Stiffness and Damping of Sands in Torsion Shear

A laboratory investigation was carried out into stiffness and damping of sands as sheared in a torsional shear apparatus. In the drained monotonic and cyclic loading tests, a particular care was taken of the small strain measurements in which the secant stiffness was measured over a wide range of shear strain from about 10-6 to 10-2. Despite the marked differences in the grain size and the sample preparation method among the sands, a fairly good coincidence of the secant stiffness was seen, in common, in the range of shear strain less than about 1 x 10-5 between two types of tests using the monotonic and cyclic loadings. However, the response was softer in the monotonic loading tests for the larger strains. It has also been pointed out that the damping when examined in relation to the normalized secant shear modulus was scarcely affected by the confining pressure, and that the values of damping were smaller than those so far available in the literature

Challenges of Applying Simplified LCA Tools in Sustainable Design Pedagogy

The growing recognition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been integrated globally into product design and business activities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a useful tool for designers to apply in the early stages of product design to mitigate the environmental impact. The study aims to identify the challenges of applying simplified LCA tools to improve the eco-efficiency of products and achieve a higher level of sustainable innovation. The study was conducted in a sustainable design course at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, for four consecutive years. All challenges and opportunities by using ECO-it, Eco-indicators, and the Materials, Energy use, and Toxic emissions (MET) matrix to assess the environmental impact in each phase of 11 home appliances are presented and discussed. Results show the positive potential of applying the tools to achieve function innovation in design for sustainable innovation. The needs for guided instruction, the availability of the database, the complexity of a study product, and the overlooking of social dimensions are four major challenges in applying the tools in the early stages of product redesign. Further study in testing the tools and developing a database in collaboration with industries should be conducted to compare and validate the results

Challenges of Applying Simplified LCA Tools in Sustainable Design Pedagogy

The growing recognition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been integrated globally into product design and business activities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a useful tool for designers to apply in the early stages of product design to mitigate the environmental impact. The study aims to identify the challenges of applying simplified LCA tools to improve the eco-efficiency of products and achieve a higher level of sustainable innovation. The study was conducted in a sustainable design course at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, for four consecutive years. All challenges and opportunities by using ECO-it, Eco-indicators, and the Materials, Energy use, and Toxic emissions (MET) matrix to assess the environmental impact in each phase of 11 home appliances are presented and discussed. Results show the positive potential of applying the tools to achieve function innovation in design for sustainable innovation. The needs for guided instruction, the availability of the database, the complexity of a study product, and the overlooking of social dimensions are four major challenges in applying the tools in the early stages of product redesign. Further study in testing the tools and developing a database in collaboration with industries should be conducted to compare and validate the results