Mental iteration in conceptual design involves repetition of cognitive activities when designers perceive discrepancies of the desired state and current state of design. Although it is believed that mental iteration has significant impact on design process and design results, little proof has been developed and our current understanding of mental iteration is still limited. This paper presents a preliminary study of impact of mental iteration on performance of designers in conceptual design. Mental iteration is modeled as various iterative loops of cognitive activities. An experiment was carried out to study the mental iteration behavior in conceptual design. The analysis of correlation was performed to identify significant associations between design metrics and the number and frequency of different types of iterations. The results provide evidence that mental iteration has not only positive but also negative impact on design performance and different types of iteration yield different impacts.
Abstract-Carleton damage function has been commonly utilized to describe the weapon-target interaction in the weapon effectiveness analyses. This function is simplified from the actual weapon lethality data and these simplifications can affect the analysis results. This paper investigates the difference between results of Monte Carlo simulations to determine the probability of target damage that utilize the Carleton damage function and the results of the same simulations that utilize a non-simplified probability of kill (Pk) matrix. A problem of multiple shots of an unguided artillery weapon against an area target was chosen as a case study. Two sets of Monte Carlo simulations to determine the probability of damage on a target were performed for several numbers of shots and target sizes. The first set of simulations utilized the Pk matrix while the second set utilized the Carleton damage function. Statistical analyses were performed. It was suggested that there was difference between the results of two sets of simulations but the effect size was small.Index Terms-Damage function, probability of damage, Monte Carlo simulation, weapon effectiveness.
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