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Layout Design (layout + design)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Engineering75%

Selected Abstracts

Human reach envelope and zone differentiation for ergonomic design

HUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS IN MANUFACTURING & SERVICE INDUSTRIES, Issue 1 2009
Jingzhou (James) Yang
In human-centric design, the human reach envelope is one of the most important components to help layout design for workstations, vehicles, and aircrafts. It also can help people to study the range of motion of different body segments. Various methods have been developed to determine human reach envelopes. This article presents different methods and common challenges. Human reach envelopes only give feedback concerning whether a point is reachable. This is not enough for the designers. The more important information the designers need to know is the zones with different discomfort levels. This capability is a powerful tool for ergonomic designers. In addition, a methodology for workspace solid zone differentiation or surface zone differentiation in the three-dimensional space is presented. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

Interior layout design of passenger vehicles with RAMSIS

HUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS IN MANUFACTURING & SERVICE INDUSTRIES, Issue 2 2005
Christian Vogt
The interior of passenger vehicles and the adapting of interior components to the human body are designed with historical guidelines, based on the experiences of the manufacturer. In contrast to this, the aim of the following study is to create a consistent and theoretically justified procedure to design the interior layout. Using the advantages of virtual design, this will be done with the software tool RAMSIS from scratch. First, four theoretical seating concepts are generated, each fixing one point of the human body (eye point, H-point, hand point, or heel point) at fixed coordinates for all anthropometric types. Then, the most practical concept is applied together with the geometry of a given vehicle. To generate a realistic and ergonomic seating concept, studies are made concerning the posture of legs and feet in relation to the pedals of the vehicle. The result is a final seating concept with fields of adjustment for seat and steering wheel. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 15: 197,212, 2005. [source]

Integrated layout design of multi-component system

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL METHODS IN ENGINEERING, Issue 6 2009
Jihong Zhu
Abstract A new integrated layout optimization method is proposed here for the design of multi-component systems. By introducing movable components into the design domain, the components layout and the supporting structural topology are optimized simultaneously. The developed design procedure mainly consists of three parts: (i) Introduction of non-overlap constraints between components. The finite circle method (FCM) is used to avoid the components overlaps and also overlaps between components and the design domain boundaries. (ii) Layout optimization of the components and supporting structure. Locations and orientations of the components are assumed as geometrical design variables for the optimal placement while topology design variables of the supporting structure are defined by the density points. Meanwhile, embedded meshing techniques are developed to take into account the finite element mesh change caused by the component movements. (iii) Consistent material interpolation scheme between element stiffness and inertial load. The commonly used solid isotropic material with penalization model is improved to avoid the singularity of localized deformation in the presence of design dependent loading when the element stiffness and the involved inertial load are weakened by the element material removal. Finally, to validate the proposed design procedure, a variety of multi-component system layout design problems are tested and solved on account of inertia loads and gravity center position constraint. Solutions are compared with traditional topology designs without component. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Design and Installation of a Next Generation Pilot Scale Fermentation System

BIOTECHNOLOGY PROGRESS, Issue 3 2003
B. Junker
Four new fermenters were designed and constructed for use in secondary metabolite cultivations, bioconversions, and enzyme production. A new PC/PLC-based control system also was implemented using GE Fanuc PLCs, Genius I/O blocks, and Fix Dynamics SCADA software. These systems were incorporated into an industrial research fermentation pilot plant, designed and constructed in the early 1980s. Details of the design of these new fermenters and the new control system are described and compared with the existing installation for expected effectiveness. In addition, the reasoning behind selection of some of these features has been included. Key to the design was the goal of preserving similarity between the new and previously existing and successfully utilized fermenter hardware and software installations where feasible but implementing improvements where warranted and beneficial. Examples of enhancements include strategic use of Inconel as a material of construction to reduce corrosion, piping layout design for simplified hazardous energy isolation, on-line calculation and control of nutrient feed rates, and the use of field I/O modules located near the vessel to permit low-cost addition of new instrumentation. [source]