Engineering design knowledge management in de-centralised virtual enterprises

The problems of collaborative engineering design and knowledge management at the conceptual stage in a network of dissimilar enterprises was investigated. This issue in engineering design is a result of the supply chain and virtual enterprise (VE) oriented industry that demands faster time to market and accurate cost/manufacturing analysis from conception. The solution consisted of a de-centralised super-peer net architecture to establish and maintain communications between enterprises in a VE. In the solution outlined below, the enterprises are able to share knowledge in a common format and nomenclature via the building-block shareable super-ontology that can be tailored on a project by project basis, whilst maintaining the common nomenclature of the ‘super-ontology’ eliminating knowledge interpretation issues. The two-tier architecture layout of the solution glues together the peer-peer and super-ontologies to form a coherent system for both internal and virtual enterprise knowledge management and product development.

The FUELGEN alternative: an evolutionary approach. The architecture

This paper introduces a few architectural concepts from FUELGEN, that generates a "cloud" of reload patterns, like the generator in the FUELCON expert system, but unlike that generator, is based on a genetic algorithm. There are indications FUELGEN may outperform FUELCON and other tools as reported in the literature, in well-researched case studies, but careful comparisons have to be carried out. This paper complements the information in two other recent papers on FUELGEN. Moreover, a sequel project is outlined.

The FUELCON meta-architecture, II: alternatives for parameter prediction

We continue the discussion of the decision points in the FUELCON metaarchitecture. Having discussed the relation of the original expert system to its sequel projects in terms of an AND/OR tree, we consider one further domain for a neural component: parameter prediction downstream of the core reload candidate pattern generator, thus, a replacement for the NOXER simulator currently in use in the project.

Micromagnetic simulation of domain walls in iron films

The micromagnetic structure and energy of 180° domain walls spanning laminar crystals of iron having (100) or (110) surfaces and ranging in thickness from 145 to 580 nm have been investigated by numerical integration of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation. Stable equilibrium structures with two flux symmetries were obtained for both crystal orientations at all thicknesses studied.

Coupled 3-D finite difference time domain and finite volume methods for solving microwave heating in porous media

Computational results for the microwave heating of a porous material are presented in this paper. Combined finite difference time domain and finite volume methods were used to solve equations that describe the electromagnetic field and heat and mass transfer in porous media. The coupling between the two schemes is through a change in dielectric properties which were assumed to be dependent both on temperature and moisture content. The model was able to reflect the evolution of temperature and moisture fields as the moisture in the porous medium evaporates. Moisture movement results from internal pressure gradients produced by the internal heating and phase change.

Domain decomposition using a 2-level correction scheme

The PHYSICA software was developed to enable multiphysics modelling allowing for interaction between Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Computational Solid Mechanics (CSM) and Computational Aeroacoustics (CAA). PHYSICA uses the finite volume method with 3-D unstructured meshes to enable the modelling of complex geometries. Many engineering applications involve significant computational time which needs to be reduced by means of a faster solution method or parallel and high performance algorithms. It is well known that multigrid methods serve as a fast iterative scheme for linear and nonlinear diffusion problems. This papers attempts to address two major issues of this iterative solver, including parallelisation of multigrid methods and their applications to time dependent multiscale problems.

Heat and mass transfer in two-phase porous materials under intensive microwave heating

Computational results for the intensive microwave heating of porous materials are presented in this work. A multi-phase porous media model has been developed to predict the heating mechanism. Combined finite difference time-domain and finite volume methods were used to solve equations that describe the electromagnetic field and heat and mass transfer in porous media. The coupling between the two schemes is through a change in dielectric properties which were assumed to be dependent both on temperature and moisture content. The model was able to reflect the evolution of both temperature and moisture fields as well as energy penetration as the moisture in the porous medium evaporates. Moisture movement results from internal pressure gradients produced by the internal heating and phase change.

A new computational approach to microwave heating of two-phase porous materials

Computational results for the microwave heating of a porous material are presented in this paper. Combined finite difference time domain and finite volume methods were used to solve equations that describe the electromagnetic field and heat and mass transfer in porous media. The coupling between the two schemes is through a change in dielectric properties which were assumed to be dependent on both temperature and moisture content. The model was able to reflect the evolution of both temperature and moisture fields as well as energy penetration as the moisture in the porous medium evaporates. Moisture movement results from internal pressure gradients produced by the internal heating and phase change.

A blackboard architecture for a hybrid CBR system for scientific software

This paper describes the use of a blackboard architecture for building a hybrid case based reasoning (CBR) system. The Smartfire fire field modelling package has been built using this architecture and includes a CBR component. It allows the integration into the system of qualitative spatial reasoning knowledge from domain experts. The system can be used for the automatic set-up of fire field models. This enables fire safety practitioners who are not expert in modelling techniques to use a fire modelling tool. The paper discusses the integrating powers of the architecture, which is based on a common knowledge representation comprising a metric diagram and place vocabulary and mechanisms for adaptation and conflict resolution built on the Blackboard.

A two dimensional unstructured staggered mesh method with special treatment of tangential velocity

A two dimensional staggered unstructured discretisation scheme for the solution of fluid flow problems has been developed. This scheme stores and solves the velocity vector resolutes normal and parallel to each cell face and other scalar variables (pressure, temperature) are stored at cell centres. The coupled momentum; continuity and energy equations are solved, using the well known pressure correction algorithm SIMPLE. The method is tested for accuracy and convergence behaviour against standard cell-centre solutions in a number of benchmark problems: The Lid-Driven Cavity, Natural Convection in a Cavity and the Melting of Gallium in a rectangular domain.

'Re-using an existing wheel' developing data architecture for cooperating autonomous and semi-autonomous, agent-based web services

This short position paper considers issues in developing Data Architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT) through the medium of an exemplar project, Domain Expertise Capture in Authoring and Development ­Environments (DECADE). A brief discussion sets the background for IoT, and the development of the ­distinction between things and computers. The paper makes a strong argument to avoid reinvention of the wheel, and to reuse approaches to distributed heterogeneous data architectures and the lessons learned from that work, and apply them to this situation. DECADE requires an autonomous recording system, ­local data storage, semi-autonomous verification model, sign-off mechanism, qualitative and ­quantitative ­analysis ­carried out when and where required through web-service architecture, based on ontology and analytic agents, with a self-maintaining ontology model. To develop this, we describe a web-service ­architecture, ­combining a distributed data warehouse, web services for analysis agents, ontology agents and a ­verification engine, with a centrally verified outcome database maintained by certifying body for qualification/­professional status.