High-Performance Integrated Window and Façade Solutions for California

The researchers developed a new generation of high-performance façade systems and supporting design and management tools to support industry in meeting California’s greenhouse gas reduction targets, reduce energy consumption, and enable an adaptable response to minimize real-time demands on the electricity grid. The project resulted in five outcomes: (1) The research team developed an R-5, 1-inch thick, triplepane, insulating glass unit with a novel low-conductance aluminum frame. This technology can help significantly reduce residential cooling and heating loads, particularly during the evening. (2) The team developed a prototype of a windowintegrated local ventilation and energy recovery device that provides clean, dry fresh air through the façade with minimal energy requirements. (3) A daylight-redirecting louver system was prototyped to redirect sunlight 15–40 feet from the window. Simulations estimated that lighting energy use could be reduced by 35–54 percent without glare. (4) A control system incorporating physics-based equations and a mathematical solver was prototyped and field tested to demonstrate feasibility. Simulations estimated that total electricity costs could be reduced by 9-28 percent on sunny summer days through adaptive control of operable shading and daylighting components and the thermostat compared to state-of-the-art automatic façade controls in commercial building perimeter zones. (5) Supporting models and tools needed by industry for technology R&D and market transformation activities were validated. Attaining California’s clean energy goals require making a fundamental shift from today’s ad-hoc assemblages of static components to turnkey, intelligent, responsive, integrated building façade systems. These systems offered significant reductions in energy use, peak demand, and operating cost in California

ARMD Workshop on Materials and Methods for Rapid Manufacturing for Commercial and Urban Aviation

This report documents the goals, organization and outcomes of the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorates (ARMD) Materials and Methods for Rapid Manufacturing for Commercial and Urban Aviation Workshop. The workshop began with a series of plenary presentations by leaders in the field of structures and materials, followed by concurrent symposia focused on forecasting the future of various technologies related to rapid manufacturing of metallic materials and polymeric matrix composites, referred to herein as composites. Shortly after the workshop, questionnaires were sent to key workshop participants from the aerospace industry with requests to rank the importance of a series of potential investment areas identified during the workshop. Outcomes from the workshop and subsequent questionnaires are being used as guidance for NASA investments in this important technology area

The logic of organizational markets: thinking through resource partitioning theory

Resource partitioning theory claims that Increasing concentration enhances the life chances of specialist organizations. We systemati- cally think through this theory,specify implicit background assump- tions,sharpen concepts,and rigorously check the theory s logic.As a result,we increase the theory s explanatory power,and claim contrary to received opinion that under certain eneral conditions, resource partitioning and the proliferation of specialists can take place independently of organizational mass and relative size effects, size localized competition,diversifying consumer tastes, increasing number of dimensions of the resource space,and changing niche widths. Our analysis makes furthermore clear that specialist and generalist strategies are asymmetric, and shows that not concentration enhances the life chances of specialists but economies of scale instead.Under the conditions explicated,we argue that if scale economies come to dominate,the number of organizations in the population increases, regardless of the incumbents sizes.

Special Session on Industry 4.0

No abstract available

What Am I Testing and Where? Comparing Testing Procedures based on Lightweight Requirements Annotations

[Context] The testing of software-intensive systems is performed in different test stages each having a large number of test cases. These test cases are commonly derived from requirements. Each test stages exhibits specific demands and constraints with respect to their degree of detail and what can be tested. Therefore, specific test suites are defined for each test stage. In this paper, the focus is on the domain of embedded systems, where, among others, typical test stages are Software- and Hardware-in-the-loop. [Objective] Monitoring and controlling which requirements are verified in which detail and in which test stage is a challenge for engineers. However, this information is necessary to assure a certain test coverage, to minimize redundant testing procedures, and to avoid inconsistencies between test stages. In addition, engineers are reluctant to state their requirements in terms of structured languages or models that would facilitate the relation of requirements to test executions. [Method] With our approach, we close the gap between requirements specifications and test executions. Previously, we have proposed a lightweight markup language for requirements which provides a set of annotations that can be applied to natural language requirements. The annotations are mapped to events and signals in test executions. As a result, meaningful insights from a set of test executions can be directly related to artifacts in the requirements specification. In this paper, we use the markup language to compare different test stages with one another. [Results] We annotate 443 natural language requirements of a driver assistance system with the means of our lightweight markup language. The annotations are then linked to 1300 test executions from a simulation environment and 53 test executions from test drives with human drivers. Based on the annotations, we are able to analyze how similar the test stages are and how well test stages and test cases are aligned with the requirements. Further, we highlight the general applicability of our approach through this extensive experimental evaluation. [Conclusion] With our approach, the results of several test levels are linked to the requirements and enable the evaluation of complex test executions. By this means, practitioners can easily evaluate how well a systems performs with regards to its specification and, additionally, can reason about the expressiveness of the applied test stage.TU Berlin, Open-Access-Mittel - 202

A Powerful Optimization Tool for Analog Integrated Circuits Design

This paper presents a new optimization tool for analog circuit design. Proposed tool is based on the robust version of the differential evolution optimization method. Corners of technology, temperature, voltage and current supplies are taken into account during the optimization. That ensures robust resulting circuits. Those circuits usually do not need any schematic change and are ready for the layout.. The newly developed tool is implemented directly to the Cadence design environment to achieve very short setup time of the optimization task. The design automation procedure was enhanced by optimization watchdog feature. It was created to control optimization progress and moreover to reduce the search space to produce better design in shorter time. The optimization algorithm presented in this paper was successfully tested on several design examples

The Factory of the Future

A brief history of aircraft production techniques is given. A flexible machining cell is then described. It is a computer controlled system capable of performing 4-axis machining part cleaning, dimensional inspection and materials handling functions in an unmanned environment. The cell was designed to: allow processing of similar and dissimilar parts in random order without disrupting production; allow serial (one-shipset-at-a-time) manufacturing; reduce work-in-process inventory; maximize machine utilization through remote set-up; maximize throughput and minimize labor