models, the 60° lip-angle model gave the highest moment capacity. Overall, the results indicate that elongated web holes can be used more efficiently when suitable edge stiffening and geometric configurations are adopted.
Investigation of the geometric effects of corrosion pits on the tensile behaviour of structural steel
(The University of Waikato, 2026) Thu, Kaung Myat; Fang, Zhiyuan (Arthur)
Pitting corrosion removes parts of the structural steel’s cross section in a localised manner, therefore introducing localised stress concentrations which can cause decreased tensile and deformation capacity in a more pronounced effect than uniform cross sectional mass loss. With aging infrastructures using structural steel used in chloride environments, there is a growing need for reliable assessment of corroded steel. Therefore, a methodology that can provide insights with the linkage of measurable corrosion parameter such as mass loss to mechanical response of the corroded steel material can prove to be a clear contribution for corrosion analysis. The methodology should also consider the localised and stochastic nature of pit formations. This thesis develops and applies a reproducible numerical workflow for this purpose and evaluates it against an experimental tensile programme on low-carbon structural steel coupons immersed in a 5% sodium-chloride solution for up to 42 days. Flat dog-bone coupons conforming to ISO 6892-1 were corroded for 0, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42 days, cleaned and weighed gravimetrically, and tested in uniaxial tension. The coupons were protection wrapped for the grip and shoulder regions and only the gauge section were exposed to the chloride immersion. Measured average effective mass losses ranged from 1.29% to 2.49%, with a power-law mass-loss-time relationship indicative of a diffusion-controlled process. Finite element analyses were conducted with a stochastic pit-generation algorithm developed in MATLAB which was used to create randomised distributions of flat-bottomed cylindrical pits, with the total pit volume matched to the measured mass loss. The resulting pit fields were then converted into discrete cavities in an Abaqus/Explicit coupon model using a Python script that conducts automated pit insertion through reading the MATLAB pit generation output data. The material model was calibrated once using a representative lab-tested experimental uncorroded Day-0 tensile response and was subsequently kept unchanged, thereby isolating the simulated influence of corrosion to geometrical material loss. This calibrated geometry-isolated workflow was subsequently applied to a numerical mass-loss projection study, extending the corrosion severity beyond the experimental range to 12% gauge-section mass loss. At this higher severity, the ultimate tensile strength showed a more pronounced decrease compared to lower mass-loss levels, while the ductility loss obtained from the FE simulations remained strongly influenced by the pit geometry and spatial distribution of each stochastic realisation. The uncorroded finite-element model reproduced the experimental ultimate tensile strength to within approximately 0.4% and was shown to be mesh-converged and quasi-static through an energy-balance study. Across the corroded cases, the experimental coupons showed no statistically clear monotonic reduction in either ultimate strength or fracture strain at the studied mass-loss levels. It was observed that the corrosion-induced change was smaller than the coupon-to-coupon scatter. On the other hand, geometry-isolated finite-element model, resolved a small reduction in ultimate strength (of order 2% over the exposure range) and a substantially larger reduction in fracture strain and toughness (of order 7-14%). This suggests that ductility is the corrosion-sensitive quantity and that strain localisation at pits are key factors of the loss of deformation capacity. Based on these findings, simple normalised predictive relationships are proposed in which the residual strength, fracture-strain and toughness factors decrease approximately linearly with mass loss, the ductility coefficient being about an order of magnitude larger than the strength coefficient. These relationships come with limitations which are discussed in the later section. The principal contribution of the thesis is a single, seed-controlled, mass-loss-verified workflow combining stochastic pit generation, idealised-pit finite-element realisation and quasi-static tensile simulation, together with a quantified experimental demonstration which shows that at low-to-moderate mass loss, the geometric effect of pitting on steel coupons is concentrated in ductility rather than strength. The cylindrical pit idealisation, the fixed material card and the coupon scale are acknowledged as part of the limitations of this study.
Disability education in Aotearoa New Zealand university sport and exercise-related programmes: Curriculum positioning, scarcity and graduate pathway reliability
(The University of Waikato, 2026) Hynard, Michael; Townsend, Robert C.
This thesis examines how disability education is incorporated within sport- and exerciserelated programmes across Aotearoa New Zealand universities, and what curriculum and institutional mechanisms contribute to its scarcity. Disability education is understood as a pathway for developing graduates’ disability-informed knowledge, skills, dispositions, and judgement, instead of a single topic, awareness activity, or optional area of interest. Using an interpretivist qualitative design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine educators and curriculum leaders from seven of the eight New Zealand universities offering relevant programmes. Participants discussed curriculum positioning, learning outcomes, assessment, staffing, partnerships, authentic learning opportunities, and the programme-level conditions that shape disability-related provision. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, supported by a cross-case comparison and curriculum-theory lens attentive to the intended, enacted, and experienced curriculum, hidden-curriculum signals, ableism, and institutional conditions. The findings indicate that disability education involves more than whether it is present or absent. Across the programme contexts described by participants, disability education was often implicit, episodic, weakly specified, optional, or folded into broader inclusion and equity language. Disability-related learning was evident in dedicated papers, threaded or infused content, guest teaching, placements, community engagement, and individual staff initiatives. Still, these forms did not always create a reliable pathway for all students. Scarcity was produced through several interacting mechanisms: weak curriculum visibility; reliance on individual champions and uneven staff expertise; limited professional development; curriculum crowding, governance, and viability pressures; and uneven access to authentic learning, which depended on staff-held partnerships and community capacity. These conditions meant that disability education could be valued in principle while remaining fragile in practice. The thesis argues that scarcity is best understood as reduced pathway reliability. Strengthening disability education does not require one uniform model across institutions, but the findings suggest that programmes are needed to make disability capability more visible, coordinated, assessed, and sustainable. The study does not assess students’ competence or directly represent disabled students’ experiences. Its contribution lies in providing an educator-informed account of how disability education is positioned within New Zealand tertiary sport- and exercise-related programmes, and in offering curriculumfocused language for future programme review, development, and research.
The central role of entrepreneurial identity in shaping opportunity evaluation and opportunity development
(The University of Waikato, 2026) Almasri, Omar Radwan; Gibb, Jenny; Sunyer, Albert
Entrepreneurial opportunities drive both venture creation and business performance, yet research has mostly studied opportunity recognition and exploitation while placing less concentration on the ways that assess and advance business opportunities. Moreover, although entrepreneurial identity has been identified as a key psychological driver of entrepreneurial behavior, little is known about how its distinct dimensions shape opportunity-related outcomes, particularly within resource-constrained and emerging economy contexts. While entrepreneurial identity is inherently motivational, it does not in itself explain how entrepreneurs regulate emotionladen judgments during opportunity evaluation and development. Entrepreneurial identity provides motivational direction, yet opportunity evaluation and development unfold in emotionally charged contexts characterised by uncertainty, risk, and ambiguity. Nevertheless, existing research has broadly conceptualized emotional intelligence as an immediate predictor of its antecedents, with less considering its theoretically significant role as a moderator of the way in which motivations grounded in identity are transformed into evaluative judgments and developmental actions. With the aim of addressing the identified gaps, this thesis explores the impact of entrepreneurial identity salience and centrality on opportunity evaluation and development, and the moderating effect of emotional intelligence on these relationships. Drawing on role identity theory and the entrepreneurial identity literature, this research conceptualises entrepreneurial identity as a multidimensional construct and advances a processoriented view of opportunity evaluation and development. The objective of this thesis is to shed light on how different aspects of entrepreneurial identity shape opportunity evaluation and development, as well as emotional intelligence as a moderating factor that shapes the expression of identity-driven motivation in challenging emotional contexts of entrepreneurship. A survey method is used to investigate 344 founder entrepreneurs in Jordan, where Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with confirmatory factor analysis is employed to verify the proposed models. For moderation effects, Z-standardized interaction terms in the SEM approach are used to ensure robustness and comparability of models. The results indicate that entrepreneurial identity salience and entrepreneurial identity centrality have different and differential effects on opportunity evaluation and opportunity development. Entrepreneurial identity salience is found to positively affect opportunity evaluation and opportunity development, and emotional intelligence plays a moderating role in these relationships in subtle ways. Emotional intelligence reduces the effect of identity salience on opportunity evaluation and increases its effect on opportunity development, implying that the effect of identity salience on opportunity development becomes less impulsive and more emotionally driven. Entrepreneurial identity centrality exhibits a strong positive relationship with opportunity evaluation, which is significantly reinforced by emotional intelligence. In contrast, emotional intelligence does not moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial identity centrality and opportunity development, suggesting that highly central identities may rely more on intrinsic commitment than on emotional regulation to sustain development activities. This thesis makes several important contributions. Theoretically, it contributes to the research on entrepreneurial identity by disentangling the concepts of salience and centrality and making an explicit connection to opportunity evaluation and development, rather than just opportunity recognition. Empirically, it provides evidence from an underexplored emerging economy context, highlighting the contingent role of emotional intelligence in identity– opportunity processes. Practically, the findings provide guidance for entrepreneurs, educators, and policymakers interested in promoting more reflective opportunity evaluations and continuous opportunity development to create programs that improve their decision-making skills through a better understanding of challenges in their institutional environment.