by Xue-jie Zhang. / "December 1999." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-[152]). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

The use of email as a communication and information sharing medium in large, complex, globally distributed engineering projects is widespread; yet there exists little understanding of the content of the emails exchanged and the implications of this content on the design project, design records and contracts. The importance of these issues is underlined by the fact that email records can now be required as evidence in legal disputes. It follows that the overall aim of this research is to assess the role and use of email in engineering design projects. A state-of-the-art review of literature pertaining to email is reported, along with a review of information and communication processes in engineering design projects. The primary contribution of this thesis is the creation of a content based approach for analysing the role and use of email in engineering design projects. This centres on the development and application of a coding scheme to email text, identifying what subject matter an email relates to, why it was sent, and how its content is expressed. Results are then analysed with respect to the frequencies of each code and other variables, including how coding varies between different senders and throughout the project duration. The second key contribution of this thesis is the analysis of emails and content in an engineering setting by applying the aforementioned approach to two case studies. The major case study concerned a large, complex, globally distributed, multimillion pound systems engineering project, from which 16 000 emails were obtained. It was found that emails are mainly used to transfer information but also to support management functions. Emails facilitate design work but little of this takes place explicitly in the email content. Characteristics of a project affect the subject matter or emails but have little effect on why they are sent. User roles and personal preferences also influence email use. If was found that the purposes for sending emails varied over the duration of a project; it was further determined that these changes could be used to identify project progress and design activity. Implications of the findings are identified in relation to: information management, knowledge management, project management, collaboration and email practice. Significantly, emails do contain potentially important design information and because these often support decisions made elsewhere, emails should be integrated with wider records. More consideration and training should be given to the use of project standards for email use and guidelines for composition. Changes in email use over the project duration could be a potential tool for project managers to identify design progress and possible issues in a project.

This thesis presents the research and development of robust metamodelling tools for engineering design. Metamodelling in engineering is typically used for reducing computational cost of highly expensive analyses or simulations. Metamodels have been shown to be effective in these problems where an approximation constructed from a limited set of true data points is used in support of optimisation. The inspiration for this work is drawn from the optimisation of aircraft wing structures, constructed using large numbers of rectangular stiffened panels. When optimising such structures to produce a minimum weight design, it is necessary to evaluate multiple design constraints such as buckling load, damage tolerance and repairability. The total computational cost for this aspect of the analysis can become considerable when a large number of evaluations is required and can creates a bottleneck in the optimisation workflow. In response to this industrial design problem, a specification is proposed for an efficient and adaptive metamodelling formulation. Following an extensive literature review the multilevel Radial Basis Function (mRBF) model is highlighted as a promising candidate for further investigation. The mRBF formulation is discussed in detail, and a comparative study is presented comparing mRBF to more established modelling techniques. mRBF is then put to work on a range of optimisation test problems, including an industrial scale multi-panel wing design scenario. Emphasis is placed on the adaptive acquisition of model data as the optimisation process progresses. Implementation details and software development processes are also presented in detail. The case is made for decoupled modelling workflows, and a RESTful web based mRBF modelling framework. Finally the performance of the proposed modelling scheme is compared to the original specification, and recommendations are made for further investigation.

"There are many types of knowledge involved in producing a design (the process of specifying a description of an artifact that satisfies a collection of constraints [Brown, 1992]). Of these, one of the most crucial is the design plan: the sequence of steps taken to create the design (or a portion of the design). A number of knowledge elicitation methods can be used to obtain this knowledge from the designer. The success of the elicitation depends on the match between the knowledge elicitation method used and the information being sought. The difficulty with obtaining design plan information is that this information may involve implicit knowledge, i.e. knowledge that can not be expressed explicitly. In this thesis, an approach is used that combines two knowledge elicitation techniques: one direct, to directly request the design steps and their sequence, and one indirect, to refine this knowledge by obtaining steps and sequences that may be implicit. The two techniques used in this thesis were Forward Scenario Simulation (FSS), a technique where the domain expert describes how the procedure followed to solve it, and Card Sort, a technique where the domain expert is asked to sort items (usually entities in the domain) along different attributes. The Design Ordering Elicitation System (DOES) was built to perform the knowledge elicitation. This system is a web-based system designed to support remote knowledge elicitation: KE performed without the presence of the knowledge engineer. This system was used to administer knowledge elicitation sessions to evaluate the effectiveness of these techniques at obtaining design steps and their sequencing. The results indicate that using an indirect technique together with a direct technique obtains more alternative sequences for the design steps than using the direct technique alone."

Thesis (Ocean E.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Ocean Engineering; and, (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, 1978. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 153-156. / by Timothy A. Holden. / Ocean E. / M.S.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING / Includes bibliographical references. / by Michael P. Hennessey. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1982. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 113-116. / by James R. Rinderle. / Ph.D.

A mandioca (Manihot Sculenta Crantz) é amplamente cultivada no Brasil e nos países tropicais do mundo por ser uma cultura de grande valor nutritivo e resistência às condições edafoclimáticas, servindo de segurança alimentar para vários países. A preponderância do cultivo no país é para abastecer mercados de consumo in natura de raízes e amido para várias agroindústrias. Apesar de sua grande aplicação, toda a cadeia agroindustrial nacional encontra obstáculos para sua expansão devido ao baixo rendimento de produção, alta demanda de mão de obra, cada vez mais escasso devido principalmente à atividade de grande esforço físico, falta de disponibilidade de máquinas especialmente para a colheita. O objetivo do trabalho foi descrever as etapas de colheita para identificar pontos de mecanização e propor alternativas de solução que se adequem melhor às necessidades da produção agrícola. Para isso, a pesquisa focou nas regiões produtoras de mandioca industrial dos estados do Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul e São Paulo onde apresentam maior emprego de tecnologia na colheita, onde uma área de 10 a 20 hectares foi selecionada como público alvo. Aplicou-se a metodologia de projeto sistemático para a obtenção de informações através da realização de visitas técnicas e experimentos em campo, para estabelecer uma lista de requisitos a serem atendidos pela colheita mecanizada. Constatou-se da revisão da bibliográfica e visitas às áreas de produção que a operação de extração, destaque, e coleta das raízes seriam as principais oportunidades de estudo para a mecanização, onde a principal restrição ao desenvolvimento estaria nas operações de posicionamento e destaque das mesmas, em razão das raízes apresentarem certa aleatoriedade de geometria e dependência do ajuste das demais operações do cultivo e variedades. Nessa perspectiva, foram coletadas informações sobre a geometria das raízes para três diferentes variedades de mandioca em dois períodos de colheita. Para a proposição de uma solução para a colheita, foram estudados sistemas mecânicos alternativos para cada etapa do processo, gerando uma matriz morfologia que orientou a proposição de desenhos esquemáticos de cinco variantes de colhedoras. Por fim, selecionou-se a variante de um implemento de colheita composto por braços mecânicos com posicionamento assistido por operadores, onde o destaque das raízes deveria ser realizado por garras mecânicas para a separação da parte aérea das plantas ainda no solo. Com o objetivo de favorecer sua posterior extração através da análise de requisitos técnicos, econômicos, ambientais e sociais. A pesquisa visou contribuir com a cadeia da cultura da mandioca, com a formalização de informações e restrições para o projeto de colhedora ajustada para as condições nacionais, indicar alternativas de colhedoras a serem desenvolvidas e validadas em campo através de pesquisas posteriores. / Manihot (Manihot Sculenta Crantz) is widely cultivated in Brazil and in the tropical countries as a crop of great nutritional value and resistance to edaphoclimatic conditions, providing food security for several countries. The prevalence of the cultivation in the country is to supply markets of in natura consumption of roots and starch for several agroindustries. Despite its great application, the entire agroindustrial chain has obstacles to its expansion due to the low yield of production, high demand of labor, increasingly scarce due mainly to the arduous work, lack of availability of harvest machines. The objective of this work was to describe the harvesting stages to identify mechanization gaps and to propose alternative that best fit the farming production. The research focused on the industrial cassava production of the states of Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul and São Paulo that holds the highest technology harvesting, and an area of 10 to 20 hectares was selected as the market target. A systematic design methodology was applied to obtain information through technical visits and field experiments, to establish a requirements list to appropriate answer the mechanized harvest. It was verified the bibliographical revision and visits that the operation of extraction, detach, and collection of the roots would be the main opportunities of the mechanization, and the main restriction to the development would be in the operations of positioning and detach, because the roots present a geometry randomness and dependence of the other operations adjustment of the crop and varieties. From this perspective, geometry information was collected for three different varieties of cassava in two harvest periods. The proposition a solution for the harvest, alternatives of mechanical systems was studied for each step of the process, creating a morphology matrix that guided to bring up the five harvesters schematic drawings. Finally, we selected the variant of a harvesting implement composed of mechanical arms with operatorassisted positioning, where the detach of the roots should be performed by mechanical claws to separate the plants aerial parts still in the soil, with the objective to facilitate after root extraction through the analysis of technical, economic, environmental and social parameters. Finally, this study aimed to contribute to the cassava culture chain, with the formalization of information and restrictions for the design of harvester machines adjusted for the national conditions, to indicate alternative to be developed and validated in the field through further works.

abstract: Planning efforts conducted during the early stages of a construction project, known as front end planning (FEP), have a large impact on project success and significant influence on the configuration of the final project. As a key component of FEP, front end engineering design (FEED) plays an essential role in the overall success of large industrial projects. The primary objective of this dissertation focuses on FEED maturity and accuracy and its impact on project performance. The author was a member of the Construction Industry Institute (CII) Research Team (RT) 331, which was tasked to develop the FEED Maturity and Accuracy Total Rating System (FEED MATRS), pronounced “feed matters.” This dissertation provides the motivation, methodology, data analysis, research findings (which include significant correlations between the maturity and accuracy of FEED and project performance), applicability and contributions to academia and industry. A scientific research methodology was employed in this dissertation that included a literature review, focus groups, an industry survey, data collection workshops, in-progress projects testing, and statistical analysis of project performance. The results presented in this dissertation are based on input from 128 experts in 57 organizations and a data sample of 33 completed and 11 on-going large industrial projects representing over $13.9 billion of total installed cost. The contributions of this work include: (1) developing a tested FEED definition for the large industrial projects sector, (2) determining the industry’s state of practice for measuring FEED deliverables, (3) developing an objective and scalable two-dimensional method to measure FEED maturity and accuracy, and (4) quantifying that projects with high FEED maturity and accuracy outperformed projects with low FEED maturity and accuracy by 24 percent in terms of cost growth, in relation to the approved budget. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Construction Management 2019

While there currently exists a great deal of research in the literature demonstrating various engineering applications for virtual reality (VR) and the benefits of these applications, VR adoption has been slow in part because of the high cost and resources required to setup and maintain the hardware for these applications. However, in the last 5 years, a new generation of VR hardware has emerged with cost and resource requirements which are a small fraction of previous hardware. This work begins with a survey of this newly available hardware summarizing recent advances for providing virtual input to all of the five human senses. The literature review then proceeds to highlight previous research into improving various aspects of the Engineering Design Process by using VR applications. The literature review concludes that given the significantly improved cost to benefit ratio of this new hardware, a tipping point has been reached where companies will see benefits from providing their engineering workforce with general access to VR hardware. From the conclusions drawn in the literature review, this work proceeds to explore and answer two main questions related to connecting and collaborating via this new VR hardware. The first question seeks to understand the trade-offs between cybersickness and disorientation from different styles of moving users in a collaborative VR environment (CVE). Since a CVE can be much larger than the physical world it is sometimes necessary to move the virtual participant which can cause cybersickness and disorientation. Understanding this trade-off is one key to creating a usable CVE. It is found that many users are willing to experience some mild cybersickness to significantly reduce the amount of disorientation experienced in a CVE. However, a second group of users are not willing to make this trade and hence require the ability to customize the CVE for their preferred trade-off between cybersickness and disorientation. The second question seeks to understand how a CVE with support for natural gestures can improve communication about complex 3D data over video conferencing which is the current standard for remote collaboration. It is found that such a CVE implemented with the latest low-cost consumer-grade VR hardware can improve communication speed up to 45% while also improving the accuracy of the communication. In addition, it was found that gestures in the CVE were much more effective and natural than mouse gestures in Skype, 93% of participants preferred the CVE over current video conferencing software, and 86% of participants stated they would like to have access to VR tools in their workplace.