A sustainable product design model

There are major challenges for the designer to now include Sustainable Development aspects into his/her design; particularly related to the social and wider economic impacts. The designer must, more than ever before, take into consideration the views and concerns of all the ‘interested parties’ – stakeholders. There are many topics – issues and concerns to consider and often they can be conflicting. The need is to examine the Sustainable Development risks and benefits associated with any particular design so improvements can be made. Both a ‘concept’ model and a Bournemouth University practical model are described which allows this risk/benefit assessment to be made in a structured manner on a wide range of topics. The assessment can examine the product, the company manufacturing the product and the manufacturing site. The major social, economic and environmental risks and benefits is tabulated or presented graphically for ease of evaluation in order to modify the design and so improve the Sustainable Development aspects.     

An expert system for preliminary numerical design modelling

This paper is based upon the premise that computers can do more than just ‘number crunching’ to assist a designer in his task. Key features of the design process where traditional computer-aided design (CAD) approaches have had limited success are presented. The approach of expert systems, which shows promise of assisting in these features, is outlined and a system based on this approach, DESIGNER, described. This system can be applied to any numerical design problem and is illustrated through an example from preliminary ship design.     

从有我的设计谈产品的审美创造

由于每个设计师都有不同于他人的个性,现代设计产品的形式也会带有不同审美倾向的特征.有我的设计强调从设计师自身进行审美创造.以有我的设计的方式来研究产品的审美创造和设计创造原理的结合的合理方式.     

Considerations on the elements of quantifying human reliability

This paper attempts to provide a contribution for the discussion of what the term ‘data’ means and how the qualitative perspective can be linked with the quantitative one. It will argue that the terms ‘quantitative data’ and ‘qualitative data’ are not distinct but a continuum that spans over the entire spectrum of the expertise that has to be involved in the HRA process. It elaborates the rational behind any human reliability quantification figure and suggests a scientific way forward to better data for human reliability assessment.     

An introduction to the metaphysics of technology

This essay offers an explanation of the metaphysics of technology. It analyzes the principal characteristics of technology: rationality, materiality, accumulation, process, and method. Technology is rational and uses a method that is built upon the accumulation of its processes in a material world. As a result, it performs an immediate and pragmatic function. After a brief introduction and an analysis of the thinking of Heidegger and Dessauer, we will discuss how free choice plays a role in technology, since all technologies emanate from one metaphysical ‘principal’: an openness to being, which is the fundamental quality of humanness.     

Optimal structural design under stochastic uncertainty by stochastic linear programming methods

In the optimal plastic design of mechanical structures one has to minimize a certain cost function under the equilibrium equation, the yield condition and some additional simple constraints, like box constraints. A basic problem is that the model parameters and the external loads are random variables with a certain probability distribution. In order to get reliable/robust optimal designs with respect to random parameter variations, by using stochastic optimization methods, the original random structural optimization problem must be replaced by an appropriate deterministic substitute problem. Starting from the equilibrium equation and the yield condition, the problem can be described in the framework of stochastic (linear) programming problems with ‘complete fixed recourse’. The main properties of this class of substitute problems are discussed, especially the ‘dual decomposition’ data structure which enables the use of very efficient special purpose LP-solvers.     

Getting beyond ‘grin and bear it’ in the practice of risk management

Risk perception researchers frequently notice major discrepancies between expert judgment and lay opinion concerning the identity of ‘large’ risks. These discrepancies are particularly disconcerting because they lead to a significant misallocation of scarce resources devoted to public risk management. Yet, democratic decision-making also appeals to many risk perception researchers, and some see such little prospect for a solution thaty they seem close to surrendering to decision-making based on lay risk perception. This article argues that such a ‘grin and bear it’ strategy is also unsatisfactory; that risk perceptions are unstable grounds for decision-making; that expert risk assessment and lay risk perception differ by design rather than accident; that risk experts' search for ‘virtuous lawmakers’ who would make public decisions for the greatest public good is a vain one; that the dissonance risk perception researchers now observe will likely get worse in the new information age; and that risk perception researchers need to return to first principles to find solutions to these dilemmas. In particular, the gap between expert judgment and lay perception will close only when non-experts are permitted and expected to make their own risk management decisions, so far as that is possible, while bearing full responsibility for their choices.     

The use of technical planes in structuring the classification

In a previous article, the idea of technical ‘planes’ into which the collective field of disclosure naturally divides, was discussed. The ideas of ‘function’ and ‘application’ were related to this more general concept. The present article demonstrates, with examples, some of the practical effects of the idea of planes on the design and development of the Classification.     

A risk assessment methodology for incorporating uncertainties using fuzzy concepts

This paper proposes a new methodology for incorporating uncertainties using fuzzy concepts into conventional risk assessment frameworks. This paper also introduces new forms of fuzzy membership curves, designed to consider the uncertainty range that represents the degree of uncertainties involved in both probabilistic parameter estimates and subjective judgments, since it is often difficult or even impossible to precisely estimate the occurrence rate of an event in terms of one single crisp probability.It is to be noted that simple linguistic variables such as ‘High/Low’ and ‘Good/Bad’ have the limitations in quantifying the various risks inherent in construction projects, but only represent subjective mental cognition adequately. Therefore, in this paper, the statements that include some quantification with giving specific value or scale, such as ‘Close to any value’ or ‘Higher/Lower than analyzed value’, are used in order to get over the limitations.It may be stated that the proposed methodology will be very useful for the systematic and rational risk assessment of construction projects.     

Design cosmologies and brain research

Perception is a process of creative construction which relies upon two modelling processes, verbal and non-verbal. Researchers believe that these processes are located respectively in the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The non-verbal (right brain) process plays a very important part in the act of creation, and designers develop means of accessing the right brain model. This accessing is done through ‘representational systems’ which are sensory based, and which involve a suspension of analytic thought. This process of accessing the non-dominant hemisphere is very similar to techniques used in hypnosis. The author maintains that the processes used by designers in their work involves the use of a different representational system than that in which design data is available, and that this results in an increase of solution poverty. He suggests that design is essentially a self-therapeutic process—an indispensable part of each person. Processes which exclude the user are in this respect seriously deficient. He argues for a political and social solution to the problems of environmental design—to a return to local autonomy and user participation.     

A logic flowgraph-based concept for decision support and management of nuclear plant operation

The architecture of au automated decision support system for nuclear plant operators is presented and discussed. The system is based on the use of ‘logic flowgraph’ process models and is designed in a hierarchical fashion. Its functionality spans from ‘function oriented’ plant status and alternative success path information displayed to the plant operators at its higher access levels to ‘process oriented’ diagnostic and recovery information deduced and displayed at its lowest. The design basis for this architecture is the ‘defense in depth’ plant safety concept. The decision support system goal is to provide plant operators, in the presence of an unforeseen transient, with the best and safest alternative between plant stabilization after shutdown and recovery of normal operation based on early diagnosis. Examples of the system capability to interpret and diagnose abnormal plant conditions and of the information that it can supply to the operators at its three access levels are presented and discussed.     

消费伦理与现代产品设计

通过对炫耀性和时尚性消费观念所导致的非理性产品设计带来的社会危害,以及设计师在社会道德责任体系中扮演的角色的分析,提出在日渐异化的消费伦理面前,设计师应该立足于环境保护和节约资源,发展绿色设计和可持续设计,引导健康的消费习惯和理性的社会价值观.     

Risk tolerance and safety management

The recent introduction of the concept of risk tolerability is discussed in relation to the management of risk in high-technology industries. Differences between ‘acceptable’ and ‘tolerable’ risk are described and a model of those factors which constitute risk tolerability is presented. The recent approach of the UK Health and Safety Executive to the problem of risk tolerance is assessed and found to be wanting in two key areas. On the one hand there is a need for greater emphasis on the ‘safety net’ arrangements necessary to tackle residual risks and beyond design basis accidents. On the other hand, a greater emphasis is needed on the significant role which the communication of risks makes to the public tolerability of high technology.     

External maintenance rate prediction and design concepts for high reliability and availability on space station Freedom

As envisioned in 1990^*, international space station Freedom (SSF) was to be a large, complex, multi-purpose manned facility with a 30-year design life. The presence of a crew and the size of the investment would require high reliability and availability for safety- and mission-critical systems, but even with these requirements satisfied, long life and complexity would make equipment failure and repair inevitable. Recognizing this fact, in 1990 NASA and its contractors performed a study of the maintainability of the then-current space station configuration. Based on well-founded predictions of equipment failure rates, life limits, maintenance rate factors, and repair times, maintenance on equipment outside the pressurized modules of the station alone would have absorbed more than 3000 crew hours per year, which was clearly prohibitive. The chief reason for this maintenance overload was not the unreliability of equipment; it was the sheer number of components present. This paper summarizes this study, and presents a number of design and operational concepts which promise to alleviate the maintenance overload, many of which have been adopted in the current design.The central recommendation was to think of Freedom as a long-term ‘facility’ analogous to a ground-based research laboratory or manufacturing plant, rather than as a ‘space mission’. This philosophy leads to placing as much emphasis on maintainability as reliability in design; rethinking conventional manned-spacecraft design rules such as ‘fail-op-fail-op-fail-safe,’ which contributed heavily to the complexity of the baseline configuration; prioritizing maintenance by time-to-effect as well as ‘criticality,’ and zero-basing systems to wring out excessive complexity while retaining acceptable performance and safety.     

Technology of the new society

To seriously speculate about the rôle of technology in a society of the future it is necessary to carefully distinguish between quantitative and qualitative aspects of life. Thus ‘progress’ and ‘improvement’, as well as ‘surviving’ and ‘living’, are pairs of notions inspected in this Paper as to their relative importance for society.

Résumé

To seriously speculate about the rôle of technology in a society of the future it is necessary to carefully distinguish between quantitative and qualitative aspects of life. Thus ‘progress’ and ‘improvement’, as well as ‘surviving’ and ‘living’, are pairs of notions inspected in this Paper as to their relative importance for society.     

Modifications to the ‘directional simulation in the load space’ approach to structural reliability analysis

‘Directional simulation in the load space (DS-LS)’ is a simulation-based technique used to perform reliability analysis of structures subjected to time-invariant or time-variant random loads. To perform DS-LS a location must first be chosen for an ‘origin of simulation’. The origin may be positioned in either the safe or failure region of the load space, and its precise location (with respect to these regions) influences the DS-LS formulation needed to evaluate reliability correctly. The current formulation requires the origin to be positioned in the safe region. However, even for simple structures, the ‘exact’ location of the safe and failure region is not always known explicitly ‘a priori’. Modifications to allow for the possibility of positioning the origin not only in the ‘safe’ region but in the ‘failure’ region are proposed in this paper. Some numerical examples involving one or more stationary continuous Gaussian loads and the simulation of directions by ‘Monte Carlo’ and ‘the hyperspace division method’ are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed formulations. Some comments on convergence are made.     

An evaluation scheme for assessing the worth of automatically generated design alternatives

This paper introduces a tool called the designer preference modeler (DPM) that analyzes the designer’s decision making during concept evaluation, and constructs a designer preference model to be used for evaluation of automatically generated design alternatives. The method is based on establishing an interaction between a designer and a computational synthesis tool during conceptual design. The synthesis software generates design alternatives using a catalog of design knowledge formulated as grammar rules which describe how electromechanical designs are built. DPM carefully selects a set from these alternatives and presents it to the designer for evaluation. The designer’s evaluations are translated into a preference model that is subsequently used to search the solution space for best designs. Application of the method to the design of a consumer product shows DPM’s range of capabilities.