Challenge For Designers Research Articles

Integration of local resources in the Guinea-Bissau single-family house architecture design

This paper presents an architectural project design for housing for a middle-high class family in the Biombo region, Guinea-Bissau (Gulf of Guinea region, West Africa). Climatic conditions, natural and labour resources, social characteristics and local architecture all have to be reconciled from an integrative perspective and a challenge for architect designers. To implement the architectural project design, a methodology tested in rural Angola has been adapted, which simultaneously benefits and harnesses resources from global industrial technology. Passive cooling and sun protection strategies are applied and the articulation between local and global technologies is promoted, guaranteeing a dwelling house with dignified comfort conditions that are appropriate to the region.

Using numerical simulation to investigate the effect of injection configurations over the scramjet performance

Achieving combustion in the available residence time by efficient mixing of the injected fuel has been a challenge for scramjet designers since years. Design of the injection configuration do affect the patterns of mixing and in turn the rate of heat release for a given combustor geometry. The presented work attempts to investigate the effect of inclined injection configurations on the performance of a scramjet for a typical combustor geometry having intrusive fuel injection using strut. Over a decades of literature points towards the fact that numerical simulations are widely being accepted as promising method of investigation of flow inside a scramjet. Reacting simulations of hydrogen injection in an inlet air stream of Mach 2.5 are done with various fuel injection configurations. After validation of simulation results with the available experimental Sadatake Tomioka et al. (2001) results, different injection configurations were simulated for a constant equivalence ratio. The maximum combustion, mixing and heating was observed in near the strut surface, hence flow fields of these configurations are studied near the strut to understand the mechanism of mixing. Observations on performance parameters like total pressure loss, maximum top wall static pressure, flow enthalpy etc. are made to compare these configurations.

A Hybrid Semantic Knowledge Integration and Sharing Approach for Distributed Smart Environments.

Distributed systems provide smart functionality to everyday objects with the help of wireless sensors using the internet. Since the last decade, the industry is struggling to develop efficient and intelligent protocols to integrate a huge number of smart objects in distributed computing environments. However, the main challenge for smart and distributed system designers lies in the integration of a large number of heterogeneous components for faster, cheaper, and more efficient functionalities. To deal with this issue, practitioners are using edge computing along with server and desktop technology for the development of smart applications by using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) where every smart object offers its functionality as a service, enabling other objects to interact with them dynamically. In order to make such a system, researchers have considered context-awareness and Quality of Service (QoS) attributes of device services. However, context modeling is a complicated task since it could include everything around the applications. Moreover, it is also important to consider non-functional interactions that may have an impact on the behavior of the complete system. In this regard, various research dimensions are explored. However, rich context-aware modeling, QoS, user priorities, grouping, and value type direction along with uncertainty are not considered properly while modeling of incomplete or partial domain knowledge during ontology engineering, resulting in low accuracy of results. In this paper, we present a semantic and logic-based formal framework (hybrid) to find the best service among many candidate services by considering the limitations of existing frameworks. Experimental results of the proposed framework show the improvement of the discovered results.

URLLC Facilitated by Mobile UAV Relay and RIS: A Joint Design of Passive Beamforming, Blocklength, and UAV Positioning

Upcoming fifth-generation (5G) networks need to support novel ultrareliable and low-latency (URLLC) traffic that utilizes short packets. This requires a paradigm shift as traditional communication systems are designed to transmit only long data packets based on Shannon’s capacity formula, which poses a challenge for system designers. To address this challenge, this article relies on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to deliver short URLLC instruction packets between ground Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. In this context, we perform passive beamforming of RIS antenna elements as well as nonlinear and nonconvex optimization to minimize the total decoding error rate and find the UAV’s optimal position and blocklength. In this article, a novel, polytope-based method from the class of direct search methods (DSMs) named Nelder–Mead simplex (NMS) is used to solve the optimization problem based on its computational efficiency; in terms of lesser number of required iterations to evaluate objective function. The proposed approach yields better convergence performance than the traditional gradient-descent optimization algorithm and a lower computation time and equivalent performance for the blocklength variable as the exhaustive search. Moreover, the proposed approach allows ultrahigh reliability, which can be attained by increasing the number of antenna elements in RIS as well as increasing the allocated blocklengths. Simulations demonstrate the RIS’s performance gain and conclusively show that the UAV’s position is crucial for achieving ultrahigh reliability in short packet transmission.

Validation of the Lattice Boltzmann Method for Simulation of Aerodynamics and Aeroacoustics in a Centrifugal Fan

Due to the fact that legal and market requirements are becoming stricter, fan noise reduction, in addition to energy efficiency, represent a challenge for fan product designers. Most experimental studies are associated with trial-and-error approaches. Therefore, numerical methods are mostly preferable. However, the quantitative prediction of the noise emitted by radial fans via numerical simulations remains challenging. The Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is a relatively new approach that promises a direct calculation of the aerodynamics coupled with the aeroacoustics. This article presents an LBM simulation of a centrifugal fan using the commercial Lattice Boltzmann Code SIMULIA PowerFLOW of Dassault Systèmes. The simulation model includes both the fan impeller and the spiral housing. In accordance with the experimental setup, the fan was mounted in a test bench to analyze four different operating points. The results of the LBM simulation were validated by experimental measurements. Flow information in terms of pressure rise and efficiency of the centrifugal fan as a function of the flow rate are in a good agreement. Considering the acoustic spectra and the blade passing frequency, the simulation was able to precisely predict the noise of the centrifugal fan. The simulation results are also used to visualize the flow and acoustic field inside of the fan to detect noise-generating flow features. By evaluating the filtered pressure fluctuation in the fluid volume and on the wall, four main noise sources of the centrifugal fan can be identified.

Automated Real-Time Intelligent Traffic Control System for Smart Cities Using Wireless Sensor Networks

Over the years, the number of vehicles has increased dramatically, which has led to serious problems such as traffic jams, accidents, and many other problems, as cities turn into smart cities. In recent years, traffic jams have become one of the main challenges for engineers and designers to create an intelligent traffic management system capable of effectively detecting and reducing the overall density of traffic in most urban areas visited by motorists such as offices, downtown, and establishments based on several modern technologies, including wireless sensor networks (WSNs), surveillance camera, and IoT. In this article, we propose an intelligent traffic control system based on the design of a wireless sensor network (WSN) in order to collect data on road traffic and also on available parking spaces in a smart city. In addition, the proposed system has innovative services that allow drivers to view the traffic rate and the number of available parking spaces to their destination remotely using an Android mobile application to avoid traffic jams and to take another alternative route to avoid getting stuck and also to make it easier for drivers when looking for a free parking space to avoid unnecessary trips. Our system integrates three smart subsystems connected to each other (crossroad management, parking space management, and a mobile application) in order to connect citizens to a smart city.

Digital Prototyping on the Example of Selected Self-Propelled Mining Machines

Abstract The changing requirements and needs of users as well as the demand for new mining machinery solutions pose a challenge for designers. Time spent on the design phase of a new machine is often reduced to a minimum. Small lot production and sometimes single piece production entails the necessity to frequently design and manufacture commercial copies, which are also prototypes. The only effective solution is to apply available CAD and CAE programs enabling digital prototyping. Their use allows for making a complete machine in a virtual environment. The virtual model is subjected to tests aimed at eliminating collisions, optimizing the construction as well as obtaining a lot of information concerning the load, kinematics, dynamics, stability and power demand. Digital prototyping enables avoiding the majority of errors whose detection and elimination in a real object is time-consuming and expensive. The article presents examples of the application of broadly understood computer aided designing of self-propelled mining machines, produced by Mine Master. The effects of applying the modelling, FEM strength analysis, static and dynamic simulations, modelling of drive systems have been demonstrated. The methods used to validate computer models and verify the parameters of finished machines have also been discussed.

The specifics of food design: Insights from professional design practice

What makes food design different from other types of industrial product design? Based on over twenty years of professional design practice and food experience research, the authors present a variety of insights – clustered in five overarching themes – that provide an invaluable view on the specifics of the food realm for practicing designers in this field. First of all, foods are based on materials that used to be alive, which makes them highly perishable. Before the widespread introduction of mass transportations systems, foods were usually produced and consumed in the same region. But food technologists continuously try to improve the ways to preserve foods and invest in packaging that protects them in order to increase shelf life and to make them more widely available, while consumers seem to demand more and more freshness. The second challenge is presented by the need to make the food system more sustainable, addressing agricultural production and its impact on biological diversity and the quality of the living environment and also focusing on the amount of waste generated in terms of food or its packaging material. Third, the food people eat is absorbed and transformed into the building blocks of their bodies. Food fulfils a basic human need, and thus, there is a challenge to provide people access to the right amount of safe and nutritious food, in order to keep them healthy. Fourth, food is a source of sensory stimulation that enriches people’s lives. This provides a new sensory spectrum to design for – including flavour and mouthfeel – and it challenges designers to trigger appetite, rather than aesthetics. The fifth challenge addresses preparation practices and the associated cultural differences. Because food stuffs can be prepared in multiple ways, many different products can be created, varying from raw to highly processed, and addressing multiple consumer needs, eating occasions and market segments. These five themes provide interesting challenges for designers that should be tackled in order to provide a healthy and sustainable future for the next generations on this planet.

Making authentic: exploring boundary objects and bricolage in knowledge mobilisation through National Health Service-university partnerships

Background: In healthcare, bridging the research-to-practice gap is a top priority. Knowledge mobilisation scholars suggest that this gap can be closed through collaboration between knowledge users and producers. The concept of boundary objects – shared things and ideas that enable communication – has gained popularity across various collaborative work practices, but their potential within knowledge mobilisation in health care is understudied. An ongoing challenge for designers of boundary objects is how to create objects that are valued and shared both in principle and in practice. Aims and objectives: This paper reports on a study of boundary objects used during knowledge mobilisation through NHS-university partnerships called Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs). The distinction is investigated between boundary objects-in-theory and boundary objects-in-use, considering whether the latter possess specific characteristics which make them more effective during knowledge mobilisation. Methods: A qualitative case study of three CLAHRCs was conducted. Twenty-one people employed as ‘boundary spanners’ were interviewed to explore whether boundary objects played a role in knowledge mobilisation. Findings: The most effective boundary objects-in-use were co-produced through a process of bricolage. These possessed high levels of meaningfulness and resonance, and reconciled multiple user perspectives. Together these properties contributed to the overall authenticity of boundary objects-in-use. Discussion and conclusion: This paper helps to explain why designated boundary objects frequently fail in practice, and why there is a need to focus on understanding boundary objects based on symbolic, rather than structural, dimensions.

Unpacking Course Overlap: Using Digital Tools to Incorporate Students’ Voice in Curriculum Design

Research on the use of modeling and mapping tools in curriculum management is thriving often focusing on the perspectives of the faculty and administrators. However, scholarly works on curriculum modeling and mapping tools that take the students’ curriculum concerns seriously are less common. A recurring theme in students’ curriculum concerns is overlap among courses and it is usually expressed by students at the level of common concepts across courses. This concept level granularity imposes a challenge for administrators and designers who often focus on curriculum management at the course level because they usually lack the tools with concept level (sub-course) granularity. In this paper, we investigate how to model and represent curriculum information to enable us to incorporate the students’ view of overlap at the level of concepts within courses that can then facilitate cross-course overlap identification and rectification. We design and develop an integrated digital environment that includes a linked data ontology for modeling curriculum content at the concept level within and across courses. The environment includes a set of course/concept manipulation and visualization tools that build on this ontology offering key functions for course overlap identification and rectification. We then deploy and evaluate this digital environment in the context of a curriculum review process, whereby 25 business faculty employed the visualization tools to tackle a course overlap problem reported by students. Our proposed curriculum modeling approach contributes to the literature on curriculum management by: (a) offering a digital environment that explicitly incorporates granular sub-course level concepts enabling students’ views to be incorporated within curriculum management tasks; (b) transforming the course overlap from an abstract and fuzzy notion, to a more concrete and actionable construct defined as either repetition or reinforcement; and (c) improving the productivity and scalability of curriculum management process through the use of digital semantic-web and visualization tools.

ARM based Telemetry Subsystems Qualification for Micro-Satellite

Developing spacecraft telemetry subsystem utilizing commercial of the shelf (COTs) components to meet the technical design requirements with low-cost is big challenge for designers, due to the considerations of harmed ionizing space radiation effect, specially the total ionizing dose effect (TID). This effect induces performance degradation and failure in satellite electronic components (ECs). Because of the complexity of microcontrollers and their various integrated functionality, they present a hardness assurance encounter. A careful technique was followed in analyzing the space radiation effects. Then rigorous tests should be conducted to test the performance of the candidate microcontrollers under these effects. This paper presents the predicted dose depth curve and the total ionizing does test results for a commercial ARM microcontroller for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. Such test results help estimate the effect of space environment on the microcontroller and decide if such microcontroller is an accepted candidate for LEO missions or not.

Security, Privacy and Risks Within Smart Cities: Literature Review and Development of a Smart City Interaction Framework

The complex and interdependent nature of smart cities raises significant political, technical, and socioeconomic challenges for designers, integrators and organisations involved in administrating these new entities. An increasing number of studies focus on the security, privacy and risks within smart cities, highlighting the threats relating to information security and challenges for smart city infrastructure in the management and processing of personal data. This study analyses many of these challenges, offers a valuable synthesis of the relevant key literature, and develops a smart city interaction framework. The study is organised around a number of key themes within smart cities research: privacy and security of mobile devices and services; smart city infrastructure, power systems, healthcare, frameworks, algorithms and protocols to improve security and privacy, operational threats for smart cities, use and adoption of smart services by citizens, use of blockchain and use of social media. This comprehensive review provides a useful perspective on many of the key issues and offers key direction for future studies. The findings of this study can provide an informative research framework and reference point for academics and practitioners.

Emerging trends in the growth of structural systems for tall buildings

ABSTRACT Tall buildings are being built for more than a century now, but there has been an exponential growth in the development of convoluted tall buildings with distinctive architecture. A tall building with a unique structural form, brings forth admonishing challenges for the structural designers to deal with. Such a contemporary inclination towards the fabrication of free-form structures has posed enormous challenges to the modern-day structural engineering community, and consequently, has faced reactions in the form of tremendous researches pertaining to complex building specific issues. This paper extensively reviews six case studies of recent tall buildings that possess a challenging architecture with tortuous structural features to cope with the gravity and lateral loadings. Six representative tall buildings have been chosen from all over the world, which have distinctive features in terms of their structural systems. This paper discusses the fundamental characteristics of these tall buildings in the world and presents the challenges faced during the modelling, analysis, design, and construction of these skyscrapers, along with the brief of methodologies which were eventually adopted to cope with these challenges.

Contention-Aware Mapping and Scheduling Optimization for NoC-Based MPSoCs

Network-on-Chip (NoC) has emerged as an alternative interconnecting paradigm in the state-of-the-art multi-core architectures. Its capability of parallel data transfer over various paths increases the possibility of resource contention and causes network congestion. How to avoid contention, as well as to optimize performance and energy consumption becomes a great challenge for system designers. In this paper, we consider spatial and temporal aspects of communication to avoid contention. In spatial aspect, we propose to utilize overlapped communication paths to estimate the degree of contention, such that they can be minimized in mapping stage. In temporal aspect, we sequentialize data transfer with potential contention by introducing additional latency. To optimize the design concerns with the corresponding constraint model, we further provide an efficient algorithm to search for better solutions for the problem, which integrates a local search process into a genetic algorithm and applies various heuristics in initialization and evolution process. Experimentations from random and real-case benchmarks demonstrate the efficiency of our method in multi-objective optimization and the effectiveness of our techniques in avoiding network contention, while keeping performance and energy consumption optimized.

Rough Kansei Mining Model for Market-Oriented Product Design

Companies need to develop new products towards customer's satisfaction in order to survive in the boom and bust cycle in todays’ economy. The capturing of customer satisfaction depends on customer needs, and generally, understanding emotions has a challenge for designers. Kansei engineering is a type of methodology to help customers and designers analyze needs and emotion for the new product development. Producing new product design with Kansei data increases customer satisfaction and helps to reach market goals. In this study, a market-oriented baby cradle design methodology is proposed, and we obtain the new product strategies with association rule extraction by using rough set theory. To obtain efficient rules, beforehand we selected sales knowledge-related Kansei words with our proposed approach: cost-based and multiclass decision-theoretic rough set (DTRS) attribute reduction. The new product design strategies which are obtained with proposed design methodology are consistent with customer expectations (mood space) and expert opinions (design team).

A multi-objective optimization of energy absorption properties of thin-walled circular tube with combined bar extrusion under quasi-static axial loading: Experiments and numerical simulation

Thin-walled tubes are one of the most popular impact absorbers. Recently, some methods have been proposed to improve crush performance parameters of the thin-walled tube such as filling by foam, modifying geometry etc. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. It is still a challenge for crashworthy designers to design an efficient energy-absorbing system which has all the necessary requirements. Therefore, the present paper aims to introduce a new design technique which is a combination of bar extrusion and thin-walled circular tube. The crushing behavior of the new proposed energy absorber was studied both experimentally and numerically. Finite element models were developed to estimate the force-displacement curve and the folding shapes of the tube. The numerically predicted load-displacement curve and the calculated crush performance parameters were verified using experimental measurements. Moreover, a parametric study was performed to investigate the effects of different parameters on the proposed energy absorber response. According to the results, the percentage increases in energy absorption (Ea) capacity and specific energy absorption (SEA) for the proposed energy absorber were 39.02% and 14.37% respectively compared to the thin-walled tube. In order to determine the optimized geometric parameters of the proposed energy absorber, a multi-objective optimization technique was implemented. Based on the response surface methodology (RSM), Ea and SEA increased 245.5% and 246.3% for the optimum proposed energy absorber. The predictive models for Ea and SEA were obtained by polynomial equations.

Construction and Application of Product Fast Conceptual Design Knowledge Base Based on Configuration Flow Graph

Complex and diverse product information and rapidly-iterated market competition context are common in the current product design areas. The rapid concept design of products is becoming a major challenge for product designers and enterprise R&D departments. Utilizing the design knowledge of 100 common products selected in the market, this study divides and realizes structured storage by function in the form of CFG matrix by introducing standard functions, components and flow lexicon. For application of matrix library, this paper proposes a template CFG search method based on similarity calculation to assist designers in implementing rapid conceptual design. Bicycle is exampled to verify the practicality of the constructed matrix library and the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Zero-gravity wardrobes: The behaviour of costume in weightless environments

Abstract In this commercial space age, audiences increasingly expect realism in science fiction. Weightlessness is commonly simulated through physical or virtual special effects, but reduced gravity aircraft offer opportunities for capturing the effects of microgravity more authentically. While this poses practical challenges for costume designers, it also invites the possibility of creative engagement with weightlessness. Costume can be employed to visibly evidence the effects of weightlessness, but to take advantage of this opportunity, designers must discard many of the fundamental principles of fashion design. This article examines the effects of weightlessness on costume in sequences shot on board reduced gravity aircraft, from Apollo 13 (), ), and the music video for OK Go's 'Upside Down & Inside Out' (), as well as footage of real-life astronauts. It then identifies those features of clothing design which must be reconsidered when designing costume for microgravity.

HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS DESIGN: A SANDBOX OF CURRENT RESEARCH THEMES PRESENTED AT AN INTERNATIONAL MEETING

AbstractHealthcare systems are under strain, this creates a challenge for designers to develop solutions for better health and care delivery. This paper presents a sandbox of illustrative design themes used to improve health systems based on state of the art research projects. These were collated from presentations at The Second International Meeting on Healthcare Systems Design Research, held at DTU-Technical University of Denmark. Attending groups were mapped based on their research keywords, target journals and methodologies in order to gain insight on the communities research landscape.

Digital literacy of EFL students in a junior high school in Iran: voices of teachers, students and Ministry Directors

Promoting students’ digital literacy has become a significant challenge for educational authorities and course designers. However, very limited attention has been directed toward junior high school students’ digital literacy in the literature of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). Thus, this mixed-methods study explored junior high school teachers’ and students’ perspectives on the students’ digital literacy level and issues pertaining to it. A total of 364 junior high school students, 20 junior high school teachers, and three Directors of the Ministry of Education of Iran participated in the study. Exploratory factor analysis was run to ensure the construct validity of the questionnaire. The results of the Mann–Whitney U test showed significant differences between the perceptions of the teachers and students. While the students and teachers reported that students had an acceptable level of digital literacy in the interviews, the questionnaire results showed that the students had a low to moderate level of digital literacy. The teachers and students believed that the junior high school students used technology for recreational and non-educational purposes. The junior high school students did not use a wide range of computer applications and software tools. The interview with the Directors of the Ministry of Education depicted that they did not have consensus on the issues related to junior high school students’ digital literacy and that the Ministry did not have clear plans for promoting students’ digital literacy levels. The study proposes implications for the renewal of the English as a foreign language (EFL) curriculum of junior high schools and the integration of CALL in EFL programs in Iran and other similar contexts.