Legal Risk Criteria Versus Tunnel Safety Guidelines: Freight Railway Safety in the Netherlands

In 2006, in the Netherlands the Betuweline will be realized between the port of Rotterdam and the German Hinterland. The Betuweline is a dedicated high-speed freight railway for all kinds of freight transport, including hazardous materials. The Betuweline crosses multiple built environments and comprises 5 tunnels. As a result, safety is a main issue for various stakeholders such as railway engineers, spatial planners and emergency responders. For this railway, however, the juridical character of the safety topics differs widely from (hard) legal risk criteria such as individual risk to (soft) safety guidelines such as accessibility by emergency responders. In this article, safety topics of the Betuweline are described and analyzed with regard to the available laws and guidelines in order to search for opportunities to reduce societal risk and society’s vulnerability.

Sustainable Design Through Flexible Product Evolution

Sustainable design defined broadly is the problem of designing environmentally benign products so that the environment can be maintained with minimal negative effects from the product throughout the product’s entire lifecycle. This research investigates how sustainable design can be achieved at the conceptual design stage. Although sustainability encompasses a vast number of issues ranging from energy efficient solutions, design for disassembly, recycling, proper material selection, and improved manufacturing choices, the research focus of this work is on the particular issue of product evolution as it relates to the flexibility of a product or concept. Product evolution, often powered by new technology, erases the market competitiveness of concepts over time and impacts flexibility on the design effort side. Specifically, how does the designer develop concepts that can at least partially be reused and adapted to the next product generation with minimal effort? One answer is to design flexible concepts that can incur unknown future changes with maximum concept reuse. Flexibility in this context implies the property of a concept, physical solution, component, or product, to be robust and tolerant to generally unavoidable evolutionary changes. The challenge is to know how to configure a product to satisfy this requirement. As part of this research, we perform empirical studies of product evolution to determine evolutionary trends. Product evolution is measured in the broad terms of product performance over time. The goal is to predict when a product should evolve by either 1) moving from the lower plateau of an S-curve to the higher plateau or 2) jumping to a new S-curve being prepared to do so in a sustainable manner. That is, the objective is to allow companies to be able to reuse components or platforms (including reconditioning and recycling), tooling as well as design and manufacturing staff. The key toward this goal is an understanding how products evolve and what conditions coincide with product change. The approach is to investigate the types of changes (evolutions) that lead to flexible (sustainable) designs. The results of this research can be used for a prescriptive approach in developing a sustainable design method that relies on this newly acquired knowledge of product evolution.

Challenges and Methods in the Quantification of Design Errors and Solution Elements

To error-proof the design process, tools such as Design Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and Project Quality Function Deployment mitigate risk through thorough understanding of the consequences of both the process-level errors that can occur and the solution elements that mitigate them. However, the quantification of design errors and prioritization of other elements are complicated by the temporal and spatial distance of the decisions from the end-result. This paper discusses measures for design elements in the context of process-based analysis, including the design errors, tasks, and project resources. The Risk Priority Number is the standard measure of criticality of failure modes and their effects. However, alternatives to the traditional RPN have emerged in forms such as expected and life-cycle cost as well as QFD-based techniques. The paper explores the benefits and challenges of these traditional and new measures and concludes with a discussion into converting between the measures.

Commercializing an Automatically Deployable Rollover Protective Structure (AutoROPS) for a Zero-Turn Riding Mower: Initial Product Safety Assessment Criteria

Fatal injuries have occurred to operators of zero-turn riding mowers when these machines rolled over during high speed sharp turns or on uneven terrain. These mowers are frequently operated in low clearance conditions such as around trees and when loaded onto low-roofed trailers. The automatically deployable rollover protective structure (AutoROPS) can provide both protection during rollover events and the capability to operate a mower in low clearance conditions. Until recently, AutoROPS technology development has occurred only in a government laboratory. In the current phase of development, private industry has taken an interest in the AutoROPS technology and is pursuing, with NIOSH, the product testing and development needed to commercialize the AutoROPS on a zero-turn riding mower. The government’s role, as a partner with private industry in bringing new safety technology into practical application, is discussed. Importantly, for the AutoROPS product to be as effective as possible, it should not introduce additional, unacceptable risks. Previous product safety assessments led by government laboratories are reviewed. These assessments were made to minimize hazards in products developed in government labs. A product safety assessment was performed on the AutoROPS during its design phase. In addition to minimizing the severity and frequency of operator injury resulting from an accidental rollover, the assessment considered 1) environmental factors such as corrosion, electromagnetic interference, and vibration; 2) human error avoidance; and 3) safeguard reliability analysis. This assessment was a cooperative effort between the safety engineering design team at the Division of Safety Research of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; a ROPS manufacturer; and a zero-turn riding mower manufacturer. Design features are being incorporated into the prototype AutoROPS to address hazards encountered in normal use of these machines.

Slip and Fall Characterization of Floors

During ambulation, every maneuver causes the feet to impose a tangential loading at each contact with the floor. If the frictional resistance at the contact point is less than the associated tangential loading, slipping occurs and sometimes falling. There are five disciplines, some recently developed, that enable one to develop the general theory for predicting the number of walkers who will slip within a given time period on a statistically homogeneous and isotropic floor. These include force-plate studies, floor duty cycles, tribometry, extreme value theory of slipperiness, and floor reliability theory. When used with some additional bookkeeping notions, the general theory will be extended to real floors traversed by walkers with multiple ambulation styles and wearing a variety of footwear. In contrast, conventional slip and fall theory does not account for floor usage, different footwear and various ambulation styles, nor can it be used to determine the number of walkers who actually slip on a given floor.

Analysis of Tiplock Phenomenon in Extension Ladders

Extension ladder accidents injure thousands of people each year in the U.S. One cause of these accidents is false lock of the flylocks. Flylocks are the devices that support the upper or fly section of an extended ladder. False locked flylocks are not fully locked, but nevertheless support a load. False lock is not stable and may release under disturbance of the ladder, e.g. from climbing. False lock modes include tiplock, flipperlock, and camlock. If a false lock releases the ladder will telescope, and may cause serious injury. One false lock mode is tiplock, where the tip of the flylock is resting on the rung of the ladder in a metastable position. The tiplock may be held in place by mechanical locking, or by friction between the tip and the rung. Tiplock may occur when the ladder is being extended and the fly section is not raised enough to fully engage the flylocks. Ladder labels usually instruct “Securely engage ladder locks before climbing,” but typically do not instuct a user how to do this. Ladder users employ various methods to securely engage flylocks. These methods do not always prevent false lock. No gravity or spring actuated flylock design is known which will completely eliminate tiplock, but various designs have different ranges of fly section travel over which tiplock can occur (tiplock “window”). A mathematical expression defines the conditions under which friction tiplock can occur. Two methods of evaluating the tiplock window are discussed: geometric analysis and physical measurement. Tiplock propensity during random ladder extension is calculated. A geometric analysis is made of two flylocks with different tip radii. The flylock with the smaller tip radius is observed to have a smaller tiplock window.

The Technology Maturity of Product and Its Mapping

Technology maturity (TM) of product is a crucial index for enterprises. But the existing methods of technology maturity mapping do not always work. By integrating some fruits of Altshuller and Darrell Mann, a technique of mapping technology maturity of product based on patent analysis was put forward. The product lifecycle was subdivided, and the algorithm and approaches of mapping TM were discussed. On the basis of above technique the software named TMMS was developed. As an illustration the TM of butterfly valve was mapped by TMMS.

Analysis of a Common Cause Hypothesis in a Forensic Product Defect Analysis

Forensic analysis of an accident involving machinery or equipment requires the engineering investigator to determine what role the equipment played in the accident. That analysis involves consideration of “defect” and “proximate cause,” items that have very specific legal meaning. The authors will discuss legal requirements relating to the investigator’s role in product defect analysis and will provide examples of scientific methodology deemed admissible in Federal Court. Two case examples are given where a reliability analysis based on the Weibull failure distribution was used to support, in part, the expert’s conclusions.

Product Development via Industry-University Joint R&D Ventures: What Makes a “Win-Win” Partnership?

There are substantial benefits for both industry and universities from performing joint R&D projects. Given the significant potential benefits, both tangible and intangible, the level of such activity, however, seems surprisingly low. One reason hypothesized for this discrepancy is that the potential partners are motivated towards opposite goals: industry wishes to limit publication of research results due to fears of loss of competitive advantage in their markets as competitors obtain the benefits of the research at no cost, while academia is motivated to maximize publication. Intuitively, this would seem to be a fundamental difference between the potential partners. This paper studies this issue through the use of insights gained by a new analytic model of the profitability of such collaborations. First amongst these is that given the typical speed of product innovation and the typical publishing delay found in archival journals, little or no competitive advantage is expected to be lost by the industrial partner by allowing unrestricted publication freedom to the university partner. A second interesting insight occurs in the situation where a firm’s competitor forms the collaboration with the university partner. In general, if it is profitable for one industry partner to join the collaboration, the most beneficial decision for other firms in that market is to also join the collaboration.

Weld Analysis Methods for Aerospace Systems

An example of the application of probabilistic structural analysis to welds is presented below. . The same methodology can be used for probabilistic structural analysis of parent metals in tank structures and other structural components such as supports. The methodology is based on a stress vs. strength model. The results may be used for a comparative analysis of candidate weld process improvements. The model can be incorporated into a probabilistic risk assessment which includes the undesirable impacts of weld failure.