This thesis looks at the capabilities of cutting thin webs on Wire EDM machines that are difficult or impossible to machine using conventional methods. Covered is an investigation of how different material and web thickness affect the capability of machining thin-walled parts. Five different metals are used for the test; Aluminum 6061 T6, Yellow Brass SS360, 420 Stainless Steel, D2 unheat-treated tool steel 25-30 RC, and D2 heat-treated tool steel 60-65 RC. The small parts were cut to a 6mm (0.2362 inch) height with six different wall thicknesses: 0.30mm (0.0118 inch), 0.25mm (0.0098 inch), 0.20mm (0.0078 inch), 0.15mm (0.0059 inch), 0.10mm (0.0039 inch), and 0.05mm (0.0020 inch). A Sodick AQ325L Wire EDM machine was utilized for testing. The methods employed during the study include the following: • Machine settings and offsets were limited to the default setting selected from the Sodick AQ325L database. • Two different pre-test cuts were taken on the material to check for web bending during the cutting process. • Hardness was tested for comparison of the web heights. This thesis shows that bending increased as webs became thinner and that bending occurred toward the wire as the second side of the web was cut. Bending does affect the height of the web. Physical properties of materials also impacted the height of the web with the hardest material staying intact during the cutting process. This study shows that two factors, physical properties of materials and web thickness, significantly affect cutting results for thin web parts.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) plays an important role in today's construction industry. Models are tools that help stakeholders communicate, visualize building geometry, perform trade coordination and clash detection among others. A less popular aspect of BIM that shows high potential is the quantity take-off (QTO) feature. Yet, its implementation among commercial general contractors (GC) has not received as much attention. The purpose of this study was to identify how the BIM QTO features were being implemented among commercial general contractors, what challenges they faced and how they worked to overcome those challenges. Through a three-step process including semi structured interviews with estimators, preconstruction, BIM and Virtual Design Construction (VDC) managers, valuable insights on the BIM QTO implementation state among general contractors were gathered and analyzed. Links between BIM QTO benefits, project design phases and delivery methods, software, training, leadership and jurisdictions were discussed. The data indicated that BIM QTO's benefits were best leveraged through early general contractor involvement, the adequate contract framework, trained BIM QTO estimators, and early and strategic communication between owners, designers and estimators. The conditions for increased efficiency were discussed along with the solutions to the common BIM-based QTO challenges.

Utility coordination is an exceedingly complex effort of managing, communicating, and facilitating the avoidance and relocation of utility facilities as needed for highway projects. Utility coordination occurs throughout the design and delivery of a project and best practices are used to make sure this occurs efficiently and in the best interest of the public, who are not only the taxpayers but also the ratepayers. Recent research has attempted to enhance utility location technology and procedures, instill frameworks and tools for utility coordination, and proceduralize risk management relative to utility coordination. However, research attempting to improve various aspects of utility coordination simultaneously has led to a lack of consensus on how to integrate these research efforts into an effective standard of practice. These is also not a standard of practice for quantifying utility related risks for transportation projects. This research will attempt to build consensus and contribute to the body of knowledge in this area of utility coordination by presenting an approach to assess the relative utility risks of a project and align current and new practices to minimize those risks. Through statistical analysis of historical project data regarding utility coordination schedules and costs for transportation projects in Kentucky, this study was able to produce a model that estimates utility related risk early in transportation project development. With input and evaluation by subject matter experts, utility coordination best practices were collected and aligned to utility risks on transportation projects. A decision support tool was developed to assist in the use of the mathematical utility risk model and the best practices associated with the varying risk levels. This research also finds that there are disparities among utility stakeholders on transportation projects in regard to the effectiveness or satisfaction with particular best practices. This finding presents the need for early involvement and collaborative utility coordination to select practices that ensure utility related issues on transportation projects are minimized. The research also presents that increased use of alternative contracting methods can pose significant challenges to utility coordination on transportation projects. This stems from the finding that utility coordination practices were not uniformly effective across these varying procurement methods. Furthermore, as Departments of Transportation continue to deal with resource issues, one of which being manpower within utility coordination, the use of consultants for utility coordination presents its own set of complexities. The research finds the best application of consult-led utility coordination is through third-part consultants specializing in utility coordination, those who have been state-specifically trained for utility coordination, and prequalified for utility coordination work.

The dangerous work environment in the construction industry and the inherent high risks associated with construction work make it the focus of safety training and regulations. Highway construction and maintenance has unique hazards but seemingly less directly applicable safety standards, regulations, and programs. Department of Transportation (DOT) employees working in highway maintenance are exposed to a variety of unique hazards specifically associated with their work and not relating to the adjacent traffic. Yet, highway construction and maintenance work has not received sufficient attention in terms of safety research and programs. The lack of safety training and education in highway construction and maintenance work leaves a significant portion of DOT employees prone to different work-related hazards that can be avoided with additional safety awareness. As part of the efforts of the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) to improve safety of their employees, the study describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a pre-task safety briefing toolbox. By analyzing recordable incidents of KYTC maintenance employees and identifying frequent hazards present within their typical work operations and the causes behind the frequent incidents, the final product of design phase is a toolbox that is relatable and relevant to KYTC maintenance crews. The toolbox presents these hazards along with incidents causes and the appropriate safety practices to avoid or mitigate the associated risk. The goal of this safety toolbox is to improve safety awareness of KYTC maintenance crews. The second part of the study is a comprehensive systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of the toolbox. Three evaluation phases including reaction and knowledge evaluation, implementation evaluation, and behavior change evaluation were carried out to assess the effectiveness of the toolbox. With 22% improvement in workers safety knowledge, 23% improvement in workers hazards identification skills, and 33.24% increase in the likelihood of safe behavior, the results showed that pre-task safety toolbox talks can increase highway workers’ safety awareness, improve their hazards identification skills, and increase their safe behavior. In addition to serving an underserved audience of the construction workforce, this study contributes to the body of knowledge in different ways. First, it sheds the light on a significant underserved portion of construction workers and the unique hazards present in their work environment. Second, it presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a data driven safety intervention that addresses the most frequent safety issues in highway maintenance operations. Finally, it presents an empirical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a common practice used in the construction industry in a unique sector of the industry that has not received sufficient research efforts.

Collecting load tickets is an example of an antiquated practice that puts inspectors in harm’s way either adjacent to traffic, in close proximity to moving or backing equipment, or at times requires climbing onto trucks to reach tickets. Technology exists to collect this information electronically allowing for safer, efficient inspection methods. Departments of Transportation are charged with inspecting an increasing work load with a diminishing number of inspection staff. Recently, doing more with less has led to the prioritization of inspection activities and resulted in less collection of data and visual inspection on projects. Technology advancements are available to improve data collection and provide for more efficient inspection. Using GPS and GIS technology tied into electronic scale report-out systems, a fleet tracking system traces haul routes, reports travel time and tonnage, and even assists contractors with equipment matching and balancing. Data from this system coupled with other technologies remote monitoring of temperature, intelligent compaction, and network enabled cameras provide an opportunity to enhance inspection and increase construction inspection productivity all the while enriching detail of project records. The contribution of this paper is to provide a framework in which to combine these technologies into a multi-faceted, enhanced inspection approach.

Over recent years, organizations such as the Federal Highway Administration and Departments of Transportation across the United States have showed interest in automating highway construction processes. The addition of e-Construction and other advanced technologies can significantly improve the efficiency and safety of highway paving operations, specifically paving inspections. Activities such as collecting load tickets, tracking pavement lay-down temperatures, and monitoring roller movement are antiquated practices that DOT inspectors perform during paving operations. E-Ticketing, Paver Mounted Thermal Profiling, and Intelligent Compaction were proposed to automate paving inspections and were recently tested in two resurfacing pilot projects in the state of Kentucky. Findings from the projects indicate that the three technologies display great potential in improving safety and efficiency of paving inspections. The contribution of this thesis is to document the research effort, evaluate the effectiveness of the technologies compared to the traditional practices, and discuss the lessons learned for industry practitioners.

As-built drawings are the traditional method used by the construction industry to record changes made during construction. As-builts provide valuable information for new design projects as well as rehabilitation and remediation projects. The completeness and accuracy of these plans are essential for transportation industries and their success. While the importance of as-builts is widely recognized, the process of creating them has proven to be difficult. It is a time consuming process and entities often lack the resources necessary to complete accurate and detailed as-builts. After an investigation of current as-built operations within State Transportation Agencies, recommendations have been made to redefine construction "as-built" plans to meet current state transportation needs. First, the importance of a central storage location accessible to all stakeholders cannot be overemphasized. Along with a central storage location, standard guidelines should be developed regarding what information is required to be included within as-built plans. This study's approach to developing such guidelines included meeting with as-built end users and formulating a list of requested information. To ensure as-builts are being completed on time and accurately, it is recommended that as-built plans be developed throughout the project using simple to use editing software on iPads. A PDF editor is ideal for as-built development as PDF is the requested format by most end users. Finally, to ensure this process is being followed by construction, a liaison between as-built developers and users is recommended.

The strut-and-tie method (STM) is a simple and conservative method for designing concrete structures, especially deep beams. This method expresses complicated stress patterns as a simple truss or kinematic model made up of compression elements (struts), tension elements (ties), and the joints between elements (nodes). STM is based on lowerbound plasticity theorem, so using it properly will lead to a conservative design. Although the concepts of STM have been around in concrete design since the late 19th century, STM was first introduced in AASHTO LRFD in 1994 and ACI 318-02 in 2002. ACI 318 defines two different types of struts (prismatic and bottle-shaped) based on whether compression stress can spread transversely along the length of the strut. Recent work has brought into question whether these two types of struts do exist and whether current design provisions conservatively estimate failure loads for all members. The performance of struts and nodes were investigated experimentally by testing six fullscale concrete deep beams. The specimens had two different shapes (rectangular and trusslike), two different shear span-to-depth ratio (1 and 1.6), and three different types of development (externally unbonded bars, internally bonded hooked bars, and internally bonded bars with welded external plates). All the specimens were supported vertically and vii tested under a three-point load setup. Based on the results, the truss-like specimen failed at higher loads than rectangular specimens with the same shear span-to-depth ratio. According to these results and recent debate in the literature, bottle-shaped struts are not weaker than prismatic struts because of their shape. They are weaker due to shear failure where struts cross a diagonal tension field. Therefore, the structures should be separately checked for shear strength when they are designed with STM. In this dissertation, the development of the design equation for shear strength of discontinuity regions was introduced, and the procedure is under consideration for adoption in ACI 318-19. This research was expanded numerically by studying the effect of development type and length, strut type, and strut angle on the behavior of concrete deep beams. The crack patterns and load-displacement curves, which were obtained from experimental tests, were used to validate numerical models. The strength of concrete deep beams was assessed by modeling thirty-five specimens in a nonlinear finite element software. According to the results, development length and development types influenced the presence of tensile stress in the support nodes. Additionally, the effect of the tensile stresses from reinforcement development and diagonal tension were not additive in rectangular specimens.

<p>Detta projekt har haft som mål att utveckla produktdisplayer för användning i butiker i syfte att exponera produkter som smycken, solglasögon eller liknande. Projektet är utfört som ett examensarbete vid Mälardalens Högskola inom produktutveckling med inriktning formgivning.</p><p>Bakgrunden till projektet är att företaget X-ponent vill utforska en ny marknad. Det vill säga konsumentmarknaden istället för sin vanliga inriktning på industri. X-ponent har fått förfrågningar om produktdisplayer av mindre tillverkare av smycken och säljer idag en enkel variant till dessa.</p><p>Uppdraget har gått ut på att ta fram tre koncept på produktdisplayer ett med ett eget användningsområde; en väggdisplay, för att kunna användas vid vägg; en golv display, för användning på golvet i butiken; och en bordsdisplay, att kunna ställa på bord eller disk. Displayens syfte skulle vara att exponera produkten och locka folk att köpa varför konsument psykologi och marknadsföring i butik studerades. Även semiotik spelade stor roll i konceptens formgivning och studerades noga.</p><p>För att ta reda på marknadens krav och egenskaper användarna ansåg vara bra och dåligt med dagens produkter utfördes en marknadsundersökning i butikerna i Tuna Park i Eskilstuna och på Dustins Elektronikmässa i Annexet i Stockholm. Även en utförlig konkurrensanalys utfördes på konkurrerande produkter.</p><p>Under projektets gång har ett flertal produktutvecklings verktyg används som, funktionsanalys, FEMA och CAD (genom SolidWorks). Arbetsmetoden har varit att ta fram en mängd olika koncept för att sedan metodiskt sålla bort, förbättra och tillslut välja ut slutgilltliga koncept.</p><p>För att göra bästa möjliga val använde jag mig av flera beprövade verktyg. Som Beslutsmatriser, PUGH och QFD. Utöver dessa verktyg hade jag flera diskussioner med uppdragsgivare och handledare.</p><p>En viktig del har varit att presentera koncept som både uppfyller marknadens och uppdragsgivarens krav samtidigt som det är så hållbart för miljön som möjligt. för att göra detta möjligt studerades "sustainable design" (hållbar design).</p><p>De slutgiltiga koncepten presenterades som renderade bilder. Dessa renderades i programmet 3D-Studio max. En säljande produktfolder skapades för att ge koncepten extra tyngd. Även en modell av väggkonceptet togs fram.</p>

<p>Examensarbetet har genomförts på Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB i Finspång. Arbetet innebär modernisering av ventiler till ångturbiner. Uppgiften består av två delar, där den första delen är att modernisera dagens tätningar i spindelgenomföringen. Syftet är att finna en mer vibrationstålig, driftsäker och mindre utrymmeskrävande lösning. Det andra delprojektet är att finna alternativ till dagens tallriksfjädrar i de servomotorer som reglerar ventilen. Anledningen till att nya fjädrar skall tas fram är att öka livslängden, minska slitaget och utrymmesbehovet på servomotorerna.</p><p>För att kunna genomföra uppgiften på ett effektivt och strukturerat sätt har en metodik för systematisk konceptutvecklings används. Denna metodik har varit hjälpfull för att finna nytänkande lösningar. För att kunna dimensionera komponenterna har beräkningsmodeller tagits fram för de ångkrafter som verkar i en ångventil samt för olika typer av packboxar och fjädrar.</p><p>Arbetet med moderniseringen av spindeltätningar har resulterat i att en ny typ av packbox har valts som minskar friktionen samt behovet av efterdragning. Två olika lösningar har tagits fram för att skapa den förspänningskraft som gör att packningen tätar. Båda lösningar minskar behovet av underhållsarbete samt underlättar monteringen. En indikation ges även när rätt kraft är uppnådd, vilket minimerar risken för läckage eller att ventilen inte går att manövrera.</p><p>Analysen av servomotorer resulterade i att inga möjliga alternativ till tallriksfjädrar hittades. Modifieringar har därför tagits fram för att förbättra dagens tallriksfjädrar. Dessa ändringar innebär att slitaget minskas och livslängden ökas betydligt.</p> / <p>This thesis was preformed at Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery AB in Finspång. The work is to make modernizations of steam turbine valves. The first part of the project is to modernize stem packing with the purpose to find a more reliable and space-saving solution that is less sensitive to vibrations. The second part is to find an alternative solution for cup springs in servomotors. A new spring type is desirable to increase the lifetime, lower the wear on stem shafts and to make it more space-saving.</p><p>To be able to perform the task efficiently and organized a method for systematic design has been used. This method has turned out to be quite useful tool in order to find new approaches to problems. Calculations of steam forces in a valve together with different types of box packing and springs have been done.</p><p>The modernization of stem packing has resulted in a new type of box packing. The winnings of changing packing are lowered friction and need of maintenance. Two solutions of live load systems have been created. Both solutions minimize the need of maintenance and make the mount and dismount easier. An indication makes sure that a sufficient force is applied on the box packing.</p><p>An analysis shows no alternative to replace the existing cup springs. The main goal was changed and modifications were made to improve the cup springs. The modifications results in a lowered wear and a significant increase of cup spring lifetime.</p>