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We present a simulation tool that utilizes advanced modeling techniques to quantify the customer-relevant features of different battery electric vehicles (BEV) concepts. By incorporating comprehensive longitudinal and lateral dynamics analyses, the tool provides an in-depth understanding of passenger vehicle concepts in various driving conditions. Furthermore, the tool emphasizes evaluating comfort, presenting a holistic view concluding into the overall driving experience. Metrics considering the vehicle’s packaging are employed to assess the comfort aspects of the concepts. Implementing this simulation tool achieves a more systematic and reliable approach to evaluating BEV concepts. The application based on the parameters of 18 state-of-the-art BEV proved its compliance in the presented categories with the results of physical tests performed by reputable magazines with great experience and comprehensice test protocols. Its academic foundation ensures the utilization of state-of-the-art methodologies and the integration of the latest research findings in vehicle dynamics and comfort. This simulation tool offers automotive engineers, researchers, and industry stakeholders a valuable resource for objectively assessing and benchmarking the performance and comfort aspects of BEV concepts. With its ability to provide accurate evaluations and reasoning for weaknesses, this tool has the potential to significantly contribute to the advancement and optimization of future electric vehicle designs by assessing concepts in early development stages before physical prototypes are available, allowing for cost-efficient modifications.

Summary: During the past decade, the progressive collapse of structures has received growing attention, and the study of member importance is a key step for investigating the progressive collapse resistance. However, traditional methods for evaluating the member importance usually employ a single indicator, and when multiple indicators are involved, different indicators may generate different member rankings. Moreover, the truss string structure is a multiple super‐stationary structure with many members, and the current studies mainly focus on cable failure, which does not mean that other members are not important. In this study, the initial selection of important members is first performed based on concept evaluation, and then, the alternate path method is used to analyze the progressive collapse resistance of truss string structures; the slope degradation coefficient γ of incremental dynamic analysis curve, load capacity degradation coefficient β, and nested load capacity degradation coefficient β′ are introduced; and the sensitivity coefficient SIj and fragility coefficient VIi are defined with axial force as the structural response. Based on the above five indicators, two cases are conducted to evaluate the member importance. The analysis results show that the cable and the bottom chord member at the support are evaluated as the first‐level important members. Through the analysis of different indicators, it is found that the regularity of the coefficient of each member is inconsistent for different indicators. The results could be one‐sided if the important members were evaluated by a single indicator only. In addition, the second‐level important members of truss string structures are evaluated by multi‐indicator analysis. Finally, the nominal progressive collapse resistance of truss string structures is given based on the importance coefficient of the first‐ and second‐level important members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lang Factor is Conceptual Estimating Method for estimating Total Plant Cost (TPC) by multiplying a Factor (f) by its Total Equipment Cost (TEC). Hans Lang introduced this Concept in 1947 (70+ years ago). Many things have changed since Hans Lang introduced this Concept, such as Modern construction techniques, computerized design practices, Etc. For its current implementation, the Author needs to research the correlation between TPC and TEC and the most appropriate lang factor range value to be applied in Class 4 Estimation. To address this issue, the Author Collected 92 of PERTAMINA's Project Data Costs from 2017 to 2022. The range of TPC Value starts from $12.2 million to $1.1 Billion and processes it using Cost Estimating Relationship (CER) and Monte Carlo Simulation. The study's findings show a very strong correlation between TPC and TEC. The authors chose the 3.00 to 5.33 range as a precise, valid, and reliable range to be utilized as an updated Lang factor that will be used to estimate Class 4 AACE for liquid processing plant costs in Indonesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary discusses improving research advocacy as part of National Cancer Institute (NCI) clinical trial activities in scientific steering committees and task forces between 2016 and 2020. Before 2016, the focus of patient advocate input on clinical trial concept evaluation was assessing accrual feasibility. By leveraging informal benchmarking and an outside-in perspective, the NCI patient advocate steering committee, comprised of NCI scientific steering committee and task force advocates, has recalibrated research advocacy within and across its clinical trial concepts. Additionally, by focusing on research advocacy fundamentals, the NCI patient advocate steering committee clarified the scope of the research advocate roles, focused its mission, defined and developed competencies, measured engagement, and created collateral and processes that support better interactions and greater value generation. Continuous improvement in the collateral and the underlying approaches, along with calibrating their application and monitoring results, will be necessary to keep pace with the science and further enhance the value of cancer clinical trial research advocacy. The road ahead should build on these fundamentals and include increased emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion in clinical trial and research advocacy participants and the supporting infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concept generation is one of the most critical steps in product design process. Recently, several computational tools for automatically generating design concepts were developed, which can generate a big number of design concepts. This brings a new challenge to traditional expert-based design concept evaluation methods since experts are not capable of evaluating a large number of design concept in a short time. Therefore, this work develops a knowledge-based method to roughly evaluation design concepts and elect a small number of design concepts for expert-based evaluation. In the proposed method, a knowledge base containing 100 design concepts extracted from existing products is constructed, and four features, including Number of Function (#F), Function Compatibility Index (FCI), Function Component Mapping Index (FCMI) and Component Compatibility Index (CCI) are defined for building evaluation models. Based on the knowledge base and features, several computational evaluation models are developed including novelty evaluation model (NEM), feasibility discrimination model (FDM) and feasibility evaluation model (FEM). Empirical results show the proposed method is capable of evaluating design concepts. This work makes two-fold contributes to the research community, the first is a manually constructed knowledge base is published, while the second is four features are defined and used to define design concept evaluation models.

The capital goods industry is characterized by intensified competition and increased fragmentation of demand. Consequently, manufacturers are required to handle higher variety at lower cost with rapid responsiveness. Reconfigurable manufacturing shows potential to meet these requirements through efficient functionality conversion of modularized equipment for increased ability to adapt the footprint to achieve cost-improvements and competitive advantage. However, current models for evaluating the investment of reconfigurable manufacturing concepts lack consideration of footprint adaptability. Therefore, this paper presents a model considering reconfigurability investments and footprint, which is applied on a case at a Danish manufacturer of capital goods for the energy sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The Human-Centered Design methodology advocates VR prototyping, as an effective tool to evaluate concepts in a cost-efficient, time-saving way. It is the question of whether it works in the development of a product intended to increase privacy while flying. OBJECTIVE: The current study aims at the application of virtual reality on the evaluation of a new privacy bubble called PRIVA for the passenger cabin. METHODS: An interactive VR was created and aligned with the HTC VIVE headset. 40 participants took part in the experiment as well as in the post-experiment survey. RESULTS: The concept was in overall, desirable as it was perceived to be more private, comfortable, satisfactory, effective, and appealing to participants compared to the current seat experiences. It was also perceived as more satisfactory with regards to the activities. CONCLUSIONS: The VR was effective, although there are limitations, the product seems promising and should be developed further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among several phases of new product development, concept selection is the most crucial activity and it gives perfection to further progress of a product. Customer's ideas and linguistic requirements are often substantial in concept specifications to assess quantitative criteria, which gives satisfaction for a product to progress in the markets. This work aggregates concept selection on design parameters values by merging acceptable- and satisfactory-level needs of the customers. A promising framework is developed based on soft sets, TOPSIS and the Shannon entropy. Customer's preferences on incorporating design values are identified based on acceptable- and satisfactory-level needs, and these preferences are weighted through Shannon entropy. By performing AND operation on the soft set of level requirements of one customer with the soft set of requirements of another customer, several weighted tables of soft sets are obtained on the pair of design parameters values. To obtain the best concept on different levels of requirements, TOPSIS is performed which provides several integrated evaluations. An illustration is considered for the demonstration of the method, brings the best concept for two customers which is acceptable for both of the customers, satisfactory for both the customers and vise-versa. Finally, the comparisons are presented with recent major existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of sensory space was first formulated over 25 years ago and has been widely adopted in oenology for around the last 15 years. It is based on both the common organoleptic characteristics of products and the mental representations built by specific groups of people. Exploring this concept involves first assessing whether it already exists for tasters, and, when this is the case, conducting perceptual evaluations to verify its effectiveness before potentially highlighting the associated sensory properties. The goal of this review, which focuses on applications linked to the field of oenology, is to study how these three steps are carried out, how the corresponding tasks and tests are performed and managed, and the type of results that can be obtained.

Although products can contribute to ecosystems positively, they can cause negative environmental impacts throughout their life cycles, from obtaining raw material, production, and use, to end of life. It is reported that most negative environmental impacts are decided at early design phases, which suggests that the determination of product sustainability should be considered as early as possible, such as during the conceptual design stage, when it is still possible to modify the design concept. However, most of the existing concept evaluation methods or tools are focused on assessing the feasibility or creativity of the concepts generated, lacking the measurements of sustainability of concepts. The paper explores key factors related to sustainable design with regard to environmental impacts, and describes a set of objective measures of sustainable product design concept evaluation, namely, material, production, use, and end of life. The rationales of the four metrics are discussed, with corresponding measurements. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the use and effectiveness of the metrics for evaluating product design concepts. The paper is the first study to explore the measurement of product design sustainability focusing on the conceptual design stage. It can be used as a guideline to measure the level of sustainability of product design concepts to support designers in developing sustainable products. Most significantly, it urges the considerations of sustainability design aspects at early design phases, and also provides a new research direction in concept evaluation regarding sustainability.

This work addresses the problem of concept evaluation in uncertain environments of early design stages, with the help of the proposed integrated method involving bijective soft sets, Shannon entropy and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The application of soft set theory in the domain of product design and development is still not being efficiently utilised by previous works. Therefore, the benefit of soft set theory to define the attributes of an object through any type of approximations is used to deal with qualitative description of design criteria, by designers, and the linguistic requirements of customers. Bijective soft sets help the designers to effectively map individual customer requirements to the generated design concepts. With the help of Shannon entropy, customers' preferences among the identified needs are captured in the new product development process, thus, improving the overall effectiveness of the concept evaluation process. This work considers concept evaluation process as a group multiple criteria decision making problem where, design specifications and customer requirements in qualitative form are first captured by using soft set theory and Shannon entropy and then, this information is incorporated in the framework of TOPSIS to identify the best concept in the evaluation process. The developed integrated method for concept evaluation process is validated with the help of a design illustration, which shows that soft set theory can serve as an effective tool for designers and researchers to reduce the imprecise and vague content of early design stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A criteria clustering and weighting approach based on three-way decision making. • Uncertain evaluation information is modeled objectively based on clustering results. • An incomplete information fusion approach based on interval D-S evidence theory. • Consideration of decision risk can improve the objectivity of evaluation results. • Consideration of information conflicts can improve the reliability of results. Concept evaluation plays a pivotal role in complex mechatronic product development, and its results greatly influence the subsequent design and manufacturing. However, the inclusion of large-scale criteria introduces complex calculations and coupling relationships, which will affect the evaluation. Moreover, the limited availability of early design knowledge, risk attitudes and cognitive differences of decision makers (DMs) lead to incompleteness and uncertainty in evaluation information. To address these challenges, a concept evaluation approach based on incomplete information with considering large-scale criteria and risk attitudes is proposed. Initially, an evaluation criteria clustering approach based on interval three-way decision-making is proposed, which considers DMs' cognitions and risk attitudes. Second, the uncertainty model of evaluation information is established according to the criteria cluster result, and the incomplete evaluation information is fused using the interval Dempster-Shafer evidence theory which takes conflicting evidence into consideration. Third, the optimal concept is selected using the combined criteria weighting approach and the interval acronym in Portuguese for interactive and multi-criteria decision making (I-TODIM). Finally, a pipe inspection robot is utilized as an engineering case to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Approach comparison and sensitivity analysis demonstrate the reliability and robustness of the proposed approach when applied to large-scale criteria concept evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concept selection is among the most crucial activities in new product development, since the consequences of a bad choice may be disastrous. The recent research of concept selection benefited from soft set theory as an effective tool for that purpose. However, some uncertainties still affix in design concept evaluation, which can be overcome by utilizing membership and non-membership functions on design attributes. In this paper, a novel approach of design concept evaluation is introduced based on generalized intuitionistic fuzzy soft sets. By combining bijective soft set and intuitionistic fuzzy set, design concepts are specified on design attributes. Generalized b-intuitionistic fuzzy soft sets are used to illustrate the mapping between customer demands and generated design concepts. An algorithm is proposed to select an appropriate object from a set of objects for one or more than one customers. Finally, we present a comparison of our methodology with focal existing methods, and we identify some of their limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considered customer requirements to determine the concept evaluation criteria weights because they are both the start and the end of the concept design. And it employed hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set(HFLTS) to express experts’ evaluation information. This paper provided hesitant fuzzy quality function deployment(QFD) to calculate the criteria weights and provided hesitant fuzzy PROMETHEEIIto rank the concepts aiming at traditional concept evaluation methods have decision-making compensation. The possibility degree formula of HFLTS replaced the preference function in PROMETHEEIIto avoid the construction of the preference function in the hesitant fuzzy environment. It obtained the concept compromise solution by establishing a 0-1 linear programming model with minimizing the total distance between each expert’s sort results and the concept compromise solution. Finally, it gave out an example of ranking the concepts of a home sweeping machine to demonstrate the proposed approach. The results show that the proposed approach can avoid the determination of expert weights and the problem that the flow values are very close. The proposed approach effectively improves the objectivity and accuracy of the ranking results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is necessary to integrate environmental aspects during the early stages of the design of eco-innovation and eco-ideation processes. In addition, it has been observed that concept evaluation metrics do not exist that measure the dimensions of creativity, such as the novelty, utility or technical feasibility of a process along with its environmental indicators; hence, current metrics do not enable global evaluations. In this context, an eco-ideation process is structured that aims to find new applications for cork in the construction sector. To achieve this goal, a creative workshop is designed in which a multidisciplinary group generates ideas in order to conceptualise new cork applications. The objective is to establish a metric to evaluate the results of an eco-ideation process during the conceptual phase of the design process that considers creative and environmental dimensions. The metric has been adapted to three scenarios to highlight the importance of environmental dimensions when creative dimensions are matched. In addition, these scenarios describe the accuracy of the applied metrics, demonstrating that metrics using Likert values or discrete scales equalise the results, while dimensions with continuous values establish the real differences between the concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology for field-testing concepts through practitioner engagement. It was developed and trialled in a study involving the critique and reconceptualisation of the psychodramatic concept of warm-up. A critical review of the concept led to a reconceptualisation and description from which an explanatory document was drawn together as the lead statement for surveying psychodrama practitioners. The field-testing used online software to communicate with selected international participants. The lead document and survey invited critical text-based evaluative responses to the reconceptualisation. The responses were processed by selecting those with substantive critical comment and then clustering them according to a framework of criteria designed for concept evaluation. Responses were reviewed critically in the context of the overall conceptualisation and incorporated as appropriate into it. The process provided significant support for the new conceptualisation as well as critical input that led to its further improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urgency for significant reductions in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions highlights the importance of carbon sinks, i.e. solutions that can remove CO 2 from the atmosphere, and the possibility for offsetting historical emissions. The later the global GHG emissions turn to decline, the greater is the need for sinks or so called “negative emissions”. Achieving negative CO 2 emissions is possible by applying carbon capture in processes using biomass as feedstock (bio-CCS). Electricity production efficiency of chemical looping combustion (CLC) power plant is higher than in power plants based on solid fuel and other CO 2 capture technologies. The higher efficiency of CLC in comparison to other CCS technologies emphasizes the cost benefit of bio-CLC in terms of both, merit order and overall economic feasibility. The advantage of combined heat and power production (CHP) over the sole power production has been recognised also in the case of CCS applications. By CHP, process efficiencies over 90% (on LHV basis) are possible and efficiency penalties of the CCS processes can be minimised as decreased efficiency in power production can be compensated by additional heat production. In this paper, the most feasible concept for bio-CCS in power and CHP production is presented based on improved efficiency, negative emissions and benefits of CHP within Nordic bioenergy context. Techno-economic analyses of industrial scale CLC power plant and CHP plant are presented in different market situations. Feasibility of CLC investment and the utilization of such plants are investigated and compared to oxy-fuel and air combustion references in a fictive energy system. In general, the smaller scale is often limiting biomass applications, CLC, CHP and utilisation of CO 2 . In the presented bio-CLC concept, all of these advantages are combined in a scale which is realistic for commercial application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EC 2030 Framework acknowledges that CCS may have an important role in reducing direct emissions from industrial processes on the scale needed in the longer term. In this paper the potential of applying different CCUS concepts to different industrial applications in Finland has been evaluated from both the economic performance as well as the emission reduction potential point of view. The overall CO 2 emissions from industry as well as the heat and power sector in Finland were in 2013 about 52 Mt of which the estimated biogenic emissions comprise about 24 Mt. The results from this work show that with a CO 2 emission allowance price of 50 €/t, CCS would be economically feasible for 8 Mt CO 2 /a, covering transport and storage costs. Most of the cost-effective CCS applications in Finland would be in the biomass power & heat sector and in the pulp and paper industry. However, this requires that “negative” emissions from bio-CCS are acknowledged and included in the EU emission trading system. CCS does not provide a simple solution to reduce CO 2 emissions in Finland as there are no suitable formations for CO 2 storage, which means that CO 2 export would be required. However, a range of CO 2 utilisation options could be attractive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, lots of manufacturing companies have been attracted by the possibility to differentiate themselves from competitors introducing product related services in their traditional portfolio. During this transition, however, companies are not properly supported by proper methods and tools. In particular, the majority of the approaches addressing the PSS design are limiting their field of application only to “service design” and are specifically focusing on requirements generation and identification phases of the design process. Few of the approaches analysed contribute to concept development and evaluation phases and if so, they just address one of the two phases. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to propose the Product-Service Concept Tree (PSCT) method. This aims at suggesting a possible structure to identify, collect possible PSS solutions and manage their assessment (i.e. the selection of the best PSS to implement). Furthermore, it includes guidelines to lead industrial practitioners in easily use it. An application of the proposed method is also presented to demonstrate its industrial applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A design problem is usually solvable in different ways or by design alternatives. In this work, the term “concept” is used to refer to the design alternatives. Additionally, it is quite common that a design problem has to satisfy conflicting objectives. In these cases, the design problem can be formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem (MOP). One of the aims of this work was to show how to combine multiobjective requirements with concepts’ comparisons, in order to attain a satisfactory design. The second aim of this work was to take advantage of this methodology to obtain a battery model that described the dynamic behavior of the main electrical variables. Two objectives related to the model accuracy during the charge and discharge processes were used. In the final model selection, three different concepts were compared. These concepts differed in the complexity of their model structure. More complex models usually provide a good approximation of the process when identification data are used, but the approximation could be worse when validation data are applied. In this article, it is shown that a model with an intermediate complexity supplies a good approximation for both identification and validation data sets.