The purpose of this study was to compare driver performance of 17 conventional automotive instrument panel (IP) tasks on the road and in the driving simulator and to validate use of the simulator in evaluation of an IP design. Introduction of random crosswind was shown to influence the driving workload in the simulator. Comparisons of the visual attentional and manual demand measures demonstrated that a driving environment close to that in the car is provided by the simulator at zero crosswind level and that the driving simulator can be used to evaluate automotive IP designs.

This research was undertaken, in part, to determine the magnitudes of performance decrements associated with automotive instrument panel tasks as a function of driver age. Driver eye scanning and dwell time measures and task completion measures were collected while 24 drivers aged 18 to 72 performed a variety of instrument panel tasks as each drove an instrumented vehicle along preselected routes. The results indicated a monotonically increasing relationship between driver age and task completion time and the number of glances to the instrument panel. Mean glance dwell times, either to the roadway or the instrument, were not significantly different among the various age groups. The nature of these differences for the various task categories used in the present study was examined.

A global search optimization system is applied to the design of a horizontal axis tidal current turbine with shroud. 11 design parameters of the turbine blade and 4 design parameters of the shroud casing are considered for the optimization using a genetic algorithm. In order to reduce the simulation cost, a neural network is applied as the meta-model of the RANS (Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes) equation solver. Multi-objectives of the power coefficient at different tip speed ratios are applied to cover a wide operating range of the turbine. The CFD (Computational fluid dynamics) for optimization is validated experimentally for the case of a baseline design, and an optimum design is proposed. In this paper, a static structural analysis has been performed, and its robustness is confirmed under several operating conditions. Furthermore, internal flow of the optimized turbine is discussed in detail. It is found that the optimized blade generates a swirling flow and suppresses flow separation at the diffuser wall. The wide angle of the diffuser successfully achieves a high pressure recovery ratio and results in a high level of suction at the inlet of the turbine. It is found that the high-performance tidal turbine is possible to design if both the blade and the shroud diffuser are optimized at the same time.

This study investigated how rotation of dot-matrix characters influenced human performance, measured by the response time in a random search task. Factors that influence the extent of dot-matrix pattern distortion were identified, and their effects were investigated. Significant effects were found in angle of rotation (p=0.0046; 0 to 180 degrees in a 5-degree increment), target character's distance from the center of rotation (p<0.0001), and target characters (p<0.0001). Issues pertinent in predicting the effect of dot-matrix pattern distortion on performance are discussed.

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of display failures and rotation of dot-matrix symbols on visual search performance. The type of display failure (cell, horizontal line, vertical line), failure mode (ON, failures matched the symbols; OFF, failures matched the background), percentage of failures (0, 1, 2, 3, 4%), and rotation angle (0, 70, 105 degrees) were the variables examined. Results showed that displays which exhibit ON cell failures greater than 1% significantly affect search time performance. Cell failures degrade performance more than line failures. Search time and accuracy were best when symbols were oriented upright. The effects of display failures and rotation angle were found to be independent. Implications for display design and suggestions for quantifying the distortion due to rotation are discussed.