We report on the design of the two Gregorian adaptive secondary mirrors of the Large Binocular Telescope. Each adaptive secondary is a Zerodur shell having an external diameter of 911 mm and a thickness of about 1.5 mm. The deformable mirror is controlled by a pattern of 918 electromagnetic actuators. Its shape is referred to a stable ULE back plate by means of capacitive sensors co-located to ...

The development of graphic based preliminary design programs is appealing because preliminary design involves the consideration of alternatives as concepts or sketches. The use of such a program would allow engineering students and new graduates to gain design experience directly, through their own trial and error. This paper describes a graphic based preliminary design program that was develop...

This paper describes the extension of a multivariate scatter plot for qualitative use. The plot combines effective diagramming practices and modified axis dimensions to cohesively summarize qualitative analysis in the early, unstructured stages of design. The rugplot is a flexible tool that improves understanding of the “hard” limits of the problem, self-imposed “false” constraints, and directi...

The invention of fictional ideas (ideation) is often a central process in producing artefacts such as poems, music and paintings in a creative way. Automated fictional ideation should, therefore, be of much interest in the study of Computational Creativity, but only a few approaches have been explored. We describe here the preliminary results of a new method for automated generation and evaluat...

This working paper presents preliminary ideas of five possible text-based notations for representing safety cases, which may be easier for non-graphically inclined people to use and understand than the currently popular graphics-based representations.

aim of this paper is to search and find ways and methods of constructivism teaching and learning ideas inteaching the architectural design studio. the objective is to extract all the positive things constructivism has to offer the architectural design studio for efficient teaching and effective learning. although there are similarities in the curricula of training architects all over the world,...

  This paper demonstrates a preliminary investigation of geometry, function and its relation to DFX principles, namely DFM (Design for Manufacturing). This is the starting point for research on the development of an expert system that assesses design goals along DFX principles in a feature-based CAD environment. There is a need for a deeper level of understanding of the relationship between geo...