During the past years, the usage of wood as construction material in multistory applications has increased. In Germany and Sweden, various activities have been, and are about to be performed, to accentuate and improve the position of wooden multistory houses. In line with that, this thesis tries to contribute to the understanding of how consumers perceive durable products; in the contextual frame of how German and Swedish consumers perceive wooden multistory houses. It was hypothesized that consumers’ perceptions on durable products differ, depending on their age, income, national and within-country habitation. Based on the Means-End Chain Theory, the Association Pattern Technique has been further developed to collect and analyze data for two samples. In Germany and Sweden, 31 respectively 34 laddering interviews have been carried out which formed the base for a survey-study in each country. Here, 229 surveys were received from German, and 503 from Swedish respondents. The results show that age, income, national and within-country habitation have significant impact on consumers’ perceptions of wooden multistory houses. Moreover, the extension of the Association Pattern Technique was validated. It allowed for additional data to be gathered, which can be regarded as rather important, since it appeared in the most dominant Means-End Chains of the respondents in both Germany and Sweden. This helps to understand consumers’ underlying reasons why one product is favoured over another.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design, 2005. / "June 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-126). Also available electronically via the Australian Digital Theses Program.

The goal of this diploma work is a proposal and structural survey of wooden bridge for pedestrians and cyclists over the water area. The bridge is situated into the area of town Jihlava. A clingy slat wood and steel construction elements have been used for construction proposal. Bridge span is being used as 50 metres. Generally two variations of bridge constructions have been elaborated, variation A and variation B, of which variation A has been elaborated in more details.

Problem - Decision makers shape the structure of the sales function, but it is unclear how they go about it and why. The rationale for making certain decisions need to be analyzed in order to understand why different decision makers apply different sales strategies. Topic - The Swedish prefabricated wooden house industry consists of many actors with no clear market leader. The sales force seems to mainly consists of external sales agents (manufacturers' representatives, also called reps), though some manufacturers also employ direct sales agents at the manufacturing company. Prefabricated wooden houses corresponded to 86% of all building permits requested during 2015. Purpose - This thesis aims to explore decision-makers' rationale behind the organization of manufacturers' sales forces in the Swedish prefabricated wooden house industry. Method - Semi-structures interviews with decision makers at manufacturing companies in the Swedish prefabricated wooden house industry have been conducted in order to fulfill the purpose of this study. The empirical findings are then analyzed based on theory that has been collected through partly inductive, partly deductive approaches. Main results - Decision makers use different arguments to justify their strategies. Many different rationale applied translates into no clear pattern besides the one that there seems to be no clear pattern. Arguments for a rationale decision are given without analytical proof for an assumption. Some interviewees are in essence for an integrated sales force, though might also work with reps.

In the summer of 1940 around five thousand aircraft clashed during several months for control of the skies over Britain. The fighter aircraft used by the German Luftwaffe and British Royal Air Force were, for the most part, very similar. They were monoplane airframes made with a metal structure and covered with fabric or metal skin, their engines produced around 1,000 h.p., and the aircraft themselves achieved speeds of around 350 to 370 m.p.h. They had retractable undercarriages and were bristling with armaments. These aircraft stood in stark contrast to those used just over twenty years earlier in the First World War. Those machines were biplanes, almost exclusively made from wood, covered in a doped fabric, their engines produced around 400 h.p., with speeds at around 120 m.p.h., they had fixed undercarriages, one or two machine guns and were largely un-armoured. In a little over twenty years the basic form of fighter aircraft had changed, and the materials used in their construction had changed. The engines, guns, interior structure and even the operational roles to which they were assigned had been altered to greater or lesser extents. The period 1918-1939 was, therefore, very important in the development of British fighter aircraft, as it was in aviation technology more generally. The inter-war period suggested itself for several reasons. Firstly, the historiography upon which part of this thesis is hinged deals largely with its latter years and the years leading to World War Two. Due to this concentration on the mid-late 1930s, there is no real sense of what was going on in the 1920s, or attempts to understand the changes that the technology, and the institutions behind them, went through over the years. Secondly, following the First World War, the British aircraft industry was possessed of some considerable degree of competence and experience. To study the development of aviation technology before the war would be to catalogue the efforts of a number of pioneers each doing their own thing and following their own beliefs. To look at such development during the First World War would be to look at what happens when money is no serious object to research and development, production space, labour, management and so on. In looking at the inter-war years, we can examine a new industry that has just come out of a very considerable baptism of fire (in the case of Britain this baptism came just five years after her first successful flight was conducted). We can examine an industry that had to deal with enormous cutbacks, governmental micromanagement and lacking, for a long time, a fertile market in which to operate. Furthermore, the twenty years of the inter-war period allows us to look at a protracted period of technological change enabling us to account for the many varied and changing factors influencing the development of British fighter aircraft. Finally, the approach of the Second World War, the danger of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism and the proliferation of the Luftwaffe was not lost on policymakers and so this period also allows us to examine the effects of wider international events on technology. As it will be shown in the section dealing with historiography there has been plenty of work examining the British aircraft industry, individual aircraft and even the technologies which appeared over the twenty years that this thesis covers. However, there has been a great scarcity of work attempting to explain how such technologies appeared, how they linked together and how aircraft technology changed over the period. These are important questions, not only in terms of providing comprehensive explanations for their creation, development and existence but also in providing crucial context when attempting to pass judgement (as many historians have done) on the industry and the technology it created, and the politics and bureaucracy involved in shaping the technology. Using the example of British fighter aircraft during the 1920s and 1930s, this thesis will look at how the pace of technological change was set. How and why did British fighter aircraft develop the way they did and at the pace that they did? In particular, it will address the central issue of how the shift from the wooden biplanetype fighter of 1918 to the metal monoplane-type of 1939 came about. And can this change be conceptualised as a ‘paradigm shift’ from one ‘technological paradigm’ to another? This is particularly interesting because many consider that aviation now needs to carry out another paradigm shift, due to concerns about environmental impacts, especially as regards climate change.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Fatores como a carência tecnológica, contratação de mão de obra pouco qualificada, estrutura produtiva precária, necessidade crescente de adaptação à mudanças constantes de mercado e às novas regras estabelecidas pela economia global. Ressaltam a necessidade de utilização de técnicas que forneçam informações para serem utilizadas como base para o gerenciamento das pequenas e médias empresas. Essas informações servem como fundamento para o processo de tomada de decisão. E os indicadores de desempenho surgem como uma oportunidade de melhoria que impulsiona a organização para o desenvolvimento tecnológico e para o auto gerenciamento dentro dos níveis operacional (chão de fábrica na produção), tático (supervisores) e estratégico (diretores, gerentes). O objetivo deste trabalho foi desenvolver indicadores de desempenho para a atividade de beneficiamento de madeira em uma empresa de pequeno porte. Para tanto, o desenvolvimetno foi realizado inicialmente com a elaboração de fluxogramas dos processos (macro) executados pela empresa e do processo produtivo, que é o principal foco desse trabalho. A partir dos fluxogramas, os pontos críticos do processo produtivo foram identificados utilizando a técnica "Brainstorming não estruturado". A seguir foi aplicada a técnica FMEA (failure mode and effect analysis) em cada ponto crítico, visando avaliar o impacto desses pontos no processo produtivo e para cada um elaborou-se um estudo de causa utilizando Diagrama de Ishikawa. A partir do estudo da causa foram desenvolvidos indicadores de desempenho para atuar em pontos críticos. Os indicadores auxiliam a empresa durante o processo de tomada de decisões com base em fatos e dados, auxiliam o gerenciamento da rotina, sinalizam alterações no processo, apontam necessidades de treinamentos para a equipe, permitem a redução de erros e o desenvolvimento de oportunidades de melhoria. / Factors like the lack of technology, the hiring of a not very well quantified labor, a poor productive structure, an increasing necessity of adjustment to constant changes in the market and to new rules established by global economy, encourage the need for the use of techniques that supply information to be used as the base for the management of small and medium enterprises. These information are fundamental in the process of making decision. This way the performance indicators come up as an opportunity of improvement that drives the organization to words a technological development to the self - management in operational levels (the basic ground in production), tactical (supervisors) and strategical (directors, managers). This study aimed to develop performance indicators for sowed wood improvement in a small enterprise. Therefore, the development of performance indicators was firstly realized planning of with the fluxograms planning of the process that are executed by the enterprise (macro processes) and of the productive process, which is of this study the main points of this study. From the fluxograms, critical points of the productive process were identified by using the "not structured brainstorming" technique the FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis) technique, was applied in each critical point in order to valuate their impact in the productive process. A case study was planned for each point by using the Ishikawa Diagram. The performance indicators were developed based on the case study and it works on the critical points of productive process. These indicators help the enterprise during the process of taking decisions based on facts and data in the routine management, show the changes in the process, point out the needs on which the crew must be trained, allow the reduction of number of failures and develop opportunities.

Esta dissertação busca, inicialmente, investigar formas de mobilidade habitacional, sobretudo, em contextos urbanos. Partindo da hipótese de que a mobilidade é um fenômeno existente e crescente, apresentam-se seus reflexos na arquitetura. Propõe-se à arquitetura, voltada em essência, para formas estáticas, uma reflexão sobre seu interesse e possibilidades na produção de casas móveis. Para contribuir com a arquitetura em face desse paradigma são: investigados na história grupos marcados pela mobilidade; expostos os efeitos possíveis sobre a questão do solo urbano; apresentados os aspectos jurídicos relacionados à habitação sobretudo, a sua mobilidade; mostrados alguns modelos de mobilidade utilizados. Ainda, após pesquisa de campo, expõe-se um caso de transposição de casas de madeira, construídas, em sua maioria, pelos carpinteiros migrantes e emigrantes no Oeste do Paraná, de 1940 a 1970. Essas construções, que outrora sustentaram a maior parte da demanda habitacional da região, são, hoje, viabilizadoras de uma prática local que expressa movimentos contemporâneos de proporções globais. / This study seeks initially for investigating ways of habitational mobility, especially in urban contexts. Starting from the hypothesis that mobility is an existing and increasing phenomenon, they present their reflexes in the architecture. The architecture proposes turned in essence to static forms, a reflection about its interest and possibilities of mobile house production. To contribute with the architecture in view of this paradigm are investigated groups marked by the mobility in the history, exposed the possible effects about the urban soil matter presented the juridical aspects related to habitation especially to its mobility and shown some models of used mobility, yet after field research a wooden house transposition case is exposed, built in its majority by the migrant carpenters and emigrants in Paraná´s West from 1940 to 1970. These constructions that formerly sustained most habitational demand of the regions they are today facilitators of a local practice that expresses contemporary actions of global proportions.

As vigas compostas pregadas possuem vasta aplicação como material estrutural, desde vigas para instalações residenciais e industriais até longarinas de pontes de pequenos vãos, apresentando como principais vantagens o baixo custo e a facilidade de execução, não exigindo mão-de-obra qualificada. Este trabalho tem como objetivo o estudo teórico e experimental de vigas de madeira com seção composta I formadas por peças de madeira serrada e solidarizadas por pregos. São apresentados os critérios das normas EUROCODE 5, DIN1052 e NBR 7190, bem como a teoria a respeito do assunto. É avaliado o procedimento de cálculo da NBR 7190, em comparação com o EUROCODE 5, sendo realizada verificação experimental dos critérios destas normas, por meio de ensaios de flexão em protótipos de vigas compostas em escala natural. Os resultados obtidos demonstram que o modelo do EUROCODE 5 é o mais indicado para estimar a rigidez efetiva, tensões normais e de cisalhamento como também a força nos conectores / The built-up I beams are widely employed as structural elements, from residential and industrial facilities, to girders for bridges of small span. The fact that they do not demand skilled workmanship, the low cost and easiness of construction are their main advantages. This research aims at the theoretical and experimental analysis of built-up I beams, made of sawn elements nailed jointed. The EUROCODE 5, DIN 1052 and NBR 7190 criteria as well as the basic theory are presented. The design procedure adopted by NBR 7190 is compared to the EUROCODE 5 one. Experimental evaluation of these criteria is made subjecting built-up beam prototype to bending tests. The results should that the EUROCODE criteria is the most recommended for estimate the effective rigidity, normal and shear stresses as well as the load on a fastener

Este trabalho apresenta um estudo teórico e experimental de estacas de madeira, incluindo a instrumentação das fundações em estacas de madeira de uma ponte de madeira, com o objetivo de gerar recomendações para o projeto deste tipo de fundações para pontes de madeira de pequeno vão. O trabalho experimental foi feito em duas etapas. Na primeira etapa foram estudadas as propriedades mecânicas de estacas de madeira a partir de ensaios de flexão e compressão em peças roliças em tamanho estrutural e a partir de ensaios de flexão e compressão em corpos-de-prova de pequenas dimensões e isentos de defeitos (CPs). Na segunda etapa foram determinadas as propriedades do solo, por meio de sondagens, e das estacas cravadas por meio de ensaios de compressão paralela em CPs. Nessa etapa, de forma pioneira no Brasil, foi feita uma análise do comportamento de estacas de madeira imersas no solo, por meio de ensaio de carregamento dinâmico (PDA - Pile Driving Analyser). Os resultados mostram que estacas de madeira são excelentes elementos estruturais para uso em fundações / This work presents a theoretical and experimental study of timber piles, including the instrumentation of the timber piles of a wooden bridge foundation, in order to generate recommendations for the project of this type of foundations for small wooden bridges. The experimental work was made in two stages. In the first stage the mechanical properties of timber pile had been determined using bending and compression tests of structural size specimens and of small clear wood specimens. In the second stage the properties of the ground had been determined, by means of subsoil exploration, and of the timber piles by means parallel compression tests in small clear wood specimens. In this stage, first time in Brazil, an analysis of the behavior of timber piles in the ground was made, by means of Pile Diver Analyser (PDA). The results show that timber piles are excellent structural elements for use in foundations