Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) impacts on the surprise aspects of designing.

The empirical case is a new hospital in the UK wherein a CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) type of an IVR environment was used performing six design review sessions during the bid preparation stage. Drawing from a former video-based study, the authors conducted follow-up discussions with the participants to access their perspectives on design surprises emerging from their engagement with the IVR. The study developed a reflective methodology, interviewing participants about their experiences of doing design in the immersive environment. Retrospective discussions were conducted in a data review format, through playing back video clips of the IVR design sessions and asking the participants to reflect on their IVR design experience and on design surprises emerging from their engagement with the IVR.

The findings indicate that IVRs, such as the CAVE, are not only enhancing existing understandings of design but also challenging the participants' understanding of the design as they experience the immersive version of it, provoking ruptures in current procedures and driving unanticipated changes to the design.

This qualitative study of surprise in design work using IVRs (for a real-life design project) brings new insights into emerging practices of designing using immersive technology, such as the CAVE.

This paper aims to present the influence of glass bead concentration in a matrix of polyamide on wear and several three-dimensional (3D) parameters of the surface texture when the composite is sliding on steel in dry contact.

There were mold disks with the following concentrations in glass beads: 2.5, 5.0, 10, 20, 30 and 50 per cent. The mix of glass beads has diameters in the range of several microns to 50 microns. Tests were done on a pin-on-disk tribotester, in dry regime, for the following parameters: average pressure (1, 2 and 3 MPa) and sliding speed (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 m/s). Zones of 500 × 500 μm were investigated from worn tracks generated on the composite disks, and the average values of several 3D texture parameters were analyzed.

The authors plotted maps indicating no correlation between the glass bead concentration and the parameters characterizing the surface quality (amplitude parameters and functional parameters). Composites with concentrations of 10[…]30 per cent glass beads generated worn surfaces with better quality as compared to composites with extreme concentrations: low (2.5 and 5 per cent) and high (50 per cent).

This set of parameters allows for evaluating the influence of regime parameters on the surface quality, by comparing the obtained values before and after sliding, and this evolution of roughness parameters could give recommendations for selecting the friction couple of materials for particular contacts that function with repeated starts and stops.

The results encourage the researchers to use a set of 3D texture parameters instead of “classical” two-dimensional parameters, the arithmetic mean deviation of the profile, Ra, because this set of parameters better evaluate the surface quality, especially for worn surfaces.