An improved way for evaluating competences: A different approach to project management learning .;

This paper presents a formal initiative for monitoring the competence acquisition by a team of students with different backgrounds facing the experience of being working by projects and in a project. These students are inexperienced in the project management field and they play this game on a time-shared manner along with other activities. The goal of this experience is to make some improvements in determining the competence levels acquired by means of how the work is being done. The use of this information, which is out of the scope of this particular work, could make possible to bring additional information to the students involved in terms of their individual competencies and the identification of new opportunities of personal improvement.

Approach to the use of indicators for the assessment of the environmental level of construction products

The European construction industry is supposed to consume the 40% of the natural European resources and to generate the 40% of the European solid waste. Conscious of the great damage being suffered by the environment because of construction activity, this work tries to provide the building actors with a new tool to improve the current situation. The tool proposed is a model for the comprehensive evaluation of construction products by determining their environmental level. In this research, the environmental level of a construction product has been defined as its quality of accomplishing the construction requirements needed by causing the minimum ecological impact in its surrounding environment. This information allows building actors to choose suitable materials for building needs and also for the environment, mainly in the project stage or on the building site, contributing to improve the relationship between buildings and environment. For the assessment of the environmental level of construction products, five indicators have been identified regarding their global environmental impact through the product life cycle: CO2 emissions provoked during their production, volume and toxicity of waste generated on the building site, durability and recycling capacity after their useful life. Therefore, the less environmental impact one construction product produces, the higher environmental level performs. The model has been tested in 30 construction products that include environmental criteria in their description. The results obtained will be discussed in this article. Furthermore, this model can lay down guidelines for the selection of ecoefficient construction products and the design of new eco-competitive and eco-committed ones

Instrumentation for accelerated life tests of concentrator solar cells

Concentrator photovoltaic is an emergent technology that may be a good economical and efficient alternative for the generation of electricity at a competitive cost. However, the reliability of these new solar cells and systems is still an open issue due to the high-irradiation level they are subjected to as well as the electrical and thermal stresses that they are expected to endure. To evaluate the reliability in a short period of time, accelerated aging tests are essential. Thermal aging tests for concentrator photovoltaic solar cells and systems under illumination are not available because no technical solution to the problem of reaching the working concentration inside a climatic chamber has been available. This work presents an automatic instrumentation system that overcomes the aforementioned limitation. Working conditions have been simulated by forward biasing the solar cells to the current they would handle at the working concentration (in this case, 700 and 1050 times the irradiance at one standard sun). The instrumentation system has been deployed for more than 10 000 h in a thermal aging test for III-V concentrator solar cells, in which the generated power evolution at different temperatures has been monitored. As a result of this test, the acceleration factor has been calculated, thus allowing for the degradation evolution at any temperature in addition to normal working conditions to be obtained.

Improvement of Mechanical Properties and Life Extension of High Reliability Structural Components by Laser Shock Processing

Profiting by the increasing availability of laser sources delivering intensities above 109 W/cm2 with pulse energies in the range of several Joules and pulse widths in the range of nanoseconds, laser shock processing (LSP) is being consolidating as an effective technology for the improvement of surface mechanical and corrosion resistance properties of metals and is being developed as a practical process amenable to production engineering. The main acknowledged advantage of the laser shock processing technique consists on its capability of inducing a relatively deep compression residual stresses field into metallic alloy pieces allowing an improved mechanical behaviour, explicitly, the life improvement of the treated specimens against wear, crack growth and stress corrosion cracking. Following a short description of the theoretical/computational and experimental methods developed by the authors for the predictive assessment and experimental implementation of LSP treatments, experimental results on the residual stress profiles and associated surface properties modification successfully reached in typical materials (specifically Al and Ti alloys) under different LSP irradiation conditions are presented. In particular, the analysis of the residual stress profiles obtained under different irradiation parameters and the evaluation of the corresponding induced surface properties as roughness and wear resistance are presented.

Accelerated life test of high luminosity AlGaInP LEDs

Specific tests to assess reliability of high luminosity AlInGaP LED for outdoor applications are needed. In this paper tests to propose a model involving three parameters: temperature, humidity and current have been carried out. Temperature, humidity and current accelerated model has been proposed to evaluate the reliability of this type of LED. Degradation and catastrophic failure mechanisms have been analyzed. Finally we analyze the effect of serial resistance in power luminosity degradation.

Quantity of CO2 Emissions in the Life Cycle of a Highway Infrastructure

There is strong evidence to indicate that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are accumulating at unprecedented concentrations in out atmosphere contributing to global climate change. Evidence is equally strong that human activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels, are driving force in this process (IPCC 2007). While different industries contribute varying amounts to total anthropogenic greenhouse gases, it is incumbent upon each to understand its contribution and search for sensible ways to reduce overall greenhouse gas production. The aim of this paper is the development of a methodology to determine the amount of CO2 emissions of a highway, allowing providing solutions that can improve the energy footprint and reduce its emissions

Prediction of wake effects on wind farm power production using a RANS approach. Part II. Offshore: Case studies from the UPWIND project

The estimation of power losses due to wind turbine wakes is crucial to understanding overall wind farm economics. This is especially true for large offshore wind farms, as it represents the primary source of losses in available power, given the regular arrangement of rotors, their generally largerdiameter and the lower ambient turbulence level, all of which conspire to dramatically affect wake expansion and, consequently, the power deficit. Simulation of wake effects in offshore wind farms (in reasonable computational time) is currently feasible using CFD tools. An elliptic CFD model basedon the actuator disk method and various RANS turbulence closure schemes is tested and validated using power ratios extracted from Horns Rev and Nysted wind farms, collected as part of the EU-funded UPWIND project. The primary focus of the present work is on turbulence modeling, as turbulent mixing is the main mechanism for flow recovery inside wind farms. A higher-order approach, based on the anisotropic RSM model, is tested to better take into account the imbalance in the length scales inside and outside of the wake, not well reproduced by current two-equation closure schemes.

Project based learning activities as a means of adapting conventional curricula to the demands of the 21st century aeronautical engineer: The design and building of the EYEFLY 1.

In this paper we report the process of designing and building the EYEFLY 1, a real UAS platform which has just performed its maiden flight. For the development of this aircraft, 30 groups of students from successive years at the Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniería Técnica Aeronáutica (EUITA) of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) carried out their compulsory End of Degree Project as a coordinated Project Based learning activity. Our conclusions clearly indicate that Project Based Learning activities can provide a valid complement to more conventional, theoretically-based, teaching methods. The combination of both approaches will allow us to maintain traditional but well-tested methods for providing our students with a sound knowledge of fundamental engineering disciplines and, at the same time, to introduce our students to exciting and relevant engineering situations and sceneries where social and business skills, such as communication skills, team-working or decision-taking, can be put into practice.

The time variable in the calculation of building structures. How to extend the working life until the 100 years?

The idea that a building and consequently its structure is for a lifetime has stopped being a reference. CTE establishes that the life utility of a normal construction structure should be of 50years. If the time variable is introduced in the calculation of actions on structures, seems evident thatdifferent values can be used for a standard building, for a provisional structure with ≤ 10 years of life utility or for a monumental building with a life utility of 100 years. The present presentation follows at all moment, the directives and formulations given in the different structural Eurocodes, till the moment not included in the CTE. Finally the values of the actions that must be used to extend the life utility of a building until. 100 years will be deduced, also it suitability and e conomic feasibility will be discuss.

System Engineering Approach to Initial Design of LEO Remote Sensing Missions

The satellite remote sensing missions are essential for long-term research around the condition of the earth resources and environment. On the other hand, in recent years the application of microsatellites is of interest in many space programs for their less cost and response time. In microsatellite remote sensing missions there are tight interrelations between different requirements such as orbital altitude, revisit time, mission life and spatial resolution. Also, all of these requirements can affect the whole system level design characteristics. In this work, the remote sensing microsatellite sizing process is divided into three major design disciplines; a) orbit design, b) payload sizing and c) bus sizing. Finally, some specific design cases are investigated inside the design space for evaluating the effect of different design variables on the satellite total mass. Considering the results of the work, it is concluded that applying a systematic approach at the initial design phase of such projects provides a good insight to the not clearly seen interactions inside their highly extended design space

The effect of a mono component protease and different AMEn levels in broiler diets on growth performance from 1 to 18 days of age.

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect of the inclusion of a mono component serine protease (RONOZYME ProAct, DSM Nutritional Products) in diets with two different AMEn contents on apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of amino acids (AA) and growth performance in broilers from 1 to 18 days of age.

Quantity of CO2 Emissions in the Life Cycle of a Highway Infrastructure.

The complexity of climate change and its evolution during the last few years has a positive impact on new developments and approaches to reduce the emissions of CO2. Looking for a methodology to evaluate the sustainability of a roadway, a tool has been developed. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is being accepted by the road industry to measure and evaluate the environmental impacts of an infrastructure, as the energy consumption and carbon footprint. This paper describes the methodology to calculate the CO2 emissions associated with the energy embodied on a roadway along its life cycle, including construction, operations and demolition. It will assist to find solutions to improve the energy footprint and reduce the amount of CO2 emissions. Details are provided of both, the methodology and the data acquisition. This paper is an application of the methodology to the Spanish highways, using a local database. Two case studies and a practical example are studied to show the model as a decision support for sustainable construction in the road industry.

Speech features of the domain of the word in heterosexual twins during the second yeard of life

Speech is the major function, emergence and which development radically changes all course of formation of the identity of the child already in the early childhood. If language and speech development in solitary born children is investigated today quite well, at twin children this process practically is not studied. Our research was carried out for the purpose of studying of an originality of mastering by speech by heterosexual children of pair of twins within communicative and pragmatist approach (T.N. Ushakov,G. V. Chirkina). Application of this approach to the analysis of process of communication at twin children allowed us to allocate those peculiar receptions and means of communication which they functionally develop in a situation of pair of twins, as allows them to show the phenomena of the speech which are not meeting at solitary born contemporaries. In this work results of supervision and research of pair of heterosexual twins of the second year of the life, carried out by a technique developed by us under the scientific guide of G. V. Chirkina

Effect of Thermal Relaxation on LSP Induced Residual Stresses and Fatigue Life Enhancement of AISI 316L stainless steel

Effect of Thermal Relaxation on LSP Induced Residual Stresses and Fatigue Life Enhancement of AISI 316L stainless steel