Safety factors as a ‘design’ principle of animal form and function: an historical perspective

ABSTRACT For well over 150 years, factors of safety (also known as safety factors) have been a fundamental engineering concept that expresses how much stronger a system is compared with the intended load. The pioneering work of Robert McNeill Alexander in the early 1980s applied this engineering concept to biomechanics. Over the next decade, evidence from comparative biomechanics supported the idea that safety factors are a fundamental principle of animal form and function. In terms of physiology, Jared Diamond related the maximal capacity of a physiological process to normal functional demands and incorporated evolutionary thinking into the concept of safety factors. It was proposed that evolutionary reasoning is required to understand the magnitudes of biological reserve capacities, an idea called ‘quantitative evolutionary design’. However, the general idea of safety factors as related to organismal form and function is much older. In 1906, Samuel James Meltzer, a physiologist and physician, presented the 5th Harvey Lecture to the New York Academy of Medicine; a lecture entitled ‘The Factors of Safety in Animal Structure and Animal Economy’, which was later published in Science in 1907. The 1907 paper is rarely cited and has never been cited within comparative biomechanics or comparative physiology. The purpose of this Commentary is to highlight Meltzer's historical contribution to the concept of safety factors as a general principle of organismal ‘design’.

Development of a financial and engineering business model for a product life cycle

A product life cycle is an important tool for designers and engineers. Next-generation smart products are complex systems that make current development processes in industries inadequate. In this paper, we substantiate an innovation financial and engineering concept based on a product life cycle for the upcoming Industry 4.0. We describe the fundamental principles for this innovative model as well as challenges to be possibly faced during its implementation. The proposed concept will undergo further development and detailization.

Toying With Engineering: Teaching Engineers to Be Entrepreneurial by Developing a Toy

Most engineering design projects focus primarily on the engineering fundamentals. Studying the business case or manufacturability of a design is often left for other courses, if at all. To address this gap, an existing mechanical engineering course project was modified by embedding the interdependent entrepreneurial dimensions. In the past, junior engineering students developed a reciprocating air engines over two semesters. The modified project extended the engineering fundamentals into an entrepreneurial venture. To accomplish this, students were asked to propose an air engine toy for middle schoolers. The proposed toy had to be assembled, provide a learning opportunity, and demonstrate utility. The students had to ensure the product appealed to those interested in the STEM fields. The students, working in groups, created renders of the final product, assembly instructions, and a guided worksheet for the kids to explore the underlying engineering concept. The groups produced a website with a video pitching their toy concepts. This case study exemplifies how any engineering endeavor can be modified to capture a more holistic simulation of the profession.

Models for development of the information-control complex of the enterprise

This article provides a brief analysis of the development of concepts and terms used in the automation the processes of production and enterprise management. The conclusion is made about the preference of the term “information-control complex” (ICC) of the enterprise and the expediency of using various concepts in its creation. A model for the development of ICC is proposed, based on the definition of a system that implements the system-target approach, and the “engineering” concept.

Idea Generation Mechanisms: Comparing the influence of classification, combination, building on others, and stimulation mechanisms on ideation effectiveness.

Ideation methods have been extensively studied, and several ideation methods can be beneficial in different contexts, but it is not understood what makes a specific method work. Previous work has shown that all the ideation methods comprise of 25 fundamental ideation mechanisms in two categories: idea implementation and idea promoting mechanisms. In this study, we try to understand how individual mechanisms affect idea generation outcomes. We chose four idea promoting mechanisms: two from the process category (Classification & Combination) and two from the idea sources category (Building on Others and Stimulation). These mechanisms were selected as they are examples of comparable mechanisms that could easily be integrated into any other ideation method. We conducted four experiments and assessed idea quantity, novelty, and originality. Our study showed that the chosen mechanism increased ideation performance. For the most part, the mechanisms are statistically equivalent, but we found evidence that classification outperforms combination in a simple ideation exercise. We also found the building on others can be more useful than the type of stimulation used in engineering concept generation, but the difference was not found in a simple ideation exercise. Overall, we find evidence that all mechanisms improve ideation effectiveness and could be incorporated into any ideation method, but further studies are needed to build more comprehensive understanding

Nano-vault architecture mitigates stress in silicon-based anodes for lithium-ion batteries

Nanomaterials undergoing cyclic swelling-deswelling benefit from inner void spaces that help accommodate significant volumetric changes. Such flexibility, however, typically comes at a price of reduced mechanical stability, which leads to component deterioration and, eventually, failure. Here, we identify an optimised building block for silicon-based lithium-ion battery (LIB) anodes, fabricate it with a ligand- and effluent-free cluster beam deposition method, and investigate its robustness by atomistic computer simulations. A columnar amorphous-silicon film was grown on a tantalum-nanoparticle scaffold due to its shadowing effect. PeakForce quantitative nanomechanical mapping revealed a critical change in mechanical behaviour when columns touched forming a vaulted structure. The resulting maximisation of measured elastic modulus (~120 GPa) is ascribed to arch action, a well-known civil engineering concept. The vaulted nanostructure displays a sealed surface resistant to deformation that results in reduced electrode-electrolyte interface and increased Coulombic efficiency. More importantly, its vertical repetition in a double-layered aqueduct-like structure improves both the capacity retention and Coulombic efficiency of the LIB.

Laser Point Cloud Segmentation in MATLAB

Currently, as a result of the massive continuous advancements in laser measurement technology, possibilities of map production are broadened, the loss of time and the waste of material sources are highly prevented, and the accuracy and precision of the obtained results are significantly improved. In the view of engineering concept. However, big data which are from laser point clouds have been especially used in the significant procedures of surveying studies. Programming methods are dependent in each studies. In the necessity of the applications, the coding procedure has more efficient, the data of work has increased, and time has been consumed. The coding methods have necessarily been optimized for working together especially in the big data studies. In this section, an automated survey (building facade surveying) is produced from scanning data by means of coding in MatLAB.

Selective electrochemical reduction of CO2 to formic acid in gas phase reactor with by-product recirculation

Recirculation is a chemical engineering concept generally applied to enhance the conversion of reagents. In common applications, by-products are removed together with the desired products and only the unconverted feed...