Mechatronics Design of Ball and Beam System: Education and Research

The key element in mechatronics design is the concurrent synergetic integration, modeling, simulation, analysis and optimization of multidisciplinary knowledge through the design process from the very start of the design process. Mechatronics engineer is expected to design engineering systems with synergy and integration toward constrains like higher performance, speed, precision, efficiency, lower costs and functionality. This paper proposes the conception and development of ball and beam system based on mechatronics design approach. A complete overall system and subsystems selection, modeling, simulation, analysis, and integration are presented. The proposed mechatronics design and models were created and verified using MATLAB /Simulink software and are intended for research purposes, as well as, application in educational process. Keywords- Mechatronics, Mechatronics design approach, Ball and beam, modeling/simulation

Pushing architectural quality further

In this paper, the intentions thriving the implementation of computational modeling of building physics as it is approached in the Architectural engineering courses at Ghent University are discussed. During the bachelor degree, courses focus mainly on integration of basic building physics feasibility in the architectural conceptualization. During the final bachelor year, students program their own simplified 2D models for internal condensation and thermal bridges in a spreadsheet, based on realistic detailing from buildings they studied in other courses. These models are intentionally kept both simplified and strongly mathematically based to nurture thorough comprehension of the physical background of problematic design options. Additionally, evaluation of energy performance with official EPB-software is incorporated in the courses because of its high relevance as a legal benchmark. All these models, including EPB, are (semi)static and thus offer only limited but nevertheless useful information on physical, legal, hygienic… viability of different options at reasonable complexity. Furthermore, they induce basic modeling skills as a basis for further development. During the master’s degree, the focus shifts from taxation of the feasibility of design decisions towards energetic performance as one of the starting points and validation criteria of the design process. For students who wish to specialize in the matter, elective courses and master’s thesis projects on optimization, innovative techniques, passive building standards etc. are offered in which advanced dynamic modeling is used. These models offer an important input for this specific design process as they enable precise, nuanced validation of the robustness and sensitivity for certain parameters of different strategies in a given, very complex, situation. By developing both innovative, more precise models for the master classes besides more powerful integration of modeling with design software (BIM) and robust predesign templates for the bachelor courses with master’s student cooperation, the research team supports these courses in achieving output of the highest possible quality

Proper software engineering process in developing an integrated telehealth system

Software development project becomes difficult because of the complexity in the business requirements, rigid framework and unpredictable performance. These cause difficulties to deliver the software on time, to maintain it and to adapt to new requirements. These scenarios had been faced in developing the healthcare information system which typically complex and comprehensive. Due to its complexities, the development of healthcare information system and other related healthcare applications typically disparate and less integrated. This led to maintenance and system integration issues that recently struggling by most healthcare providers around the world to resolve it by putting effort to link all existing disparate system into integrated one. This was due to the fact that a proper software engineering process was given less attention at the beginning of the health ICT project. This paper proposed, a systematic software engineering process based on customized Rational Unified Process for managing the development of integrated telehealth system. This paper also proposed literate modeling approach for performing system analysis and design model for users‟ accessibility and comprehensibility

Distributed product development approaches and system for achieving optimal design.

The research in this dissertation attempts to provide theoretic approaches and design systems to support engineers who are located in different places and belong to different teams or companies to work collaboratively to perform product development.The second challenge is addressed by developing a collaborative design process modeling technique based on Petri-net. Petri-net is used to describe complex design processes and to construct different design process alternatives. These alternative Petri-net models are then analyzed to evaluate design process alternatives and to select the appropriate process.In this dissertation, three major challenges are identified in realization of a collaborative design paradigm: (i) development of design method that supports multidisciplinary xi design teams to collaboratively solve coupled design problems, (ii) development of process modeling techniques to support representation and improve complex collaborative design process, and (iii) implementation of a testbed system that demonstrates the feasibility of enhancing current design system to satisfy with the needs of organizing collaborative design process for collaborative decision making and associated design activities.New paradigms, along with accompanying approaches and software systems are necessary to support collaborative design work, in a distributed design environment, of multidisciplinary engineering teams who have different knowledge, experience, and skills. Current research generally focuses on the development of online collaborative tools, and software frameworks that integrate and coordinate these tools. However, a gap exists between the needs of a distributed collaborative design paradigm and current collaborative design tools. On one side, design methodologies facilitating engineering teams' decision making is not well developed. In a distributed collaborative design paradigm, each team holds its own perspective towards the product realization problem, and each team seeks design decisions that can maximize the design performance in its own discipline. Design methodologies that coordinate the separate design decisions are essential to achieve successful collaboration. On the other side, design of products is becoming more complex. Organizing a complex design process is a major obstacle in the application of a distributed collaborative design paradigm in practice. Therefore, the principal research goal in this dissertation is to develop a collaborative multidisciplinary decision making methodology and design process modeling technique that bridges the gap between a collaborative design paradigm and current collaborative design systems.To overcome the first challenge, decision templates are constructed to exchange design information among interacting disciplines. Three game protocols from game theory are utilized to categorize the collaboration in decision makings. Design formulations are used to capture the design freedom among coupled design activities.The third challenge, implementation of collaborative design testbed, is addressed by integration of existing Petri-net modeling tools into the design system. The testbed incorporates optimization software, collaborative design tools, and management software for product and process design to support group design activities.Two product realization examples are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the research and collaborative testbed. A simplified manipulator design example is used for explanation of collaborative decision making and design process organization. And a reverse engineering design example is introduced to verify the application of collaborative design paradigm with design support systems in practice

Advantages of building information modeling (bim) during the operational life

Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology is rapidly gaining traction in facility management and operations. This software aids in the effective management and exchange of building data, offering valuable benefits throughout construction stages, from planning to maintenance. This study delves into the factors affecting the operational performance of a BIM model and its paramount benefits during the digital design phase. Emphasis is placed on the merits of BIM during the operational phase, primarily using Autodesk Revit software. The research includes an analysis of engineering systems, particularly digital modeling of HVAC, water supply, and electrical systems. Drawing from BIM implementation experiences in Ukraine, the study reviewed significant contributions to digital model designs, examining BIM models across various infrastructure projects. A unique aspect of this research is the development of a digital BIM model using Autodesk Revit 2016, which uses advanced tools to spotlight the benefits of modeling throughout the design process

Scenario based requirement analysis modeling and design evaluation for real-time reactive systems

An effective requirements engineering process can greatly improve the quality of software development, direct an effective design solution, reduce early mistakes, and provide a foundation for evaluating design and implementation. In this thesis work, we explored how to integrate scenario-based requirements modeling approach into real time reactive system development. We developed an object-event-scenario requirement analysis modeling method, which describes system context, behavioural characteristics and system usages. We also developed a scenario-based design evaluation method, which applies a black-box approach to simulate design execution, test design solutions, and evaluate design performance. To promote and facilitate our scenario-based design evaluation, some supporting tools are designed and developed

High frequency trading system design and process management

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-79).Trading firms nowadays are highly reliant on data mining, computer modeling and software development. Financial analysts perform many similar tasks to those in software and manufacturing industries. However, the finance industry has not yet fully adopted high-standard systems engineering frameworks and process management approaches that have been successful in the software and manufacturing industries. Many of the traditional methodologies for product design, quality control, systematic innovation, and continuous improvement found in engineering disciplines can be applied to the finance field. This thesis shows how the knowledge acquired from engineering disciplines can improve the design and processes management of high frequency trading systems. High frequency trading systems are computation-based. These systems are automatic or semi-automatic software systems that are inherently complex and require a high degree of design precision. The design of a high frequency trading system links multiple fields, including quantitative finance, system design and software engineering. In the finance industry, where mathematical theories and trading models are relatively well researched, the ability to implement these designs in real trading practices is one of the key elements of an investment firm's competitiveness. The capability of converting investment ideas into high performance trading systems effectively and efficiently can give an investment firm a huge competitive advantage.(cont.) This thesis provides a detailed study composed of high frequency trading system design, system modeling and principles, and processes management for system development. Particular emphasis is given to backtesting and optimization, which are considered the most important parts in building a trading system. This research builds system engineering models that guide the development process. It also uses experimental trading systems to verify and validate principles addressed in this thesis. Finally, this thesis concludes that systems engineering principles and frameworks can be the key to success for implementing high frequency trading or quantitative investment systems.by Xiangguang Xiao.S.M

A Framework for Model-Driven Development of Mobile Applications with Context Support

Model-driven development (MDD) of software systems has been a serious trend in different application domains over the last 15 years. While technologies, platforms, and architectural paradigms have changed several times since model-driven development processes were first introduced, their applicability and usefulness are discussed every time a new technological trend appears. Looking at the rapid market penetration of smartphones, software engineers are curious about how model-driven development technologies can deal with this novel and emergent domain of software engineering (SE). Indeed, software engineering of mobile applications provides many challenges that model-driven development can address. Model-driven development uses a platform independent model as a crucial artifact. Such a model usually follows a domain-specific modeling language and separates the business concerns from the technical concerns. These platform-independent models can be reused for generating native program code for several mobile software platforms. However, a major drawback of model-driven development is that infrastructure developers must provide a fairly sophisticated model-driven development infrastructure before mobile application developers can create mobile applications in a model-driven way. Hence, the first part of this thesis deals with designing a model-driven development infrastructure for mobile applications. We will follow a rigorous design process comprising a domain analysis, the design of a domain-specific modeling language, and the development of the corresponding model editors. To ensure that the code generators produce high-quality application code and the resulting mobile applications follow a proper architectural design, we will analyze several representative reference applications beforehand. Thus, the reader will get an insight into both the features of mobile applications and the steps that are required to design and implement a model-driven development infrastructure. As a result of the domain analysis and the analysis of the reference applications, we identified context-awareness as a further important feature of mobile applications. Current software engineering tools do not sufficiently support designing and implementing of context-aware mobile applications. Although these tools (e.g., middleware approaches) support the definition and the collection of contextual information, the adaptation of the mobile application must often be implemented by hand at a low abstraction level by the mobile application developers. Thus, the second part of this thesis demonstrates how context-aware mobile applications can be designed more easily by using a model-driven development approach. Techniques such as model transformation and model interpretation are used to adapt mobile applications to different contexts at design time or runtime. Moreover, model analysis and model-based simulation help mobile application developers to evaluate a designed mobile application (i.e., app model) prior to its generation and deployment with respected to certain contexts. We demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of the model-driven development infrastructure we developed by seven case examples. These showcases demonstrate the designing of mobile applications in different domains. We demonstrate the scalability of our model-driven development infrastructure with several performance tests, focusing on the generation time of mobile applications, as well as their runtime performance. Moreover, the usability was successfully evaluated during several hands-on training sessions by real mobile application developers with different skill levels

Numerical Simulation/Analysis and Computer Aided Engineering for Virtual Protyping of Heavy Ground Vehicle

This doctoral project dissertation deals with the investigation of simulation/analysis in the product development process of specialized heavy ground vehicle engineering which posts some of the most challenging engineering problems. The focus of the project is to keep the process of simulation efficient by structuring and managing of models and the method, for usage early in product development cycle. Previous work in this area has focused on developing faster calculation algorithms, more specialized simulation software, and elegance. For simulation/analysis, in today's competitive engineering environment in which engineers strive to develop designs with high performance, and reduced time and cost, there is also a growing demand to capture reality more accurately and efficiently when numerically modeling a problem in Computer Aided Engineering (CAE). Accurate simulation coupled with educated simplifications and other modeling techniques, allow for the concept of Virtual Prototyping (VP), upfront and in design-integrated manner for the product development which would reduce much of the status quo Specialized or Traditional CAE, and Physical Prototyping or Test, to ensure a problem free product launch, overall cost and time savings in the design work - essentially resulting in lean, economical and accelerated product development. In line with increasingly popular new product development and project management paradigm, and also as trade studies, in this doctoral project design works are performed and managed, investigated on, and `up or front loaded' using various contemporary CAE simulation software packages to Virtually Prototype and verify industrial design and wide variety of real world problems commonly came across in the design of Specialized Road and Rail Heavy Ground Vehicles. The numerical simulation technology capabilities are fully explored to specifically tackle the kinematics, dynamics, statics, and structural problems, some with the added realism of today's 3D high fidelity graphical environment of VP. Adopting various modeling and VP strategies, the work for the doctoral project is performed with increasing complexity and some coupled with testing to compliment or validate simulation/analysis result as a show of accuracy providing high level of confidence in further design customization, synthesis, and iterations. The main purpose of the doctoral project is to arrive at a `Virtual Prototyping driven' rather than a `Virtual Prototyping verified' design, although much verification is performed to confirm acceptable virtual prototype fidelity

Evolving multi-tenant SaaS cloud applications using model-driven engineering

Cloud computing promotes multi-tenancy for efficient resource utilization by sharing hardware and software infrastructure among multiple clients. Multi-tenant applications running on a cloud infrastructure are provided to clients as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) over the network. Despite its benefits, multi-tenancy introduces additional challenges, such as p artitioning, extensibility, and customizability during the application development. Over time, after the application deployment, new requirements of clients and changes in business environment result application evolution. As the application evolves, its complexity also increases. In multi-tenancy, evolution demanded by individual clients should not affect availability , security , and performance of the application for other clients. Thus, the multi- tenancy concerns add more complexity by causing variability in design decisions. Managing this complexity requires adequate approaches and tools. In this paper, we propose modeling techniques from software product lines (SPL) and model-driven engineering (MDE) to manage variability and support evolution of multi-tenant applications and their requirements. Specifically, SPL was ap p lied to define technological and concep tual variabilities during the application design, where MDE was suggested to manage these variabilities. We also present a process of how MDE can address evolution of multi-tenant applications using variability models