An intuitive method to design load displacement characteristics for nonlinear springs in parallelogram linkages

Many mechanical applications involve the use of springs with specifically designed load-displacement characteristics. This paper presents a new mechanical concept, that uses prestressed nonlinear plate springs that can be designed for various load-displacement characteristics for the end effector of parallelogram linkages. An intuitive method is...

Process improvement of Damen Shipyards Galati pre-processing: Merging two pre-processing facilities by implementing Lean Manufacturing

An improvement study to the pre-processing process of Damen Shipyards Galati (DSGa) is performed since benchmark analysis shows that the current pre-processing process underperforms, compared to industry peers. The objective is to increase DSGa’s throughput and decrease space utilisation, such that pre-processing facilities S1 and S1a can be...

The Circular Supermarket Chain: Introducing the Circular Economy in the Building Specification

The main question of this master thesis is: Which changes have to be made to make the Lidl’s Specification circular, with an emphasis on materials and assembly? To come to an answer, a multitude of steps were taken. <br/><br/>The first step was an assessment of the principles of Circular Economy, the principles which lie at the foundation of the...

Development of Silicon Oxide as Electron Selective Passivating Contact Layer in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Within the photovoltaic industry, a lot of research is done in order to minimize losses which are created during the conversion of solar light to electrical energy. In a crystalline silicon solar cell light has to pass through several layers before it enters the silicon wafer where the electron-hole pairs are generated. As one can imagine, if...

Incremental Nonlinear Flight Control for Fixed-Wing Aircraft

In the context of fault-tolerant flight control (FTFC), various types of incremental nonlinear control methods have been previously proposed that should overcome important challenges that are imposed by the use of nonlinear, model-based flight control systems. This work presents an analysis, design and implementation of promising incremental...