The longitudinal forces generated from the Friction Stir Welding process are substantial. An understanding of these forces is critical to proper tool design. This study describes a technique to measure the longitudinal force distribution on a friction stir weld pin tool. Total longitudinal forces were recorded on a dynamometer while welding 6061 aluminum with non-threaded pins that varied in length and diameter. A model was developed that characterizes pin force as a function of pin length and diameter. Results suggest that force generally increases with pin length, while forces remain relatively constant with pin diameter. Unexpected force variation was found at large pin lengths, which yielded several possible models of the force distribution. All of the modeled force distributions proved to be non-uniform and increase linearly with pin length, which produces a pin force that increases with the square of the pin length.

In today's competitive manufacturing industries, companies strive to reduce manufacturing development costs and lead times in hopes of reducing costs and capturing more market share from early release of their new or redesigned products. Tooling lead time constraints are some of the more significant challenges facing product development of advanced free-form components. This is especially true for complex designs in which large dies, molds or other large forming tools are required. The lead time for tooling, in general, consists of three main components; material acquisition, tool design and engineering, and tool manufacturing. Lead times for material acquisition and tool manufacture are normally a function of vendor/outsourcing constraints, manufacturing techniques and complexity of tooling being produced. The tool design and engineering component is a function of available manpower, engineering expertise, type of design problem (initial design or redesign of tooling), and complexity of the design problem. To reduce the tool design/engineering lead time, many engineering groups have implemented Computer-Aided Design, Engineering, and Manufacturing (CAD/CAE/CAM or CAx) tools as their standard practice for the design and analysis of their products. Although the predictive capabilities are efficient, using CAx tools to expedite advanced die design is time consuming due to the free-form nature and complexity of the desired part geometry. Design iterations can consume large quantities of time and money, thus driving profit margins down or even being infeasible from a cost and schedule standpoint. Any savings based on a reduction in time are desired so long as quality is not sacrificed. This thesis presents an automated tool design methodology that integrates state-of-the-art numerical surface fitting methods with commercially available CAD/CAE/CAM technologies and optimization software. The intent is to virtually create tooling wherein work-piece geometries have been optimized producing products that capture accurate design intent. Results show a significant reduction in design/engineering tool development time. This is due to the integration and automation of associative tooling surfaces automatically derived from the known final design intent geometry. Because this approach extends commercially available CAx tools, this thesis can be used as a blueprint for any automotive or aerospace tooling need to eliminate significant time and costs from the manufacture of complex free-form components.

The thesis is focused on the technology of scarfing longitudinal welds in welded tubes. The theoretical part describes methods of production tubes. It also analyzes the method used in Mubea company. The experimental part presents the design of two innovative technologies of scarfing welds tubes, their experimental validation and subsequent evaluation. The experimental part also presents a design of the machine that must be produced for this operation.

Tooling design is crucial for the production of cost-effective and durable composite products. As part of the current search for cost reduction (by reducing capital investment, energy use and cycle time), integrally-heated tooling is one of the technologies available for ‘out-of-autoclave’ processing of advanced thermoset polymer composites. Despite their advantages, integrally-heated tools can suffer from uneven distribution of temperature, variability in heat flow rate and inconsistency in heating/cooling time. This research, therefore, investigates a number of design variables such as shape and layout of heating channels in order to improve the heating performance of an integrally-heated tool. Design of Experiments (DoE) has been carried out using Taguchi’s Orthogonal Array (OA) method to set several combinations of design parameters. Each of these design combinations has been evaluated through numerical simulation to investigate heating time and mould surface temperature variation. The simulation results suggest that the layout of the channels and their separation play a vital role in the heating performance. Signal-to-Noise (S/N) ratio and analysis of variance (ANOVA) have been applied to the results obtained to identify the optimal design combination of the integrally-heated tool. Statistical analysis reveals that the heating performance of an integrally-heated tool can be significantly improved when the channels’ layout is parallel. The shape of the channels has negligible effect and the distance between the channels should be determined based on the production requirement. According to the predicted optimal design, a developed integrally water-heated tool is manufactured. The actual thermal properties of the constituent materials of the produced tool are also measured. Then a numerical model of the experimental tool model is simulated in ANSYS software, with setting the actual material properties and boundary condition to define the temperature uniformity and heating rate of the experimental tool. Comparison of the experimental and numerical results of the experimental tool confirmed the well assigning of the boundary conditions and material properties during simulation the heated tool. The experimental results also confirmed the predicted optimal design of the integrally heated tool. Finally, in order to define its thermomechanical behaviour under the effective (in service) thermal loads, a tool model is simulated. Numerical results presented that the produced extremes of thermal deformation, elastic strain, normal and plane shear stresses, under the effective thermal loading, are within the allowable elastic limits of the participated materials.

The fully fashioned master’s thesis within the frame of the master’s study at the Fakulty of mechanical engineering deals with subject woodworking tools. There are characteristics of wood and tool materials used for woodworking. There is an emphasis on milling cutter in each case of construction of selected woodworking tools. Whereas there is concrete proposal of milling cutter used for production of half round profile – half round concave cutter – at the end of the thesis.

Ensemble simulation is a commonly used technique in operational forecasting of weather and floods. Multi-member ensemble output is usually large, multivariate, and challenging to interpret interactively. Forecast meteorologists and hydrologists are interested in understanding the uncertainties associated with the simulation; specifically variability between the ensemble members. The visualization of ensemble members is currently accomplished through spaghetti plots or hydrographs. To improve visualization techniques and tools for forecasters, we conducted a userstudy to evaluate the effectiveness of existing uncertainty visualization techniques on 1D and 2D synthetic datasets. We designed an uncertainty evaluation framework to enable easier design of such studies for scientific visualization. The techniques evaluated are errorbars, scaled size of glyphs, color-mapping on glyphs, and color-mapping of uncertainty on the data surface. Although we did not find a consistent order among the four techniques for all tasks, we found that the efficiency of techniques used highly depended on the tasks being performed. Errorbars consistently underperformed throughout the experiment. Scaling the size of glyphs and color-mapping of the surface performed reasonably well. With results from the user-study, we iteratively developed a tool named ‘Noodles’ to interactively explore the ensemble uncertainty in weather simulations. Uncertainty was quantified using standard deviation, inter-quartile range, width of the 95% confidence interval, and by bootstrapping the data. A coordinated view of ribbon and glyph-based uncertainty visualization, spaghetti plots, and data transect plots was provided to two meteorologists for expert evaluation. They found it useful in assessing uncertainty in the data, especially in finding outliers and avoiding the parametrizations leading to these outliers. Additionally, they could identify spatial regions with high uncertainty thereby determining poorly simulated storm environments and deriving physical interpretation of these model issues. We also describe uncertainty visualization capabilities developed for a tool named ‘FloodViz’ for visualization and analysis of flood simulation ensembles. Simple member and trend plots and composited inundation maps with uncertainty are described along with different types of glyph based uncertainty representations. We also provide feedback from a hydrologist using various features of the tool from an operational perspective.

Throughout the past twenty-five years the process of designing and manufacturing a product has been revolutionized by the integration of Computer Aided Design (CAD). Although three-dimensional solid modeling, or 3-D CAD offers a better representation of the product in a virtual environment, it can be complicated and difficult to learn. Tutorials have been developed to assist manufacturing tool design student in the learning of 3-D CAD principles as they apply to tool design. This study seeks to test the effectiveness of those tutorials. A BYU tool design class was divided into two groups according to their assigned laboratory time. The experimental group used the tutorials in their lab assignments. The other group acted as the control group for the study and did not use the tutorial in their lab assignments. Both groups took a pre-evaluation quiz and three short quizzes throughout the semester to test how well they had learned the software. The short quizzes included ten written answers and a small design project. The answers to the quizzes were graded and the students recorded the time it took to complete the design project. This data was analyzed statistically using an ANCOVA model. The student who used the tutorials performed better on the written answer section of the quizzes. This was proven to be statistically significant. There was no significance difference, however, in the time it took students to complete the design projects on each quiz. It was concluded from this data that the tutorials were effective teaching 3-D CAD principles to tool design students.

Finding a boot that fits comfortably in a ski rental shop can be a difficult and tedious task for many people. Having properly fitting boots is important to prevent injuries in the user and reduce the risk of accidents happening on the mountain. The goal of this master thesis was to develop a tool that could make it easier for the customers in a ski rental shop to find the right boot for them. This was done by first sending out surveys to students at LTU and Swedish rental stores and interviewing rental store staff. It was found that a lot of the students don’t want to take the time to properly test their boots in the shop and that the staff don’t feel like they have the time to properly measure and fit every customer with a proper set of boots. It was theorised that making the measuring of the foot easier, faster, and more thorough would increase the chances of customers finding the right set of boots. The measurements that need to be taken for a proper boot matching to be made were found to be foot length, foot width, instep height, and calf volume. Through a design process combining a convergent/divergent and an iterative phase a tool that can take these measurements was designed and developed. The tool is a sock with built in stretch sensors that align themselves on the user’s foot in the correct places as the user puts on the sock. With a microcontroller the sock takes the measurements and sends them wirelessly to a screen that is placed in the store making it easy for the user to read the measurements. On the screen the user can also see what boot they are recommended to rent based on the measurements and book them directly on the screen.

Climate analysts use Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) simulations to make sense of models performance in predicting extreme events such as heavy precipitation. Similarly, weather analysts use numerical weather prediction models (NWP) to simulate weather conditions either by perturbing initial conditions or by changing multiple input parameterization schemes, e.g., cumulus and microphysics schemes. These simulations are used in operational weather forecasting and for studying the role of parameterization schemes in synoptic weather events like storms. This work addresses the need for visualizing the differences in both CMIP5 and NWP model output. This work proposes three glyph designs used for communicating CMIP5 model error. It also describes Ensemble Visual eXplorer tool that provides multiple ways of visualizing NWP model output and the related input parameter space. The proposed interactive dendrogram provides an effective way to relate multiple input parameterization schemes with spatial characteristics of model uncertainty features. The glyphs that were designed to communicate CMIP5 model error are extended to encode both parameterization schemes and graduated uncertainty, to provide related insights at specific locations such as storm center and the areas surrounding it. The work analyzes different ways of using glyphs to represent parametric uncertainty using visual variables such as color and size, in conjunction with Gestalt visual properties. It demonstrates the use of visual analytics in resolving some of the issues such as visual scalability. As part of this dissertation, we evaluated three glyph designs using average precipitation rate predicted by CMIP5 simulations, and Ensemble Visual eXplorer tool using WRF 1999 March 4th, North American storm track dataset.

This research investigates formulation, compounding and thin-wall injection moulding of Polypropylene/clay nanocomposites (PPCNs) prepared using conventional melt-state processes. An independent study on single screw extrusion dynamics using Design of Experiments (DoE) was performed first. Then the optimum formulation of PPCNs and compounding conditions were determined using this strategy. The outcomes from the DoE study were then applied to produce PPCN compounds for the subsequent study of thin-wall injection moulding, for which a novel four-cavity injection moulding system was designed using CAD software and a new moulding tool was constructed based upon this design. Subsequently, the effects of moulding conditions, nanoclay concentration and wall thickness on the injection moulded PPCN parts were investigated. Moreover, simulation of the injection moulding process was carried out to compare the predicted performance with that obtained in practice by measurement of real-time data using an in-cavity pressure sensor. For the selected materials, the optimum formulation is 4 wt% organoclay (DK4), 4 wt% compatibiliser (Polybond 3200, PPgMA) and 1.5 wt% co-intercalant (erucamide), as the maximum interlayer spacing of clay can be achieved in the selected experimental range. Furthermore, DoE investigations determined that a screw speed of 159 rpm and a feed rate of 5.4 kg/h are the optimum compounding conditions for the twin screw extruder used to obtain the highest tensile modulus and yield strength from the PPCN compounds. The optimised formulation of PPCNs and compounding conditions were adopted to manufacture PPCN materials for the study of thin-wall injection moulding. In the selected processing window, tensile modulus and yield strength increase significantly with decreasing injection speed, due to shear-induced orientation effects, exemplified by a significantly increased frozen layer thickness observed by optical microscopy (OM) and Moldflow® simulation. Furthermore, the TEM images indicate a strong orientation of clay particles in the flow direction, so the PPCN test pieces cut parallel to the flow direction have 36.4% higher tensile modulus and 13.6 % higher yield strength than those cut perpendicular to the flow direction, demonstrating the effects of shear induced orientation on the tensile properties of thin-wall injection moulded PPCN parts. In comparison to injection speed, mould temperature has very limited effects in the selected range investigated (25-55 °C), in this study. The changes in moulding conditions show no distinctive effects on PP crystallinity and intercalation behaviour of clay. Impact toughness of thin wall injection moulded PPCN parts is not significantly affected by either the changes in moulding conditions or clay concentration (1-5 %). The SEM images show no clear difference between the fracture surfaces of PPCN samples with different clay concentrations. TEM and XRD results suggest that higher intercalation but lower exfoliation is achieved in PPCN parts with higher clay content. The composites in the thin sections (at the end of flow) have 34 % higher tensile modulus and 11 % higher yield strength than in the thicker sections, although the thin sections show reduced d001 values. This is attributed to the significantly enhanced shear-induced particle/molecular orientation and more highly oriented frozen layer, according to TEM, OM and process simulation results. In terms of the reduced d001 values in the thin sections, it is proposed that the extreme shear conditions in the thin sections stretch the PP chains in the clay galleries to a much higher level, compaction of clay stacks occurs as less interspacing is needed to accommodate the stretched chains, but rapid cooling allows no time for the chains to relax and expand the galleries back. Overall, data obtained from both actual moulding and simulation indicate that injection speed is of utmost importance to the thin-wall injection moulding process, development of microstructure, and thus the resulting properties of the moulded PPCN parts, in the selected experimental ranges of this research.