Influence of the ratio on the mechanical properties of epoxy resin composite with diapers waste as fillers for partition panel application

Materials play significant role in the domestic economy and defense with the fast growth of science and technology field. New materials are the core of fresh technologies and the three pillars of modern science and technology are materials science, power technology and data science. The prior properties of the partition panel by using recycled diapers waste depend on the origin of waste deposits and its chemical constituents. This study presents the influence of the ratio on the mechanical properties of polymer in diapers waste reinforced with binder matrix for partition panel application. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of different ratio of diapers waste polymer reinforced epoxy-matrix with regards to mechanical properties and morphology analysis. The polymer includes polypropylene, polystyrene, polyethylene and superabsorbent polymer (SAP) were used as reinforcing material. The tensile and bending resistance for ratio of 0.4 diapers waste polymers indicated the optimum ratio for fabricating the partition panel. Samples with 0.4 ratios of diapers waste polymers have highest stiffness of elasticity reading with 76.06 MPa. A correlation between the micro structural analysis using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the mechanical properties of the material has been discussed

Enhancing the Supply Chain Performance by Integrating Simulated and Physical Agents into Organizational Information Systems

As the business environment gets more complicated, organizations must be able to respond to the business changes and adjust themselves quickly to gain their competitive advantages. This study proposes an integrated agent system, called SPA, which coordinates simulated and physical agents to provide an efficient way for organizations to meet the challenges in managing supply chains. In the integrated framework, physical agents coordinate with inter-organizations\' physical agents to form workable business processes and detect the variations occurring in the outside world, whereas simulated agents model and analyze the what-if scenarios to support physical agents in making decisions. This study uses a supply chain that produces digital still cameras as an example to demonstrate how the SPA works. In this example, individual information systems of the involved companies equip with the SPA and the entire supply chain is modeled as a hierarchical object oriented Petri nets. The SPA here applies the modified AGNES data clustering technique and the moving average approach to help each firm generalize customers\' past demand patterns and forecast their future demands. The amplitude of forecasting errors caused by bullwhip effects is used as a metric to evaluate the degree that the SPA affects the supply chain performance. The experimental results show that the SPA benefits the entire supply chain by reducing the bullwhip effects and forecasting errors in a dynamic environment.Supply Chain Performance Enhancement; Bullwhip Effects; Simulated Agents; Physical Agents; Dynamic Customer Demand Pattern Discovery

An agile and adaptive holonic architecture for manufacturing control

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. 2004. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Port

Intelligent Simulation Modeling of a Flexible Manufacturing System with Automated Guided Vehicles

Although simulation is a very flexible and cost effective problem solving technique, it has been traditionally limited to building models which are merely descriptive of the system under study. Relatively new approaches combine improvement heuristics and artificial intelligence with simulation to provide prescriptive power in simulation modeling. This study demonstrates the synergy obtained by bringing together the "learning automata theory" and simulation analysis. Intelligent objects are embedded in the simulation model of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS), in which Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) serve as the material handling system between four unique workcenters. The objective of the study is to find satisfactory AGV routing patterns along available paths to minimize the mean time spent by different kinds of parts in the system. System parameters such as different part routing and processing time requirements, arrivals distribution, number of palettes, available paths between workcenters, number and speed of AGVs can be defined by the user. The network of learning automata acts as the decision maker driving the simulation, and the FMS model acts as the training environment for the automata network; providing realistic, yet cost-effective and risk-free feedback. Object oriented design and implementation of the simulation model with a process oriented world view, graphical animation and visually interactive simulation (using GUI objects such as windows, menus, dialog boxes; mouse sensitive dynamic automaton trace charts and dynamic graphical statistical monitoring) are other issues dealt with in the study

Special Session on Industry 4.0

No abstract available

Process control and configuration of a reconfigurable production system using a multi-agent software system

Thesis (M. Tech. (Information Technology)) -- Central University of technology, Free State, 2011Traditional designs for component-handling platforms are rigidly linked to the product being produced. Control and monitoring methods for these platforms consist of various proprietary hardware controllers containing the control logic for the production process. Should the configuration of the component handling platform change, the controllers need to be taken offline and reprogrammed to take the changes into account. The current thinking in component-handling system design is the notion of re-configurability. Reconfigurability means that with minimum or no downtime the system can be adapted to produce another product type or overcome a device failure. The re-configurable component handling platform is built-up from groups of independent devices. These groups or cells are each responsible for some aspect of the overall production process. By moving or swopping different versions of these cells within the component-handling platform, re-configurability is achieved. Such a dynamic system requires a flexible communications platform and high-level software control architecture to accommodate the reconfigurable nature of the system. This work represents the design and testing of the core of a re-configurable production control software platform. Multiple software components work together to control and monitor a re-configurable component handling platform. The design and implementation of a production database, production ontology, communications architecture and the core multi-agent control application linking all these components together is presented

Engineering framework for service-oriented automation systems

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Survey on assembly sequencing: a combinatorial and geometrical perspective

A systematic overview on the subject of assembly sequencing is presented. Sequencing lies at the core of assembly planning, and variants include finding a feasible sequence—respecting the precedence constraints between the assembly operations—, or determining an optimal one according to one or several operational criteria. The different ways of representing the space of feasible assembly sequences are described, as well as the search and optimization algorithms that can be used. Geometry plays a fundamental role in devising the precedence constraints between assembly operations, and this is the subject of the second part of the survey, which treats also motion in contact in the context of the actual performance of assembly operations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft