Cultural Heritage and Adaptive Reuse as a Contributor to Well-Being

This chapter aims to discuss the dialectic relationship between interior environments of heritage buildings and users and the importance of preserving interior elements as communicators of cultural significance. Today the conservation practice and reuse proposals focus on preserving the architectural envelope of buildings rather than interior aspects. Conversely, interiors need specific safeguard and care, not only due to their cultural significance but also because they are the part most closely connected to the real life of users. In the perspective of cultural conservation, existing buildings represent the continuity of cultural values from the past to the future, and at this point, interior architecture is crucial as it provides an authentic interaction between users and spaces conveying all these values. Therefore, the conservation of interior envelope and interior elements rises as a very important issue to be discussed, affecting the occupant's well-being in a very subjective and sometimes unconscious way (considering the cultural belonging).

The Ray Optimization Method for the Determination of Workspaces of Planar Parallel Manipulators of General Design

An extension to a novel optimization approach for the determination of workspaces of planar manipulators is presented. This approach provides a general method for the determination of manipulator workspaces and has the advantage that it may easily be automated. The method consists of finding a suitable initial radiating point interior to the accessible output set of the manipulator, and then determining the points of intersection of a representative pencil of rays, emanating from this point, with the boundary of the accessible set. The points of intersection are determined by means of an optimization approach in which a dynamic constrained optimization algorithm is used. If any section of the workspace boundary cannot be determined due to non-convexity, then the missing section is mapped using a suitably chosen new radiating point. The method is illustrated by its application to a generally constrained planar parallel manipulator. The method has been implemented in a practical, interactive computer code that has been used to determine convex and non-convex workspaces of different parallel manipulators of arbitrary geometry.

Force in the Plane of Two Joined Semi-Infinite Plates

The stress due to a force parallel to the plane of two joined semi-infinite plates is obtained from the three-dimensional state of stress produced by a force operative at a point interior to one of two joined semi-infinite elastic solids. The variation in the traction on the interface of a steel and aluminum plate is shown graphically.