Optimal Paths for Progressive Aircraft Subsystem Electrification in Early Design

Systems thinking methods have evolved into a popular toolkit in Human Factors to analyze complex sociotechnical systems at early design stages, such as future airliners’ single pilot operations (SPO). A quantitative re-analysis of studies from a systematic literature review (Schmid & Stanton, 2019b) was conducted to categorically assess their contributions to researching SPO and to fitting their systems thinking methods to contemporary Human Factors problems. Although only 15 of 79 publications applied systems thinking methods to operational, automation, and the pilot incapacitation issue(s) of SPO, these studies provided a comprehensive concept of operations that is able to deal with many issues of future single-piloted airliners. These theoretical models require further evaluation by looking at the empirical instances of system behavior. Finally, the hierarchical structures in system’s development and operations from systems thinking enable Human Factors professionals and researchers to approach SPO systematically.

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Including Urban Heat Island in Bioclimatic Early-Design Phases: A Simplified Methodology and Sample Applications

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13115918 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (11) ◽

pp. 5918

Author(s):

Giacomo Chiesa ◽

Yingyue Li

Keyword(s):

Urban Heat Island ◽

Urban Climate ◽

Temperate Climate ◽

Heat Island ◽

Climate Data ◽

Degree Days ◽

Climate Conditions ◽

Early Design ◽

Correct Definition ◽

Urban Heat

Urban heat island and urban-driven climate variations are recognized issues and may considerably affect the local climatic potential of free-running technologies. Nevertheless, green design and bioclimatic early-design analyses are generally based on typical rural climate data, without including urban effects. This paper aims to define a simple approach to considering urban shapes and expected effects on local bioclimatic potential indicators to support early-design choices. Furthermore, the proposed approach is based on simplifying urban shapes to simplify analyses in early-design phases. The proposed approach was applied to a sample location (Turin, temperate climate) and five other climate conditions representative of Eurasian climates. The results show that the inclusion of the urban climate dimension considerably reduced rural HDD (heating degree-days) from 10% to 30% and increased CDD (cooling degree-days) from 70% to 95%. The results reveal the importance of including the urban climate dimension in early-design phases, such as building programming in which specific design actions are not yet defined, to support the correct definition of early-design bioclimatic analyses.

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Optimal paths of nonequilibrium stochastic fields: The Kardar-Parisi-Zhang interface as a test case

Physical Review Research ◽

10.1103/physrevresearch.1.032043 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Alexander K. Hartmann ◽

Baruch Meerson ◽

Pavel Sasorov

Keyword(s):

Test Case ◽

Stochastic Fields ◽

Optimal Paths

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R-DFS: A Coverage Path Planning Approach Based on Region Optimal Decomposition

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs13081525 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (8) ◽

pp. 1525

Author(s):

Gang Tang ◽

Congqiang Tang ◽

Hao Zhou ◽

Christophe Claramunt ◽

Shaoyang Men

Keyword(s):

Path Planning ◽

Google Earth ◽

Simulation Experiments ◽

Minimum Width ◽

Coverage Path Planning ◽

Optimal Paths ◽

Planning Approach ◽

Polygonal Area ◽

Aerial Vehicle ◽

Working Distance

Most Coverage Path Planning (CPP) strategies based on the minimum width of a concave polygonal area are very likely to generate non-optimal paths with many turns. This paper introduces a CPP method based on a Region Optimal Decomposition (ROD) that overcomes this limitation when applied to the path planning of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in a port environment. The principle of the approach is to first apply a ROD to a Google Earth image of a port and combining the resulting sub-regions by an improved Depth-First-Search (DFS) algorithm. Finally, a genetic algorithm determines the traversal order of all sub-regions. The simulation experiments show that the combination of ROD and improved DFS algorithm can reduce the number of turns by 4.34%, increase the coverage rate by more than 10%, and shorten the non-working distance by about 29.91%. Overall, the whole approach provides a sound solution for the CPP and operations of UAVs in port environments.

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Metrics for Measuring Sustainable Product Design Concepts

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14123469 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (12) ◽

pp. 3469

Author(s):

Ji Han ◽

Pingfei Jiang ◽

Peter R. N. Childs

Keyword(s):

Product Design ◽

End Of Life ◽

Environmental Impacts ◽

Conceptual Design ◽

Design Stage ◽

Sustainable Product Design ◽

Early Design ◽

Design Concepts ◽

Concept Evaluation ◽

Sustainable Product

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.

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