Comparative study of design: application to Engineering Design

A recent exploratory study examines design processes across domains and compares them. This is achieved through a series of interdisciplinary, participative workshops. A systematic framework is used to collect data from expert witnesses who are practising designers across domains from engineering through architecture to product design and fashion, including film production, pharmaceutical drugs, food, packaging, graphics and multimedia and software. Similarities and differences across domains are described which indicate the types of comparative analysis we have been able to do from our data. The paper goes further and speculates on possible lessons for selected areas of engineering design which can be drawn from comparison with processes in other domains. As such this comparative design study offers the potential for improving engineering design processes. More generally it is a first step in creating a discipline of comparative design which aims to provide a new rich picture of design processes

Computationally Efficient Optimization of a Five-Phase Flux-Switching PM Machine Under Different Operating Conditions

This paper investigates the comparative design optimizations of a five-phase outer-rotor flux-switching permanent magnet (FSPM) machine for in-wheel traction applications. To improve the comprehensive performance of the motor, two kinds of large-scale design optimizations under different operating conditions are performed and compared, including the traditional optimization performed at the rated operating point and the optimization targeting the whole driving cycles. Three driving cycles are taken into account, namely, the urban dynamometer driving schedule (UDDS), the highway fuel economy driving schedule (HWFET), and the combined UDDS/HWFET, representing the city, highway, and combined city/highway driving, respectively. Meanwhile, the computationally efficient finite-element analysis (CE-FEA) method, the cyclic representative operating points extraction technique, as well as the response surface methodology (in order to minimize the number of experiments when establishing the inverse machine model), are presented to reduce the computational effort and cost. From the results and discussion, it will be found that the optimization results against different operating conditions exhibit distinct characteristics in terms of geometry, efficiency, and energy loss distributions. For the traditional optimization performed at the rated operating point, the optimal design tends to reduce copper losses but suffer from high core losses; for UDDS, the optimal design tends to minimize both copper losses and PM eddy-current losses in the low-speed region; for HWFET, the optimal design tends to minimize core losses in the high-speed region; for the combined UDDS/HWFET, the optimal design tends to balance/compromise the loss components in both the low-speed and high-speed regions. Furthermore, the advantages of the adopted optimization methodologies versus the traditional procedure are highlighted

An Integrated Design and Simulation Environment for Rapid Prototyping of Laminate Robotic Mechanisms

Laminate mechanisms are a reliable concept in producing lowcost robots for educational and commercial purposes. These mechanisms are produced using low-cost manufacturing techniques which have improved significantly during recent years and are more accessible to novices and hobbyists. However, iterating through the design space to come up with the best design for a robot is still a time consuming and rather expensive task and therefore, there is still a need for model-based analysis before manufacturing. Until now, there has been no integrated design and analysis software for laminate robots. This paper addresses some of the issues surrounding laminate analysis by introducing a companion to an existing laminate design tool that automates the generation of dynamic equations and produces simulation results via rendered plots and videos. We have validated the accuracy of the software by comparing the position, velocity and acceleration of the simulated mechanisms with the measurements taken from physical laminate prototypes using a motion capture system

Design: One, but in different forms

This overview paper defends an augmented cognitively oriented generic-design hypothesis: there are both significant similarities between the design activities implemented in different situations and crucial differences between these and other cognitive activities; yet, characteristics of a design situation (related to the design process, the designers, and the artefact) introduce specificities in the corresponding cognitive activities and structures that are used, and in the resulting designs. We thus augment the classical generic-design hypothesis with that of different forms of designing. We review the data available in the cognitive design research literature and propose a series of candidates underlying such forms of design, outlining a number of directions requiring further elaboration

Recursive SDN for Carrier Networks

Control planes for global carrier networks should be programmable (so that new functionality can be easily introduced) and scalable (so they can handle the numerical scale and geographic scope of these networks). Neither traditional control planes nor new SDN-based control planes meet both of these goals. In this paper, we propose a framework for recursive routing computations that combines the best of SDN (programmability) and traditional networks (scalability through hierarchy) to achieve these two desired properties. Through simulation on graphs of up to 10,000 nodes, we evaluate our design's ability to support a variety of routing and traffic engineering solutions, while incorporating a fast failure recovery mechanism