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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
The Arched Flexure Vsa: A Compact Variable Stiffness Actuator With Large Stiffness Range, Joseph M. Schimmels, Daniel Garces
The Arched Flexure Vsa: A Compact Variable Stiffness Actuator With Large Stiffness Range, Joseph M. Schimmels, Daniel Garces
Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications
The high stiffness of conventional robots is beneficial in attaining highly accurate positioning in free space. High stiffness, however, limits a robot's ability to perform constrained manipulation. Because of the high stiffness, geometric conflict between the robot and task constraints during constrained manipulation can lead to excessive forces and task failure. Variable stiffness actuators can be used to adjust the stiffness of robot joints to allow high stiffness in unconstrained directions and low stiffness in constrained directions. Two important design criteria for variable stiffness actuation are a large range of stiffness and a compact size. A new design, the Arched …
Optimal Pavement Design And Rehabilitation Planning Using A Mechanistic-Empirical Approach, Yun Bai, Osman Erman Gungor, Jaime Alberto Hernandez-Urrea, Yanfeng Ouyang, Imad L. Al-Qadi
Optimal Pavement Design And Rehabilitation Planning Using A Mechanistic-Empirical Approach, Yun Bai, Osman Erman Gungor, Jaime Alberto Hernandez-Urrea, Yanfeng Ouyang, Imad L. Al-Qadi
Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications
This paper presents the development of a pavement design and rehabilitation optimization decision-making framework based on Mechanistic-Empirical (ME) roughness transfer models. The AASHTOWare Pavement ME Design (the software of Pavement ME Design) is used to estimate pavement deterioration based on the combined effects of permanent deformation, fatigue, and thermal cracking. The optimization problem is first formulated into a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model to address the predominant trade-off between agency and user costs. To deal with the complexity associated with the pavement roughness transfer functions in the software and to use the roughness values as input to the optimization framework, a …