Considering Manufacturability in the Design of Deployable Origami-Adapted Mechanisms

Primary barriers to greater implementation of deployable origami-adapted mechanisms are their manufacturability and robustness. This paper discusses manufacturability in the design of such mechanisms through presenting and examining three examples. Manufacturability lessons gathered from these examples include the importance of joint-panel interfaces and how techniques and approaches for origami-adapted design can be customized to meet the needs of a specific product. As the manufacturability of deployable origami-adapted products is addressed and improved, their robustness will also improve, thereby enabling greater use of origami-adapted design

Optimization of a Graded Multi-Material Composite Flywheel

<div> <div> <div> <p>Storing energy is a challenge given the fleeting nature of elemental energy. Flywheels were developed to solve this problem of energy storage by transferring unused energy into controlled rotational motion with the ability to transfer it back into usable energy. Flywheel design has evolved significantly and the most sophisticated and expensive flywheels incorporate composite materials. This paper introduces a novel multi-objective approach to flywheel design where composite materials are optimally mixed together to produce the maximum amount of rotational energy while minimizing the cost for production. To determine the best mixture of materials, coefficients for a polynomial model describing this mixture are treated as design variables. This model is then optimized for every combination of fiber materials over a range of cost constraints, resulting in a Pareto front of optimal material combinations. This Pareto front provides insight into cost versus performance trends for a graded multi-material flywheel and can be used as a decision making tool for industries in flywheel design.</p> </div> </div> </div

Early Paleogene temperature history of the Southwest Pacific Ocean: Reconciling proxies and models

We present a new multiproxy (TEX86, ?18O and Mg/Ca), marine temperature history for Canterbury Basin, eastern New Zealand, that extends from middle Paleocene to middle Eocene, including the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) and early Eocene climatic optimum (EECO). In light of concerns that proxy-based sea surface temperature (SST) estimates are untenably warm for the southwest Pacific during the Eocene, we review the assumptions that underlie the proxies and develop a preliminary paleo-calibration for TEX86 that is based on four multiproxy Eocene records that represent an SST range of 15–34 °C. For the southwest Pacific Paleogene, we show that TEX86L exhibits the best fit with the Eocene paleo-calibration. SSTs derived from related proxies (TEX86H, 1/TEX86) exhibit a systematic warm bias that increases as TEX86 values decrease (a warm bias of 4–7 °C where TEX86&lt;0.7). The TEX86L proxy indicates that southwest Pacific SST increased by ?10 °C from middle Paleocene to early Eocene, with SST maxima of 26–28 °C (tropical) during the PETM and EECO and an SST minimum of 13–16 °C (cool–warm temperate) at the middle/late Paleocene transition (58.7 Ma). The base of the EECO is poorly defined in these records but the top is well-defined in Canterbury Basin by a 2–5 °C decrease in SST and bottom water temperature (BWT) in the latest early Eocene (49.3 Ma); BWT falls from a maximum of 18–20 °C in the EECO to 12–14 °C in the middle Eocene. Overall, cooler temperatures are recorded in the mid-Waipara section, which may reflect a deeper (?500 m water depth) and less neritic depositional setting compared with Hampden and ODP 1172 (?200 m water depth). The high SSTs and BWTs inferred for the PETM and EECO can be reconciled with Eocene coupled climate model results if the proxies are biased towards seasonal maxima and the likely effect of a proto-East Australian Current is taken into account