Beyond Sustainability: The Contractor’s Role in Regenerative System Design

Current business models employ the concept of the triple bottom line to integrate three aspects of sustainability into the organizational process: economic growth, environmental protection and social equity. This concept is evolving toward a regenerative design approach that promotes a triple top line, moving accountability to the beginning of the design process by assigning value to a variety of economic, environmental and social factors. There is an increasingly important need for proactive participation from the construction community in this new generation of sustainability efforts. Otherwise, there will be a widening gap between design and construction, in which the contractor role in sustainability is marginalized, relegated to merely minimizing end-of-project impacts rather than adding value and innovation throughout the project. This paper examines the triple top line in the context of construction projects and identifies opportunities for construction professionals to play a collaborative role in developing the next generation of regenerative facilities

Resistance to IT Change in the AEC Industry: An Individual Assessment Tool

Numerous IT adoption studies within the AEC industry identify issues with individuals resisting IT changes. Current change models often only look at organizations and tasks and frequently neglect the individuals involved. The limitations in existing change models and the criticality of people issues in the successful implementation of change necessitates the investigation of individual resistance to IT change. Change management theory and attitude-behavior connections provide a framework to study variables associated with impeding/promoting the use of technologies. Data collected from a 50-person sample of the AEC population allowed reductions of the attitudes, fears, and beliefs variables. Reducing the variables indicative of resistance to information technology change facilitated the creation of a detailed social architecture factor model. Subsequently, a Resistance to Change Index (RTCI) was created, enabling estimations of the intensity of resistance an individual is likely to exhibit using the personality traits and behavioral characteristics identified in the revised social architecture factor model. The RTCI assists practitioners in developing new technology implementation plans. The RTCI also enables researchers to understand how individual participants resist and adapt to change allowing the development of enhanced organizational adoption models for new technology implementation within the building industry

InSight Aerothermal Environment Assessment

The Mars Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) spacecraft, which successfully touched down on the planet surface on November 26, 2018, was proposed as a near build-to-print copy of the Mars Phoenix vehicle to reduce the overall cost and risk of the mission. Since the lander payload and the atmospheric entry trajectory were similar enough to those of the Phoenix mission, it was expected that the Phoenix thermal protection material thickness would be sufficient to withstand the entry heat load. However, allowances were made for increasing the heatshield thickness because the planned spacecraft arrival date coincided with the Mars dust storm season. The aftbody Thermal Protection System (TPS) components were not expected to change. In a first for a US Mars mission, the aerothermal environments for InSight included estimates of radiative heat flux to the aftbody from the wake. The combined convective and radiative heat fluxes were used to determine if the as-flown Phoenix thermal protection system (TPS) design would be sufficient for InSight. Although the radiative heat fluxes on the aftbody were predicted to be comparable to, or even higher than the local convective heat fluxes, all analyses of the aftbody TPS showed that the design would still be adequate. Aerothermal environments were computed for the vehicle from post-flight reconstruction of the atmosphere and trajectory and compared with the design environments. These comparisons showed that the predicted as-flown conditions were less severe than the design conditions

Interdisciplinary, Collaborative International Service Learning: Developing Engineering Students as Global Citizens

Recent calls to reform engineering education place emphasis on applied math and science within the broader context of globalization, economics, the environment, and society. This broad and complex challenge necessitates the investigation of new interdisciplinary education approaches for engineering education. This paper presents a formal approach for developing engineering students as global citizens. The 360 Degree Model for Educating Socially Responsible Global Citizens (360 Global Ed model) presented herein includes a framework for foundational theory, educational environment, academic coursework, and outcomes. At the core of the emerging model is an international service learning experience called the Village Network. The Village Network provides an interdisciplinary educational program that combines classroom learning with authentic international field experiences. The program responds to the demands for integrating technical and social domains in a multi-disciplined, globally sensitive paradigm. The multi-disciplined team approached addresses both internal outcomes of self mastery and motivation that propel individuals to engage as socially responsible global citizens and external outcomes of technical and social knowledge and skills to include sustainability, teaming, and leadership. This paper establishes the need for a global imperative for engineering education and provides a background on globalization, social responsibility and service learning. It describes the 360 degree model for educating socially responsible global citizens and provides pilot assessment results through a mixed methods approach

InSight Aerothermal Environment Assessment

The InSight spacecraft was proposed to be a build-to-print copy of the Phoenix vehicle due to the knowledge that the lander payload would be similar and the trajectory would be similar. However, the InSight aerothermal analysts, based on tests performed in CO2 during the Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL) and completion of Russian databases, considered radiative heat flux to the aftbody from the wake for the first time for a US Mars mission. The combined convective and radiative heat flux was used to determine if the as-flown Phoenix thermal protection system (TPS) design would be sufficient for InSight. All analyses showed that the design would be adequate. Once the InSight lander was successfully delivered to Mars on November 26, 2018, work began to reconstruct the atmosphere and trajectory in order to evaluate the aerothermal environments that were actually encountered by the spacecraft and to compare them to the design environments.The best estimated trajectory (BET) reconstructed for the InSight atmospheric entry fell between the two trajectories considered for the design, when looking at the velocity versus altitude values. The maximum heat rate design trajectory (MHR) flew at a higher velocity and the maximum heat load design trajectory (MHL) flew at a lower velocity than the BET. For TPS sizing, the MHL trajectory drove the design. Reconstruction has shown that the BET flew for a shorter time than either of the design environments, hence total heat load on the vehicle should have been less than used in design. Utilizing the BET, both DPLR and LAURA were first run to analyze the convective heating on the vehicle with no angle of attack. Both codes were run with axisymmetric, laminar flow in radiative equilibrium and vibrational non-equilibrium with a surface emissivity of 0.8. Eight species Mitcheltree chemistry was assumed with CO2, CO, N2, O2, NO, C, N, and O. Both codes agreed within 1% on the forebody and had the expected differences on the aftbody. The NEQAIR and HARA codes were used to analyze the radiative heating on the vehicle using full spherical ray-tracing. The codes agreed within 5% on most aftbody points of interest.The LAURA code was then used to evaluate the conditions at angle of attack at the peak heating and peak pressure times. Boundary layer properties were investigated to confirm that the flow over the forebody was laminar for the flight.Comparisons of the aerothermal heating determined for the reconstructed trajectory to the design trajectories showed that the as-flown conditions were less severe than desig

Aerocapture Inflatable Decelerator for Planetary Entry

Forward Attached Inflatable Decelerators, more commonly known as inflatable aeroshells, provide an effective, cost efficient means of decelerating spacecrafts by using atmospheric drag for aerocapture or planetary entry instead of conventional liquid propulsion deceleration systems. Entry into planetary atmospheres results in significant heating and aerodynamic pressures which stress aeroshell systems to their useful limits. Incorporation of lightweight inflatable decelerator surfaces with increased surface-area footprints provides the opportunity to reduce heat flux and induced temperatures, while increasing the payload mass fraction. Furthermore, inflatable aeroshell decelerators provide the needed deceleration at considerably higher altitudes and Mach numbers when compared with conventional rigid aeroshell entry systems. Inflatable aeroshells also provide for stowage in a compact space, with subsequent deployment of a large-area, lightweight heatshield to survive entry heating. Use of a deployable heatshield decelerator enables an increase in the spacecraft payload mass fraction and may eliminate the need for a spacecraft backshell

Low cost underwater robot sensor suite

One of the most expensive parts of underwater robotics is the sensors. This paper looks at modifying off the shelf components to create a sensor suite on a small budget. A big saving is made with sonar using a cheap commercial product to create a four sonar array. A depth sensor and acceleration navigation system are also developed.<br /

Guiding explanation construction by children at the entry points of learning progressions

Policy documents in science education suggest that even at the earliest years of formal schooling, students are capable of constructing scientific explanations about focal content. Nonetheless, few research studies provide insights into how to effectively provide scaffolds appropriate for late elementary‐age students' fruitful creation of scientific explanations. This article describes two research studies to address the question, what makes explanation construction difficult for elementary students? The studies were conducted in urban fourth, fifth, and sixth grade classrooms where students were learning science through curricular units that contained 8 weeks of scaffold‐rich activities focused on explanation construction. The first study focused on the kind and amount of information scaffold‐rich assessments provided about young students' abilities to construct explanations under a range of scaffold conditions. Results demonstrated that fifth and sixth grade tests provided strong information about a range of students' abilities to construct explanations under a range of supported conditions. On balance, the fourth grade test did not provide as much information, nor was this test curricular‐sensitive. The second study provided information on pre–post test achievement relative to the amount of curricular intervention utilized over the 8‐week time period with each cohort. Results demonstrated that when taking the amount of the intervention into account, there were strong learning gains in all three grade‐level cohorts. In conjunction with the pre–post study, a type‐of‐error analysis was conducted to better understand the nature of errors among younger students. This analysis revealed that our youngest students generated the most incomplete responses and struggled in particular ways with generating valid evidence. Conclusions emphasize the synergistic value of research studies on scaffold‐rich assessments, curricular scaffolds, and teacher guidance toward a more complete understanding of how to support young students' explanation construction. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 141–165, 2012Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90320/1/20454_ftp.pd