For Inspiration Only; Designer interaction with informal collections of visual material

Designers surround themselves with visual material as a source of inspiration. The images are used in collages and moodboards to define and communicate the direction of a design project at an early stage of the design process. This thesis describes how designers interact with their collections of visual material and how new tools can support...

Ontevredenheid in de Nederlandse bouw: Een onderzoek naar het sociale interactieproces tussen partijen

Fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton robots

This thesis is the first to provide the fundamentals of ergonomic exoskeleton design. The fundamental theory as well as technology necessary to analyze and develop ergonomic wearable robots interacting with humans is established and validated by experiments and prototypes. The fundamentals are (1) a new theoretical framework for analyzing...

Unsteady Flow Organization of a Shock Wave/Boundary Layer Interaction

A fundamental experimental study is carried out to investigate the unsteady flow organization of an incident shock wave/turbulent boundary layer interaction at Mach 2.1. Planar and tomographic particle image velocimetry (PIV) are used in combination with data processing using the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), complemented with hot-wire...

Techniques and architectures for 3D interaction

Spatial scientific datasets are all around us, and 3D visualization is a powerful tool to explore details and structures within them. When dealing with complex spatial structures, interactive Virtual Reality (VR) systems can potentially improve exploration over desktop-based systems. However, from previous experience it was found that...

On the scaling and unsteadiness of shock induced separation

Shock wave boundary layer interactions (SWBLI) are a common phenomenon in transonic and supersonic flows. The presence of shock waves, induced by specific geometrical configurations, causes a rapid increase of the pressure, which can lead to flow separation. Examples of such interactions are found in amongst others rocket engine nozzles and on...

Shoes, Cars, and Other Love Stories: Investigating The Experience of Love for Products

People often say they love a product. What do they really mean when they say this, and is this a phenomenon that is relevant to the field of design? Findings from a preliminary study in this thesis indicated that people describe their love as a rewarding, long-term, and dynamic experience that arises from a meaningful relationship built with...

Coactive Design: Designing Support for Interdependence in Human-Robot Teamwork

Coactive Design breaks with traditional approaches by focusing on effective management of the interdependencies among human-machine team members. Providing support for interdependence enables members of a human-machine team to recognize problems and adapt. Support for a variety of interdependence relations makes a team flexible. Flexibility, in...

On the Interaction between a Tunnel Boring Machine and the Surrounding Soil

The thesis investigates the mechanical equilibrium of a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) driving in soft soil. The interaction between the TBM-shield and the soil is also investigated. The analysis is based on monitoring data gathered during the construction of the Hubertus tunnel in The Hague, Netherlands. The monitoring activities during tunnel...

Open data infrastructures: The design of an infrastructure to enhance the coordination of open data use

Governments and researchers traditionally focus on the publication of Open Government Data (OGD), whereas the actual use of the data is often neglected. Open data initiatives are often criticized for not realising the promoted benefits, yet only the use of OGD can result in these benefits. OGD use requires several actors, activities and tools;...

Participation and Interaction in Projects: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

Much of what agents (people, robots, etc.) do is dividing effort between several activities. In order to facilitate efficient divisions, we study contributions to such activities and advise on stable divisions that result in high social<br/>welfare. To this end, for each model (game), we find the Nash equilibria and their social welfare. A Nash...

Aerodynamics of Propellers in Interaction Dominated Flowfields: An Application to Novel Aerospace Vehicles

This research is on the aerodynamics of propellers in interaction. As a propeller is dependent on the flowfield it encounters, any disturbance in that inflow results in changes in loading on the propeller. This can result in propulsive efficiency changes and affect stability through generation of in-plane forces and out-of-plane moments. The...