Multidisciplinary problems in mechatronics and some solutions

The thesis text contains personal scientific contributions including original models, new concepts and approaches in relation to the transdisciplinary integration of the mechatronics. In order to accomplish the general and specific objectives were used a lot of references (books, text review, research reports), most of them published in the last 10 years. The author contributions, as unique, first author and as coauthor, were elaborated in the research doctorate period, published in prestigious reviews, proceedings of international congresses, conferences, books and a chapter in an international published book. The footnotes are considered as complementary explanations of the objectives of the doctorate research in engineering mechatronics (what) from the transdisciplinary point of view (how) in the context of the knowledge based society (why).

DS 48: Proceedings DESIGN 2008, the 10th International Design Conference, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2008

Mechatronic design requires that a mechanical system and its control system be designed as an integrated system. In order to make proper choices early in the design stage, tools are required that support modeling and simulation of physical systems -together with controllers-with parameters that are directly related to the real-world system. The 20-sim software, developed at the Control Laboratory of the Drebbel Institute is such a tool. Components in various physical domains (e.g. mechanical or electrical) can easily be selected from a library and combined into a process that can be controlled by block-diagram-based (digital) controllers. A few examples will be discussed that show the use of such a tool in various stages of the design. The examples include a typical mechatronic system with a flexible transmission, a mobile robot, and an industrial linear motor with a neural-network-based learning feed-forward controller that compensates for cogging.

IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 2000

A mechatronic system needs an integrated, concurrent, and system-based design approach due to the existence of interactions among its subsystems, and also the existence of interactions between the criteria involved in a realistic evaluation of a mechatronic product. This paper presents a systematic methodology for a detailed mechatronic design based on a mechatronic design quotient (MDQ). MDQ is a multicriteria index, reflecting a system-based evaluation of a mechatronic design, which is calculated using soft computing techniques, thereby accommodating interactions between criteria and human experience. A niching genetic algorithm is utilized to explore the huge search space raised due to concurrent and integrated design approach, with the aim to find the elite representatives of different possible configurations. To demonstrate the method, it is applied to an industrial fish cutting machine called the Iron Butcher-an electromechanical system that falls into the class of mixed or multidomain systems.

2012

In this paper, a novel approach for the multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) of complex mechatronic systems. This approach, which is a part of a global project aiming to include the MDO aspect inside an innovative design process. As a first step, the paper considers the MDO as a redesign approach which is limited to the parametric optimization. After defining and introducing the different keywords, the proposed method which is based on the V-Model which is commonly used in mechatronics.

Mechatronics, 2003

Applied System Innovation

Mechatronics as a science is a synergic combination of mechanical engineering, electronic control, and software design in product development and manufacturing processes. To understand how the field of knowledge that incorporates mechatronics in innovative products, given that it is not in itself a basic engineering discipline but an integration of fields of knowledge, has advanced, it was developed a bibliometric and qualitative study through systematic review with an analytical framework for the establishment of variables to subsidize the construction of the selected theoretical body. The results and conclusions of the sampled publications show that mechatronics performs one of the principal roles in innovation due to the multidisciplinary integration that the scope of innovation in product engineering is propitiating. The study classified five global scenarios: practical approaches aimed at product development, research that studies curricula and education in engineering, studies...

2008

ABSTRACT Mechatronic systems encompass a wide range of disciplines and hence are collaborative in nature. Currently the collaborative development of mechatronic systems is inefficient and error-prone because contemporary design environments do not allow sufficient information flow of design and manufacturing data across the electrical and mechanical domains.

Volume 12: Systems and Design, 2013

It is quite common to find information about Product Design methodologies; however these methodologies are focused on Mechanical Design, Electronics Design or even Software Design. A methodology for Mechatronics Design has been developed at the National University of Mexico and has been tested for several years. Now a focus on product design has been included to expand this methodology that was mostly dedicated to one-of-a-kind machine design and not to product design. This paper presents both the Mechatronics Product Design Methodology and the results obtained in the Product Design course taught to interdisciplinary teams of Mechanical, Mechatronics, Industrial Engineers and Industrial Designers. An assessment of the implementation problems and how these have been solved is presented together with the products developed by the students.

2011

This paper presents research results from an ongoing project concerning the development of agent systems which aim to support mechatronic design. Today mechatronic design usually suffers from a lack of domain-spanning IT-support. The abundance of logical connections between the disciplines is only present in the designer's minds or in unstructured documents. One approach to document and use the connections between the disciplines are agent based systems. Such systems use independent software entities representing either components of the product or certain process segments which interact in a system called agent system. Due to their flexibility and the ability to achieve solutions which satisfy multiple objectives such systems are promising approaches to address the complexity challenge of mechatronic design. However, the application of such systems requires the documentation of the interdisciplinary connections in an interdisciplinary system model. In this paper SysML is proposed for this specific task. This proposal is supported by the application to an exemplary product developmentthe parametric development of a Quadrotoran unmanned multipurpose flying object.