scholarly journals Preliminary structural design for extraterrestrial buildings

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fard Sartipi ◽  

The adventurous human nature had recently expanded to extraterrestrial habitation. Public billion-dollar companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin are investing extra ordinary capitals in space exploration. Australian Space Agency had also joined the space competition in 2018 in a so-called Mars mission. Although might sound far reaching, the idea of building human habitats on Mars requires well evaluated engineering design in the first stage as the cost of transporting equipment and materials as light as a kilogram to another planet is a massive financial burden. Throughout this passage, the effect of gravity, atmospheric pressure, and radiation on extra terrestrial buildings will be discussed. Following that a cylindrical structure as the most stable type of shell against internal pressure will be analyzed.

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 264-271
Author(s):  
Rachel E. López

The elderly prison population continues to rise along with higher rates of dementia behind bars. To maintain the detention of this elderly population, federal and state prisons are creating long-term care units, which in turn carry a heavy financial burden. Prisons are thus gearing up to become nursing homes, but without the proper trained staff and adequate financial support. The costs both to taxpayers and to human dignity are only now becoming clear. This article squarely addresses the second dimension of this carceral practice, that is the cost to human dignity. Namely, it sets out why indefinitely incarcerating someone with dementia or other neurocognitive disorders violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. This conclusion derives from the confluence of two lines of U.S. Supreme Court precedent. First, in Madison v. Alabama, the Court recently held that executing someone (in Madison’s case someone with dementia) who cannot rationally understand their sentence amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Second, in line with Miller v. Alabama, which puts life without parole (LWOP) sentences in the same class as death sentences due to their irrevocability, this holding should be extended to LWOP sentences. Put another way, this article explains why being condemned to life is equivalent to death for someone whose neurodegenerative disease is so severe that they cannot rationally understand their punishment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 7246
Author(s):  
Julius Moritz Berges ◽  
Georg Jacobs ◽  
Sebastian Stein ◽  
Jonathan Sprehe

Locally load-optimized fiber-based composites, the so-called tailored textiles (TT), offer the potential to reduce weight and cost compared to conventional fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP). However, the design of TT has a higher complexity compared to FRP. Current approaches, focusing on solving this complexity for multiple objectives (cost, weight, stiffness), require great effort and calculation time, which makes them unsuitable for serial applications. Therefore, in this paper, an approach for the efficient creation of simplified TT concept designs is presented. By combining simplified models for structural design and cost estimation, the most promising concepts, regarding the cost, weight, and stiffness of TT parts, can be identified. By performing a parameter study, the cost, weight, and stiffness optima of a sample part compared to a conventional FRP component can be determined. The cost and weight were reduced by 30% for the same stiffness. Applying this approach at an early stage of product development reduces the initial complexity of the subsequent detailed engineering design, e.g., by applying methods from the state of the art.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3535
Author(s):  
Byung-Ju Jeon ◽  
Byung-Soo Kim

The Korean government proposed a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 37% compared to business-as-usual levels by 2030 and launched the Green Standard for Energy and Environmental Design (G-SEED) certification system. The certification requires meeting the required score and material selection with a secured economy and construction efficiency. However, most buildings only focus on obtaining the certification scores instead of choosing economical materials with high construction efficiency. This research focused on developing a material selection model that considers both the construction efficiency and economy of the materials and the acquisition of material and resource evaluation scores from the G-SEED certification. This research, therefore, analyzed actual data to automate the material selection and compare alternatives to using a genetic algorithm to obtain optimized alternatives. This model proposes an alternative to constructability and economy when the required score and material information is entered. When the model was applied to actual cases, the result revealed a reduction in construction costs of about 37% compared to the cost with the traditional methods. The material selection model from this research can benefit construction project owners in terms of cost reduction, designers in terms of structural design time, and constructors in terms of construction efficiency


Author(s):  
Whitney N. Goldsberry ◽  
Sarah S. Summerlin ◽  
Allison Guyton ◽  
Brittani Caddell ◽  
Warner K. Huh ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 764-765 ◽  
pp. 374-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Long Chang Hsieh ◽  
Tzu Hsia Chen ◽  
Hsiu Chen Tang

Traditionally, the reduction ratio of a spur gear pair is limited to 4 ~ 7. For a spur gear transmission with reduction ratio more than 7, it is necessary to have more than two gear pairs. Consider the cost of production, this paper proposes a helical spur gear reducer with one gear pair having reduction ratio 19.25 to substitute the gear reducer with two gear pairs. Based on the involute theorem, the gear data of helical spur gear pair is obtained. According to the gear data, its corresponding engineering drawing is accomplished. This manuscript verify that one spur gear pair also can have high reduction ratio (20 ~ 30).


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-ao Cao ◽  
Donghao Yang ◽  
Huafeng Ding

The umbrella linkage is one of the most classical deployable mechanisms. This paper concentrates on topological structural design of a family of umbrella-shaped deployable mechanisms based on new two-layer and two-loop spatial linkage units. First, deployable units are developed systematically from two-layer and two-loop linkage with four revolute pair (4R) coupling chains. Then, mobile connection modes of the deployable units are established based on the conditions of one degree-of-freedom (DOF) and structural symmetry. Finally, umbrella-shaped deployable mechanisms are constructed based on the developed deployable units and the established mobile connection modes. Like umbrellas, the designed deployable mechanisms can be actuated in a simple and reliable way, and those mechanisms have good potential applications in the fields of architecture, manufacturing, space exploration, and recreation.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Upendra Malla ◽  
Krishna M. Karri

Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) sizing and cost estimation has become a challenging task at the early stages of offshore field development. During the early stages of field development designer needs to size and estimate cost in order to decide feasibility of the project. This paper describes a step by step method used to size and estimate the cost of a new built (or) converted FPSO based on basic engineering, existing FPSO data and corresponding metocean criteria for a particular location. This step by step approach covers FPSO sizing, hull structural design, mooring sizing, topsides support design and steel renewal using offshore classification rules and regulations. FPSO cost is estimated based on the design particulars (i.e. hull weights, FPSO particulars, mooring sizes etc.) and current market unit rates. This approach is an effective means to size and estimate cost of an FPSO at early stages of field development which saves overall time and cost for a client.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satya Prasad Paruchuru ◽  
Siva Kalyani Koneti ◽  
Deepthi Jammula ◽  
Jashwitha Nuthalapati

Abstract Capturing the tidal energy is one of the ways of tapping natural and renewable energy which do not involve the cost of working fluid/ fuel. The present work focuses on some of the feasibility aspects of setting up of major tidal power plants along the seacoast. Besides, the present study synergizes on methods of estimating the power-producing capacities in regions along the seacoast. Estimation of power-producing capacities, calendar month-wise, and lunar month-wise gave handy information. Also, the estimation of power-producing capacities of different regions along a location gave clarity on the probable regions of interest for producing power simultaneously. A comparison of the estimates with the details of the literature authenticated the study. A discussion of producing more tidal power in specific locations gave insights into the aspects that may have been ignored in the literature. Geographic restrictions along the local seacoast like identifying the security-sensitive regions rationalized the estimating procedures. The paper includes a discussion of various factors that address the feasibility concerns. The study supposedly helps space exploration too.


Author(s):  
Alexander MacDonald

In the first half of the nineteenth century, American astronomical observatories were instruments for the personal exploration of the planets and the stars as well as monuments of civic development. Their value was often more symbolic than scientific and they represented significant expenditures for the individuals and communities that undertook them. Their costs were equivalent, in modern terms, to small robotic NASA probes. The cost of these facilities grew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the Lick, Mount Wilson, and Mount Palomar Observatories representing major, billion-dollar equivalent investments in space exploration capabilities. These early American observatories were predominantly privately funded. Over forty observatories are investigated, only two of which were built with significant government support. The motivations that dominated the financing of these “lighthouses of the sky” were personal ones—intrinsic interest in the heavens and scientific curiosity, or the desire to signal status through monuments and legacies. This earliest period of American space exploration was thus one with an overridingly private context, with social entrepreneurs like Ormsby McKnight Mitchell and George Ellery Hale selling the mystique and adventure of the heavens to the wealthy elite and the general public. Major figures from the 19th century were involved in funding astronomical observatories, include Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Ruggero Piscitelli

Glass structures are being built ever more frequently all over the world, in a growing architectural trend towards light, transparency and sustainability. The engineering design of laminated glass elements being profoundly influenced by properties of interlayers, this multi-scale research highlights some among the key elements on the hyperelastic and viscoplastic response of such synthetic materials. Results and new discoveries are interpreted to better model and predict the response of laminated glass structures: examples are provided for design applications to post-failure safety assessments, structural design and cold-bending techniques. Still, in a vastly unknown field, a growing market and foggy regulatory framework, many challenges and research opportunities remain to be dealt with.


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