Computational modelling of aerodynamic disturbances on spacecraft within a concurrent engineering framework

This research was motivated by the need to perform an accurate aerodynamic analysis of the drag deorbit device concept under development within the Space Research Centre, Cranfield University. Its purpose is to deorbit satellites from low Earth orbit at the end of the useful lives, in order to help reduce the growing problem of space debris. It has been found that existing spacecraft aerodynamic analysis tools do not adequately support concurrent engineering. Furthermore, use of concurrent engineering in the space industry is currently limited to Phase A (preliminary design studies). To remedy this, the Spacecraft Engineering, Design, and Analysis Tools (SEDAT) Concept has been proposed. Inspired by the approach employed by enterprise applications, it proposes that all the computer tools used on a spacecraft project should be incorporated into one system as separate modules, presented via a single client, and connected to a centralised Relational Database Management System. To demonstrate the concept and assess its potential a SEDAT System and accompanying Free Molecular Flow (FMF) spacecraft aerodynamic analysis module have been developed. The FMF Module is explicitly designed to facilitate concurrent engineering and make use of the maximum variety of Gas-Surface Interaction Models (GSIMs) and their associated data. It also incorporates a new Hybrid method of FMF analysis that combines the Ray-Tracing Panel (RTP) and Test-Particle Monte Carlo (TPMC) methods, enabling it to analyse complex geometries that are subject to surface shielding and multiple molecular reflections. Studies have been performed using a Hybrid version of the Schaaf and Chambre GSIM. One of these studies analysed a drag deorbit device design using a range of accommodation coefficients, including the latest empirically based incidence-dependent coefficients. Based on this analysis, recommendations have been made regarding the material selection and structural design of the device

Transforming shape: hybrid practice as group activity

Printed textile and garment design are generally taught and practised as separate disciplines. Integrated CAD software enables textile and clothing designers to envisage printed garments by assimilating graphic imagery with 2D garment shapes and 3D visualizations. Digital fabric printing can be employed to transpose print-filled garment shapes directly onto cloth. During a recently completed practice-led PhD (1998-2003), I researched the aesthetic design potential of combining new CAD technology with garment modelling methods to create new innovative printed textiles/garments. The merging of physical and screen-based making resulted in a hybrid 3D approach to the body, cloth and print referred to as the 'simultaneous design method'. In 2001 this hybrid practice provided the catalyst for a collaborative textile research project at the Nottingham Trent University, UK. The group included surface, shape and multimedia designers. The key group aim was to explore the transforming effects of computer-aided textile design through dialogues between two and three dimensions. In parallel with my own practice, print and embroidery were considered from a 3D starting-point through the relating of geometric cloth shapes to the form. Each designer took an idiosyncratic approach to the selection and integration of imagery with the shapes. The novel consideration of the final modelled textile at the start of the designing process influenced each designer in different ways, leading to a collection of contrasting, original outcomes that were displayed in the exhibition Transforming Shape (UK 2001, Denmark 2003). The exhibition demonstrated the design opportunities (and limitations) of new and existing technologies, specifically the relationship between innovative textile imagery and three-dimensional form. The designs illustrated the premise that surface designs can be engineered through different pattern shapes and that engineer-printed shapes transform the body

Transforming shape: a simultaneous approach to the body, cloth and print for garment and textile design (synthesising CAD with manual methods)

Printed textile and garment design are generally taught and practised as separate disciplines. Integrated CAD software enables textile and clothing designers to envisage printed garments by assimilating graphic imagery with 2D garment shapes, and 3D visualisations. Digital printing can be enlisted to transpose print-filled garment shapes directly onto cloth. This research challenges existing 2D practice by synthesising manual and CAD technologies, to explore the integration of print design and garment shape from a simultaneous, 3D perspective. This research has identified three fundamental archetypes of printed garment styles from Twentieth Century fashion: 'sculptural', 'architectural' and 'crossover'. The contrasting spatial characteristics and surface patterning inherent in these models provided tlýe theoretical and practical framework for the research. Design approaches such as'textile-led', 'garment-led'and 'the garment as canvas' highlighted the originality of the simultaneous design method, which embraces all of these concepts. This research recognises the body form as a positive influence within the printed textile and printed garment designing process, whereby modelled fabric shapes can be enlisted to determine mark making. The aim of the practice, to create printed garment designs from a 3D perspective, was facilitated by an original method of image capture, resulting in blueprinted toiles, or cyanoforms, that formed the basis of engineer-printed garments and textiles. Integrated CAD software provided the interface between manual modelling, design development and realisation, where draping software was employed to digitally craft 3D textiles. The practical and aesthetic characteristics of digital printing were tested through the printing of photographic-style, integrated garment prototypes. The design outcomes demonstrate that a simultaneous approach to the body, cloth and print can result in innovative textile vocabulary, that'plays a proactive role within the design equation, through its aesthetic integration with garment and form. The integration of print directly with the garment contour can result in a 3D orientated approach to printed garment design that is empathetic with the natural body shape

Field sketching and the interpretation of landscape : exploring the benefits of fieldwork and drawing in contemporary landscape practice

This thesis explores potential roles for field sketching in, landscape observation and assessment, landscape planning and design, landscape representation, and in addressing the experiential dimension of the landscape.The research seeks to define and legitimise the old technique of field sketching, and the use and development of field sketches by students and practitioners of landscape architecture, and other landscape disciplines. The wider values of, fieldwork, hand -generated field notations, drawing as an interactive dialogue with others, and the sketch as a type of landscape representation, are also recognised.Whilst accurate representation and precise geometrical definition of the landscape can now be achieved quickly with photographs and by semi - automated digital means, interpretation requires careful observation. Sketching involves an observer stopping and looking and interpreting slowly and carefully. Field sketching and the uses of the field sketch are proposed as bringing an effectiveness to landscape work, valuable because of the interpretation it involves, and the time it does take: timeless because of its simplicity.A personal way of working is investigated, based on a Grounded Theory approach. Systematic analysis of case studies is made through reflection-on-practice. Practice observations (data) are collated and interpreted by practical sorting tasks, to propose a series of how to do and why important principles regarding field sketching. External support for the research findings is sought from literature, considering the broad themes of: fieldwork and the experience of landscapes, field sketching and drawing as craft and expression, and developing and using field sketches.Applications for field sketching to meet contemporary needs in landscape architecture are proposed: the sketch as a designer's tool, sketch-based visualisations as interpretive images, and field sketching as a participative technique that can be used to engage the inquirer, collaborators, and the public with landscape experience -grounded decisions

The Poetics of Self-fashioning: Between nonsense and meaning

This paper reflects on the role of garments in the changing sense of self through the literary notions of “estrangement/ defamiliarisation” (Shklovsky) and “poetic function” (Jakobson). What are the poetic or prosaic qualities of artefacts: what is it that renders some garments mundane and others captivating, auratic, and ‘disruptive’? How and why certain clothes tell us much more about human’s need of protection or decency? I suggest that it is contingent on the relationship between self and other articulated through the notion of defamiliarisation. Shklovsky suggests that poetic language is structured, impeded, distorted speech, as opposed to economical and correct prose, that it removes the perceiver from the domain of automatic, or conventional, perception, making them pause and dwell on what is being perceived. Applying this to other domains of art, Shklovsky proposes that artistic practice aims to make objects foreign and unfamiliar, to increase the difficulty of perception, because the process of perception itself is the main purpose. (Shklovsky 1991, 12-3) The physical proximity and ubiquity often render cloth and clothing invisible, ‘nonsensical’ material. Yet precisely because of this proximity, once estranged, garments can be effective means of self-objectification. With the material qualities showing ourselves to us and touching us, garments are powerful metaphorical as well as mimetic representation of the self, at once the trace and symbol the self. Depending on our perceptiveness as a wearer, the materiality of garment can trigger a “disruption of rhythm” (ibid., 14), or defamiliarisation, allowing us a ‘poetic experience’, as Shklovsky would put it. The ambiguity, or the disrupted meanings, brought on by the estrangement however, is quickly settled into a new meaning: our need for the immutable reality, the unique unchanging self, inevitably draws a new distinct boundary. This sequential steps—the garment as a poetic device, estrangement, ambiguity, the generation of new meaning and self—is potentially unending, as the authentic unchanging self, lying in a never-attainable beyond, is faithfully pursued, but also constantly doubted and subverted. This understanding of garment as a poetic device unsettles the deep-seated surface/depth dichotomy: the self is not anything ‘hidden,’ ‘underneath’ or ‘behind’ to uncover, but transient, multiple, and constantly self-generating. Dressing practice as self-making is thus an iterative, poetic process, the constant oscillation between self and other, between nonsense and renewed meaning. This permanent passage is conducted through bodily engagement, the visceral and emotional process of interacting with the material other. The multiple realities experienced in this passage is materialized in our dressed selves, the constantly self-fashioning bodies

UNSTABLE TERRITORIES OF REPRESENTATION: Architectural Experience and the Behaviour of Forms, Spaces and the Collective Dynamic Environment

This thesis applies an interdisciplinary cybernetic and phenomenological analysis to contemporary theories of representation and interpretation of architecture, resulting in a speculative theoretical model of architectural experience as a behavioural system. The methodological model adopted for this research defines the main structure of the thesis where the narrative and the contributing parts of its complexity emerge. The narrative is presented through objectives and hypotheses that shift and slide between architectural representation and its experience based on three key internal components in architecture: the architectural forms and spaces, the active observers that interact with their environment, and finally, the responsive environment. Three interrelated research questions are considered. The first seeks to define the influence of the theoretical instability between complex life processes, emerging technologies and active perception upon architecture. The second questions the way in which the architectural experience is generated. The third asks: Does architecture behave? And if so, is it possible to define its behavioural characteristics related to its representation, experience and the medium of communication in-between? The thesis begins by exploring the effect of developments in digitally interactive, biological, and hybrid technologies on representation in architecture. An account of architectural examples considers the shift in the meaning of representation in architecture from the actual and literal to the more conceptual and experimental, from the individual human body and its relations to the multifaceted ecosystem of collective and connected cultures. The writings of Kester Rattenbury, Neil Leach, and Peter Cook among others contribute to the transformation of the ordinary perceptual experience of architecture, the development of experimental practices in architectural theory, and the dynamism of our perception. The thesis goes on to suggest that instability in architectural representation does not only depend on the internal components of the architectural system but also on the principles and processes of complex systems as well as changes in active perception and our consciousness that act as the external influences on the system. Established theoretical endeavours in biology of D’Arcy Thompson, Alan Turing, and John Holland and philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, Richard Gregory, and Deleuze and Guattari are discussed in this context. Pre-programmed and computational models, illustrative and generative, are presented throughout the thesis. In the final stage of the development of the thesis architecture is analysed as a system. This is not an unprecedented notion, however defining the main elements and components of this system and their interactions and thereafter identifying that the system behaves and defining its behavioural characteristics, adds to the knowledge in the field of theoretical and experimental architecture. This thesis considers the behavioural characteristics of architecture to be derived from the hypothetical links and unstable thresholds of its non-dualistic notions of materiality and immateriality, reality and virtuality, and finally, intentionality and interpretation

The place of expert systems in business now and over the next decade

Information technology has entered a new generation. In recent years, considerable interest has been focussed on the commercialisation of expert systems, which represent an important application of Artificial Intelligence in the field of Information Technology. Expert systems are now in a crucial stage of development because, although in business computerised systems are not new, expert systems still need time for their applicability and usefulness to be proved. The market for expert systems will not develop if such systems are unable to cope with the demanding applications of business; for example with top management problem-solving and decision-making. This thesis is principally concerned with determining the position of expert systems in business by looking at these major business related issues. [Continues.