A collaborative navigation system for concurrent mold design

Concurrent engineering: Automation, tools, and techniques

This research focuses on the development of a quantitative intelligent system for implementing concurrent engineering design. The paper first discusses the task of concurrent engineering design and the basic requirements for conducting integrated concurrent engineering design. The proposed quantitative intelligent system approach combines qualitative reasoning, based upon design and manufacturing knowledge, and quantitative evaluation and optimization, conducted using design information and manufacturing data generated in the knowledge-based reasoning. The method allows considerations on non-operating principle aspects of a product to be incorporated into the design phase, such as manufacturing, maintenance, service, recycle, etc., with an emphasis on production costs. The proposed method serves as a convenient software tool for gathering information required in the concurrent engineering design process and integrates tasks from different parts of the product development life cycle, particularly function design, manufacturability analysis and production cost estimation. A prototype software system is developed based upon this method using Smalltalk-80. In the prototype system, concurrent engineering design is carried out by: (1) describing and representing design requirements; (2) generating feasible design candidates and evaluating their design functions; (3) representing design geometry; (4) finding the associated production processes and predicting the production costs of each feasible design; and (5) identifying the costeffective design that satisfies given design requirements and requires minimum production costs.

This paper presents ongoing work to standardize model-based system engineering as a complement to point design development in the conceptual design phase of deep space missions. It summarizes two first steps towards practical application of this capability within the framework of concurrent engineering design teams and their customers. The first step is standard generation of system sensitivities models as the output of concurrent engineering design sessions, representing the local trade space around a point design. A review of the chosen model development process, and the results of three case study examples, demonstrate that a simple update to the concurrent engineering design process can easily capture sensitivities to key requirements. It can serve as a valuable tool to analyze design drivers and uncover breakpoints in the design. The second step is development of rough-order- of-magnitude, broad-range-of-validity design models for rapid exploration of the trade space, before selection of a point design. At least one case study demonstrated the feasibility to generate such models in a concurrent engineering session. The experiment indicated that such a capability could yield valid system-level conclusions for a trade space composed of understood elements. Ongoing efforts are assessing the practicality of developing end-to-end system-level design models for use before even convening the first concurrent engineering session, starting with modeling an end-to-end Mars architecture.

An Internet-enabled integrated system for co-design and concurrent engineering

North American undergraduate mechanical engineering design education has failed to meet the needs of industry in educating students in effective design philosophies typified by the concurrent engineering design philosophy. Current programmes emphasize traditional engineering analysis courses, leaving little room for truly educating the students in the fundamentals of mechanical engineering design. This paper uses the concurrent engineering design paradigm to design a programme for the education of students in mechanical engineering design. The basics of concurrent engineering design are outlined, the failings of typical design education stated, and an exploration of the required features of a new design curriculum presented.

An integrated graphical user interface (GUI) for concurrent engineering design of mechanical parts

Autoclave forming is an important method for manufacturing matrix composite components with large dimension and high quality. Digitization of its manufacturing process is an active research field. The quality of manufacturing process information representation has great impact on the reuse of knowledge. Therefore, based on the analysis of devices, processing parameters and mould structure requirement in autoclave forming, an ontology-based representation for matrix composite components manufacturing process is presented. It can digitally describe and store device capability parameters, process parameters, and mould structure parameters. Thus a knowledge framework for mould design of autoclave forming is presented, and on that basis a rapid design prototype system for mould is developed, in it a mould design process wizard is built to integrate the mould design process, it include input information, calculation, analysis, data storage, display the result of mould design. The outcome of this system can be used for knowledge for autoclave forming mould design storage and reuse.

Originally published in IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technology Vol. 20 No. 2. IEEE holds all copyright of this article. IEEE allows the final published version of author's own work to be deposited in institutional repositories.

A Computer-aided Mold Design for Transfer Molding Process in Semiconductor Packaging Industry

A concurrent engineering-oriented design database representation model

The author demonstrates the natural extension of the box structure theory and techniques of system development to concurrent system design. The semantics and syntax of box structures for designing concurrency are presented. Concurrent box structure designs for several concurrent system environments are shown. Extensions to more complex environments are suggested. >

To develop the future CAD systems with concurrent engineering functions, a new CAD model, called Concurrent Engineering-oriented Design Database Representation Model (CE-DDRM), is introduced in this research for supporting various lifecycle aspects in concurrent design. In this model, concepts and behaviors of different design database modeling components, including entities, properties, relationships, tasks, and specifications, are defined at meta-class level. Design database is modeled at two different levels, class level and instance level, representing generic design libraries and special design cases, respectively.

Space science mission concurrent design is to meet the scientific mission requirements, optimize the spacecraft design and ultimately reaches a feasible solution for the proposed program. The information management system for space science mission concurrent design is developed to manage all design disciplinary data and support data exchange between the coupled disciplines. The space science mission concurrent design process and information involved are reviewed and analyzed. The system architecture is divided into three layers, including the data persistence layer, business logic layer and presentation layers. Data persistence layer provides local data services, data entities access, data entities, file system. Business logic layer provides file management, workflow management and data exchange interface. Presentation layer provides interactive interface. A space science mission application is given as an example. The simulation results show the mission design can be performed via the information management system to acquire high quality results.

Comparison of Limit Surface Approach with other Approaches in Fixture Planning with Friction

In this study, a study of conceptual design for the polymeric-based composite automotive pedal box system is presented. This study describes the importance of the concurrent engineering technique in the total design activity. Several idea generation methods like the extension of the search space, the morphological chart, the exploitation of experiences, the gallery method and the voice of customer had been employed. Extensive application of the morphological charts enabled designers to identify the sub-solutions to each sub-functions of the pedal box system. The evaluation matrix method was used to decide on the final concept for the mounting bracket arrangement. The final solution for the polymeric-based composite pedal box system was three pedals mounted onto a common mounting bracket. The clutch and the brake pedals were pivoted onto a common shaft and the accelerator pedal had its own shaft. All the methods used were finally compared and evaluated.