This paper presents a numerical analysis method for solving the shape identification problems of forced convection heat transfer fields. The square error integral between the actual temperature distributions and the prescribed temperature distributions in the prescribed sub-domains is used as the objective functional. The shape gradient of the shape identification problems was derived theoretically using the adjoint variable method, the Lagrange multiplier method and the formulae of the material derivative. Reshaping was accomplished using a traction method that was proposed as a solution to the domain optimization problems. A new numerical procedure using finite element method for the shape identification was proposed. The validity of the proposed method was confirmed by the results of 2D numerical analysis.

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In this paper, an optimization procedure to decide layouts and shapes of cooling pipe system in plastic injection molding die is developed. Unfortunately in plastic moldings, residual stresses are remained by nonuniformity at the coagulation late and the cooling velocity of molten plastic. Residual stress causes unexpected warps and cracks in plastic products some years after molding. When the plastic materials in the gel state during the solidification process are cooled down uniformly, it is expected that the generation of the residual stress can be reduced. For this purpose, we have tried to optimize the cooling pipe system of plastic injection die, which is the most effective factor to reduce the residual stress.

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This paper proposes a new methodology that supports to create structures of product and assembly-machines to prevent occurrence of assembly-faults. It consists of two components. The first component of the methodology identifies parts, functions and assembly actions with their properties related to an assembly fault, and provides the guidelines to create the solutions for the fault. The second component of the methodology identifies parts and assembly actions with their properties that will amplify assembly difficulty.

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In order to deploy a good product family, a designer should consider product architecture, which explicitly defines relationships between customer's requirements, functions and components, and determine commonalization of components while diversifying customer's requirement. This paper reports a quantity space of attributes, which characterize products, and the formalization of product family design process. It represents plural products within a product family as members of quantity space, and defines mapping between attributes in customer's requirements, functions and entities. These facilitate a designer to explicitly grasp mapping structures between attributes of customer's requirement, function and entity, and to deploy product family under the mapping. Based on the attribute quantity space mapping structure, we introduce the formal definition of five steps and several operations of product architecture design process, and implement two indices for evolutional satisfaction of customer's requirement and production cost. A prototype design system is implemented under knowledge management approach, which we have been developing to support evolutional design such as product architecture design. It ascertains that the developed formalization and system can support a designer toward the optimal product family.

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The research & development of Virtual Prototyping (VP) technology of the launch vehicle development was carried out to improve the reliability of the launch system and vastly shorten its full development period. The VP system enables designers to evaluate propriety of design by simulating assembling operation in virtual space at an early stage of development before manufacturing hardware, to prevent outbreak of big malfunctions at a last stage. This means that outbreak of serious malfunction can be prevented beforehand.

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This paper reports the backgrounds, contents, and some experiences in establishing a graduate course on product design and development methodology at Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. While product design and development are the key factors for success in manufacturing industry, the methodologies for enhancing their performance are not well known or utilized systematically among Japanese companies. On the other hand, engineering education at universities is now under the pressure for renovation, and a part of requirements focuses on integration of design or synthesis activities into education systems by means of the project-based learning paradigm. Under these factors, our department initiates a new graduate design course in the first semester of 2005. The course is composed of a series of lectures on design-for-X methodologies and projects on product design problems sponsored by industrial partners. Since this course has just started, it is not possible to evaluate its outcomes, but this paper reports the motivations, its position within the whole curriculum, course schedule, responses from manufacturing industry, issues on intellectual properties, etc.

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This paper studies the effect of vibration mode on damping of fiber reinforced plastic composite plates. For this purpose, the free vibration analysis for the laminated plates is formulated by using the Ritz method, based on Classical Lamination Theory (CLT), First-order Shear Deformation Theory (FSDT) and Higher-order Shear Deformation Theory (HSDT), and then natural frequencies and specific damping capacities of the plates with different stacking sequences are calculated numerically assuming complex elastic modulus. On the other hands, experimental study is also carried out using experimental mode analysis. Finally not only the applicability of each analytical model for damping analysis but also the effect of vibration mode on damping are discussed from the comparisons of the numerical results and experimental results.

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A layerwise optimization approach, developed for the design of vibration of laminated rectangular plates, is extended to the symmetrically laminated, composite elliptical plates. There is little information available on the optimum lay-ups of such elliptical plates, including the special case of circular plates. The optimum design problem is formulated to maximize the critical buckling load and the lowest frequency, and fiber orientation angles in the layers are used as the design variables. A Ritz method is used to calculate eigenvalues (buckling load and frequency) of the elliptical plates and the convergence and comparison studies indicate accuracy of the calculated eigenvalues as the object function. A set of numerical results is given in tabular and graphical form, illustrating the optimum lay-ups of the laminated elliptical plates with respect to the fiber orientation angles.

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An elastic nonlinear Ritz analysis is used to study the buckling behavior of axially loaded imperfect fiber reinforced polymeric cylindrical shells. Extensive parameter studies demonstrate the existence of a well-defined lower bound to buckling loads and the dominance of characteristic incremental deformation modes as this lower bound is approached. It is shown that even for the fiber reinforced polymeric composite shells as well as for the isotropic shell the reduced stiffness method provides reliable estimates of the lower bounds to buckling loads and consequently an important basis for design.

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The application of wooden dowel joints in timber construction was considered. Several types of post-beam joints made with glued-in wooden dowels were tested. Dowels of 8mm in diameter made of hard maple were glued into members of ezomatsu glulams with polyurethane adhesives to make joint specimens. Some specimen types had end joints in beam members, which was intended to prevent bending failures of beam members. The test results showed that the end joints in beam members prevented bending failures of beam members. This resulted in comparatively stable moment-resisting properties. Mechanical properties of joints can be controlled by changing the numbers and the arrangements of wooden dowels.

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Aodamo (Fraxinus lanuginosa) is usually used for baseball bats. The objective of this study is to prove the variation in mechanical properties of aodamo grows in Hokkaido. Torsional test, static bending test, compressive test (parallel to grain), partial compressive test (perpendicular to grain) and shearing test were performed to specimens of aodamo cut at Nikappu, Shizunai and Urakawa which were located in Hidaka-shicho, and test results of 3 regions were compared. As a result, specific gravity and most other properties for Nikappu were a little greater than those for the others. However, it was hard to arrive at the definite conclusion because only 2-4 logs per a region were available in this study.

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In this report, we show the following acknowledgments of present study. The first, IsoTruss grid structures have been formed with carbon/epoxy FRP materials with helically filament-winding (FW) method. The next, influence of the tetrahedron region (pyramidal grid in this structure) on mechanical properties are measured. The third, for the applications of this structure the Christmas tree tower was constructed at campus of Kusiro N. C. T. with connected half a dozen pieces.

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The 2003 Tokachi-Oki Earthquake caused severe damage to oil storage tanks due to liquid sloshing. Six single deck floating roofs have experienced structural problem as evidenced by sinking failure in large diameter tanks at Tomakomai refinery. The pontoon of the floating roof may be buckled due to circumferential bending moment during sloshing. This paper presents the buckling strength of the pontoon using axisymmetric shell finite element analysis. Linear elastic bifurcation buckling analysis is carried out.

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This analysis assumed the disc supported by elasticity spring model and did the theoretical analysis. The boundary condition is provided as the moment and the shearing force become zero inside of the pontoon and outside of to analyze it intended for a single deck. We obtain that the maximum bending moment is in the pontoon. As a result, the maximum bend moment of the first mode wave is larger than that of the second first mode. Circumference direction bend moment is the maximum in a minimum, maximum wave high side.

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Structural integrity assessment method for floating roof of oil tank against semi-long period (2-15 sec.) ground motion is presented. To obtain the roof motion and maximum dynamic pressure profile loaded on lower roof deck from oscillating oil during earthquake, structure-fluid coupled analysis between roof and oil was conducted with actual waveform of the Tokachi-Oki earthquake in 2003. Detailed stress analysis with non-liner FEM for floating roof was performed to evaluate buckling and welded joint strength of floating roof component. It is concluded that strength assessment results of welded joint is good agreement with observed actual damage of oil tank.

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Oil storage tanks at Tomakomai were severely damaged by liquid sloshing generated by long-period strong ground motions in the 2003 Tokachi-oki earthquake. In this report, studies on generation and propagation of long-period waves were reviewed. Furthermore, long-period ground motions at oils complex sites were predicted for expected large earthquakes in the future.

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Knowledge transfers from experts to younger engineers are now crucial problems among Japanese manufacturing industries. We developed a Knowledge Management Software, ShareFast, for supporting organizational knowledge acquisition and transition. Work flows describe structures of work processes and details are depicted in documents, which are linked to tasks in workflows. ShareFast was tested by several Japanese shipyards and showed its efficiency in practical design knowledge acquisition.

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A representation framework for expert knowledge using work flow is proposed and an integrated knowledge based design support system has been developed. The system supports designers by indicating design navigation in accordance with the work flow system. The system has been applied to design support of molds for mobile equipment and automotive parts. The proposed system shows the effectiveness of expert knowledge succession and substantial reduction of lead time for the design process.

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Designer's decision making in the feedback process is one of the big issues for shortening the design lead time. In this paper, the method of supporting feedback design process is proposed. We collected a variety of feedback actions in LSI design, and classified them from the viewpoint of the function-technology-technique hierarchy, the process feedback ahead, and influence to other elements. Then, each arranged feedback action are evaluated their important degrees by five evaluation points. In addition, the method for suggesting a effective feedback action in current design case by using the importance degree as weight parameter is proposed.

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This paper describes a development of design review support system with design intention model to shorten product development period. An inexperienced designer tends to make deficiencies due to his poor design examination knowledge. The model represents a system of design examination knowledge, which skilled designer has. The designer can search design examination items for functional specifications or parts data on the design support system and output the search result with comments. The designer can list design examination items in early phase of design process to avoid design deficiencies that derived from leak of design examination. We expect that the troubles that happen in design phase are made 52% decrease.

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Program management aims to support a management for a large and complex project. We have already proposed a framework for supporting this management process by reviewing a program from three different aspects (i.e., process planning, related information, and stake holder networks). However, this system only supports to represent and review a program by using manually inputted information. In this paper, I proposed a system that extract stakeholders information from a text to support constructing stake holder network. In this system, we categorize stakeholders in two types. One is collaborator and the other is opponent. For extracting these two types of stakeholders, we collected typical expression for describing them and made pattern match rule for extraction. For evaluating our methodology, we implemented the prototype system that uses Japanese newspaper articles as a resource for extraction.

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A cyber field is a digital image built in a computer which has its structure, properties, and abilities equivalent to the real one. Virtua manufacturing systems and geographical information systems are typical examples of cyber fields. This report gives an explanation about the framework for representing object worlds based on the frame of space-time and state primitives, followed by the introduction of the research project on the cyber field.

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The design of interactions of product components, i.e., an interface structure, is a very difficult design problem, because the whole product behavior is determined by the interface structure. This paper proposes a new algorithm that can be used to derive the interface structure automatically to achieve the required product behaviors. An evaluation method for product behavior by comparison of the required product behavior is proposed. We call this methodology the design system of Product Behavior by automatic calculation of the Interface Structure (PBIS). Here, we demonstrated the effectiveness of the PBIS algorithm in an implemented prototype system. PBIS enables the designer to determine the interface structure interactively based on a list of proposed interface structures that can realize the required product behavior. The methodology addresses: (1) how the interface structure problem should be formulated; (2) how the algorithm for automatic proposition of the interface structure achieves the required product behaviors; and (3) the evaluation method of the interface structure by comparison between the required product behavior and achieved product behavior.

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In shape design, designer grasps the macroscopic shape feature that emerges from the whole feature of a shape and controls it. These works are based on his intuition and experience. Therefore, in shape design for styling, it is important to construct the method of representing the macroscopic shape feature. The macroscopic shape feature has been explained by gestalt in cognitive psychology. Gestalt theory shows that the human characteristic of recognition emerges from the whole feature that cannot be reduced to the elements and not the total of individual elements of recognition. Firstly, this paper shows the new view of gestalt based on hierarchical design model in shape design. Next, this paper describes the method of representing the macroscopic shape feature that is based on gestalt theory. Moreover, this paper describes that the curvature entropy proposed in the present study is different from conventional microscopic shape information and represents "complexity" as macroscopic shape feature. From these results, this paper shows the possibility of the design for artifacts using them.

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This paper describes a method to relate form impressions to design parameters; a mapping of image-space to design-space via a neural network solution. A survey designed by the Taguchi method was used to collect data on how altering various design parameters of an automobile affects its image. Principal Component Analysis was performed to extract correlated factors from this data and each sample included in the survey was described in this new space by calculating its factor score. A neural network was constructed and trained with these samples, which allowed a CAD-system, based on this neural network, to automatically generate 3D-models corresponding to any form impression presented to it These results show that it is possible to give a design system a 'sense' of shapes, previously restricted only to the designer.

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This paper presents the state of the art of Sapporo IT Carrozzeria Project. The purpose of the project is to establish the industrial infrastructure which enables to manufacture a functional mock-up of IT appliances in the Sapporo city area. In order to realize the project, we organized a prototype design research group, and started to produce the mock-up by way of trial. The purpose of the trial is to grasp problems related to the prototype design process, and clarify the solutions through the different kinds of design, such as the redesign, the advanced and requested design. As a result, the problems in relation to the industrial infrastructure of Sapporo area have been solved gradually. And we have produced the mock-up models in which an IT-electronic circuit is embedded, such as VideoBOX, VWC (Visual Wireless Communicator), TAJODA (Tactile and Jog Dial) interface, CyARM (Cybernetic Arm), and Marin Movacom (Movable Computer). In this paper, we discuss the esthetic design process of those mock-up models.

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All the roads are covered with ice and snow in midwinter in northern cities with heavy snowfall, and the inhabitants have to face with various problems caused by the heavy snow. Pedestrians often slip on icy pedestrian crossings and the incidents sometime result in head and hip injuries. One way to maintain the safety should be using snow sleds on the winter road. The present paper studies how the various design aspects are considered in the development of the sleds to assist daily life and improve the quality of life in heavy snowfall area, like in Sapporo.

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We worked on the case study about concept development of sight seeing information system & equipment, and tried human centered design process which includes two new supporting methods. As a result, the new sightseeing information system & equipment concept was developed effectively that based not only the traveler who use information but also the benefit of the entrepreneur and the resident in the region, also had been considered about usability. In addition, enough analysis result was obtained from two proposed method "User experience scenario generation based on user needs strength" and "Requirements extraction for the communication support system", therefore effectiveness of both methods was confirmed.

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The concept of Human-Centered Design is a key word of product development in recent years. We also begin to work on the product concept development and the design development that introduces Human-Centered Design process presented with ISO13407 in the product development support to enterprises in Hokkaido. Human-Centered Design is an approach that shifts the design object from product to activity, so task analysis that catch the use activity of product by user and extract the user requirements of each act that composes each activity is assumed to be an effective technique. In this paper we introduce Human-Centered Design process tried in the prototype development of chair ski for seriouly handicapped children, and report on effectiveness and problems of the approach in each process.

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Park golf that arose in Hokkaido is popular recently, and wheelchair user's rally has been held. Therefore, easy-to-use Moreover, the data base for the conception support was made, and the equipment and tools idea was examined, to a lot of people are requested. In this research, a current investigation and the Task analysis of the park golf game were analyzed from the aspect of the universal design. And, the review of equipment etc was aimed at. Moreover, the data base for the conception support was made, and the idea of equipment and tools was advanced. Practical use was examined and because the ideal way was brought together, it reports.

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It is pointed out that although the importance of communication has been pointed out many times, there are other aspects to be consider when we enter 21^<st> century, which is often called the age of wisdom. Maslow classified human needs into five levels and showed it as Maslow's pyramid. Our industries have developed to satisfy the fundamental needs of hunger at the first level and then go up the pyramid upward, from the first industry to the second and the third. But if we look at the 3^<rd>, 4^<th>, and 5^<th> level, i.e., love and belonging needs, esteem needs, self actualization needs, designers have to look at communication from a different angle other than the traditional ones. This new direction of communication will lead to the creation of new market, where designers can sell their products with their new concepts and values.

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As today customers start to show preferences to products that reflect their own personalities and interests, we had earlier proposed and built a system called, Internet-based Consumer-oriented Ordering system, equipped with a data mining-based recommender system, where by customer can determine the specifications of a product based on their interests. However, in case where by customers do not possess knowledge regarding certain product specifications, it is not easy for them to be certain that the specification determined suits their needs or not. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to classify the products based on various customer's needs which include functional, usability and esthetics needs, thus narrowing down the choices of specifications and make the specification determination process more simple and precise. In this paper, we examine the nature of product architecture, study how a range of products can be classified under various product evaluation standards from customer's points of view, and find an effective way to classify a product and its specification. With the existence of this framework of product classification, it can be acted as a catalyst for performance of design work on the internet especially for custom-made product, thus bringing the manufacturing industry closer to BtoC (Business to Customer) approach.

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The environment where Japanese industry has been paid with respect is changing tremendously due to the globalization of economics, where Asian countries are undergoing economical and technical development as well as advancing in information technology. For example, in the design of custom-made casting product, a designer whom lacking of casting knowledge may not be able to produce a good design. In order to obtain a good design and manufacturing result, it is necessary to equip the designer and manufacturer with a support system related to casting design or so called, knowledge transfer and creation system. This paper proposes a new virtual reality based knowledge acquisition and job training system for casting design, which is composed of the explicit and tacit knowledge transfer system using synchronized multimedia and the knowledge internalization system using portable virtual environment. In our proposed system, the education content is displayed in the immersive virtual environment, where by a trainee may experience himself in the virtual site operations. Provided that the trainee has gained explicit and tacit knowledge of casting through the multimedia-based knowledge transfer system, the immersive virtual environment catalyzes the internalization of knowledge and also enable the trainee to gain tacit knowledge before undergoing on the job training at real operation site.

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The concept of a growing product is realized by using a pushdown keyboard as an examplar. The adequateness of the concept is demonstrated through a series of experiments using the developed prototype pushdown keyboard system.

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This paper describes a new approach in visualizing self-awareness. In particular, Habit of Speaking (HoS) is focused. In the pilot experiment of the chat system 48 kinds of HoS were extracted, and they were altogether called 'Group of HoS.' In the main experiment, all subjects evaluated HoS one by one using the Internet. Then they had to choose one from 4 kinds of Frequency; a) Many times, b) Sometimes, c) Unusual, d) Never, and one from 5 kinds of Impression; a) Best, b) Better, c) So so, d) Worse, e) Worst. Thus, all HoS were ranked by Impression and Frequency, which lead to 4 categories. This experiment demonstrates that although most subjects would like to grasp their own HoS, they felt it too difficult to grasp their HoS by themselves.

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Simplified method of detecting fatigue from the change of facial expression is developed using fluorescent pigment painting and its usefulness is demonstrated by image processing system.

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Method to detect emotion from driver's face is developed using a fluorescent pigment painting and using an image processing technique. Anger and surprise which will endanger driving were successfully detected.

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Features to extract emotion from driver's face is clarified using a fluorescent pigment painting and anger and surprise which plays important roles in driving were successfully extracted.

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Anger and fatigue were successfully detected from a text independent free sentence voice by noting the maximum value of its pressure and pitch and by comparing them with those of the data base for each subject.

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In this paper, we propose the collaborative design system with which we can simultaneously modify the actual 3D CAD model by the remote control and have interaction on it. It enables instantaneous decision making among the multiple disciplines in distributed locations using the function of simultaneous access and video conference. It also provides the method of managing the consistency between design entities. This system consists of Collaborative Management Server, Remote Control Module, File Server, Solid Modeler and Client Module.

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This paper describes about knowledge extraction method from process information focuesd on communication patterns. Process information include general information such as document, plan, communication and linked information between them, so it include information behind general information. To utilize process information, we focused on communication pattern. Some communication patterns are linked strongly to some actions. Knowledge about some action is found efficiently in communications categorized to particular communication patterns.

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In order to sustain advantages of Japanese manufacturing industries, it is very important to organize appropriate design process in consideration of its quality, cost, lead time and so on. In this paper, design processes of ship structure are paying attention to. At first, multi-step optimization system for ship structural design was developed. The characteristic of the system is to reproduce designer's solution by considering the feature and the relation of design information. Next, some new processes for ship structural design are proposed by the use of Design Structure Matrix. As a result, influences of design process on ship structure are discussed by using above optimization system.

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Because of increasing pressure to sustain competitive advantages, it is a crucial topic for manufacturers to reduce product development cost and lead-time while maintaining a high level of quality. These requirements drive the companies to focus on planning the optimal design and development process, which appropriately allocates resources into tasks. This methodology represents each design process plan by a set of tasks and their network through input-output relationships of information. The performance of each plan should be measured with leadtime, budget, expected quality of designed product, and risks on these criteria, while they depend on how rework of tasks occurr and chain. Since it is affected by rework chains, this paper establishes a model of rework probability, design quality, etc, and implements a simulation-based evaluation scheme with Monte Carlo method. An experimental simulation shows that the proposed methodology can assess the trade off among the aforementioned criteria in design prces plans.

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In recent years, industrial designers are being required to design creative products in a short period. In the conceptual design, they who are using TRIZ hope that a process of thinking is aided for problem solving and problem analysis, because both the jump of idea and the mapping on to specific solution from generic solution are difficult. In this paper, Authors proposed the methodology of Conceptual Design Support System (CDSS) for the requirement, and estimate this methodology to satisfy the requirement by questionnaire. The effectiveness of this methodology is discussed through the result of them.

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Various development technique and methodology for managing the quality in a software development are proposed. Generally, the quality of software is defined as the degree of satisfaction of the expectation for the software of a client or a user. In order to assure the quality of software, it is thought that the design model which can be designed during development always checking a requirement is required. In this paper, first, we describe a requirement with a scenario and propose the scenario-driven design model which designs software based on it. Next, in order to assure the consistency of the scenario and design information, those correspondence relations are clarified. Finally, by considering design information from the viewpoint of the dynamic structure and from the viewpoint of the static structure, we aim at assuring consistency between them.

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In recent years, the diversification and individualization of client needs has increased the demand for diverse-type and small-quantity production. As such, research and development of system that can flexibly deal with the market change is important especially to the enterprise. Therefore, the construction of data base between design and production, and sharing and integration of information between design production are strongly requested. In this paper, knowledge was systematized based on the ontology technology, and the ontology construction methodology for design and production is described. By using ontology, morphology modeling is made applicable to the design process. On the other hand, by using production ontology, extraction of knowledge like the enactment, the production scheduling of the production plan in the enterprise, and the grasp of production information, etc. is made convenient. In addition, we also discuss about the integration of design and production ontology from the view point of logic and logic reasoning. Lastly, by considering the design and production of a mechanical part, we have constructed a design and production integrated system that shares the design and production ontology database.

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When the targets of an argument are mixed, as a product model in computer made with CAD and that's prototype, there are often difficult situations to understand what object is pointed and disucussed. Then, in our study, we aim at the development of the system which an opinion of a participant in an argument is positively reflected by making the target clear using three demension pointing device. We called this system "Universal Pointing System (UPS)". UPS is capable of pointing the object regardless of entities or representations using three demension pointing devices. Furthermore it is possible to add easily devices and applications because the entire system is going to be designed with the client-server model.

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Set-based design approach is proposed for the design methodology for conceptual design in the previous paper. The approach is considered as a method of design optimization. However, the definition of the design space is different from the usual functional optimization method. In the present paper, the application of the set-based approach to the optimization problem of automobile body design is presented and its result is discussed.

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