An axial force sensor for screw bolt using optical fiber grating (FBG, Fiber Bragg Grating) was studied and developed. This sensor has the tolerance to an electromagnetic noise. Furthermore, it has a characteristic as long-distance signal transmission possibility, because it made in optical fiber. This axial force sensor has a doughnut-formed projection. It is because the stress distribution in the sensor is got in only proportion to a screw bolt axis force. Axial force sensor for M10 screw bolt was produced experimentally. According to characteristic test result, reflection wavelength shift was in proportion to axial force. It means that this is good characteristic sensor.

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The objective of CAD/CAM/CAE systems are well recognized and utilized as one of sophisticated design tools. The way to creates design objects are always in compromising with many index such as costs, performance, robustness and so on . In this paper, a numerical analysis's controlling and managing system is suggested, which controls the modelling process and data treating for structural robustness, although a numerical analysis's manager only controls a structural analysis by finite element method. The modeling process is described by the list of function ID and its procedures in a data base. The analytical modeling manager executes the process by order of the lists for simulation procedures. The manager controls the intention of an analysis by changing the analytical process one to another. Modeling process was experimentally found that may subject to the intention of designing index. The numerical experiments were carried out with static analyses and dynamic analyses. The results of its experiment introduce resonable discussion to understand the accuracy of simulation. In the numerical experiments, K, supercomputer is utilized by using parallel computing resource with the controlling and managing system. This research and development is partially supported by HPCI strategic program of MEXT.

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This paper introduces a technical drawing course starting with three-dimensional CAD (3D CAD). Anan National College of Technology had offered drafting education to the first-year students of four different departments under their independent curricula until the new curricula were launched and started a department-mixture course of technical drawing with a syllabus common to all four departments in 2008. The new course of technical drawing starts with drawing solid models on a computer with 3D CAD. This method is effective in training students to build three-dimensional images in their mind. The students go on to learn how to draw isometric and multi-view projections of solid models. The implementation of the new syllabus shows it is effective to develop students' ability to conceive three-dimensional images before teaching them how to draw plane figures.

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The current engineering education aims to educate a person to a desired level, no matter what latent capabilities he or she may have. This may be good for the age of mass production with increasing number of working age population, but with the increasing diversification and with the quickly decreasing working age population, a new form of engineering education is required. This education called Engineering Administration, just as in Business Administration is focused on bringing out the latent capabilities of each individual and to achieve a goal with the currently available resources (time, money, human, etc.). Such engineering education which corresponds to Theodore Roosevelt's "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are" will make out engineering more tailored to our needs.

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The educational program of Osaka prefecture university college of technology was changed in 2011. In the mechatronics course, design education for mechanical engineering started in new practical training. I made teaching text for the student, would learned the method of design by using 3D-CAD and using for 3D printer. This report is the outline in the program.

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Many manufacturing companies have provided to customers a product with superior functionality and performance. However, differentiation based on only functionality with similar products of the matured product has become difficult for the sense of values of current consumers. In order to develop a product that the customer feel sympathy, it is necessary that create a premium value with customers to avoid commoditization. It is called "co-creation" that a company and a contributor perform development of products with customer community. The purpose of this study is to establish a system to increase the sympathy by sharing the embodied image when the community and the company carries out the co-creation design. We have constructed algorithmic design system about standarized frame which satisfied yield function based on elastic analysis and simple mechanical calculations. Using this design system, we could consider the feasibility of the idea in a simple evaluation, and understand the structural principles and the mechanical behavior by observation of optimized cross-section. This developed standarization structure can construct a frame structure of arbitrary shape in response flexibly to customer preferences and is comprised of several pipes and spacers.

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This paper points out that in order to develop our design capabilities more to cope with the quickly diversifying requirements and to adapt to the wide and frequent changes, we should look at things in a homological manner, Current engineering design education is carried out in an analogical way so that we can solve the problems well, but we cannot discover or define the problem adequately, which is most important for design today. And to improve such capabilities, we should learn how design from everyday things. As an example, it is shown how many different things we can design from paper.

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In this paper, the author breaks down creativity into four elements: idea generation potentiality, idea emergence ability, planning ability and executive ability, and then considers the effects of various conventional design- and creativity- education on these four elements. Then the author assumes both knowledge and experience of various design cases and phenomena and thinking methods are necessary as materials and its processing for idea generation potentiality based on literatures of psychology and neuroscience. Based on the assumption, the author has tried education for idea generation potentiality in which every student in a classroom presents and shares cases of ingenious design and phenomenon and corresponding TRIZ inventive principles to accumulate knowledge, experience and thinking patterns. The results of the class in 2014 are reported.

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This paper presents a framework for collaborative service production by formalizing tacit knowledge and reusing it effectively between clients and service practitioners. Knowledge about service delivery is an asset and a competitive edge to service providers. However, service providers in the IT industry have not utilized it satisfactorily yet. To reinforce their asset development and reuse in service production, this paper introduces production patterns for mass customization, tacit knowledge formalization for mutual understanding, and disciplines for practitioners' tasks with kernel states. This collaborative service production is carried out by enforcing the disciplines with task tickets under a widely-used project management system.

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Designing tours requires much time and effort of designers because they have to consider so many kinds of things and quality of work excessively depends on their personal skills and experiences. One of the difficulties of designing tours is that designers have to consider fundamental needs of tourist, which are often kept unsaid. This paper proposes a data structural definition of tourism resources that can help designers grasp tourists' fundamental need from their requests and design tours more efficiently. By analyzing tour service, the information which is useful for proposing services considering tourists' requests is divided into three types; geographical information, time information, and meaning information. Based on those three types of information, this paper defines two indexes for proposing services matching customers' requests. One is "Similarity Score", which means how similar what the customer want to do and what a tour service let customers do are, based on meaning information. The other is "Duration Optimality", which means how long the customer can enjoy the service under the requested situation, based on geographical and time information, Data structure is defined so that design supporting system for sightseeing tours can propose tour services to designers based on these two scores.

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"Servitization" of non-service industry has attracted much attention as a business model to enhance the value of products. In general, a multitude of customer who has various requirements in each is involved in a service offering structure. To realize a business which has a high customer satisfaction, it is important to consider various requirements of each customer correctly. However, customer requirements for a service might change depending on the environments which customers are facing. In order to realize a sustainable a business, therefore, it is necessary to improve a service from the viewpoints of customers continuously. This paper proposes an engineering method to support the planning of service improvement from the viewpoint of a multitude of customer. To be more precise, a Genetic Algorithm is applied as a tool for identifying an optimum resource allocation which can reach the purpose of maximizing the degree of whole customers' satisfaction.

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The current trends of environemnt benign production and rising energy price compel industries to improve energy efficiency and saving not only for manufacturers but also service industries. This paper proposes a service energy efficiency model and an energy-aware scheduling method using an energy-block modeling for service production systems. The energy-block represents whole power profiles during one processing job and that is modelled as combined multiple rectangle energy pieces. Each production facility has specific energy consumption pattern for a processing job. The proposed model is based on the energy-block model concept proposed by the authors for manufacturing system to extend for applying service production systems. This paper examines single objective to minimize total tardiness by changing the parameter of constraint of energy max peak. The proposed model is applied to a preliminary experiment with some cases of different combinations of blocks, and it is confirmed the balance of energy max peak and makespan.

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As a key driver for servitization in manufacturing industries, the concept of Product-Service System (PSS) has been attracting much attention. One of the important benefits of PSS is to enable providers to construct a long-term relationship with their customer by offering services throughout the life cycle of product. However, customer requirements for the PSS vary over time. Therefore, to realize ideal PSS which realize a long-term relationship with a customer, it is necessary to image a to-be PSS in the future and design a growth scenario towards the to-be PSS. This paper focuses on such growth scenario and proposes a modelling framework to design it logically. The proposed model represents state changes of product/service, provider, receiver, and environment. Also, dependences between each state change are manifeted. The usefulness of the model is demonstrated by application to an example case.

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Recently, we must depart from the traditional paradigm of mass production, consumption, and disposal. Especially, technologically innovative products are discarded before their breakdowns because of the deterioration of their value. To break away this social circumstance, environmentally conscious product design methods such as reuse, recycle, and upgrade product design method have been studied. An upgrade product design method develops to increase the product's value and inhibit the disposal by exchanging only a few components closely related to its deterioration in value. This method predicts the required future performance criteria and functions and designs products in advance to be compatible with anticipated product upgrades. Hence, designers are required to take account of the uncertain design information associated with future prediction. In the conventional research, proposed methods typically focus on the physical performance improvement. Therefore, these proposed methods couldn't deal with the amount of the environmental load reduction quantitatively. Hence this paper proposes an upgrade product design method that satisfies required uncertain future product performance criteria and functions and adverse effects related to product upgrading concurrently by applying a preference set-based design method that can obtain ranged sets of design solutions that optimally satisfy multi-objective requirements. In addition, this paper evaluates the amount of the environmental load reduction in production phase by applying proposed upgrade product design method to design problem of a laptop PC.

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A variety of energy-saving and -generating products, such as photovoltaics and electric vehicles, are being diffused to reduce electricity demand in residential sectors. When one attempts to understand changes in electricity demand in the future, the problem is the existence of numerous unpredictable factors (e.g., peoples' lifestyle and national energy policy) associated with the diffusion of such products. This paper takes a scenario approach to analyzing the impacts of the product diffusion on residential electricty demand under different social circumstances. For the analysis, two simulation models are employed; i.e., (i) a model to estimate the diffusion of products based on consumers' preferences and (ii) a model to estimate electricity demand in residential sectors given the resulting product diffusion. A case study of scenario analysis of the electricity demand in the residential sector in Toyonaka City, Osaka, Japan in 2030 is carried out. The results reveal that the net electricity demand in the city in 2030 is decreased 20-39% from the 2012 level depending on scenarios, where demographic changes and PV diffusion are among critical factors.

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For strategic planning and policy making toward sustainable society, to envision normative future of society is helpful. For this task, future scenario development in backcasting manner is a hopeful approach. In backcasting scenario development, several targeted future visions and pathways between the future and the present is drawn. The future visions of sustainable society are different among the stakeholders in the society. In order to support such future scenarios about sustainable society in backcasting manner, we propose a scenario development support method by reflecting opinion of a group of the stakeholders. We updated the backcasting method proposed in the previous study, which uses a logic tree to support imagining the future in backward direction, from the future to the present. In this study, we proposed a support method to construct several different future visions by conducting questionnaire about the elements of the logic tree to the stakeholders. We also proposed indexes to reflect the result of questionnaire to the future visions. As a case study, we developed a scenario about the sustainable future visions of Japanese society. We conducted a questionnaire to the graduate students and researchers and constructed four different future visions reflecting the group's opinion.

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This paper proposes a level-set based topology optimization method for a diaphragm piezoresistive pressure sensor. Our primary goal is to maximize the response and reliability of the sensor. The finite element method was applied for discretization, and shell elements are used, which are suited for analysis of diaphragm.

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This study investigates the topology optimization design of the non-uniform thickness plate design under out-of-plane deformation. As the first trial, this study formulates the design problem as the two-step optimization problem and adopts the level set-based topology optimization method. At the first step, the optimum material distribution with uniform thickness plate is obtained. Then, the thickness distribution inside of the material region is obtained, where the plate thickness is assumed to have the two types of thickness, thin and thick regions. Through numerical examples, validity of the two-step method is discussed. For the mean compliance minimization design problem, it is found that the peripheral region close to the void region is reduced the thickness.

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In this paper, a non-parametric, or a node-based shape optimization method was proposed for achieving a desired static deformation of frame structures. For a frame structure composed of arbitrarily curved linear elastic members, the deformation control is one of the important problems in the stiffness design problem, and it also enables to give a function to frame structures. As an objective functional, we introduce the sum of squared error norms to the desired displacements on specified members, and the assumption that each frame member varies in the out-of-plane direction to the centoroidal axis. The shape gradient function and the optimality conditions for this problem were theoretically derived by the Lagrange multiplier method and the material derivative method. An optimal geometry is determined by applying the negative shape gradient function as fictitious external forces to the frame members and analyzing an optimal variation that minimizes the objective functional. With the proposed, an optimal arbitrarily formed frame structure with smoothness can be obtained while minimizing the objective functional. The validity and practical utilities of this method for the static deformation control of frame structures were verified through design examples.

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Shear Panel Damper (SPD) made of low yield steel can dissipate seismic energy by plastic deformation. In this paper, we propose a shape optimization method for designing an SPD with high energy dissipation capacity. An elasto-plastic shape optimization problem under cyclic load is formulated, in which the negative plastic work is minimized under a volume constraint. The shape gradient function and the optimality conditions for this problem are theoretically derived, and they are applied to the H1 gradient method. With the method, the optimal three dimensional shape of an SPD is determined by iterative calculation of the shape gradient function and the shape updating. The objective functional is minimized in the iterative process, while maintaining the mesh regularity. The calculated results show the validity of this method for designing a high performance SPD efficiently.

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The reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) is one of the methods considers uncertainties of design parameters such as the applied load and material properties, where the parameters of the random variables are usually estimated with sufficient accuracy. However, under actual situation, the parameter itself will have uncertainties due to lack of information. For example, the mean value and the standard deviation of the random variables have uncertainties. This study proposes a parameter estimation method in order to quantitatively evaluate the effect of the parameter uncertainty itself on the reliability. The method adopts Bayesian statistics to estimate the parameter. Then, the estimated parameter is used in the RBDO. Since the parameter is estimated through Bayesian statistics, the obtained design in RBDO also has some uncertainties. Therefore, this study proposes to obtain the confidence level of the obtained reliability-based optimum design to consider the effect of the uncertainty on the reliability. Through numerical examples, the validity of the proposed method is demonstrated.

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Solar panels are installed at roof, wall, ground surface, slope and so on. Panels are placed statically because of easy construction at various capability of installation locations. The amount of light received at fixed panels is affected by shadows from the surroundings, seasonal variation of solar orbit, the latitude and the clear sky rate of the installation location and the area. In this study to increase the amount of light received at fixed solar panels, optimization method is applied to determine the optimization parameters relating the installation configuration and the inclined angle of panels. Optimization results for ten local cities in Japan to demonstrate the effectiveness of the optimum design of the solar panel configuration on a regional basis are shown in this paper.

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The optimization of the large structure with the layout of stiffener is considered by a new calculation method in this study. Many number of stiffener are attached to large structures. Optimization of the large structures with design variables of plate thickness and shape of stiffener is performed. However, in order to obtain a better optimal solution, the optimization of the structure with design variable of number of stiffener and allocation of stiffener is required. But, the optimization of structure with design variable of the number of stiffener and allocation of stiffener is not performed. There are two problems. The first problem is the FEM model. FEM models need some nodes at allocation of stiffener as a characteristic of FEM. When number of stiffener and allocation of stiffener are changed by the process of the optimization of the structure, number of nodes and allocation of nodes of FEM model is also changed. Therefore, in order to ensure consistency of mesh, it is necessary to remake FEM model. In order to optimize structural, it is necessary to examine many propositions for design. However it is difficult to create and analyze the proposition for design of many numbers in restricted time. The second problem is the optimization method. When the number and allocate of stiffeners are changed, the stricture is modified and the number of design variables is changed. The optimization problem with changed number of design variables cannot be optimized by standard optimization methods. The methods of solving these problems are examined.

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Welding is widely used for constructions, automobiles and space structures. This paper presents an optimization method for an arc welding position of sheet metal structure. The arc welding shape is assumed to be movable in the normal direction to the welding and in the tangential direction to the plate surface. As an application of this solution, the squared error norm of maximum principal stress is minimized subject to welding length constraint. The design problem is formulated as a distributed-parameter shape optimization problem, and the shape gradient function is derived using the material derivative method. The optimal shape and position is determined by apply the shape gradient function derived to the H^1 gradient method. Design example show that the effectiveness of this approach for designing the welding position and also the shape of sheet metal structures.

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We attempted to improve the thermostability of thermosetting resins by controlling cross-linking structures with living radical polymerization. It was found that the thermal decomposition- and glass-trasition-temperature (Tg) of the resin cured by alkylboranes as living radical initiator were higher than those of the resin cured by typical radical initiators such as peroxides or azo compounds. In this study, in order to reveal the relation between Tg and cross-linking structure, resin controlled cross-linking structures were synthesized with the rate of polymerization constants (k_p) and the resin were evaluated by solid state NMR. In the solid state NMR, ^<13>C-NMR spectra and spin-lattice relaxation times (T_<1p>) were measured. T_<1p> value of the resin controlled cross-linking structures was shorter than those of typical resins, that implies the controlled resin had more ordered structure compared with typical resins. These results suggest the solid state NMR is effective for the analysis of cross-linking structure of thermoset resins.

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I would like to solve the mechanism of hydrogen embrittlement of aluminum alloy. But the software which can carry out the simulation of the transportation of hydrogen by transposition is not developed. And it is difficult to make the situation idealized as an actual experiment. So I build and mount a hydrogen embrittlement simulator. and it sets it as the purpose of this research to express a hydrogen embrittlement mechanism. Therefore, atomic defects in hydrogen embrittlement, such as transposition and Boyd, have been expressed. And the comparison consideration which shows a breakdown behavior was attained.

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Many people feel cleaning bathtub is a great deal of housework today. Moreover, it is dangerous especially for elderly people to clean a bathtub since they may be injured by slipping on the bathroom floor. However, Japan is a most aged society in the world, so that elderly people have to do housework in many Japanese household. On the other hand, an understanding customer requirement is most important for a conceptual design. Successful companies are providing the highest quality service by which customer receives a satisfaction through the Kando experience. Thus, an element of customer satisfaction is necessary for the great success in business. Therefore, authors have proposed the Idea Creation Support System (ICSS). In this paper, we develop a robot cleans a bathtub automtically by using ICSS. At first, we discussed a concept of the bathtub cleaning robot based on questionnaires and the patents search about existing bathtub cleaning machines. Next, the first prototype of the bathtub cleaning robot was developed and could clean a bathtub through the experiment for validation. Based on validation of this prototype, we tried to define concept by ICSS again. In the ICSS, words of the Kando quality were gotten by world cafe. Moreover, we calculated demand quality weight and quality element weight calculated through Quality Function Deployment. Thereby, we drew on quality elements for the bathtub cleaning robot.

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The aim of the present study was to formulate the relationship between the total perceived discomfort (TPD) and six joint moment ratios of the entire body (i.e., shoulder, elbow, L5/S1, hip, knee, and ankle joint moment ratios). A manual material handling experiment was performed. Twelve healthy Japanese subjects (six males and six females), aged between 21 and 24, participated in this experiment. The subjects were required to hold a weight with varying holding point and load amplitude, and joint angles and subjective TPD were measured. In addition, the joint moment ratios were calculated from the measured joint angles. Three approximation models (i.e., sum, maximum, and square sum) were compared in terms of the accuracy of predicting the TPD, and the sum model was selected because its average error was lowest. The correlation coefficient between measured and predicted TPD of the function was compared to that of four observational methods (i.e., OWAS, RULA, REBA, and NIOSH lifting equation). The correlation ratio was highest for the proposed TPD function followed by REBA.

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The size of a space is an important element for comfort in small, enclosed areas, such as the insides of a car. When potential size is limited, a space may be made to seem larger through visual factors such as lighting and coloring, both of which affect human perception. In this paper, we focused on an optical illusion - the "Pincushion Distortion Figure" - as a possible factor in spatial design. We also examined the parameter involved in causing the optical illusion from a visual information processing standpoint, with particular focus on the visual field. Results of several experiments revealed that the peripheral visual field may keep this optical illusion effect; indeed, with regards to the Pincushion Distortion Figure, horizontal lines were more influential than vertical lines. We also found that the dense center of the figure causes oppression, and concluded that in order to have sufficient depth with minimum oppression, the center of the figure should not contain lines.

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Human beings find a variety of meanings from a sensory stimulus provided by artifacts. Found meanings may differ depending on interpreter's knowledge and context. For example, a vehicle engine sound means powerful accelerations for a driver, but annoying noise for neighborhoods. Each meaning creates different value. Our motivation in this study is to provide designers the exhaustive possible meanings of a sensory stimulus in early stage of design. Potential meanings stimulate desingers to come up with design strategies with novel points of view. Exhaustive meanings help designers to avoid interferences between different meanings with respect to their values. In case of electric vehicle, for example, the silence of vehicle cruise sound is attractive for neightborhood, but it put walkers at risk due to increasing difficulty to notice approaching vehicle. The goal of our study was to construct a new design framework for structuring semantics of artifacts' sensory information using idea of Peirce's semiotics, and exhaustive categories of meanings. With the framework, we developed a methodology for semantic deployments of a sensory information. We further proposed the outlook of design support tool of sensory information based on proposed methodology.

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Disconfirmation between prior expectation and posterior experience affects customer's satisfaction of a product. Product providers would like to avoid both customer's overestimation and underestimation. In this paper, we propose a methodology for supporting designers to control customer's expectation of a product with lighting control. This paper consists of two parts. In this first part, we propose a visual expectation model that explains a cognitive process between visual environmental conditions and customer's expectation. Proposed model consist of a multi-layered structure. We applied QFD (quality function deployment) to develop hypothetical relationships between each layer in the model. Using the QFD tables, we extracted and described design problems to control visual expectation of a product with environmental parameters. In the second part, we developed optimization design support system for perceptual color based on visual perception characteristics. Using this system, we derived pareto solutions for multiple objective functions regarding design problems extracted from QFD.

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A long-lasting product needs to satisfy conditions where customers begin, continue, and repeat to use in product lifecycle. We assumed that perceived quality such as texture contribute to satisfy such conditions. User's evaluation of perceived quality changes during use due to change of user's sensitivity and sense of value. To realize a long-life product, designers have to consider such dynamically changeable evaluation as well as first time evaluation of a product. In this paper, we developed an experimental methodology to acquire total evaluation of products and evaluate perceived quality that affects the total evaluation of the products under different situations where customers begin, continue, and repeat to use. We applied the methodology to the design of a face lotion container. We asked 30 female participants to use a sample daily for one month. Participants were required to recoed their opinions about the samples (online assessment). On the first day, one month later (the final day), and another one month later (after finishing the sample), we invited the participants to the laboratory and asked them to assess five samples that contained different surface finishes (offline assessment). Based on these reults, we demonstrated that the methodology can acquire total evaluation of products and evaluate perceived quality that affect the total evaluation of the products at each situation of the life cycle.

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Prior expectation affects posterior perceptual experience. This psychological effect is called expectation effect. In this paper, we proposed mathematical model of the expectation effect. The model consists of three statistic distributions, prior, likelihood, and posterior. We assumed that a combination of prior and likelihood estimates the posterior that represents posterior perceptual experience using Bayes' inference and efficient coding hypothesis. Based on the proposed model, we formalized the expectation effect as a function of three parameters: expectation error (difference between expectation values of prior and likelihood), uncertainty (variance of prior), and external noise (variance of noise distributions for sensory input). We conducted both computer simulation and experiment using size-weight illusion (SWI) to examine the characteristics of expectation effect. We investigated the effects of the three parameters on intensity of expectation effect and the conditions of two types of expectation effect, i.e. contrast and assimilation. From the result of both simulations and experiments, we found following characteristics of the expectation effect. 1) Assimilation shifts to contrast as expectation error increased. 2) Uncertainty decreased intensity of both assimilation and contrast effect. 3) External noise increase assimilation and decrease contrast.

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Miniaturization technology based on Dennard's rule for CMOS devices has progressed consistently over time and has had a profound impact on mankind and the world. Lithography has also made amazing progress up to this point, achieving high resolution at 28nm-L/S or below using 193nm ultraviolet (UV) light. However, the probability is low that production of ever-finer feature geometries will continue, because resolution capabilities will likely reach a critical limit due to CMOS performance threshold, as well as chip economics. Therefore, to ensure continued performance improvements and create added-value by miniaturization of future devices, attention should be focused on new three dimensional (3D) integration and other novel technologies. In addition, a new technology management strategy is imperative. In this paper, we first describe the current status of the semiconductor industry. Then, a new methodology of technology management for this market segment based on the IC's compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) and a tool's book to bill ratio (B/B) is discussed. Finally, we focus on the criticality of an innovative System Design approach that will offer international competitiveness and enable profitably for all Japanese companies.

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