5,296 research outputs found
Design as a means of exploring the emotional component of scent
This paper demonstrates how industrial designers can generate engaging solutions by applying new technology to the area of scent-delivery through the use of practice-based research. It discusses works by Jason Morenikeji, Nick Rhodes and other designers contrasting these with developments in the scent and nano-technology industries. The paper also presents a series of designs by industrial designer Ben Hughes, namely âFontenay aux Roses.â It also includes a collection of wearable, smart interactive scent delivery devices designed for Jenny Tillotsonâs e-Scent research project at CSM.
'Fontenay aux Roses 1' is a wearable bag-type device that houses a battery and pump unit to deliver three types of scent, controllable by the user. The prototype was made by award-winning bag designer Ann Chui.
Fontenay is a brooch -type device that attaches to a garment with a magnetic snap-fastening. Three different snap-on covers show how the device might be customised by the user, branded by the scent manufacturer, or added to by a third-party. In both its design and its co-engineering by Murray Tidmarsh and Ben Hughes, it is an exploration of the use of rapid-manufacturing technology for this type of object.
This work has evolved to incorporate devices for insect repellent under the title âE.Mosâ, two of which Ben Hughes designed and created the prototype for
A spatio-temporal structure-based approach to drought characterisation
Drought characterisation is an intrinsically spatio-temporal problem. A limitation of previous approaches to
characterisation is that they discard much of the spatio-temporal information by reducing events to a lower-order subspace. To address this, an explicit 3-dimensional (longitude, latitude, time) structure-based method is described in which drought events are defined by a spatially and temporarily coherent set of points displaying standardised precipitation below a given threshold. Geometric methods can then be used to measure similarity between individual drought structures. Groupings of
these similarities provide an alternative to traditional methods for extracting recurrent space-time signals from geophysical data. The explicit consideration of structure encourages the construction of summary statistics which relate to the event geometry. Example measures considered are the event volume, centroid, and aspect ratio. The utility of a 3-dimensional approach is demonstrated by application to the analysis of European droughts (15 °W to 35°E, and 35 °N to 70°N) for the period 1901â2006. Large-scale structure is found to be abundant with 75 events identified lasting for more than 3 months
and spanning at least 0.5 Ă 106 km2. Near-complete dissimilarity is seen between the individual drought structures, and little or no regularity is found in the time evolution of even the most spatially similar drought events. The spatial distribution of the event centroids and the time evolution of the geographic cross-sectional areas strongly suggest that large area, sustained droughts result from the combination of multiple small area (âŒ106 km2) short duration (âŒ3 months) events. The small events are not found to occur independently in space. This leads to the hypothesis that local water feedbacks play an important role in the aggregation process
Exact mean first-passage time on the T-graph
We consider a simple random walk on the T-fractal and we calculate the exact
mean time to first reach the central node . The mean is performed
over the set of possible walks from a given origin and over the set of starting
points uniformly distributed throughout the sites of the graph, except .
By means of analytic techniques based on decimation procedures, we find the
explicit expression for as a function of the generation and of the
volume of the underlying fractal. Our results agree with the asymptotic
ones already known for diffusion on the T-fractal and, more generally, they are
consistent with the standard laws describing diffusion on low-dimensional
structures.Comment: 6 page
Determining the impact of VAWT farm configurations on power output
The potential for significant increases in VAWT farm performance compared to isolated turbines is well documented and could potentially allow VAWTs to compete in the Wind Energy market. In order to determine the most effective layout based upon both average turbine efficiency and efficient use of area, different configurations which have been shown to offer improved performance such as the 'School of Fish' design alongside new derivative and hybrid designs are compared and optimised using 2D URANS (Unsteady Reynold's Averaged Navier Stokes) CFD simulations. The results show that on a farm scale, the optimised staggered configuration provides the highest array power coefficient for a single wind direction, with a farm design proposed in order to achieve maximum efficiency and results showing increases in array power of up to 80%. Fluid flow mechanisms which cause this improvement are also identified
Log-periodic modulation in one-dimensional random walks
We have studied the diffusion of a single particle on a one-dimensional
lattice. It is shown that, for a self-similar distribution of hopping rates,
the time dependence of the mean-square displacement follows an anomalous power
law modulated by logarithmic periodic oscillations. The origin of this
modulation is traced to the dependence on the length of the diffusion
coefficient. Both the random walk exponent and the period of the modulation are
analytically calculated and confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure
Next stages in automated craft: the integration of rapid manufacture technologies into craft and DIY applications
Advances in the sophistication and affordability of rapid manufacture technology has started to pave
the way for home use (Malone and Lipson, 2007a; Burns and Howison, 2001). This paper explores
scenarios linking the potential of such technologies to craft and DIY use. While certain forms of
automation and semi-industrial processes are already familiar in this area (knitting and embroidery
machines, laser cutting), it is suggested that the next stage of development will involve more
complex processes, currently more closely linked to applications of rapid prototyping. The
improvement in entry-level CAD software (both 2D and 3D) has brought an increasing number of
unlikely end-users into closer contact with the kind of processes normally associated with massmanufacture
or the professional practice of industrial design (Gershenfeld, 2005). Such users are not
merely replicating industrial processes however, but are modifying and experimenting with both the
machines and materials available to them. Future processes might be accessed remotely, some of
them through browser interfaces, or eventually housed at home as is the case with home knitting or
printing solutions. The paper presents examples from a project undertaken by postgraduate industrial
design students investigating the possibilities of future manufacturing scenarios. It also demonstrates
the broader potential of exploring this issue in the area of design education. Illustrative examples are
taken from a project undertaken by postgraduate industrial design students and also demonstrates the
potential of exploring this issue in the area of design education
Diffusion in scale-free networks with annealed disorder
The scale-free (SF) networks that have been studied so far contained quenched
disorder generated by random dilution which does not vary with the time. In
practice, if a SF network is to represent, for example, the worldwide web, then
the links between its various nodes may temporarily be lost, and re-established
again later on. This gives rise to SF networks with annealed disorder. Even if
the disorder is quenched, it may be more realistic to generate it by a
dynamical process that is happening in the network. In this paper, we study
diffusion in SF networks with annealed disorder generated by various scenarios,
as well as in SF networks with quenched disorder which, however, is generated
by the diffusion process itself. Several quantities of the diffusion process
are computed, including the mean number of distinct sites visited, the mean
number of returns to the origin, and the mean number of connected nodes that
are accessible to the random walkers at any given time. The results including,
(1) greatly reduced growth with the time of the mean number of distinct sites
visited; (2) blocking of the random walkers; (3) the existence of a phase
diagram that separates the region in which diffusion is possible from one in
which diffusion is impossible, and (4) a transition in the structure of the
networks at which the mean number of distinct sites visited vanishes, indicate
completely different behavior for the computed quantities than those in SF
networks with quenched disorder generated by simple random dilution.Comment: 18 pages including 8 figure
A novel design of a desiccant rotary wheel for passive ventilation applications
Rotary desiccant wheels are used to regulate the relative humidity of airstreams. These are commonly integrated into Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning units to reduce the relative humidity of incoming ventilation air. To maximise the surface area, desiccant materials are arranged in a honeycomb matrix structure which results in a high pressure drop across the device requiring fans and blowers to provide adequate ventilation. This restricts the use of rotary desiccant wheels to mechanical ventilation systems. Passive ventilation systems are able to deliver adequate ventilation air but cannot control the humidity of the incoming air. To overcome this, the traditional honeycomb matrix structure of rotary desiccant wheels was redesigned to maintain a pressure drop value below 2 Pa, which is required for passive ventilation purposes. In addition to this, the temperature of the regeneration air for desorption was lowered. Radial blades extending out from the centre of a wheel to the circumference were coated in silica gel particles to form a rotary desiccant wheel. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling of the design was validated using experimental data. Reduction in relative humidity up to 55% was seen from the system whilst maintaining a low pressure drop across the new design. As an outcome of the work presented in this paper, a UK patent GB1506768.9 has been accepted
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