An Artificial - Intelligent - Based System to Automate the Design of Complex Mechanical Products

Over the last decades, there has been growing pressure on industrial companies to offer to their costumers products with high quality, in the minimum deadlines and with reasonable prices. Since the design phase plays a key role to achieve these difficult goals, many traditional, DFX (Design For X) and integrated approaches have been proposed. However, many limits are still present. Thus, the main objectives of this work were first to identify these limits and then to overcome them by proposing and developing an automated framework for integrated product design. In this work, we automated the integrated DFMMA (Design For Materials, Manufacturing and Assembly) approach by developing an architecture composed of four levels, namely: the Common Information Modeling Level, the Selection Systems Level, the Inference and Computation Level and finally the Application Level. The proposed automated system is based on ontologies, on the CBR (Cases Based Reasoning) and the RBR (Rules Based Reasoning). The first main result obtained throughout the contributions consists on the integration of Manufacturing process selection, Assembly solution selection and materials selection in one integrated design approach. The second main result obtained consists on the exploitation of all the previous design studies developed by the design team and the ability to reuse the designers experience throughout the case based reasoning used in the proposed architecture. Another important result consists on the formalization and the automation of the execution of the design rules and the ability to infer new results and to check inconsistencies in the developed product using the data and information modeled in the ontological model and throughout the Cases Based Reasoning that we have incorporated in the developed approach. In this way, the redundancy in work and the difficulties faced in case of having a high number of design alternatives are avoided. Consequently, the product quality increases and wastes of time and money decrease. Finally, to validate the functioning and the efficacy of the proposed DFMMA system, an application on the design of a complex mechanical product is developed in the end of the work.

Women Decision-Making and Responsibility-Taking of Criminal Lifestyle: The Israeli Case

This study aims to investigate patterns of decision-making and responsibility-taking as opposed to the compulsion process selection of a criminal lifestyle among women in prison. A life story approach and semi-structured interviews sampling 30 Israeli women in prison during their first imprisonment were used. Using a mixed-method, results revealed that most of the participants claimed full or partial self-responsibility for having engaged in a criminal lifestyle or for the offense of which they had been convicted. This figure was consistent when the participants were divided by age of first offense or a history of abuse. The results support the need for an integrated approach explaining women’s criminal paths, including gender-specific as well as gender-neutral factors. The conclusion is that responsibility-taking for a criminal act should be one of the factors in intervention programs for women with delinquent behavior, regardless of whether there is a history of victimization or not.

An Innovative Approach to Install Production String with ESP to Avoid Productivity Impairment in Multistage Fractured Horizontal Well

Objectives/Scope Generally, tight reservoirs require hydraulic fracturing to enhance and sustain hydrocarbon production. However, fracturing requires frac string with bigger Internal Diameter (ID) to minimize frictional losses during hydraulic fracturing operation. This string ID may not be suitable to provide optimum Vertical Lift Performance (VLP) during production phase, particularly in oil wells. Therefore, it is required to replace the frac string with production string of smaller ID. Occasionally, artificial lift also becomes essential to overcome VLP issues in future due to progressive water production and declining reservoir pressure. Methods, Procedures, Process Completion replacement often causes reservoir damage due to killing operation, which can be removed in conventional carbonate reservoirs by matrix stimulation. However, formation damage removal is difficult in hydraulically fractured tight carbonate and sandstone reservoirs. Preventive measures become essential to avoid productivity impairment particularly in hydraulically fractured reservoirs. Different preventative options are proposed and reviewed to isolate reservoir with their advantages and disadvantages. After comprehensive studies and risk assessments, an innovative modification in the completion plan was introduced and finalized. This plan includes production string with Electrical Submersible Pump (ESP) to improve VLP. This completion provides full accessibility intervention job, which may be required for reservoir monitoring and surveillance in future. Results, Observations, Conclusions A comprehensive production test is performed to evaluate and compare the testing results of pre and post workover. Testing results show there is no impairment in productivity of the reservoir, which is avoided in workover process by isolating reservoir section. This paper summarizes the completion design process, selection criteria, challenges, and lessons learnt during design and execution phases. This technique will provide the guidelines for installation of the Production string/ESP in hydraulically fractured reservoir without productivity impairment. Novel/Additive Information With modified design, the reservoir is isolated from wellbore and completion with ESP is run successfully without killing reservoir section. Underbalance conditions are achieved prior to establishing communication between reservoir and wellbore.

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A SPECIALIZED REGULATORY REFERENCE DATABASE (DB) "SOWING EQUIPMENT FOR TILLED AND VEGETABLE CROPS”

This paper discusses the procedure for the develop-ment and operation algorithm of the specialized regulatory and reference database “Sowing equipment for tilled and vegetable crops” which contains a description and tech-nical characteristics of domestic and foreign precision seeders (their units and assemblies) for tilled and vegeta-ble crops in the system precision and zero agriculture. The main function of the program is the accumulation and sys-tematization of information on sowing equipment for tilled and vegetable crops with the possibility of interactive search, filtering and comparison of results. The structure of the database being developed has been determined; it includes 4 blocks: a graphical interface; control algorithms; data management; control components and general pur-pose components. Taking into account this structure, the stages of creating a database are determined: analysis of real world objects for the implementation of the modeling process, selection of tables and fields that are capable of identifying each object, designing relationships between tables and setting referential integrity rules. The developed software solves the following tasks: searches according to the main characteristics of sowing equipment for tilled and vegetable crops; forms an initial set of characteristics and their limit values; implements sorting and filtering of search results; provides the ability to select from the table-list a specific instance of equipment with the output of detailed information; provides the ability to select from the table-list of several copies of equipment for their detailed compari-son; provides personalized access to entering and modify-ing information in the database. The advantage of using the developed database is its regular replenishment; at the moment the information volume (content) is: for mechanical seeders -23 items; pneumatic seeders -78 items; “direct sowing” (“zero” farming) equipment -10 items.

Desain Dan Implementasi Data Warehouse Pada Perpustakaan Daerah Provinsi Sumatera Selatan

This research will focus on processing visitor data, member data, book borrowing data and book return data at the Regional Library of South Sumatra Province. The data is stored in the form of an excel file with a large amount of data, causing problems in the storage system such as data accumulation, data loss, no data analysis and delays in the reporting process. The process of data storage and data retrieval will be well integrated by building a data Warehouse at the Regional Library of South Sumatra Province. Data Warehouse is a system that contains several years of history and facilitates decision making. At the data Warehouse design stage using the Nine-Step method (Kimball, 2002), in this method there are nine steps in designing a data Warehouse, namely Process Selection, Grain Selection, Identification of dimensional adjustments, Fact Selection, Storage of initial calculations in the fact table, Reviewing the dimension table, selecting the database duration, tracking dimension changes, and prioritizing, querying the model and selecting the physical design. And the design and data processing process will use the Pentaho kettle and public Tableau applications, with the design and implementation of the data Warehouse, it is expected to help facilitate the reporting and analysis process for the Regional Library of South Sumatra Province.

An optimisation framework for designs for additive manufacturing combining design, manufacturing and post-processing

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) methodology that connects several methods, from geometrical design to post-process selection, into a common optimisation framework. Design/methodology/approach A design methodology is formulated and tested in a case study. The outcome of the case study is analysed by comparing the obtained results with alternative designs achieved by using other design methods. The design process in the case study and the potential of the method to be used in different settings are also discussed. Finally, the work is concluded by stating the main contribution of the paper and highlighting where further research is needed. Findings The proposed method is implemented in a novel framework which is applied to a physical component in the case study. The component is a structural aircraft part that was designed to minimise weight while respecting several static and fatigue structural load cases. An addition goal is to minimise the manufacturing cost. Designs optimised for manufacturing by two different AM machines (EOS M400 and Arcam Q20+), with and without post-processing (centrifugal finishing) are considered. The designs achieved in this study show a significant reduction in both weight and cost compared to one AM manufactured geometry designed using more conventional methods and one design milled in aluminium. Originality/value The method in this paper allows for the holistic design and optimisation of components while considering manufacturability, cost and component functionality. Within the same framework, designs optimised for different setups of AM machines and post-processing can be automatically evaluated without any additional manual work.

A Novel Methodology for Simultaneous Minimization of Manufacturing Objectives in Tolerance Allocation of Complex Assembly

Tolerance cost and machining time play crucial roles while performing tolerance allocation in complex assemblies. The aim of the proposed work is to minimize the above-said manufacturing objectives for allocating optimum tolerance to the components of complex assemblies, by considering the proper process and machine selections from the given alternatives. A novel methodology that provides a two-step solution is developed for this work. First, a heuristic approach is applied to determine the best machine for each process, and then a combined whale optimization algorithm with a univariate search method is used to allocate optimum tolerances with the best process selection for each sub-stage/operation. The efficiency of the proposed novel methodology is validated by solving two typical tolerance allocation problems of complex assemblies: a wheel mounting assembly and a knuckle joint assembly. Compared with previous approaches, the proposed methodology showed a considerable reduction in tolerance cost and machining time in relatively less computation time.