Product family optimization: a multiplatform algorithm based on iterative increase of the commonality

International audienceThis work addresses the problem of optimizing the design of a family of products and simultaneously maximizing the commonality between these products. By commonality, we mean the proportion of components that are shared between the products. The set of all components common to all products is called platform [2, 3]. We consider here the multiplatform problem that allows the commonality to start as soon as one component is common to two products. The multiplatform formulation encompasses every possible case of commonality and leads to a highly complex optimization problem: for NP products, of each N design variables, there are (BNP )N multiplatform configurations (BNP is the Nth P number of Bell). In this paper, we propose an algorithm to tackle this multiplatform product family optimization. Similarly to [1, 3] , we will estimate the Pareto front between an aggregation of the products engineering performance and the family commonality. The proposed method is based on a quadratic approximation of the product performance functions and has a complexity of O(N ×N2 P ×log(NP )), which is much better than the complexity of any enumeration strategy ((BNP )N)

Repairing Cultural and Museum Cooperation between Cameroon and Europe

How can we recreate conditions for a relationship based on reciprocity and mutuality between Europe and Africa? How do we repair this relationship? Beginning with these questions, this contribution analyses museum and cultural cooperation between Cameroon and Europe from the 1960s to the present day. Building on Kwame Nkrumah’s and Ade Ajayi’s concepts of decolonization and “Reparation” (with a capital R) on the one hand, and Aimé Césaire’s and Philipp Schorch and Noelle Kahanu’s concepts of cooperation on the other, the chapter interrogates legal and institutional mechanisms of this cultural cooperation such as the formal agreements on which it is based, as well as participating institutions and their impact in Cameroon today. By addressing museums as one of the many legacies of (post)colonial relations between Cameroon and Europe, the chapter aims to contribute to the debate on the future of the colonial legacy in Cameroon.ERC Consolidator Grant Minor Universalit

Coupled structural and magnetic properties of ferric fluoride nanostructures: part II, a Monte-Carlo Heisenberg study

We present a numerical study of the magnetic structure of nanostructured iron fluoride, using the Monte-Carlo-Metropolis simulated annealing technique and a classical Heisenberg Hamiltonian with a superexchange angle dependence. The parameters are adjusted on experimental results, and the atomic structure and topology taken from a previous atomistic model of grain boundaries in the same system. We find perfect antiferromagnetic crystalline grains and a disordered magnetic configuration (speromagnetic like) at the grain boundary, in agreement with experimental findings. Both the lowest magnetic energy and the rate of magnetic frustration are found to be dependent on the relative disorientation of crystalline grains, i.e. on the cationic topology. By simulating hysteresis loops, we find that the magnetization rotation is not spatially uniform. We conclude on possible extensions of the model.Comment: submitted to JMM

Reparation, Restitution, and the Politics of Memory. A Methodological and Historical Introduction

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme – Grant Agreement Number 819931