Design Analysis Fabrication and Testing of Progressive Air Suspension Strut

Ride comfort and adjustability has always been deprived on low budget suspensions. The main problems faced in the current market shocks are that, they being heavy and having no adjustability. There should be a way to provide the masses with a highly efficient shock absorber for a very low price. The project aims to provide the reader an ideal way to design, analyze, simulate and manufacture a non-conventional shock absorber having adjustability in the ride parameters

Effective Viscous Damping Enables Morphological Computation in Legged Locomotion

Muscle models and animal observations suggest that physical damping is beneficial for stabilization. Still, only a few implementations of mechanical damping exist in compliant robotic legged locomotion. It remains unclear how physical damping can be exploited for locomotion tasks, while its advantages as sensor-free, adaptive force- and negative work-producing actuators are promising. In a simplified numerical leg model, we studied the energy dissipation from viscous and Coulomb damping during vertical drops with ground-level perturbations. A parallel spring-damper is engaged between touch-down and mid-stance, and its damper auto-disengages during mid-stance and takeoff. Our simulations indicate that an adjustable and viscous damper is desired. In hardware we explored effective viscous damping and adjustability and quantified the dissipated energy. We tested two mechanical, leg-mounted damping mechanisms; a commercial hydraulic damper, and a custom-made pneumatic damper. The pneumatic damper exploits a rolling diaphragm with an adjustable orifice, minimizing Coulomb damping effects while permitting adjustable resistance. Experimental results show that the leg-mounted, hydraulic damper exhibits the most effective viscous damping. Adjusting the orifice setting did not result in substantial changes of dissipated energy per drop, unlike adjusting damping parameters in the numerical model. Consequently, we also emphasize the importance of characterizing physical dampers during real legged impacts to evaluate their effectiveness for compliant legged locomotion

A high resolution, adjustable, lockable laser mirror mount

A prototype high resolution, adjustable, lockable mirror mount is described, suitable for use as a resonator end mirror mount in fieldable lasers. The prototype was vibrated to 15g levels, 10-2000 Hz, and was shown to be stable to within 1 arc second and settable to an accuracy of 10 arc seconds. Improvements to be made to the prototype are outlined which will significantly improve the accuracy without sacrificing the other attributes of the prototype

The Effect of Incorporating End-User Customization into Additive Manufacturing Designs

In the realm of additive manufacturing there is an increasing trend among makers to create designs that allow for end-users to alter them prior to printing an artifact. Online design repositories have tools that facilitate the creation of such artifacts. There are currently no rules for how to create a good customizable design or a way to measure the degree of customization within a design. This work defines three types of customizations found in additive manufacturing and presents three metrics to measure the degree of customization within designs based on the three types of customization. The goal of this work is to ultimately provide a consistent basis for which a customizable design can be evaluated in order to assist makers in the creation of new customizable designs that can better serve end-user. The types of customization were defined by doing a search of Thingiverse’s online data base of customizable designs and evaluating commonalities between designs. The three types of customization defined by this work are surface, structure, and personal customization. The associated metrics are used to quantify the adjustability of a set of online designs which are then plot against the daily use rate and each other on separate graphs. The use rate data used in this study is naturally biased towards hobbyists due to where the designs used to create the data resides. A preliminary analysis is done on the metrics to evaluate their correlation with design use rate as well as the dependency of the metrics in relation to each other. The trends between the metrics are examined for an idea of how best to provide customizable designs. This work provides a basis for measuring the degree of customization within additive manufacturing design and provides an initial framework for evaluating the usability of designs based on the measured degree of customization relative to the three types of defined customizations

Conditions under which adjustability lowers the cost of a robust linear program

The adjustable robust counterpart (ARC) of an uncertain linear program extends the robust counterpart (RC) by allowing some decision variables to adjust to the realizations of some uncertain parameters. The ARC may product a less conservative solution than the RC does but cases are known in which it does not. While the literature documents some examples of cost savings provided by adjustability (particularly affine adjustability), it is not straightforward to determine in advance whether they will materialize. The affine adjustable robust counterpart, while having a tractable structure, still may be much larger than the original problem. We establish conditions under which affine adjustability may lover the optimal cost with a numerical condition that can be checked in small representative instances. As demonstrated in applications, the conditions provide insights into constraint relationships that allow adjustability to make a difference

The Moral Obligation to Prioritize Research Into Deep Brain Stimulation Over Brain Lesioning Procedures for Severe Enduring Anorexia Nervosa

Deep Brain Stimulation is currently being investigated as an experimental treatment for patients suffering from treatment-refractory AN, with an increasing number of case reports and small-scale trials published. Although still at an exploratory and experimental stage, initial results have been promising. Despite the risks associated with an invasive neurosurgical procedure and the long-term implantation of a foreign body, DBS has a number of advantageous features for patients with SE-AN. Stimulation can be fine-tuned to the specific needs of the particular patient, is relatively reversible, and the technique also allows for the crucial issue of investigating and comparing the effects of different neural targets. However, at a time when DBS is emerging as a promising investigational treatment modality for AN, lesioning procedures in psychiatry are having a renaissance. Of concern it has been argued that the two kinds of interventions should instead be understood as rivaling, yet “mutually enriching paradigms” despite the fact that lesioning the brain is irreversible and there is no evidence base for an effective target in AN. We argue that lesioning procedures in AN are unethical at this stage of knowledge and seriously problematic for this patient group, for whom self-control is particularly central to wellbeing. They pose a greater risk of major harms that cannot justify ethical equipoise, despite the apparent superiority in reduced short term surgical harms and lower cost

The CFO’s Information Challenge in Managing Macroeconomic Risk

In this chapter we examine the role of the CFO in setting risk management strategy with respect to macroeconomic risk, in particular, and we consider the information requirements for setting a strategy that is consistent with corporate objectives. We argue that macroeconomic risk management requires a broad approach encompassing financial, operational and strategic considerations. Furthermore, several interdependent sources of risk in the macroeconomic environment must be taken into account. Once this interdependence among, for example, exchange rates, interest rates and inflation are taken into account macroeconomic risk management can be considered a relatively self-contained aspect of Integrated Risk Management (IRM) provided relevant information is available to management. Financial risk management cannot be considered a self-contained part of macroeconomic risk management, however, since value increasing investments in flexibility of business operations affect corporate exposure and make it uncertain.Risk Management Strategy; Macroeconomic Risk; Integrated Risk Management; Chief Financial Officer; Information Needs; Corporate Strategy; Financial Risk; Real Options

Maksutov spectrograph Patent

Maksutov spectrograph for low light level researc

Propulsion and control propellers with thruster nozzles primarily for aircraft applications

A propulsion and control propeller with thruster nozzles, primarily for aircraft application is described. Adjustability of rotor blades at the hub and pressurized gas expulsion combined with an air propeller increase power. Both characteristics are combined in one simple device, and, furthermore, incorporate overall aircraft control so that mechanisms which govern lateral and horizontal movement become superfluous