Authentic design commonly involves teams of designers collaborating on ill-structured problems over extended time periods. Nonetheless, design has been studied extensively in sequestered settings, limiting our understanding of design as process and especially of learning design process. This study addresses potential shortcomings of such studies by examining in-situ student team design. The participants of this study are three cohorts of a year-long capstone biomedical engineering design class at The University of Texas. Pilot research demonstrated advantages of a more authentic redesign task over a kit-based design task; students who chose devices to redesign were significantly better at representing perspective taking associated with customers' needs. Pilot research showed that there was no relationship between Early Efficiency (appropriate use of factual and conceptual knowledge) and Final Innovation of design products. I triangulated various methods for studying design: Qualitative research, Hierarchical Linear Modeling, and Social Network Analysis, the latter of which allowed me to generate team-level statistics of interaction (Cohesion), once I devised a practical method to account for missing data in a weighted network. Final Efficiency is a function of Early Innovation, early and late Cohesion, and team feasibility (factual and practical knowledge). Final Innovation is a function of Early Innovation, late Cohesion, and team Voice of the Customer (perspective-taking), with all relationships in both models positive. Measures of both design skills and interaction are required to explain variance in these outcomes. Narratives of team negotiation of design impasses --seemingly insurmountable barriers-- provide deeper understanding of relationships between design process and products. The case study teams spent a large percentage of their time engaged in problem scoping, but framed as engineering science rather than as engineering design. Only when they began prototyping did they transition towards being solution focused and frame the problem as engineering design. This left little time for iteration of the final design. Variance in timing of iteration may account for slight deviations of the case study teams from the statistical model. Recommendations include earlier opportunities to design and support for team collaboration. Social network analysis is recommended when learning is interactional and to support triangulation. / text

A Systematic Approach to Bio-inspired Conceptual Design

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2011. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-61). Also available on the World Wide Web.

<p>Teacher talk is a major way in which instructors support and provide scaffolding for their students, frame their pedagogies, model ways of thinking, and convey ideas. Effective teacher talk about engineering design at all levels of students’ educational experiences has the potential to better prepare students for success in engineering and increase the diversity of engineering fields. However, the most effective ways for teachers to talk to their students during engineering design are not well understood. This three-study dissertation examines the ways in which instructors use talk to interact with their students through a variety of different engineering design settings and contexts, with potential implications to improve and educate how teachers present engineering to their students. Overall, this thesis addresses the research question: How do instructors (teachers and professors) use talk interactions to scaffold students in engineering design? The first study is a case study that focuses on the whole class verbal interactions of an experienced and successful teacher throughout the entirety of a month-long life science-based STEM integration unit in a 6th grade classroom. Results show that this teacher’s talk helped to integrate engineering with the science and mathematics content of the unit and modeled the practices of informed designers to help students learn engineering in the context of their science classroom. He framed lessons around problem scoping, incorporated engineering ideas into scientific verbal interactions and aligned individual lessons and the overall unit with the engineering design process. The second study uses naturalistic inquiry to examine how six different teachers of 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades talked to their students while the students were actively working in small teams on engineering design projects. Results indicate that the teachers had conversations with the students about many areas of engineering, demonstrating that middle school teachers can have high-level conversations with their students about their design ideas. However, when students struggle to communicate their ideas, the different levels of support outlined in the coding framework and examples provide a structure of support for teachers to give their students. Additionally, there were many areas of engineering that were underemphasized in the teachers’ talk and each teacher had different emphasis. The third study examines how professors in mechanical and biomedical engineering talk to their students during introductory engineering design projects. Results show that the three professors used their talk to support their role as a guide and mentor to students during their projects, although they had different goals with their mentoring. They used their talk to push students’ ideas to consider their problems more broadly, encouraged students to brainstorm diverse out-of-the-box ideas, supported teaming, and modeled engineering language. They maintained a focus on non-technical content, including the iterative nature of design, teaming, and communication, but made references to how students would apply this knowledge in future, more technical projects. The professors supported many challenges for novice designers, including supporting prototype development to represent ideas and iterating to improve their ideas, but were not comprehensive in their support of other challenges, especially problem scoping, testing and troubleshooting, and reflecting on the process. The final chapter of this dissertation presents a synthesis across the three studies and a summary of the implications for teaching. These implications include many examples of high-quality engineering conversations with students at different levels of their education, identification of aspects of engineering education that are underemphasized in teachers’ talk to their students, and connections to needed areas of support and professional development for teachers.</p>

Past research into the phenomenon of reliability growth has emphasised modeling a major reliability characteristic in terms of a specific parametric function. In addition, the time-to-failure distribution of the system was generally assumed to be exponential. The result was that in most cases the improvement was modeled as a nonhomogeneous Poisson process with intensity λ(t). Major differences among models centered on the particular functional form of the intensity function. The popular Duane model, for example, assumes that λ(t) = β(1 – α)t ⁻ᵅ. The inability of any one family of distributions or parametric form to describe the growth process resulted in a multitude of models, each directed toward answering problems encountered with a particular test situation. This thesis proposes two new growth models, neither requiring the assumption of a specific function to describe the intensity λ(t). Further, the first of the models only requires that the time-to-failure distribution be unimodal and that the reliability become no worse as development progresses. The second model, while requiring the assumption of an exponential failure distribution, remains significantly more flexible than past models. Major points of this Bayesian model include: (1) the ability to encorporate data from a number of test sources (e.g. engineering judgement, CERT testing, etc.), (2) the assumption that the failure intensity is stochastically decreasing, and (3) accountability of changes that are incorporated into the design after testing is completed. These models were compared to a number of existing growth models and found to be consistently superior in terms of relative error and mean-square error. An extension to the second model is also proposed that allows system level growth analysis to be accomplished based on subsystem development data. This is particularly significant, in that, as systems become larger and more complex, development efforts concentrate on subsystem levels of design. No analysis technique currently exists that has this capability. The methodology is applied to data sets from two actual test situations.

No description available.

No description available.

Engineering Design Re-use refers to the utilisation of any knowledge gained from the design activity to support future design. As such, Engineering Design Re-use approaches are concerned with the support, exploration and enhancement of design knowledge prior, during and after a design activity. Modular Design is a product structuring principle whereby products are developed with distinct modules for rapid product development, efficient upgrades, and possible re-use (of the physical modules). The benefits of Modular Design centre of a greater capacity for structuring component parts to better manage the relation between market requirements and the designed product. This work explores the capabilities of Modular Design principles to provide improved support for the Engineering Design Reuse concept. The Modular Design principle is extended to structure not only the artefact's components but also their associated knowledge, to support, explore and enhance the knowledge genera ted during the evolution of the design process. A novel modular design approach, termed a Multi-Viewpoint Modular Design Methodology, is developed to address identified requirements including; support for evolutionary design knowledge, exploration and identification of inherent modularity and maintenance of the modular solution. The overall concept of the Methodology is to support the designer in evolving a modular artefact whilst utilising the principles of modularity to structure the artefact knowledge to enhance its potential applicability for re-use, the concept is termed knowledge modularity. Based on the results of a state of the art review deficiencies of existing approaches are identified including; insufficient support of evolutionary design knowledge, insufficiencies in the modelling, exploration, identification and representation of knowledge modularity, limitations in the module identification process. Declarative and procedural knowledge is developed to define a novel Modular Design Methodology to address these deficiencies. As such, the Methodology presents a formalised approach to support the modelling, optimisation and identification of modularity, both within and across viewpoints (function, working principle and structure) of the product structure, and evolutionary design knowledge. The core phenomena of a knowledge module is formalised in terms of the knowledge of design concepts and their dependencies. The formalism supports the identification of inherent modularity. An alternative model, termed the Modular Structure Matrix is developed as part of the Methodology to represent this inherent modularity. In addition, the Methodology has been developed, through a 12-month industrial residency, to address the requirements of practising designers. The Methodology is applied throughout a design activity to formalise and represent (in a matrix formalism) knowledge of the concepts embodied by a design artefact. The resulting model provides the basis to determine and represent interdependency knowledge between design concepts. The modelled concept and dependency knowledge can be utilised to support a modular analysis of the product structure both within and across design viewpoints. An optimisation and module identification mechanism can then be applied to the model and, based on the dependency data, identify inherent modularity within individual viewpoints of the product structure. Further, a mapping methodology has been developed to support the maintenance of the modular solution, and its associated artefact knowledge, across multiple viewpoints of design. The new methodology can be applied in a cyclic and iterative manner to support modularisation of the artefact design knowledge through the evolution of the design. A computational implementation has been developed to aid the evaluation of the Methodology. The functionality ofthe Methodology has been illustrated through two literature based case studies and two industrial implementation evaluations. An implementation and evaluation methodology was formalised through the rationalisation of the activities carried out during the first, and further utilised as the basis to support the second, industrial implementation. The two literature based studies evaluate the functionality of the methodologies optimisation and module identification mechanisms. These evaluations result in the identification of modular hierarchies that were not evident in the findings of the original publications. In addition, both industrial implementations result in the identification of potential improvements in the design. The evaluations illustrate the functionality of the Methodology in identifying and maintaining modularity, structuring design knowledge, supporting decision-making, learning, and improving design understanding. In addition, the evaluators outlined further potential Methodology application fields such as team design, manufacturing design and technology life-cycle management. Further the strengths and weaknesses of the Methodology, the computational implementation, and the research methodology utilised to facilitate the work presented in this thesis, are discussed. Finally, future work required to enhance the capabilities of the Multi- Viewpoint MD methodology and the functionality of the computational implementation have been identified, including; the development of more advanced modular clustering criterions, the introduction of constraints and constraint management, and the development of module costing mechanisms/metrics.

No description available.

近些年來，計算機輔助造型技術廣泛應用於工業設計領域。對於那些產品設計於三維空間，但是產品加工要使用二維材料的工業，一個急遞解決的問題是對於一件三維設計，如何找到對應的二維裁片。而且，得到的二維裁片應該可以在微小的拉伸下折疊使之還原其原始三綠的形狀。除此之外，工業界還有一些額外的要求例如在特徵線和邊界上的長度控制。為了解決上述問題，我們提出了一些解決方法。 / 關於長度的曲面攤平技術對於生成以可微小拉伸材料製成的二維裁片，是一項非常關鍵的技術。王昌凌教授於2007 年研發了WireWarping 攤平技街，可以在保持邊界和特徵線長度不變的情況下將三維模型攤平得到二維裁片。然而，在攤平過程中，嚴格地保證所有的邊界和特徵長度不變通常會導致得到的二維裁片誤差很大，尤其是當要攤平的三維模型非常不可展的時候。為解決上述問題，我們提出一種新的，可靠而又靈活的新攤平方法--WireWarping++。其基本思想是:我們首先將所有特徵線劃分為彈性特徵線和剛性特徵線。在攤平過程中，只有剛性特徵線的長度需要嚴格保證，而彈性特徵線的長度可以在給定的範圍內變化。為了實現這一功能，我們構架了一個多層優化體系，可以在保證剛性特徵線長度不變的前提下，在一定範圍內改變彈性特徵線的長度，從而使得到的二維裁片形狀最優。除此以外，我們也開發了一套拓撲處理的算法，可以處理那些使得計算不穩定的特徵線網絡拓撲結構。最終的實驗結果證明，我們的WireWarping++方法可以有效地獲得形狀更優的二維裁片，並擁有穩定的性能 / 除了曲面攤平技街，另外一項可以得到二維裁片的技街是可展曲回處理技街。可展曲面處理技術可以將輸入的三維模型處理成可展曲面，而可展曲面可以被無誤差地攤平到二維裁片。現有的方法要么只能處理簡單形狀的模型，要么處理得到的形狀與處理前的相差太遠。 / 為了解決上述困難，我們首先嘗試一種局部可展曲面處理方法。不同於現有的基於全局優化的方法，我們的局部可展曲面處理方法基於可控的拉普拉斯漸變，一個一個地調整頂點的位置。局部可展曲面處理方法的計算速度非常的快。基於此項特性，我們開發了一種實時交互工具去處理輸入的模型。這種工具可以迅速、有效地改進被處理模型的可展度;與王昌凌教授2007 年開發的FL-mesh 方法比，我們的局部處理方法可以得到更接近原始模型形狀的可展曲面。 / 為了進一步得到接近原始模型形狀的可展曲面，我們開發了一種擬合算法，可以擬合出接近原始模型形狀的可展曲面。其中，構成可展曲面的材料僅允許輕微拉伸，而且在擬合過程中，可展曲面與原始模型形狀的誤差被優化，同時可展曲面上的應變得到控制。我們首先提出一種新的曲面造型工具，通過進行一系列接近等量度變形使一個可展曲面的形狀變得更接近原始模型。其次，為了得到更好的擬合結果和克服拓撲死鎖，我們提出了一種隨機形狀擾動的方法來生成不同的初始形狀。最後，為了使我們的方法有可伸縮性，我們提出一套由粗疏到細密擬合的框架，可以處理網格非常細密的模型，而且處理後的模型可以保持原始模型的邊界形狀。 / 除了對輕微可拉伸材料製成的產品進行建模，我們希望將我們的研究拓展到對有壓力產品的建模。我們提出了基於實驗的建模方法，包括以下兩個方面的工作1 )為了建立長度變化--壓力而進行的材料測試2) 長度控制的攤平。目前，我們獲得了一些初步結果。 / In those industries whose products are designed in 3D but fabricated by planar materials, a challenge work is to find out a 2D pattern for a given 3D design, and the 2D pattern should be warped back to the 3D shape with slight extension. Constraints coming from industries like length control on feature curves and boundary interpolation are needed to be enforced. To solve the aforementioned problems, we have proposed several approaches. / Length-aware surface flattening is very useful for generating 2D patterns made of slightly-extensible materials. WireWarping method presented by Wang, 2008 is exploited to generate 2D patterns with invariant lengths of feature and boundary curves. However, strict length constraints on all feature curves sometimes cause large distortions on 2D patterns, especially for those 3D surfaces which are highly non-developable. Then, we present a flexible and robust extension of Wire Warping by introducing a new type of feature curves named elastic feature, which brings flexibility to shape control of the resultant 2D patterns. On these new feature curves, instead of strictly preserving the exact lengths, only the ranges of their lengths are controlled. To achieve this function, a multi-loop shape control optimization framework is proposed to find out the optimized 2D shape among all possible flattening results with different length variations on those elastic feature curves, while the lengths of other feature curves are kept unchanged. Besides, we also present a topology processing algorithm on the network of feature curves to eliminate cases that lead to numerical singularity. The new proposed method is named as WireWarping++. Experimental results show that the WireWarping++ can successfully flatten surface patches into 2D patterns with more flexible shape control and more robust numerical performance. / As an alternative to surface flattening, flattenable surface processing approaches try to process an input model into a flattenable surface where flattenable surface is a polygonal mesh surface that can be unfolded into a planar patch without stretching any polygon. Prior approaches result in either a flattenable surface that could be quite different from the input shape or a (discrete) developable surface has relative simple shape. / To overcome the aforementioned shortages, our first attempt is a local flattenable processing approach. In stead of processing the input model by a global optimization, the local approach adjusts the positions of vertices one by one via a controllable Laplacian evolution. The computation speed of local approach is quite fast so that we develop an interactive tool based on it. The interactive tool can improve the flattenability of the processed model efficiently meanwhile having better shape approximation compared with the result obtained by FL-mesh processing proposed by Wang, 2007. / To achieve a flattenable surface with good shape approximation to the input model, we also proposed a new method for computing a slightly stretched flattenable mesh surface M from a piece wise-linear surface patch P in 3D, where the shape approximation error between M and P is minimized and the strain of stretching on M is controlled. Firstly, we introduce a new surface modeling method to conduct a sequence of nearly isometric deformations to morph a flattenable mesh surface to a new shape which has a better approximation of the input surface. Secondly, in order to get better initial surfaces for fitting and overcome topological obstacles, a shape perturbation scheme is investigated to obtain the optimal surface fitting result. Lastly, to improve the scalability of our optimal surface fitting algorithm, a coarse-to-fine fitting framework is exploited so that very dense flattenable mesh surfaces can be modeled and boundaries of the input surfaces can be interpolated. / Besides modeling on products fabricated by slightly-extensible materials, we also try to extend our work to modeling on compression garment. A calibration based method is proposed consist two aspects: 1) a material testing for establishing the relationship between length change and compression; 2) a length control flattening. Some preliminary results are presented. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Zhang, Yunbo. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-161). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.1 / Chinese Abstract --- p.4 / Acknowledgements --- p.6 / List of Figures --- p.10 / List of Tables --- p.12 / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Motivation. --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Problems and Methodology. --- p.3 / Chapter 1.2.1 --- Surface Flat tening with Length Control --- p.4 / Chapter 1.2.2 --- Modeling on Flattenable Surfaces --- p.5 / Chapter 1.2.2.1 --- A Local Flat tenable Processing Approach --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.2.2 --- Optimal Fitting of Strain-cont rolled Flattenable Mesh Surfaces --- p.6 / Chapter 1.2.3 --- Modeling on Compression Garment --- p.7 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Organization --- p.7 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.11 / Chapter 2.1 --- Developable Parametric Surfaces --- p.11 / Chapter 2.2 --- Discrete Developable Surface Modeling --- p.12 / Chapter 2.3 --- Mesh Parameterization and Surface Flattening --- p.13 / Chapter 2.4 --- Cloth Simulation --- p.16 / Chapter 2.5 --- Multi-resolution Techniques --- p.16 / Chapter 3 --- Robust and Flexible Surface Flattening with Length Control --- p.18 / Chapter 3.1 --- Const rained Optimizat ion based Surface Flattening --- p.20 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Length Preserved WireWarping --- p.21 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Multi-loop Optimization Framework --- p.23 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Shape Error Function --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2 --- Topology Processing --- p.29 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Processing on Hinged Feature Curves --- p.30 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Connecting Separate Boundary Loops --- p.32 / Chapter 3.3 --- Metrics --- p.8 / Chapter 3.4 --- Experimental Results --- p.33 / Chapter 3.5 --- Ot her Applications --- p.34 / Chapter 3.6 --- Angle Constraints on Female Jeans-pants Design --- p.39 / Chapter 3.7 --- Summary --- p.40 / Chapter 4 --- Flattenable Mesh Processing : A Local Approach --- p.42 / Chapter 4.1 --- Problem Definitions --- p.43 / Chapter 4.2 --- Controllable Laplacian Evolution --- p.44 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Laplacian Operator. --- p.45 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Analys is on Laplacian Operator --- p.45 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Localized Energy Function --- p.46 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Numerical Solution --- p.48 / Chapter 4.3 --- Interactive Tool --- p.49 / Chapter 4.4 --- Summary and Limit ation --- p.50 / Chapter 5 --- Optimal Fitting of St rain-Cont rolled Flattenable Mesh Surfaces --- p.55 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.55 / Chapter 5.2 --- Toolbox --- p.56 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- FL-mesh Processing --- p.56 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Inextensible Cloth Simulation --- p.57 / Chapter 5.2.3 --- Least-square Mesh --- p.59 / Chapter 5.2.4 --- Spring-mass System --- p.59 / Chapter 5.3 --- Optimal Shape Approximation --- p.61 / Chapter 5.3.1 --- Isometric Surface Fitting --- p.62 / Chapter 5.3.1.1 --- Nearly Isometric Deformation --- p.63 / Chapter 5.3.1.2 --- Surface Fitting --- p.64 / Chapter 5.3.1.3 --- Problem of Numerical Singularity --- p.66 / Chapter 5.3.2 --- Shape Perturbation for Optimal Fitting --- p.68 / Chapter 5.3.3 --- Relaxation for Accurate Strain Control --- p.71 / Chapter 5.4 --- Multi-scale Surface Fitting. --- p.72 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- Coarsening, Local update and Relaxation --- p.74 / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Boundary Constraints of Interpolation --- p.78 / Chapter 5.4.2.1 --- Propert ies of Isometric Deformation --- p.78 / Chapter 5.4.2.2 --- Existence of Solution --- p.80 / Chapter 5.4.2.3 --- Boundary Triangulation --- p.81 / Chapter 5.4.2.4 --- Optimal Boundary Coarsening --- p.83 / Chapter 5.5 --- Results --- p.85 / Chapter 5.6 --- Summary --- p.87 / Chapter 6 --- Towards Compression Garment --- p.89 / Chapter 6.1 --- Problem Formulation --- p.90 / Chapter 6.2 --- Testing on Elastic Materials --- p.92 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Test ing Overview --- p.92 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Quad Load Test --- p.92 / Chapter 6.2.3 --- Geometric Models --- p.9 / Chapter 6.2.4 --- Pressure Sensors --- p.94 / Chapter 6.2.5 --- Test -bed --- p.95 / Chapter 6.2.6 --- Data Analysis --- p.99 / Chapter 6.2.6.1 --- Results for Ellipsoid --- p.100 / Chapter 6.2.6.2 --- Results for Cone wit hout Head --- p.102 / Chapter 6.2.6.3 --- Results for Cylinder --- p.105 / Chapter 6.2.7 --- Summary --- p.107 / Chapter 6.3 --- Compression Generation via Length Control --- p.108 / Chapter 6.4 --- Summary and Discussion --- p.111 / Chapter 7 --- Conclusion and Discuss ion --- p.114 / Chapter 7.1 --- Summary --- p.114 / Chapter 7.2 --- Fut ure Work --- p.117 / Chapter A --- Appendix A: Work on An Wet suit Design system --- p.119 / Chapter A.1 --- Introduction --- p.119 / Chapter A.1.1 --- Tools Expect ed by Designers --- p.120 / Chapter A.1.2 --- Existing Met hods --- p.121 / Chapter A.1.3 --- Conventional Fabricat ion of User Customized Products --- p.124 / Chapter A.2 --- System Overview --- p.124 / Chapter A.3 --- System Implement at ion --- p.127 / Chapter A.3.1 --- Styling Design and Its Transformation --- p.127 / Chapter A.3.2 --- Trimming --- p.129 / Chapter A.3.3 --- Unfolding with Length-Preserved Feature Curves --- p.130 / Chapter A.3.4 --- Discrete Developable Mesh Processing --- p.133 / Chapter A.3.5 --- Map-guided Layout Arrangement --- p.135 / Chapter A.4 --- Result s and Applications --- p.137 / Chapter A.5 --- User Experience --- p.142 / Chapter A.6 --- Summary --- p.146 / Bibliography --- p.148