In today's competitive global market, there is an ever-increasing demand for highly skilled engineers equipped to perform in teams dispersed over several time-zones by geography. Aerospace Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering (AerosPACE) is a senior design capstone program co-developed by academia and industry to help students develop the necessary skills to excel in the aerospace industry by challenging them to design, build, and fly an unique unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Students with little to no experience designing UAVs are put together in teams with their peers from geographically dispersed universities. This presents a significant challenge for the students in assimilating and applying aircraft design principles, using and interpreting output from analysis tools in multiple disciplines, and communicating their findings with their team members in an effective way. This thesis documents the development of a collaborative design tool for the generation and evaluation of small-scale electric-powered UAV concepts in AerosPACE. The integrated design and optimization software CCADE (Collaborative Conceptual Aircraft Design Environment) enables the immersion of team members from different universities in a software environment which shares design information and analysis results in a central database. Input files for use by open-source analysis tools are automatically generated, and output files read in and displayed in a user-friendly graphical interface. Analysis codes for initial sizing, geometry, airfoil selection, aerodynamics, propulsion, stability and control, and structures are included in the software. Optimization methods are proposed for implementation in future versions of CCADE to explore the breadth of the design space and help students understand the sensitivity of their design to certain key parameters. Testing of CCADE by students during the 2014-2015 AerosPACE course showed an increased volume of explored concepts and prompted questions from students to fill gaps in understanding of fundamental principles. Suggestions for increased student acceptance and use of the software are given. Through its unique architecture and application, CCADE aims to increase productivity and teamwork among AerosPACE participants by increasing the number of concepts which can be fully analyzed, enabling broader exploration of the feasible design space to produce unique and innovative aircraft configurations, and allowing teammates to share thoughts and learning via a shared design and analysis work-space.

Leveraging virtual reality (VR) technology to enhance engineering design reviews has been an area of significant interest for researchers since the advent of modern VR. The ability to interact meaningfully with 3D engineering models in these VR design reviews is an important, though often neglected, capability due to the difficulty of performing data translation between native CAD data and VR compatible file formats. A bi-directional interface was developed between a VR design review environment and a commercial CAD package that streamlines the data translation process. By transmitting both geometric data and selected metadata from the CAD system an improved format for the VR model was achieved and enhanced model interaction tools were added to the VR design review application. The suite of model interaction tools developed include component hiding, exploded views, and the ability to parametrically update the model directly from the VR environment. Preliminary user experiments were performed once an early prototype of the system was in place. These experiments guided the remainder of the development and the experimental setup for the final set of experiments. Final user experiments were performed to validate the usefulness of the bi-directional interface concept and the system developed, as well as to establish the importance of enhanced model interaction in VR engineering design reviews. The experiments performed were composed of two tasks: One task aimed at exploring how CAD integration and advanced interaction tools in VR design reviews aid understanding of model geometry and design comprehension and a second task that explores how the ability to preview design changes from the VR design review environment improves decision making. In the first task participants were shown a model of a complex gearbox and asked to count the number of gears. Participants performed this test on two different models: once with the enhanced toolset and once with a baseline toolset representative of the current state of the art that only allows users to pan, rotate, and scale a shaded monochrome version of the model. In the second task participants were given a model of a four cylinder internal combustion engine and asked to determine the feasibility of three proposed design changes based on whether the changes would cause interference in the model. Again, participants performed this test with two different models, once with each toolset. The analysis of the data from these experiments showed that participants were significantly more successful at understanding the geometry of the model when using the enhanced toolset. The data also showed that the enhanced toolset often boosts users' confidence in their understanding, and can help users to understand the design more quickly. Data from the second task showed that the enhanced environment can also help users to better and more confidently understand the implications of a proposed design change, which can lead to improved decision making. The work presented here builds the foundation for the bi-directional interface concept to be extended to further applications that can enable advanced interaction with a diversity of engineering data in VR.

Estágio realizado na Lismolde 2, Ld.ª e orientado pelo Eng.º Marco Ruivo / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Mecânica. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2008

Tese de mestrado. Tecnologia Multimédia. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, Instituto Superior da Maia. 2009

Estágio realizado no INEB / Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores - Major de Telecomunicações. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2008

Orientador: Marizilda dos Santos Menezes / Coorientador: Marco Antônio dos Reis Pereira / Banca: Aparecida Maria Zem Lopes / Banca: Fernando José da Silva / Banca: José Carlos Plácido da Silva / Banca: Luis Carlos Paschoarelli / Resumo: O desenvolvimento sustentável é entendido como o melhor equilíbrio entre o crescimento econômico, a preservação ambiental e o desenvolvimento social, objetivando promover a melhoria do padrão de vida como um todo, garantindo esta continuidade às gerações futuras. A utilização de materiais de fontes renováveis, aliados às novas tecnologias, pode contribuir para esse desenvolvimento equilibrado. A popularização de softwares de projeto propiciou uma evolução na área do design, integrando sistemas, informações, permitindo a simulação de ensaios físico-mecânicos e a realização de prototipagem rápida. Esta integração é denominada como sistemas Computer Aided Design / Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) - Projeto auxiliado por computador e manufatura auxiliada por computador. O objetivo deste projeto é apresentar diretrizes para a relação entre os sistemas CAD/CAM e o desenvolvimento de componentes para calçados femininos em bambu. Para tanto, foi realizada pesquisa quanti-qualitativa, dividida em três momentos: pesquisa bibliográfica, pesquisa de campo e experimentações. A pesquisa de campo apresentou duas fases: na primeira, foram aplicados questionários semiestruturados para a coleta de dados primários no Arranjo Produtivo Local APL de Jaú, Estado de São Paulo; na segunda, preparou-se a matéria-prima experimental aplicada no estudo, denominada Bambu Laminado Colado (BLC). O BLC foi gerado por meio de uma interação com uma associação rural. As experimentações com o BLC foram ef... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Sustainable development is understood as the best balance among economic growth, environmental preservation and social development, intending to promote the improvement of the living standard as a whole, guaranteeing this continuity to future generations. The use of renewable materials, associated with new technologies, can contribute to this balanced development. The popularization of design software provided an evolution in the area of design, integrating systems, information, as well as allowing the simulation of physical-mechanical tests and rapid prototyping. This integration is referred to as Computer Aided Design / Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD / CAM). This project aims at presenting guidelines for the relationship between CAD / CAM systems and the development of components for female bamboo shoes. In order to accomplish that, a quantitative-qualitative research was conducted, divided into three moments: bibliographical research, field research and experimentation. Field research consisted of two phases: in the first, semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect primary data in the APL Local Productive Arrangement of Jaú, State of São Paulo; in the second phase, the experimental raw material applied in the study, called Bamboo Laminated Glued (Bambu Laminado Colado - BLC), was prepared. BLC was generated by means of an interaction with a rural association. The experiments with the BLC were made using CAD / CAM equipment, producing heels and ornaments, using ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death for both men and women in the United States, despite being the second-most frequent cancer diagnosis for both sexes. This high mortality rate is due to the majority of cases being diagnosed after the primary lung cancer has metastasized. In an effort to reduce mortality associated with lung cancer by diagnosing lung cancer at an earlier stage, screening of high-risk populations has been employed. One screening tool, computed tomography (CT), has been shown to reduce mortality by 20%, compared to screening for lung cancer by chest x-ray. This was achieved by earlier stage diagnosis of lung cancer in participants screened with CT. The use of chest CT in lung cancer screening has also led to increased numbers of false-positives - benign lung nodules that are marked as suspicious for lung cancer. These false-positives result in unnecessary invasive follow-up procedures and costs while incurring additional emotional stress on the patient. In an effort to reduce the number of false-positives, a computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) tool can be designed to determine the probability of malignancy of a lung nodule based on objective measurements. While current CAD models characterize the pulmonary nodule's shape, density, and border, analyzing the parenchyma surrounding the nodule is an area that has been minimally explored. By quantifying characteristics, or features, of the surrounding tissue, this project explores the hypothesis that textural differences in both the nodule and surrounding parenchyma exist between malignant and benign cases. By incorporating these features, performance in the measures of sensitivity, specificity and accuracy can be improved over CAD tools that rely on nodule characteristics alone. A CAD program was developed for the computation of features from a pulmonary nodule. A region of interest containing a nodule and surrounding parenchyma was extracted from a CT scan. Several novel feature extraction techniques were developed, including a three-dimensional application of Laws' Texture Energy Measures to quantify the textures of the parenchyma surrounding the nodule and the nodule itself. In addition, the densities of the nodule and surrounding parenchyma were summarized through metrics such as mean, variance, and entropy of the intensities within each region. Finally, the margins of the nodule were characterized by analyzing mean and variance of border irregularity. A total of 299 features were extracted. To illustrate proof of concept, the CAD program was applied to 27 regions of interest - 10 benign and 17 malignant. Through feature selection, 36 significant features were recognized (p-values < 0.05), including many textural and parenchymal features. These features were further reduced by forward feature selection to two features that summarized the dataset. A neural network was used to classify the cases in a leave-one-out method. Preliminary results yielded 92.6% accuracy in classification of test cases, with two benign nodules incorrectly classified as malignant. The significance of texture and parenchymal features supports the hypothesis that features extracted from the parenchyma have the potential to improve classification of nodules, aiding in the reduction of false-positives identified through CT screening. As more cases are incorporated into the database, these textural features will play a larger role.

CAD/CAM technology had evolved extensively from the time when it was first used clinically in the 1980s. Today, CAD/CAM technology can be used to fabricate crowns, design and mill fixed partial denture frameworks, set teeth and fabricate complete dentures as well as to mill interim restorations. An extensive literature review found many research studies on the evaluation of the accuracy of the CAD/CAM ceramic crowns as compared to other ceramic crowns but little research had been done to evaluate the accuracy of interim restorations. This article describes the method in which CAD/CAM as well as conventional interim crowns were fabricated, cemented onto their dies, dye stained, thermocycled as well as sectioned with their marginal discrepancies investigated.

This report aims to covers the conduction of a final thesis project for the University of Skövde in collaboration with J.Design studio (Stockholm). The purpose of this project is applying and evaluating CAD and different tools related to the field of 3D CAD within design and product development phases. This has been achieved by the development of two pieces of furniture from a defined line of products stated by existing clients of J.Design. The initial phase of the project was knowing the design limitations from both clients and their stakeholders. Once these limitations were known, a pre-study phase where 3D CAD modelling was set as the key tool for the research was done. This research identified related tools with CAD that are applied during the development design phase. Starting the development of the two case studies, the user needs’ phase was the first step in the process, followed by a benchmarking study, an ergonomics study, and finally, setting these requirements into a requirement list. Then, the design development phase took place, covering initial sketches until the detailed final solutions. As a final step, the use of the identified tools was evaluated and analysed based on the experience from the two case studies of this thesis project. From this evaluation came the conclusion that these tools need to take part in the design phase in a certain moment depending on the level of development, and as the level of sophistication of the tool increases, the information and detail provided are also higher.

The sport and leisure industry in New Zealand (NZ) has the potential to become a major user of composite materials. Given the size of NZ industry, design and manufacturing strategies based on virtual engineering should be developed to suit NZ requirements. Virtual methods use computer aided engineering capabilities to find faults, explore alternatives and optimise product performance before detailed design or prototyping. When doing computer aided simulation the required mechanical properties of individual reinforcement and matrix components are well documented. However, the mechanical properties of composite materials are not as simple to obtain. Micro-mechanical modelling could therefore be used to aid the design and development of composite equipment, where mechanical properties are unknown. In this study, solids modelling was used to produce an analog model of a composite, and it was found that it lead to reductions in file size and simulation time. Representing a composite with an analog model implies that the behavioural characteristics are modelled, but not the physical characteristics of the individual components. Three micro-mechanical models were developed to predict the flexural modulus of composite materials, based on perfect, partial and no adhesion. It was found that the partial adhesion model was both practical and consistently accurate. The partial adhesion model accounted for adhesion between components by considering an 'effective shear value' at the interface. Validation of the models was done by flexural testing injection moulded samples of glass, wood and carbon fibre reinforced polyethylene. It was shown that the adhesion coefficient range was 0.1 for carbon fibre, 0.5 for glass fibre and 0.9 for the wood fibre composites. It was concluded that the adhesion coefficient is crucial and it is recommended that further work is done to validate effective shear values by empirical means. The predicted flexural modulus values were used to enable finite element simulation of modelled analog beams as well as commercial kayak paddles. It was determined that accurate simulation is possible for composite equipment using the partial adhesion model.