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Conceptual design approaches the definition of an innovative concept design applied to a product intended for children'-=s recreational area, corresponding to a personal profile located around the age of childhood, namely aged 2 to 5. The case study presented highlights the development of an innovative concept for children's recreational areas, to be precise the design, and the conceptual design applied to a roto-pendular carousel for children's recreational areas. The working method aims at identifying the chronological stages of development and the conceptual design, starting from the idea, prospectographic research, analysis of constructive solutions, and finally the materialization of the assisted design in detail, applied to the new concept. Based on the prospectographic study, several constructive variants are highlighted, at the draft level, and after the analysis, the optimized variant of the carousel concept is established that should match the functions and characteristics pursued and imposed on the new concept. Following the justification of the choice of the optimal variant of the concept, the model is designed in an assisted environment in order to follow aspects related to technology associated with each component of the whole assembly, as well as aspects related to ergonomics, safety in exploration and proportion associated to the typology and to the age criteria of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concept design is an early and crucial phase in product development where the general concept of a product is created. In this stage, various aspects of the product are considered, such as usability and technical performance, among others. Product design and development are currently a well-established area of knowledge, and academia is increasingly including its fundamentals in regular curricula, especially in the areas of engineering, design, and marketing. At the same time, industrial players recognize the potential of the method for i. responding successfully to market uncertainty and speed; ii. improving the knowledge available and the systematization of creative processes; and iii. ensuring that the decision process is explicit and well documented. Nevertheless, only a few studies demonstrating the concept design procedure in detail are available in the literature. In this paper, we thus present a detailed case study concerning the design of portable thermal slippers, so as to demonstrate the application of structured procedures and systematic approaches to concept design, and providing a pedagogical review of methods and tools to support the analysis and decisions along the several steps of the concept design procedure. The particular case study here addressed resulted from the collaboration between an academic institution and a company operating in the home footwear industry, with the design team including elements from both sides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern optimisation methodologies have revolutionised the engineering sector and pave the way for innovation. In ship design, this has been spearheaded by the introduction of the Holistic Design approach that allows more attributes and performances of the end product to be assessed accurately and concurrently even at the early design phase. In this respect, the authors present herein a methodology based on the optimisation of the functionalities that the general arrangement needs to provide (in this case; adjacency, noise and evacuation flow). The methodology allows for a large optimisation space, several objectives and intrinsic control by the user at all the stages. By re-arranging the location of the spaces onboard, in relation to their position on the hull as well as between themselves, significant improvements can be achieved. More functional objectives can be incorporated through modularity and penalty functions, keeping the overall process simple and flexible to adapt to fluid early design requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research was conducted during Covid 19 Pandemic -when University Education was provided online- as a part of the Design Studio I course for the first-year students of the Interior Architecture Department of Maltepe University, Faculty of Architecture, and Design in the 2020-2021 Academic Year. 62 students participated in this study. In the study in which the empirical research method was used, semi-structured, and closed-ended interview technique was used to analyze the design education, and design principles approaches to the students along with demographic questions. For this purpose, a written interview form consisting of 25 questions was sent. The data conveying the design preferences showing the self-report scales obtained with the natural observation method were tabulated with the qualitative research method. As a result of this study, it was observed that the students were introduced to the concept of design for the first time during their university years. It was determined that they had difficulty in understanding the concept of design in the first stage of distance education, and then they showed improvement. Despite this, it was determined that as their experience increased thanks to course applications, and discussions, their perceptions of the course content also improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the concept design of complex networked systems, concept developers have to ensure that the choice of hardware modules and the topology of the target platform will provide adequate resources to support the needs of the application. For example, future-generation aerospace systems need to consider multiple requirements, with many trade-offs, foreseeing rapid technological change and a long period for realization and service. For that purpose, we introduce NetGAP, an automated 3-phase approach to synthesize network topologies and support the exploration and concept design of networked systems with multiple requirements including dependability, security, and performance. NetGAP represents the possible interconnections between hardware modules using a graph grammar and uses a Monte Carlo Tree Search optimization to generate candidate topologies from the grammar while aiming to satisfy the requirements. We apply the proposed approach to a synthetic version of a realistic avionics application use case. It includes 99 processes and 660 messages. The experiment shows the merits of the solution to support the early-stage exploration of alternative candidate topologies. The method vividly characterizes the topology-related trade-offs between requirements stemming from security, fault tolerance, timeliness, and the "cost" of adding new modules or links. We also create a scaled-up version of the problem (267 processes, 1887 messages) to illustrate scalability. Finally, we discuss the flexibility of using the approach when changes in the application and its requirements occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose an AI-assisted design concept exploration tool, the "Character Space Construction" ("CSC"). Concept designers explore and articulate the target product aesthetics and semantics in language, which is expressed using "Design Concept Phrases" ("DCPs"), that is, compound adjective phrases, and contrasting terms that convey what are not their target design concepts. Designers often utilize this dichotomy technique to communicate the nature of their aesthetic and semantic design concepts with stakeholders, especially in an early design development phase. The CSC assists this designers' cognitive activity by constructing a "Character Space" ("CS"), which is a semantic quadrant system, in a structured manner. A CS created by designers with the assistance of the CSC enables them to discern and explain their design concepts in contrast with opposing terms. These terms in a CS are retrieved and combined in the CSC by using a knowledge graph. The CSC presents terms and phrases as lists of candidates to users from which users will choose in order to define the target design concept, which is then visualized in a CS. The participants in our experiment, who were in the "arts and design" profession, were given two conditions under which to create DCPs and explain them. One group created and explained the DCPs with the assistance of the proposed CSC, and the other did the same task without this assistance, given the freedom to use any publicly available web search tools instead. The result showed that the group assisted by the CSC indicated their tasks were supported significantly better, especially in exploration, as measured by the Creativity Support Index (CSI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose an AI-assisted design concept exploration tool, the “Character Space Construction” (“CSC”). Concept designers explore and articulate the target product aesthetics and semantics in language, which is expressed using “Design Concept Phrases” (“DCPs”), that is, compound adjective phrases, and contrasting terms that convey what are not their target design concepts. Designers often utilize this dichotomy technique to communicate the nature of their aesthetic and semantic design concepts with stakeholders, especially in an early design development phase. The CSC assists this designers' cognitive activity by constructing a “Character Space” (“CS”), which is a semantic quadrant system, in a structured manner. A CS created by designers with the assistance of the CSC enables them to discern and explain their design concepts in contrast with opposing terms. These terms in a CS are retrieved and combined in the CSC by using a knowledge graph. The CSC presents terms and phrases as lists of candidates to users from which users will choose in order to define the target design concept, which is then visualized in a CS. The participants in our experiment, who were in the “arts and design” profession, were given two conditions under which to create DCPs and explain them. One group created and explained the DCPs with the assistance of the proposed CSC, and the other did the same task without this assistance, given the freedom to use any publicly available web search tools instead. The result showed that the group assisted by the CSC indicated their tasks were supported significantly better, especially in exploration, as measured by the Creativity Support Index (CSI).

Architectural design decisions are primarily made through an interaction between an architect and a client during the conceptual design phase. However, in larger-scale public architecture projects, the client is frequently represented by a community that embraces numerous stakeholders. The scale, social diversity, and political layers of such collective clients make their interaction with architects challenging. A solution to address this challenge is using new information technologies that automate design interactions on an urban scale through crowdsourcing and artificial intelligence technologies. However, since such technologies have not yet been applied and tested in field conditions, it remains unknown how communities interact with such systems and whether useful concept designs can be produced in this way. To fill this gap in the literature, this paper reports the results of a case study architecture project where a novel crowdsourcing system was used to automate interactions with a community. The results of both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed the effectiveness of our approach, which resulted in high-level stakeholder satisfaction and yielded conceptual designs that better reflect stakeholders’ preferences. Along with identifying opportunities for using advanced technologies to automate design interactions in the concept design phase, we also highlight the challenges of such technologies, thus warranting future research.

The article proposes three essential elements in the bridge design process: site, type and drawing. The site defines the problem. The type relates to structural history. The study of alternatives constantly turns to the open catalogue of types for support. Drawing is the conceptual synthesis that builds on the two previous elements. Bridge design entails drawing as much as analysis and sometimes it is even more about geometry than about engineering. To design is to draw. A discussion of the proposed key design components is followed by a description of several bridges and footbridges designed by the authors: a competition proposal in the United Kingdom, two competition-winning footbridges—over the Drava river in Maribor, Slovenia, and over the Miño river between Spain and Portugal—and two urban bridges built in Riyadh. The presentation of the projects is structured according to the three essential elements proposed (site, type and drawing) and highlights the main characteristics of each project and the key aspects of their design processes. In conclusion, the article proposes several actions to be considered as open instructions or recommendations for bridge design with the aim of being both a design method and a manifesto to encourage creative structural engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The product innovation design is an innovation-intensive process that requires abundant knowledge and design experience, even across industries and disciplines, as a resource for problem solving. Therefore, designers need to have a good command of more design knowledge in this process. However, due to varied expressions of design knowledge (function, principle, structure) in different fields lead to the difficulty in representation of design knowledge, which makes designers unable to innovate by directly using design knowledge. Therefore, to solve the problem above, this paper, analogous to biological gene, proposes a product innovation process model based on functional gene extraction and construction. The proposed process model normalizes design knowledge through functional genes and help designers acquire design knowledge in different fields, which further promotes the product innovation design. The process model consists of four following steps. First, Obtain the overall function of product based on user needs and decompose it. Second, Build the functional gene model based on digital twin ones to expand the breadth of design knowledge and facilitate the retrieval. Third, Screen similar functional gene by the functional similarity algorithm. Finally, Obtain the design scheme through recombination, transcription, and translation of the functional gene. The feasibility of the research method is verified by using a shared bicycle parking device as an example.

One of the main challenges for the construction of DEMO, the first fusion demonstration reactor, is the power exhaust issue. To deal with it, EUROfusion has undertaken the construction of DTT (Divertor Tokamak Test) facility which will be held in Frascati, Italy. It aims to test various divertor models which can be integrated and used under different plasma confinement configurations. The current design of DTT embed 54 divertor cassettes which must be anchored to the vacuum vessel using suitable fixation systems. This paper deals with the initial monotonic load assessment of the fixation system of the Fixation System which must ensure compliance with multiple design requirements. The Remote Handling compatibility is one of the most demanding, since it includes a preloading phase of the divertor necessary to mitigate the shaking of the cassette due to dynamic forces. Moreover, the system must withstand the conspicuous loads acting on the Divertor due to the full or partial loss of plasma confinement (Disruptive Events). Structural verifications through Finite Element Method (FEM) have been performed on the Divertor-Fixation System, considering a set of load combinations, with particular focus on the most demanding case related to Fast-transient Vertical Disruption Event-downward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptual design approaches the definition of an innovative concept design applied to a product intended for children’-=s recreational area, corresponding to a personal profile located around the age of childhood, namely aged 2 to 5. The case study presented highlights the development of an innovative concept for children’s recreational areas, to be precise the design, and the conceptual design applied to a roto-pendular carousel for children’s recreational areas. The working method aims at identifying the chronological stages of development and the conceptual design, starting from the idea, prospectographic research, analysis of constructive solutions, and finally the materialization of the assisted design in detail, applied to the new concept. Based on the prospectographic study, several constructive variants are highlighted, at the draft level, and after the analysis, the optimized variant of the carousel concept is established that should match the functions and characteristics pursued and imposed on the new concept. Following the justification of the choice of the optimal variant of the concept, the model is designed in an assisted environment in order to follow aspects related to technology associated with each component of the whole assembly, as well as aspects related to ergonomics, safety in exploration and proportion associated to the typology and to the age criteria of children.

Concept design is an early and crucial phase in product development where the general concept of a product is created. In this stage, various aspects of the product are considered, such as usability and technical performance, among others. Product design and development are currently a well-established area of knowledge, and academia is increasingly including its fundamentals in regular curricula, especially in the areas of engineering, design, and marketing. At the same time, industrial players recognize the potential of the method for i. responding successfully to market uncertainty and speed; ii. improving the knowledge available and the systematization of creative processes; and iii. ensuring that the decision process is explicit and well documented. Nevertheless, only a few studies demonstrating the concept design procedure in detail are available in the literature. In this paper, we thus present a detailed case study concerning the design of portable thermal slippers, so as to demonstrate the application of structured procedures and systematic approaches to concept design, and providing a pedagogical review of methods and tools to support the analysis and decisions along the several steps of the concept design procedure. The particular case study here addressed resulted from the collaboration between an academic institution and a company operating in the home footwear industry, with the design team including elements from both sides.

The article presents the approach to the design process of acoustic panels based on the scientific research. This approach is based on combining the technical and the design competences to develop the innovative product value for the concept of acoustic panels. The article presents the concepts of two new acoustic panels -- an absorbing and scattering panel and a panel reflecting sound waves. The first part of the article presents the starting point for the presented project -- the acoustic research and the inspiration for both types of presented solutions. Next, the materials possible to use were discussed, which could reproduce the natural acoustic properties of the lava and glacier caves. The next part presents consecutive stages of the product development in a modern form, ensuring the expected acoustic properties. The last part of the article presents a fully functional solution and proposes further research and development directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimaterial additive manufacturing is expanding the design space realizable with 3D printing, yet is largely constrained to sequential deposition of each individual material. The ability to coextrude two materials and change the ratio of materials while printing would enable custom-tailored polymer composites. Here, the evolution of a dynamic material coextrusion process for additive manufacturing capable of printing any ratio between and including two neat input materials is described across 3 hot-end generations and 14 implemented design iterations. The designs evolved with increased understanding of manufacturing constraints associated with the additive manufacturing of metal components with internal flow bore diameters on the order of 2 mm and typical bore length around 50 mm. The second generation overcame this issue by partitioning the design into two pieces to locate the flow channel geometry at the interface between the components so that the details could be easily printed on the components' external surfaces. The third concept generation then focused on minimizing flow channel volume to reduce the average length when transitioning between materials by 92%. The third-generation design was also used to investigate the improvements in dimensional stability during annealing of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) made possible by coextruding ABS with a polycarbonate (PC) core. The standard deviation of part shrinkage after annealing was 7.08% for the neat ABS but reduced to 0.24% for the coextruded ABS/PC components., Competing Interests: No competing financial interests exist., (Copyright 2024, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.)

Abstract This paper details the concept development process for an interactive and augmented reality based application that compensates for attending Orientation Week at a higher education institution. The application will help freshmen learn about the institution’s environment and campus, degree program, and course curriculum before school starts. For efficiency and to elicit high emotional engagement, various pedagogical and technological approaches are used for presenting the content, such as gamification and augmented reality. Awareness of their future learning environment, study path, and course details helps students reduce their fear of failure, and this, in turn, prevents educational withdrawal. In addition to raising awareness, the interactive augmented learning for orientation application saves educational institutions significant time and resources by preparing new students for their educational journey on their personal mobile devices. The contribution of this paper is both for academicians and practitioners regarding the process for developing an innovative concept.

For manufacturing companies, the integration of service elements to support product offering has become a key factor in gaining competitive advantage. Product-Service Systems (PSSs) are value offerings that combine tangible products and intangible services. To date, their design process is still critical. There are several aspects that designers need to consider, including (i) the variety of PSS elements, (ii) potential interactions between PSS players and (iii) lasting customer relationships. Considering these issues, this paper proposes a novel operative tool, herein named Player-Interface (PI) method, to support designers in the definition of new PSS concepts. The method helps designers to activate new service or product elements based on the analysis of the possible interactions between the PSS players. The description is supported by a case study in the manufacturing sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Main target of this paper is to describe the conceptual design and the virtual prototyping phases of a new detector, named Crystal Eye, aimed at the exploration of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational wave events. Such events generated by neutron stars collision (or mergers) are associated with γ-ray bursts. With its characteristics, Crystal Eye will provide the continuous exploration and monitoring of the Universe after a Gravitational Wave event with a better resolution than that of other detectors such as the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM). Thanks to its large field of view and its design, it has the potentiality to be the trigger for those present X-ray astronomy missions (Chandra, Swift, Integral XMM Newton) that are based on high angular resolution pointing experiment but that have unfortunately a very small field of view. An intense brainstorming phase, involving a team of physicians and engineers for the generation of concepts, started the design process. So, many preliminary sketches and CAD models were realized to well identify the main requirements of the new detector. Afterwards, considering the features and the constraints of the project, a refinement of the possible solutions among all the alternatives thought was performed, and three virtual prototypes were selected according to the Multi-Voting Method. Lastly, the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) Multi Criteria decision making approach was considered to designate the best concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing companies are increasingly moving toward delivering combinations of products and services to provide higher value to their customers. The development of such Product Service Systems (PSS) escalates in complexity when several products developed by different suppliers need to be integrated into a unique system. For first tier suppliers, it is a great challenge to model and simulate the impact of changing design variables at the micro-level on both hardware properties and governing behaviors of services over the entire life-cycle of the PSS. The paper describes a model-based approach developed to estimate the life cycle cost of a PSS hardware already at a concept design stage. The proposed approach computes the relative cost efficiency of a set of design variants using as input the data generated by the simulations run in the Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) environment. The approach allows the exploration of the design space of a PSS given by the variation of the geometry of a Computer Aided Design (CAD) model, building on the computation of customized cost modules selected by a generic list of PSS cost dimensions. For each evaluated design case, the model produces as output a unique monetary figure of the cost expected to incur by owning or using the asset throughout the lifetime. The work has been conducted in collaboration with a tier-one aerospace component manufacturer, and the application of the model is exemplified through a case study related to the development of a turbine rear structure (TRS) for commercial jet engines. The approach is most suitable for the development of complex systems in which new products and components are integrated into a shared product platform. The results are discussed in relation to the current literature on PSS cost engineering, highlighting challenges to be addressed to increase cost estimation accuracy and increase uncertainty identification and awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent earthquake events in New Zealand have highlighted the need to improve the post-earthquake reparability of buildings. This paper describes a number of avenues for improving the post-earthquake reparability of buildings and reviews a number of recent and ongoing efforts to improve post-earthquake reparability in New Zealand. Attention is given to the role that non-structural elements play in the reparability of buildings. The work explains how the design and detailing of non-structural elements can be enhanced to achieve improved reparability. To reduce the vulnerability of drift-sensitive non-structural elements, such as plasterboard partition walls, a number of alternative detailing strategies are under development. For acceleration-sensitive components such as ceilings and suspended piping, issues with the industry design, installation and inspection provisions are highlighted and ongoing research aimed at understanding system interaction effects is discussed. The last part of the paper proposes different ways of improving reparability during the conceptual design of a building. Various possibilities are identified, such as the definition of inspection and repair criteria and the relocation of non-structural elements away from structural locations to improve access to non-structural elements. It is concluded that by considering potential inspection and repair needs during concept design, considerable time and repair cost could be saved following intense earthquake shaking, with considerable socio-economic benefits for the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve creative thinking in architectural design education, it is useful to interact with other disciplines such as music. There are many works of this interdisciplinary approach between architecture and music in the literature. These studies focus on new methods of creating forms with music for basic architectural education. The common aim is using music as a creative perspective for designing forms before proceeding to architectural design. Various structural forms designed by students are examined within these studies. It is concluded that designing with music could improve students' imagination and could be benefit to architectural design education. Furthermore, these approaches could be improved, not only in basic form design, but also to be applied in an entire architectural project from space to façade. Music could be used as an inspiration to be transformed into a product, an interior or an architectural structure, and this could be useful for architectural design studio courses. Therefore, this review aims to underline the benefit of music in architectural education by examining the existing studies in the field, and it is a preliminary research for the further study of a method of designing with music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immersed tunnel works of Hongkong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge was completed in 2018, a joint research team on submerged floating tunnel (SFT) was established for CCCC Hongkong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge island & tunnel project to propose and design a overall basin test of tethered type SFT. The prototype length of 1.2 km long, with a scale of 1:50. After rounds of discussions on test significance, technical feasibility and details, the 1st generation basin test was initiated in early 2019. A special SFT basin was built in Tianjin and a test model was fabricated in a Dalian laboratory. In this paper, we introduced the general test design scheme and its evolution, critical issues encountered, and improvements for 2nd generation test. Main discussions or findings at works were: 1) the overall SFT basin test should be divided by three stages for mechanism, parameters and engineering respectively, in which the basin test is preferably divided by 3 stages targeted at trial, structural behavior, and validation; 2) a supporting system was required to ensure efficiency and quality; 3) model residual buoyancy simulation alternatives were proposed and compared; 4) attention shall be paid to the risk of SFT model damaging from artificially imposed regular waves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In present study, a history analysis and review of last 30 years for U.S. naval ship concept design development trend is proposed. Based on the development of naval ship concept design model history, the three features of development process are further summarized. The first is that model-based system engineering (MBSE) becomes the basic of naval ship concept design, while the second one is that the multi-discipline crossing and combination becomes a general innovation model. And the third one is that systematization oriented naval system integration is the developing goal. Some detailed examples are presented to illustrate these three characteristics. Finally, the technology difficulties in naval ship concept design are also presented.

Among the various challenges that spaceborne radar observations of the ocean face, the following two issues are probably of a higher priority: inadequate dynamic resolution, and ineffective vertical penetration. It is therefore the vision of the National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology of China that two highly anticipated breakthroughs in the coming decade are likely to be associated with radar interferometry and ocean lidar (OL) technology, which are expected to make a substantial contribution to a submesoscale-resolving and depth-resolving observation of the ocean. As an expanded follow-up of SWOT and an oceanic counterpart of CALIPSO, the planned “Guanlan” science mission comprises a dual-frequency (Ku and Ka) interferometric altimetry (IA), and a near-nadir pointing OL. Such an unprecedented combination of sensor systems has at least three prominent advantages. (i) The dual-frequency IA ensures a wider swath and a shorter repeat cycle which leads to a significantly improved temporal and spatial resolution up to days and kilometers. (ii) The first spaceborne active OL ensures a deeper penetration depth and an all-time detection which leads to a layered characterization of the optical properties of the subsurface ocean, while also serving as a near-nadir altimeter measuring vertical velocities associated with the divergence, and convergence of geostrophic eddy motions in the mixed layer. (iii) The simultaneous functioning of the IA/OL system allows for an enhanced correction of the contamination effects of the atmosphere and the air-sea interface, which in turn considerably reduces the error budgets of the two sensors. As a result, the integrated IA/OL payload is expected to resolve the ocean variability at submeso and sub-week scales with a centimeter-level accuracy, while also partially revealing marine life systems and ecosystems with a 10-m vertical interval in the euphotic layer, moving a significant step forward toward a “transparent ocean” down to the vicinity of the thermocline, both dynamically and bio-optically.

One problem in incremental product development is that geometric models are limited in their ability to explore radical alternative design variants. In this publication, a function modeling approach is suggested to increase the amount and variety of explored alternatives, since function models (FM) provide greater model flexibility. An enhanced function-means (EF-M) model capable of representing the constraints of the design space as well as alternative designs is created through a reverse engineering process. This model is then used as a basis for the development of a new product variant. This work describes the EF-M model's capabilities for representing the design space and integrating novel solutions into the existing product structure and explains how these capabilities support the exploration of alternative design variants. First-order analyses are executed, and the EF-M model is used to capture and represent already existing design information for further analyses. Based on these findings, a design space exploration approach is developed. It positions the FM as a connection between legacy and novel designs and, through this, allows for the exploration of more diverse product concepts. This approach is based on three steps – decomposition, design, and embodiment – and builds on the capabilities of EF-M to model alternative solutions for different requirements. While the embodiment step of creating the novel product's geometry is still a topic for future research, the design space exploration concept can be used to enable wider, more methodological, and potentially automated design space exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the scientific revolution and technological development led to the development of architectural trends, where the structure of mosques was affected globally, regionally and locally in terms of design concept, which led to creativity in thinking and innovation in the design of mosques, where the environmental and physical characteristics of the mosque remained constant on the importance of the mosque and its requirements as a place With the change in the concept of design, personality and architectural identity, and the relationship between the mosque and the environment of different urban areas, also led some factors as (environment, society, economy) to convert elements and vocabulary of mosques, these paper aims to read the critical analysis of the impact of the era variables and the sustainable architecture trends to design the mosque concept, monitoring, and analyze and evaluate architectural transformations with the integration between forms, spaces, and the meanings of symbolic expressions, through the elements and vocabulary of the mosques structure types, its role and mission in the Islamic city, also study the principles of the mosques design and its development through (plans, elevations, structural system, details) to derive architectural values and principles and integrate them into a modern architectural style to express the Islamic architectural personality. As an attempt to present an architectural character, values, concepts, aesthetic, social, cultural and environmental standards according to the nature of each society, to explore new horizons for the future sustainability of the concept of mosque design, the research relies on some descriptive methodological methods based on information gathering and highlighting the theoretical backgrounds of the different trends, A comparative analytical approach to the monitoring and analysis of case study samples using of statistical analysis, the results are extracted and graphically illustrated by the graph method and charts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the EUROfusion framework, a Molten Lead Ceramic Breeder (MLCB) breeding blanket is being developed at KIT as an alternative, cost-effective and low technology-risk solid breeder blanket for EU DEMO. The use of molten lead as neutron multiplier has been identified very promising, solving key potential issues coupled with the use of Be in solid breeder blankets. This MLCB concept has been derived from the enhanced Helium Cooled Pebble Bed, which is based on fission-like "fuel-breeder pin" configuration. Compared to former cooling-plate configuration, this concept greatly reduce the pressure drop, enabling the use of existing helium-circulator. After initial design studies with this concept for the previous EU DEMO baseline (BL2015), the status of the design activities on MLCB for the latest EU DEMO baseline (BL2017) is presented in this paper. First, neutronics analyses have been performed to assess and optimize the tritium breeding performance. Then, structural integrity under in-box LOCA has been assessed and the design has been iterated to fulfill the design criteria. Thereafter, thermo-hydraulic analyses have been conducted to evaluate the temperatures and pressure drops. After several design iterations to satisfy the temperature and pressure drop requirements, a structural assessment under normal condition has been conducted respecting the RCC-MRx rules. The results show that the current MLCB design fulfills the basic nuclear and thermo-mechanic-hydraulic requirements, setting the path for a consolidated design of this concept. Due to the absence of water-reactive elements in MLCB concept, water can be also used as coolant, which is under investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new course introduces modern concept-design methods to first-year mechanical engineering students at Georgia Southern University, USA. Since students at this college level do not have design experience or engineering science knowledge, the class follows a breakdown of the design process, the steps of it being sequentially applied in a student team project to develop original design concepts for a product. The focus is placed on customer needs, which the students develop by the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) technique. The QFD sequence requires students to realize first customers and their requirements, to then carry out market research for existing competing products, and generate specifications and design constraints. The employed design sequence leads first-year students to apply some classic and modern concept generation techniques (such as TRIZ) in a team project; generated concepts are then evaluated to realize a final one. As a follow-up of that project, the author has developed and teaches the use of a novel design-improvement sequence, which combines QFD and TRIZ and overcomes the contradictions between engineering specifications. Examples of student work and assessment of student learning outcomes are presented and discussed. They show that the teaching and use of the author's QFD-TRIZ sequence successfully guide students to learn and effectively apply the TRIZ methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, consumers are no longer merely satisfied with functional use of products. They are seeking for a kind of comprehensive experience which combines multisensory factors and takes the product-service system (PSS) as the carrier. Due to the lack of key information affecting user experience (UX) such as target users' persona, PSS scenarios, interaction sequence and modality, the traditional product concept information model cannot effectively support UX-centered PSS development activities. In this respect, first, the process of UX formation and its influencing factors were analyzed. Second, the object-oriented and semantic network methods were employed to characterize the meta-design information related to UX, a Meta scenario interaction-centered model was proposed. Then the seven layers structure scenario interaction-centered conceptual information model to support UX design of PSS was constructed. It incorporates the semantic network as its basis and is particularly suitable for characterizing dynamic Interactive behaviors. Finally, a prototype modeling system for user-oriented PSS design concept was developed based on Neo4j graph database and a sweeping robot PSS conceptual modeling case was introduced to analyze the application prospect of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late years, the size of RoRo cargo ships has continuously increased, leading to the so-called Large Car Truck Carriers (LCTC). The design of these vessels introduced new challenges that shall be considered during the ship design since the conceptual stage, which has a very strong impact on the technical and economic performances of the vessel during all its life-cycle. In this work, the concept design of an LCTC is presented based on Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM). A large set of design alternatives have been generated and compared in order to find out the most promising feasible designs. The proposed approach is based on a Mathematical Design Model (MDM) capable to assess all the main technical and economic characteristics for each design. Among the others, here focus has been done on the ship stability to assure the compliance with statutory rules within the MDM. A new stability metamodel has been developed capable to define the cross curves of stability at the concept design stage. The proposed MADM methodology has been applied to North Europe-Mediterranean transport scenario highlighting the impact of main particulars describing hull geometry on the technical and economic performances of an LCTC ship.