Editorial

Citation

Haupt, T.C. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Vol. 8 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jedt.2010.34308baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Volume 8, Issue 2

This second issue of Vol. 8 of the Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology includes papers on elastic beam deformation problems, design of cashew nut shelling machine, fabrication of magnetic torquer coils, assessment of satisfaction in construction, robot prototype for pets, artificial neural networks (ANNs), and career decisions in construction.

In the first paper, A. Barari, B. Ganjavi, M. Ghanbari Jeloudar, and G. Domairry argue that variational iteration method and homotopy-perturbation method are effective and simple to use to solve elastic beam deformation problems. They suggest that they do not need large computer memories to achieve this objective. In particular, the methods are excellent for solving boundary value problems.

The second paper authored by S.J. Ojolo, O. Damisa, J.I. Orisaleye, and C. Ogbonnaya from Nigeria discusses the benefits of using a motorized shelling impeller that they had designed. They found that the shelling efficiency of the machine was 95 percent while whole kernel recovery was 70 percent. The machine could be modified further for even better performance. The resultant reduced unit cost was beneficial for large-scale commercial production of the sheller.

The design of a template to fabricate magnetic torquer coils is the subject of the paper by Sanjay Jayaram. He argues that the manufacture of the magnetic torquer coil in varying sizes and shapes is simple, cost effective and efficient in the satellite manufacturing industry.

Chinny Nzekwe-Excel, Chris Nwagboso, Panos Georgakis, and David Proverbs discuss an integrated framework for assessing satisfaction in the construction sector. They demonstrate that satisfaction is not only required by construction clients but also other members of the project team. They suggest that this satisfaction assessment integrated framework can be applied at different phases of a project life cycle and evaluate project team satisfaction.

The design of a robot that engages animals into playing as part of a multi-disciplinary engineering capstone design project is discussed by Yanfei Liu, Jiaxin Zhao, Ves Dimitrov, Amanda Irish, Chad Jones, Sean Kirk, Joseph Thomas, and David Welter. They found that the prototype was a start for an intelligent robot system designed to entertain pets. The robot would have to be manufactured in different sizes to accommodate, for example, cats and dogs given their general size differences.

S.P. Joy Vasantha Rani and K. Aruna Prabha implement the hardware structure for radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) based on stochastic logic computation. They argue that the hardware implementation of ANNs has a complicated structure and is normally space consuming due to, for example, the huge size of digital multiplication, addition/subtraction, and non-linear activation functions. Further, the unavailability of ANN hardware at an attractive price limits its use for real time applications. According to the authors stochastic theory-based arithmetic and logic approach provides a way to carry out complex computation with very simple hardware and very flexible design of the system. The Gaussian RBF for hidden layer neuron can be employed using stochastic counter to reduce the hardware resources significantly. The number of hidden layer neurons in RBFNN structure is adaptively varied to make it an intelligent system.

The final paper by Nicholas Chileshe and Theodore C. Haupt discusses the gender-biased career decisions in the construction industry using South Africa as their context. Their sample was male and female high school students drawn from a varied socio-economic background. They found subtle gender-biased differences in the career choice decision making processes of these students.

Special thanks to each of the contributing authors and reviewers for their contributions to the papers in this particular issue.

Theo C. Haupt