Application of permutation genetic algorithm for sequential model building–model validation design of experiments

The work presented in this paper is motivated by a complex multivariate engineering problem associated with engine mapping experiments, which require efficient design of experiments (DoE) strategies to minimise expensive testing. The paper describes the development and evaluation of a Permutation Genetic Algorithm (PermGA) to enable an exploration-based sequential DoE strategy for complex real-life engineering problems. A known PermGA was implemented to generate uniform OLH DoEs, and substantially extended to support generation of model building–model validation (MB–MV) sequences, by generating optimal infill sets of test points as OLH DoEs that preserve good space-filling and projection properties for the merged MB + MV test plan. The algorithm was further extended to address issues with non-orthogonal design spaces, which is a common problem in engineering applications. The effectiveness of the PermGA algorithm for the MB–MV OLH DoE sequence was evaluated through a theoretical benchmark problem based on the Six-Hump-Camel-Back function, as well as the Gasoline Direct Injection engine steady-state engine mapping problem that motivated this research. The case studies show that the algorithm is effective in delivering quasi-orthogonal space-filling DoEs with good properties even after several MB–MV iterations, while the improvement in model adequacy and accuracy can be monitored by the engineering analyst. The practical importance of this work, demonstrated through the engine case study, is that significant reduction in the effort and cost of testing can be achieved.     

Development and application of a model for analysis and design phases of Web-based system development

The major characteristics of Web systems that shall be taken into account can be summarized as follows: First, the implementation of Web systems shall have a beneficial effect. To meet the requirements of Internet business system, the Web systems shall enable businesses to provide customers with something valuable through the Internet and profit from this process in return[1]. Second, the way to express the contents on the Web matters. To express the contents, Web systems shall introduce mu…     

Development of a functional model for a master–slave combined manipulator for laparoscopic surgery

Minimally invasive surgery helps patients by accelerating postoperative recovery. However, its application is impeded because it is necessary for the surgeons performing such surgery to possess surgical skills of a high order. Therefore, a master-slave combined manipulator (MCM) has been proposed as a robotic tool that enhances the surgeon's skill in laparoscopic surgery. The master grip and the slave hand are combined through the manipulator body, and a surgeon can operate the tool near the patient. The slave hand is controlled electrically by the master grip and its position is directly controlled by the surgeon. A prototype model of the MCM has been developed. The functions of the MCM have been verified by basic evaluation tests and the MCM has been used in a preliminary animal experiment. This paper describes the concept, the basic performance and the validation of the MCM.     

A robust wire crossing design for thermostability and fault tolerance in quantum–dot cellular automata

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) present an unconventional computing model in the nanometer regime. The applications in QCA require complex wire crossings between intersectional wires. The existing wire crossing schemes show low fault tolerance or thermal instability. In this paper, a robust wire crossing scheme is proposed by using two opposite clock zones and redundant cells. The thermostability and fault tolerance are illustrated by using statistical analysis and fault simulations with regard to cell undeposition. This paper also presents a new signal distribution network (SDN) using the proposed wire crossings. The layouts of an XOR gate and a full adder are investigated to show the scalability of the proposed designs to circuits for logic functions with various number of inputs. For the proposed wire crossing and SDN, the circuitries of metal wires to provide the electric fields for driving the involved cells in each clock zone are also discussed. The functionalities of these circuits are validated by using QCADesigner.     

Human–robot collision model with effective mass and manipulability for design of a spatial manipulator

As the use of service robots becomes more popular, many solutions to ensure human safety during human–robot collision have been proposed. In this paper, we address one of the most fundamental solutions to design an inherently safe robot manipulator. A collision model is developed to evaluate the collision safety of any spatial manipulator. Most collision studies have focused on collision analysis and safety evaluation, but not on the use of evaluation results to design a safer robot arm. Therefore, we propose a collision model that relates design parameters to collision safety by adopting effective mass and manipulability. The model was then simplified with several assumptions. Furthermore, experimental results from biomechanical literature were employed to describe a human–robot collision. The major advantage of this collision model is that it can be used to systemically determine the design parameters of a robot arm.     

The design and implementation of an individual-based predator–prey model for a distributed computing environment

A distributed implementation of the Spatially-Explicit Individual-Based Simulation Model of Florida Panther and White-Tailed Deer in the Everglades and Big Cypress Landscapes (SIMPDEL) model is presented. SIMPDEL models the impact of different water management strategies in the South Florida region on the white-tailed deer and the Florida panther populations. SIMPDEL models the interaction of the four interrelated components – vegetation, hydrology, white-tailed deer and Florida panther, over a time span up to several decades. Very similar outputs of bioenergetic and survival statistics were obtained from the serial and distributed models. A performance evaluation of the two models revealed moderate speed improvements for the distributed model (referred to as DSIMPDEL). The 4-processor configuration attained a speed improvement of 3.83 with small deer populations on an ATM-based network of SUN Ultra 2 workstations over the serial model executing on a single SUN Ultra 2 workstation.     

Development of a simple model for batch and boundary information updation for a similar ship’s block model

In early 2000,large domestic shipyards introduced shipbuilding 3D computer-aided design (CAD) to the hull production design process to define manufacturing and assembly information.The production design process accounts for most of the man-hours (M/H) of the entire design process and is closely connected to yard production because designs must take into account the production schedule of the shipyard,the current state of the dock needed to mount the ship’s block,and supply information.Therefore,many shipyards are investigating the complete automation of the production design process to reduce the M/H for designers.However,these problems are still currently unresolved,and a clear direction is needed for research on the automatic design base of manufacturing rules,batches reflecting changed building specifications,batch updates of boundary information for hull members,and management of the hull model change history to automate the production design process.In this study,a process was developed to aid production design engineers in designing a new ship’s hull block model from that of a similar ship previously built,based on AVEVA Marine.An automation system that uses the similar ship’s hull block model is proposed to reduce M/H and human errors by the production design engineer.First,scheme files holding important information were constructed in a database to automatically update hull block model modifications.Second,for batch updates,the database’s table,including building specifications and the referential integrity of a relational database were compared.In particular,this study focused on reflecting the frequent modification of building specifications and regeneration of boundary information of the adjacent panel due to changes in a specific panel.Third,the rollback function is proposed in which the database (DB) is used to return to the previously designed panels.     

Energy-based robust controller design for flexible spacecraft

This paper presents a class of non-model2based position controllers for a kind of flexible spacecraft. With the controllers, one can achieve not only the closed-loop stability of the original distributed parameter system, but also the asymptotic stability of the truncated system, which is obtained through representing the deflection of the appendage by an arbitrary finite number of flexible modes. The system dynamics are not explicitly involved in the controller design and stability proof. Instead, only a very basic system energy rehtionship of the flexible spacecraft is utilized. The controllers possess several remarkable advantages over the traditional model-based ones. Numerical simulations are carried out on a kind of spacecraft with one flexible appendage and satisfactory results are obtained.     

Modular design of a hybrid genetic algorithm for a flexible job–shop scheduling problem

The aim of the job–shop scheduling problem is to optimize the task planning in an industrial plant satisfying time and technological constraints. The existing algorithmic and mathematical methods for solving this problem usually have high computational complexities making them intractable. Flexible job–shop scheduling becomes even more complex, since it allows one to assign each operation to a resource from a set of suitable ones. Alternative heuristic methods are only able to satisfy part of the constraints applicable to the problem. Moreover, these solutions usually offer little flexibility to adapt them to new requirements. This paper describes research within heuristic methods that combines genetic algorithms with repair heuristics. Firstly, it uses a genetic algorithm to provide a non-optimal solution for the problem, which does not satisfy all its constraints. Then, it applies repair heuristics to refine this solution. There are different types of heuristics, which correspond to the different types of constraints. A heuristic is intended to evaluate and slightly modify a solution that violates a constraint in a way that avoids or mitigates such violation. This approach improves the adaptability of the solution to a problem, as some changes can be addressed just modifying the considered chromosome or heuristics. The proposed solution has been tested in order to analyse its level of constraint satisfaction and its makespan, which are two of the main parameters considered in these types of problems. The paper discusses this experimentation showing the improvements over existing methods.     

Development of a hybrid PSO–ANN model for estimating glucose and xylose yields for microwave-assisted pretreatment and the enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass

In this paper, two artificial intelligent systems, the artificial neural network (ANN) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), were combined to form a hybrid PSO–ANN model that was used to improve estimates of glucose and xylose yields from the microwave–acid pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass based on pretreatment parameters. ANN is a powerful tool capable of determining the relationship between the desired input and output data while PSO was used as a robust population-based search algorithm to optimize the performance of the ANN model. Specifically, it was used to determine the optimum number of neurons in the hidden layer and the best value of the learning rate of the ANN model. The optimization method includes minimizing the fitness function mean absolute error that was found to be 0.0176. The PSO algorithm suggested an optimum number of neurons in the hidden layer as 15 and a learning rate of 0.761 these consequently used to construct the ANN model. After constructing the hybrid PSO–ANN model, the performance of the intelligent system was examined by determining the regression coefficient (R ²) for estimating the experimental values of glucose and xylose and compared to the results from a response surface methodology (RSM) model. The results of R ² of the hybrid PSO–ANN model for glucose and xylose were 0.9939 and 0.9479, respectively, while the RSM model results for the same sugars were 0.8901 and 0.8439. This analysis reveals that the hybrid PSO–ANN model offers a higher degree of accuracy in comparison with the more commonly used RSM model.

     

A stochastic model for forward–reverse logistics network design under risk

Attention with reverse logistics networks has increased during the last decade since their economic impact has been increasingly important and as environmental legislation has been becoming stricter. In this paper, A multi-period multi-echelon forward–reverse logistics network design under risk model is developed. The proposed network structure consists of three echelons in the forward direction, (suppliers, facilities and distribution centers) and two echelons, in the reverse direction (disassembly, and redistribution centers), first customer zones in which the demands are stochastic and second customer zones in which the demand is assumed to be deterministic, but it may also assumed to be stochastic. The problem is formulated in a stochastic mixed integer linear programming (SMILP) decision making form as a multi-stage stochastic program. The objective is to maximize the total expected profit.     

Development and validation of a biodynamic model for predicting multi-finger movements in cylinder-grasping tasks †

This article describes the development and validation of a model for predicting multi-finger movements in grasping activities. The model builds upon a newly proposed approach that incorporates forward dynamics and a system identification procedure, and is amenable to empirical tests. A database of multi-fingered grasping movements performed by 28 subjects was established and divided into four sets, one for model development and three for model validation. In the development phase, model parameter values were estimated by the iterative system identification procedure through a physics-based heuristic algorithm. The estimated parameter values were then statistically synthesised and integrated into the prediction model. In the validation phase, the model was applied to three novel datasets containing different grasping movements involving objects of varied sizes and different subjects. The results demonstrated the model's ability to predict hand prehensile movements with error magnitudes comparable to the inter-person variability in performing such movements. New insights into the control of multi-fingered hand prehensile movements at the systems and joint levels emerged from the model development and validation process. The current study contributes to building a foundation for long-term development of realistic biodynamic simulation of multi-finger hand movements. Such simulation capabilities will aid in design of hand-operated tools, devices or hand-intensive work for proactive ergonomics and in evaluation as well as treatment of functional impairment of the hand.     

A new approach to design source–receptor relationships for air quality modelling

Air quality models are often used to simulate how emission scenarios influence the concentration of primary as well as secondary pollutants in the atmosphere. In some cases, it is necessary to replace these air quality models with source–receptor relationships, to mimic in a faster way the link between emissions and concentrations. Source–receptor relationships are therefore also used in Integrated Assessment Models, when scenario responses need to be known in very short time. The objective of this work is to present a novel approach to design a source–receptor relationship for air quality modeling. Overall the proposed approach is shown to significantly reduce the number of simulations required for the training step and to bring flexibility in terms of emission source definition. A regional domain application is also presented, to test the performances of the proposed approach.     

Designing business model development tools for sustainability—a design science study

Electronic Markets - The development of business models that boost fundamental changes in behavior to act more economically, ecologically, and socially is a challenging task because the...     

H∞ optimal design of robust observer against disturbances

This paper considers the robust observer design problem for linear dynamic systems subject to the interference of external disturbances. For such systems, the state estimate from the conventional Luenberger is normally biased with respect to the true system state. To remedy this situation, this paper proposes a new structure for robust observers. With this new structure, the robust observer design problem is skillfully transformed into the well-known disturbance rejection control problem. The H_∞ optimal control design technique can then be applied to shape the proposed robust observer in the frequency domain. The proposed robust observer is a joint state and disturbance observer, which simultaneously estimates both the system state and unknown disturbances, and can be applied to non-minimum-phase systems.     

Dynamical behavior of a general reaction–diffusion–advection model for two competing species

It is well known that the studies of the evolution of biased movement along a resource gradient could create very interesting phenomena. This paper deals with a general two-species Lotka–Volterra competition model for the same resources in an advective nonhomogeneous environment, where the individuals are exposed to unidirectional flow (advection) but no individuals are lost through the boundary. It is assumed that the two species have the same population dynamics but different diffusion and advection rates. It is shown that at least five scenarios can occur (i) If one with a very strong biased movement relative to diffusion and the other with a more balanced approach, the species with much larger advection dispersal rate is driven to extinction; (ii) If one with a very strong biased movement and the other is smaller compare to its diffusion, the two species can coexist since one species mainly pursues resources at places of locally most favorable environments while the other relies on resources from other parts of the habitat; (iii) If both of the species random dispersal rates are sufficiently large (respectively small), two competing species coexist; (iv) If one with a sufficiently large random dispersal rate and the other with a sufficiently small one, two competing species still coexist; (v) If one with a sufficiently small random dispersal rate and the other with a suitable diffusion, which causes the extinction of the species with smaller random movement. Where (iii), (iv) and (v) show the global dynamics of (5) when both of the species dispersal rates are sufficiently large or sufficiently small. These results provide a new mechanism for the coexistence of competing species, and they also imply that selection is against excessive advection along environmental gradients (respectively, random dispersal rate), and an intermediate biased movement rate (respectively, random dispersal rate) may evolve. Finally, we also apply a perturbation argument to illustrate the evolution of these rates.     

Stability and bifurcation analysis for a model of a nonlinear coupled pitch–roll ship

Using a combination of analytical and numerical methods, the paper studies the stability and bifurcations for a model of a nonlinear coupled pitch–roll ship. The model represents a two-degree-of-freedom system with quadratic coupling subjected to a modulated sinusoidal excitation. Three types of critical points for the bifurcation response equations near the combination resonance in the presence of internal resonance are considered. These points are characterized by a double zero and two negative eigenvalues, a double zero and a pair of purely imaginary eigenvalues, and two pairs of purely imaginary eigenvalues, respectively. For each case, the stability regions for the initial equilibrium solution and the critical bifurcation curves are obtained. The amplitude response curves with respect to detuning/damping parameters for critical bifurcation parameters are obtained for the first two types, and detailed analyses of the eigenvalues of the linearized system for each parametric region are given. For the third type, with the aid of normal form theory, the explicit expressions of the critical bifurcation curves leading to incipient and secondary bifurcations are obtained. Bifurcations leading to 2D, 3D tori and their stability conditions are also investigated. Some new dynamical behaviors are presented for this system.     

Efficient design and implementation of a robust coplanar crossover and multilayer hybrid full adder–subtractor using QCA technology

The Journal of Supercomputing - Quantum dot cellular automaton (QCA) is a novel emerging nanometer-scale-based circuit design using nanocomputing technology, which overcomes the limitations of...