Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of a large e-book touch-wall, on which the visualized interface provides information in a fun, hedonic-oriented fashion on readers of different ages browsing in a public library. The authors examined how emotions exert influence on the information-seeking behaviors of readers.

The authors investigated the emotions and responsive eye movements of 38 readers in various age groups when operating the touch-wall interface of New Taipei City Library. They were monitored using an eye-tracker and a camera that videotaped their spontaneous facial expressions. A facial affect scoring technique was used to measure emotions and statistical analysis was used to explore the relationships among the scope of eye movements, emotions and information-seeking behavior of readers of different ages.

Results revealed that participants experienced an array of emotions, such as contemplative, doubtful or peaceful. The older the participant was, the smaller the scope of eye movements was. Scope was also affected by emotions (both positive and negative).

These results serve as useful reference for exploration into human – information interaction, perceived ease of use, affected searching and the formulation of knowledge structures in visualized interfaces.

Due to its inexpensive production costs, low stress concentration and maintenance-friendliness, the adhesive bonded pipe joint is frequently utilized for pipe connection. However, further theoretical analysis is needed to understand the debonding failure mechanism of such bonded pipe joints under axial tension.

In this study, based on the bi-linear cohesive zone model, the integrated closed-form solutions were derived by considering the axial stiffness ratio and failure stage to determine the relative interfacial slip, interfacial shear stress and relationship of tension–displacement in the bonded pipe joint.

Additionally, solutions for the critical bonded length and the ultimate load capacity were put forth. Besides, the numerical study was conducted to verify the theoretical solutions regarding the load–displacement relationship. The interfacial shear stress distribution at different failure stages was presented to understand the interfacial shear stress transmission and debonding process. The effect of bonded length on the ultimate load and ductility of pipe joints was also discussed.

The findings in this study can give a reference for the design of bonded pipe joints in their actual engineering applications.

An issue when printing multi-material objects is understanding how different materials will perform together, especially because interfaces between them are always created. This paper aims to address this interface from a mechanical perspective and evaluates how it should be designed for a better mechanical performance.

Different interface mechanisms were considered, namely, microscopic interfaces that are based on chemical bonding and were represented with a U-shape interface; a macroscopic interface characterized by a mechanical interlocking mechanism, represented by a T-shape interface; and a mesoscopic interface that sits between other interface systems and that was represented by a dovetail shape geometry. All these different interfaces were tested in two different material sets, namely, poly (lactic acid)–poly (lactic acid) and poly (lactic acid)–thermoplastic polyurethane material pairs. These two sets represent high- and low-compatibility materials sets, respectively.

The results showed, despite the materials’ compatibility level, multi-material objects will have a better mechanical performance through a macroscopic interface, as it is based on a mechanical interlocking system, of which performance cannot be achieved by a simple face-to-face interface even when considering the same material.

The paper investigates the importance of interface design in multi-material 3D prints by fused filament fabrication. Especially, for parts intended to be subjected to mechanical efforts, simple face-to-face interfaces are not sufficient and more robust and macroscopic-based interface geometries (based on mechanical interlocking systems) are advised. Moreover, such interfaces do not raise esthetic problems because of their working principle; the 3D printing technology can hide the interface geometries, if required.

This paper deals with numerical techniques dedicated to the predictive calculation of complex structures undergoing medium‐frequency vibrations. This field presents challenging difficulties. The first difficulty is the development of an efficient computational method because with the traditional finite element method (FEM), as the frequency increases, it becomes more expensive to control the pollution error. The second difficulty is the availability of sufficiently realistic joint models to take into account damping phenomena because in vibration problems dissipation controls the magnitude of the response directly.

We use the Variational Theory of Complex Rays (VTCR), an approach which effectively avoids the difficulties encountered with traditional FE techniques. Using two‐scale shape functions which verify the dynamic equation and the constitutive relation within each substructure, the VTCR can be viewed as a means of expressing the power balance at the different interfaces between substructures in variational form. New joint models which include heterogeneous mass, stiffness and damping are introduced to deal with the second difficulty.

This paper focuses on a new, substructured version of the VTCR which enables us to separate the realistically modeled substructures from the less accurate joints. The equations of the substructures are enforced exactly, whereas the interface equations are verified approximately through the minimization of an L² residual. We show that this new formulation gives good results compared to the traditional VTCR or the FEM.

Although the examples presented in this paper are very simple, this new formulation shoult encounter no difficulties when dealing with more complex assemblies composed of several plates, beams, shells,…

This new, substructured VTCR approach provides more flexibility in the improvement of joint models, for example by carrying out experimental measurements on real structures.

The purpose of this paper is to resolve a gap in the knowledge of how people with dyslexia interact with information retrieval (IR) systems, specifically an understanding of their information‐searching behaviour.

The dyslexia cognitive profile is used to design a logging system, recording the difference between two sets of participants: dyslexic and control users. A standard Okapi interface is used – together with two standard TREC topics – in order to record the information searching behaviour of these users.

Using the log data, the differences in information‐searching behaviour of control and dyslexic users, i.e. in the way the two groups interact with Okapi, are established and it also established that qualitative information collected (such as experience etc.) may not be able to account for these differences. Evidence from query variables was unable to distinguish between groups, but differences on topic for the same variables were recorded. Users who view more documents tended to judge more documents as being relevant, in terms of either the user group or topic. Session data indicated that there may be an important difference between the number of iterations used in a search between the user groups, as there may be little effect from the topic on this variable.

This is the first study of the effect of dyslexia on information search behaviour, and it provides some evidence to take the field forward.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the inelastic behavior of heterogeneous structures within the framework of finite element modelling, by taking into the related probabilistic aspects of heterogeneities.

The paper shows how to construct the structured FE mesh representation for the failure modelling for such structures, by using a building‐block of a constant stress element which can contain two different phases and phase interface. All the modifications which are needed to enforce for such an element in order to account for inelastic behavior in each phase and the corresponding inelastic failure modes at the phase interface are presented.

It is demonstrated by numerical examples that the proposed structured FE mesh approach is much more efficient from the non‐structured mesh representation. This feature is of special interest for probabilistic analysis, where a large amount of computation is needed in order to provide the corresponding statistics. One such case of probabilistic analysis is considered in this work where the geometry of the phase interface is obtained as the result of the Gibbs random process.

The paper confirms that one can make the most appropriate interpretation of the heterogeneous structure properties by taking into account the fine details of the internal structure, along with the related probabilistic aspects with the proper source of randomness, such as the one addressed herein in terms of porosity.

Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies offer designers the opportunity to experiment with novel interaction grammars, whose implications for conceptual modeling still need to be fully understood. An open problem is the ability to characterize the fluid, smooth and organic nature of the user interaction and navigation in ways that allow web engineers to share through a common vocabulary, as well as sketch, explore and specify design decisions in the light of usability requirements and stakeholder's goals. The purpose of this paper is to address this problem.

To meet this challenge, the authors extend IDM (Interactive Dialogue Model), a dialogue‐based approach focusing on the conceptual dialogue flow with the user, codifying a set of key modeling constructs in order to describe the new dialogue features of RIAs.

The approach, called Rich‐IDM demonstrated some relevant features: expressiveness to capture interactive features at a high level of abstraction, semi‐formality to facilitate the establishment of a common ground between designers and web engineers, and traceability of the design to important usability requirements.

The paper proposes a simple way to fill the gap between hypermedia design and user experience design for RIAs, which is an open issue, both from the web engineering point of view and the human‐computer interaction point of view.

The authors have described how Rich‐IDM can help designers to capture and cope with some RIA interface flaws. In this case, the benefits of the approach are directly related to the semantics of its primitives.

The authors' proposal is the first, consolidated step of a promising research avenue.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate current simulation capabilities for thin film delamination on the basis of real test data as well as a contribution to its extension in order to partly substitute experimental investigations.

The proposed model consists of a formulation that describes the behaviour of the bulk material and an approach that introduces the film's delamination capability. An implicit finite element framework with a cohesive zone implementation is used and described in detail. The numerical results on the basis of the a priori identified material parameters are related to the experimental work. In order to capture the obvious peel speed dependency of these delamination processes, a viscoelastic cohesive formulation is introduced and compared with a pure separation rate dependent cohesive material in the second part of this contribution.

The performed numerical simulations show a good approximation of the experimental peel process. The extension in order to take time‐dependent effects into account is required for the simulation of such problems. In contrast with the pure rate‐dependent model, the presented consistent formulation of the cohesive part is able to cover the whole range of observed material phenomena.

Owing to the absence of suitable experimental single mode investigations of the sealed layer, the used cohesive material parameters are identified in relation to the pre‐existing experimental results. Furthermore, the resultant peel force has a constant value due to the assumed homogeneous cohesive material and therefore gives only a mean approximation of the experimental values at this stage of the investigation.

The numerical representation of such a thin film delamination process in relation to real experimental results shows the additional capabilities and the usability of the implicit finite element method with a cohesive zone implementation in a clear and illustrative way. The first proposed cohesive extension based on a rheological model shows the capability to cover the full range of time‐dependent interface layer behaviour.

In this paper, the effect of the FE discretization density on the results of both convex and nonconvex‐nonsmooth frictional contact and adhesive contact interface problems is investigated. The tool for this study is a variational formulation leading to an iterative method for the numerical solution of the arising nonconvex‐nonsmooth optimization problems. Various cases of monotone and nonmonotone interface laws are considered and interesting results are obtained.

Drawing from resource-based theory, the authors aim to study how and under what conditions small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) capitalise on their proactive entrepreneurial behaviour (PEB) to achieve new product development (NPD) performance.

The authors’ data were drawn from a cross-sectional questionnaire survey of 401 UK-based SMEs in the manufacturing sector.

The authors identify an upward curvilinear relationship between PEB and NPD performance. Taking a step further, the authors propose and confirm that this curvilinear association arises from, in part, SMEs’ innovation capability, which in turn translates into NPD performance. The authors also find that this upward curvilinear relationship between PEB and innovation capability flips to a downward curvilinear relationship when firms pursue a customer and competitor orientation.

This paper looks beyond the linear relationship that exists among entrepreneurial behaviour, market orientation and innovation outcomes.