A comparative analysis of the conservative bridge transition design approaches

Differential settlement at the bridge approach between the deck and rail track on ground is often considered as a source of challenging technical and economical problem. This caused by the sudden stiffness changes between the bridge deck and the track on ground, and changes in soil stiffness of backfill and sub-grade with soil moisture content and loading history. To minimise the negative social and economic impacts due to poor performances of railway tracks at bridge transition zones, it is important, a special attention to be given at design, construction and maintenance stages. It is critically challenging to obtain an appropriate design solution for any given site condition and most of the existing conventional design approaches are unable to address the actual on-site behaviour due to their inherent assumptions of continuity and lack of clarifying of the local effects. An evaluation of existing design techniques is considered to estimate their contributions to a potential solution for bridge transition zones. This paper analyses five different approaches: the Chinese Standard, the European Standard with three different approaches, and the Australian approach. Each design approach is used to calculate the layer thicknesses, accounting critical design features such as the train speed, the axle load, the backfill subgrade condition, and the dynamic loading response. Considering correlation between track degradation and design parameters, this paper concludes that there is still a need of an optimised design approach for bridge transition zones.

Conservative Design Optimization of Laminated Composite Structures Using Genetic Algorithms and Multiple Failure Criteria

This article analyzes the effect of devising a new failure envelope by the combination of the most commonly used failure criteria for the composite laminates, on the design of composite structures. The failure criteria considered for the study are maximum stress and Tsai-Wu criteria. In addition to these popular phenomenological-based failure criteria, a micromechanics-based failure criterion called failure mechanism-based failure criterion is also considered. The failure envelopes obtained by these failure criteria are superimposed over one another and a new failure envelope is constructed based on the lowest absolute values of the strengths predicted by these failure criteria. Thus, the new failure envelope so obtained is named as most conservative failure envelope. A minimum weight design of composite laminates is performed using genetic algorithms. In addition to this, the effect of stacking sequence on the minimum weight of the laminate is also studied. Results are compared for the different failure envelopes and the conservative design is evaluated, with respect to the designs obtained by using only one failure criteria. The design approach is recommended for structures where composites are the key load-carrying members such as helicopter rotor blades.

Improving team dynamics and innovation : the “Aspect Design” approach applied to interaction design

Interaction Design is a fast developing branch of Industrial Design. The availability of cheap microprocessors and sensor electronics allow interactions between people and products that were until recently impossible. This has added additional layers of complexity to the design process. Novice designers find it difficult to effectively juggle these complexities and typically tend to focus on one aspect at a time. They also tend to take a linear, step-by-step approach to the design process in contrast to expert designers who pursue “parallel lines of thought” whilst simultaneously co-evolving both problem and solution. (Lawson, 1993) This paper explores an approach that encourages designers (in this case novice designers) to take a parallel rather than linear approach to the design process. It also addresses the problem of social loafing that tends to occur in team activities.

A design approach to teaching new product development

The educational unit new product development, taught within the industrial design program at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) introduces the relationship between product design and commercialisation to third year industrial design undergraduate students. In which, they are exposed for the first time to product strategy development aimed at meeting consumer expectations, whilst at the same time achieving corporate objectives. Delivered content such as intellectual property, market opportunities, competitor analysis and investor requirements are taught within the thirteen week semester timeframe. New product development theory is not a new field. However, the design approach to teaching this theory and more importantly how designers can use it in the design process is novel. This paper provides an overview of the curriculum design of this unit as well as its incremental development over the past four year duration period. Student project outcomes and more importantly the process and tools from this unit are also discussed and presented.

Teaching design and emotion in the foundation year : an industrial design approach

This paper showcases two design tools; the ‘storyboard’ and ‘a day in the life’ demonstrated to design students in their foundational year (first year) of study. By employing these tools during the design process the aim was to provoke students to consider and design for emotional experiences for potential users. The assessment asked students to design an MP3 player using these tools. This is demonstrated through a student project that successfully used the tools and method introduced. The teaching theory, project context, student outcome as well as challenges faced by students using this approach are discussed. The paper concludes with implications for teaching emotion theory at an undergraduate level and potential future directions.

A design approach to the study of people's experiences with technologies in the context of public transport

Relevant to the study of people’s attitudes towards public transport use is the consideration to the role of technology as part of the travel experience. Technologies aim to enhance daily tasks but tend to change the way people interact with products and can be perceived as difficult to use. This is critical in the context of “public use” where products and services are to be used by the population at large: adults, children, elderly, people with disabilities, and tourists. From different perspectives, the topic of users and the use of technologies have been studied in the social sciences and human computer interaction fields; however, earlier approaches fail to address the ways in which experiential knowledge informs people’s interactions with products and technologies, and how such information could guide the design of future technologies. This paper describes a pilot study, part of a larger ongoing exploratory research that investigates people’s experiences with infrastructure, systems, and technologies in the context of public transport. The methodological approach included focus groups, field observations, and retrospective verbal reports. At this stage, the study found that four context led factors were the primary source of reference informing participants’ actions and interactions; they are: (i) context >> experience, (ii) context >> interface, (iii) context >> knowledge, (iv) context >> emotion.

Development of a flexible design approach for the deflection zone behind road safety barriers

Flexible design practices broadly permit that design values outside the normal range can be accepted as appropriate for a site-specific context providing that the risk is evaluated and is tolerable. Execution of flexible design demands some evaluation of risk. In restoration projects, it may be the case that an immovable object exists within the zone of the expected deflection of a road safety barrier system. Only by design exception can the situation be determined to be acceptable. However, the notion of using flexible design for road safety barrier design is not well developed. The existence of a diminishing return relationship between safety benefits and provision of increased clear zone has been established previously. This paper proposes that a similar rationale might reasonably apply for the deflection zone behind road safety barriers and describes how the risk associated with road safety barriers might be quantified in order that defensible road safety barrier design can exist below the lower bounds of normal design standards. As such, the methodology described in this paper may provide some basis to enable road authorities to make informed design decisions, particularly for restoration, or “Brownfield”, projects.

Zombies on the road: A holistic design approach to balancing gamification and safe driving

This paper explores novel driving experiences that make use of gamification and augmented reality in the car. We discuss our design considerations, which are grounded in road safety psychology and video game design theory. We aim to address the tension between safe driving practices and player engagement. Specifically, we propose a holistic, iterative thinking process inspired by game design cognition and share our insights generated through the application of this process. We present preliminary game concepts that blend digital components with physical elements from the driving environment. We further highlight how this design process helped us to iteratively evolve these concepts towards being safer while maintaining fun. These insights and game design cognition itself will be useful to the AutomotiveUI community investigating similar novel driving experiences.

A principled experimental design approach to Big Data analysis

Big Datasets are endemic, but they are often notoriously difficult to analyse because of their size, heterogeneity, history and quality. The purpose of this paper is to open a discourse on the use of modern experimental design methods to analyse Big Data in order to answer particular questions of interest. By appealing to a range of examples, it is suggested that this perspective on Big Data modelling and analysis has wide generality and advantageous inferential and computational properties. In particular, the principled experimental design approach is shown to provide a flexible framework for analysis that, for certain classes of objectives and utility functions, delivers near equivalent answers compared with analyses of the full dataset under a controlled error rate. It can also provide a formalised method for iterative parameter estimation, model checking, identification of data gaps and evaluation of data quality. Finally, it has the potential to add value to other Big Data sampling algorithms, in particular divide-and-conquer strategies, by determining efficient sub-samples.

Zombies on the road: A holistic design approach to balancing gamification and safe driving [poster]

This paper explores novel driving experiences that make use of gamification and augmented reality in the car. We discuss our design considerations, which are grounded in road safety psychology and video game design theory. We aim to address the tension between safe driving practices and player engagement. Specifically, we propose a holistic, iterative thinking process inspired by game design cognition and share our insights generated through the application of this process. We present preliminary game concepts that blend digital components with physical elements from the driving environment. We further highlight how this design process helped us to iteratively evolve these concepts towards being safer while maintaining fun. These insights and game design cognition itself will be useful to the AutomotiveUI community investigating similar novel driving experiences.

A design approach to innovation in the Australian energy industry

Electricity businesses across Australia are facing many market disruptions, such as the increasing demand from the rapid uptake of domestic air conditioners and the contrasting problematic generation from solar power connections to the grid. In this context, the opportunity to proactively leverage forthcoming technological advances in battery storage and electric vehicles to address the steeply rising cost of electricity supply has emerged. This research explores a design approach to support a business to navigate such disruptions in the current market.This study examines a design-led approach to innovation conducted over a ten month action research study within a large, risk-averse firm in the Australian energy sector. This article presents results describing a current foresight gap within the business; the response of the business to using design-led innovation to address this issue; and the tools, approaches and processes used. The business responses indicate their perception of the value of qualitative customer engagement as a path to addressing, and potentially benefiting from, disruptive innovation. It is anticipated that these results will further business model development within the company, and assist in leveraging disruptive innovations for this industry participant, thus limiting future increases in the cost of electricity supply for customers in Australia.

Reliability-based load and resistance factor design approach for external seismic stability of reinforced soil walls

Load and resistance factor design (LRFD) approach for the design of reinforced soil walls is presented to produce designs with consistent and uniform levels of risk for the whole range of design applications. The evaluation of load and resistance factors for the reinforced soil walls based on reliability theory is presented. A first order reliability method (FORM) is used to determine appropriate ranges for the values of the load and resistance factors. Using pseudo-static limit equilibrium method, analysis is conducted to evaluate the external stability of reinforced soil walls subjected to earthquake loading. The potential failure mechanisms considered in the analysis are sliding failure, eccentricity failure of resultant force (or overturning failure) and bearing capacity failure. The proposed procedure includes the variability associated with reinforced backfill, retained backfill, foundation soil, horizontal seismic acceleration and surcharge load acting on the wall. Partial factors needed to maintain the stability against three modes of failure by targeting component reliability index of 3.0 are obtained for various values of coefficients of variation (COV) of friction angle of backfill and foundation soil, distributed dead load surcharge, cohesion of the foundation soil and horizontal seismic acceleration. A comparative study between LRFD and allowable stress design (ASD) is also presented with a design example. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.