Structural design of modern steam turbine blades using ADINA™

The present paper provides an overview of the structural design of modern steam turbine blades at Siemens power generation using the finite element code ADINA™. The different types of blades are described in detail regarding their geometry and loading. The modular building block approach of modelling is shown to be of essential importance. For the different analyses a fatigue post-processor has been implemented as well as an optimization tool. Both of these in-house codes will be briefly presented.     

Behavioural data in the design of ergonomic computer terminals and workstations—a case study

Abstract

Manufacturers of office automation equipment, in their design of ergonomic computer terminals and office furniture, are encountering needed design data which is sometimes weak, absent, erroneous or inapplicable to the office-worker situation under consideration. In some instances, office automation manufacturers simply follow standards. In others, manufacturers make assumptions as to the best design, and in others, design decisions were based on testing results and conclusions.This paper reviews the ergonomic tools and features incorporated into the design of one office automation manufacturer's terminals and workstations. The short fall of applicable design data relevant to comfort versus extremes of motion in biomechanics, to keyboard home row height and slope angle to viewing distance, as well as to reverse video and surface colour are presented, along with the design resolution of these parameters. Further, certain aspects of posture recently published are discussed.     

Exploring the costs of technical debt management – a case study

Technical debt is a metaphor for delayed software maintenance tasks. Incurring technical debt may bring short-term benefits to a project, but such benefits are often achieved at the cost of extra work in future, analogous to paying interest on the debt. Currently technical debt is managed implicitly, if at all. However, on large systems, it is too easy to lose track of delayed tasks or to misunderstand their impact. Therefore, we have proposed a new approach to managing technical debt, which we believe to be helpful for software managers to make informed decisions. In this study we explored the costs of the new approach by tracking the technical debt management activities in an on-going software project. The results from the study provided insights into the impact of technical debt management on software projects. In particular, we found that there is a significant start-up cost when beginning to track and monitor technical debt, but the cost of ongoing management soon declines to very reasonable levels.     

Constraints for the design of variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures – An industrial case study

ContextService-oriented architecture has become a widely used concept in software industry. However, we currently lack support for designing variability-intensive service-oriented systems. Such systems could be used in different environments, without the need to design them from scratch. To support the design of variability-intensive service-oriented systems, reference architectures that facilitate variability in instantiated service-oriented architectures can help.ObjectiveThe design of variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures is subject to specific constraints. Architects need to know these constraints when designing such reference architectures. Our objective is to identify these constraints.MethodAn exploratory case study was performed in the context of local e-government in the Netherlands to study constraints from the perspective of (a) the users of a variability-intensive service-oriented system (municipalities that implement national laws), and (b) the implementing organizations (software vendors). We collected data through interviews with representatives from five organizations, document analyses and expert meetings.ResultsWe identified ten constraints (e.g., organizational constraints, integration-related constraints) which affect the process of designing reference architectures for variability-intensive service-oriented systems. Also, we identified how stakeholders are affected by these constraints, and how constraints are specific to the case study domain.ConclusionsOur results help design variability-intensive service-oriented reference architectures. Furthermore, our results can be used to define processes to design such reference architectures.     

Applying Kansei engineering to design logistics services – A case of home delivery service

Home delivery service (HDS) has grown fast in recent years because more and more customers engage in Internet and television shopping. Moreover, due to the rising competition in the HDS sector, service providers need to put more concentration on the continual improvement and differentiation of service to maintain the competitive advantage. After experiencing the current services, customers are always expecting the new ones. Thus, the idea of new service design never ends. Designers always have to insight into the real feelings of customers so that they could design the new service, which is able to meet customers' expectation. Kansei engineering is a means to transform real voices of customers into the product and service design. This method is able to quantify the relationship between feelings represented by simple words and design elements. In this study, the Partial Least Square (PLS) is used to analyze the relationships between the real feelings of customers and characteristics of HDS. Finally, this study combines those characteristics, which are strongly related to important feelings, to obtain the original idea of new design of HDS.Relevance to industryAs stated in this abstract, our study offers an exemplification on applying Kansei engineering to design service in service industries. Specifically, along with the application of Kansei engineering, the research findings offer a technique for service design of service industries.     

Students’ use of social media in collaborative design: a case study of an advanced interior design studio

Cognition, Technology & Work - Social media, essential in everyday activity, have been frequently used in the performance of collaborative tasks as well as in collaborative learning in academia...     

Reverse engineering of spatiotemporal patterns in the spatial prisoner’s dilemma

Many complex patterns are produced by the spatial prisoner’s dilemma, such as spatial games (Nature 1992;359:826–829) and spatial strategies (Artif Life Robotics 2004;9:139–143). We have studied the inverse problem of identifying a game by estimating the parameters in the payoff of the game from spatiotemporal patterns.     

Optimizing a damped system – a case study

We consider a second-order damped-vibrational system described by the equation M ?+C(v) [xdot]+K x=0, where M, C(v), K are real, symmetric matrices of order n. We assume that the undamped eigenfrequencies (eigenvalues of (λ² M+K) x=0) ω₁, ω₂, …, ω _n , are multiple in the sense that ω₁=ω₂, ω₃=ω₄, …, ω _n?1=ω _n , or are given in close pairs ω₁ ≈ ω₂, ω₃ ≈ ω₄, …, ω _n?1 ≈ ω _n . We present a formula which gives the solution of the corresponding phase space Lyapunov equation, which then allows us to calculate the first and second derivatives of the trace of the solution, with no extra cost. It can serve for the efficient trace minimization.     

Effective digital collaboration in the construction industry – A case study of BIM deployment in a hospital construction project

Building information modeling (BIM) and related digital innovations can serve as a catalyst for more transparency, tighter integration, and increased productivity in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Yet, many project teams struggle with how to work based on the new technology. Collaborative design based on shared information systems like BIM requires changing traditional and institutionalized work practices and routines. A case study of integrated BIM design in a large healthcare construction project serves as an example for how commonly experienced challenges can be overcome. The project has been awarded BuildingSMART's 2015 award for ‘outstanding open BIM practice’ making it Norway's role model for BIM practice. Based on diffusion of innovations theory, we identified the following set of key factors enabling digital collaboration in this project: change agents, new roles and responsibilities, a cloud computing infrastructure, BIM contracts, and a BIM learning environment. The findings presented in this article may serve as an example for BIM implementation and collaborative work in construction projects.     

Determining the number of postal units in the network – Fuzzy approach,Serbia case study

One of the main, current, goals of the public postal operators in developing countries is to define the model for proper postal network design and access. The access to the postal network represents a set of different elements that interact with each other and have a common aim of providing continuous, of high quality, reliable and sustainable universal postal service. Worldwide experience suggests different approaches in defining the components and criteria for establishing the system of access to the postal network of the public operator. In this paper we present two different approaches. The first one is based on criteria determined in previous study and, here, we develop proper mathematical formulation. The second one is new, general, method created to generate fuzzy rules from numerical data, well known as Wang–Mendel’s method. The authors apply both methods on real data collected from Serbian municipalities and finally, compare results obtained by them.     

SOA in practice – a study of governance aspects

The academic literature on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance is based on theories and assumptions rather than practices, whereas the SOA governance frameworks proposed by Information Technology (IT) vendors are made to suit their products. Research shows that the problems with SOA governance in practice are among the major reasons of SOA failures. An extensive literature review that covers SOA, IT governance and SOA governance has been carried out part of this research. The purpose of this research paper is to increase our understanding of SOA governance and to show which SOA aspects organizations should consider when adopting a SOA governance framework. Based on a literature review, this study first proposes a list of SOA aspects to be considered when implementing SOA governance. By adopting an interpretive research methodology – based on interviews with professionals and practitioners in the fields of IT governance and SOA governance – this research paper examines the importance of these aspects. The results provide a theoretical conceptualization of SOA aspects that can be used to assess SOA governance practices and provide guidance to improve them.     

Optimisation of maintenance concept choice using risk-decision factor – a case study

This article is concerned with the state estimation problem for a kind of non-uniform sampling dynamic system. The system is described at a certain sampling rate in discrete form. A sensor observes the target successively, while the samples are obtained non-uniformly and the sampling points in each sampling periods may be different. To generate the optimal state estimate, state prediction and innovation are carried out step-by-step similar to Kalman filter (KF), but before innovation in each sampling period, measurements should be properly disposed and augmented. It is shown that our main results improve and extend the existing KF for which the samples are obtained multirate non-uniformly. Measurements randomly missing with Bernoulli distribution are also considered in this article. Finally, the feasibility and efficiency of the presented algorithm is illustrated by a numerical simulation example.     

Systematic literature reviews in software engineering – A tertiary study

ContextIn a previous study, we reported on a systematic literature review (SLR), based on a manual search of 13 journals and conferences undertaken in the period 1st January 2004 to 30th June 2007.ObjectiveThe aim of this on-going research is to provide an annotated catalogue of SLRs available to software engineering researchers and practitioners. This study updates our previous study using a broad automated search.MethodWe performed a broad automated search to find SLRs published in the time period 1st January 2004 to 30th June 2008. We contrast the number, quality and source of these SLRs with SLRs found in the original study.ResultsOur broad search found an additional 35 SLRs corresponding to 33 unique studies. Of these papers, 17 appeared relevant to the undergraduate educational curriculum and 12 appeared of possible interest to practitioners. The number of SLRs being published is increasing. The quality of papers in conferences and workshops has improved as more researchers use SLR guidelines.ConclusionSLRs appear to have gone past the stage of being used solely by innovators but cannot yet be considered a main stream software engineering research methodology. They are addressing a wide range of topics but still have limitations, such as often failing to assess primary study quality.     

A case study of applying data mining techniques in an outfitter’s customer value analysis

This study applies K-means method, fuzzy c-means clustering method and bagged clustering algorithm to the analysis of customer value for an outfitter in Taipei, Taiwan. These three techniques bear similar philosophy for data classification. Thus, it would be of interest to know which clustering technique performs best in a real world case of evaluating customer value. Using cluster quality assessment, this study concludes that bagged clustering algorithm outperforms the other two methods. To conclude the analyses, this study also suggests marketing strategies for each cluster based on the results generated by bagged clustering technique.     

Potential of polarimetric Radarsat-2 data in geological mapping – a case study in parts of Dharwar craton,India

Polarimetry is a technique for quantitatively estimating the change in polarization in a backscattered electromagnetic signal (in this case a radar signal) with reference to the polarization of the incident signal for estimating the geophysical properties (roughness and dielectric constant) of surface elements. In this study, quadrapole Radarsat-2 data have been utilized for mapping geological elements in Archaean terrain based on their geophysical parameters preserved in the four polarization channels of Radarsat-2 data. The study illustrates how single-look complex polarimetric data can be processed to extract information on lithology, geological structure, and land covers (i.e. soil type, etc.) preferentially developed over each rock type. The study revealed that C-band polarization power images can be used indirectly to delineate lithounits provided each unit has characteristic surface roughness and moisture resulting from the surface cover or exposure pattern developed over each lithounit. Moreover, polarimetric data (inclusive of phase and amplitude) provide complementary information when we compare this information with the information derived from simple polarization composites, derived from the backscattered image of each polarization channel. It is also observed that structural imprints are enhanced in co-polarized (HH, VV) data, whereas the cross-polarized channel (HV, VH) provides information on land cover.     

Object-oriented design of process line simulation and optimization—A case study in papermaking

Simulation-based optimization for industrial process lines is discussed in this paper. Our approach combines multidisciplinary modeling, modern sensitivity analysis methodology as well as multiobjective optimization by means of object-oriented software design principles. As a result, a simulation and optimization approach that can be extended and modified due to users’ needs can be developed. Our approach is illustrated by a real-world example from papermaking industry.     

Modular product design with grouping genetic algorithm—a case study

Modular products are products that fulfill various functions through the combination of distinct modules. These detachable modules are constructed both according to the maximum physical and functional relations among components and maximizing the similarity of specifically modular driving forces. Accordingly, a non-linear programming is proposed to identify separable modules and simultaneously optimize the number of modules. This paper presents a systematic approach to accomplish modular product design in four major phases. Phase 1 is by means of functional and physical interaction analysis to format a component-to-component correlation matrix. Phase 2 is the exploration of design requirements to evaluate the relative importance of each modular driver. In phase 3, non-linear programming is used to formulate the objective function. In the final phase, a heuristic grouping genetic algorithm is adopted to search for the optimal or near-optimal modular architecture. This process and its application are illustrated by a real case of an electrical consumer product provided by an Original Design Manufacturer. The results demonstrate that the designer could direct a new approach to establish product modules according to the relative importance of modular drivers and the interaction among components.     

Conceptualizing task-technology fit and the effect on adoption – A case study of a digital textbook service

Although information technology has revolutionized virtually every aspect of how we interact with products and services, it has changed learning to a surprisingly small degree. In a study of a digital textbook service, we provide a new conceptual definition and measurement of technology fit. We conceptualize task-technology fit as how well a technology is integrated with a set of interrelated tasks included in achieving the goal of the behavior where the technology is used. Whereas research on technology adoption typically explains around 40 percent of the variance in motivation to adopt, our model explains as much as 76 percent.