Simultaneous optimal selection of design and manufacturing tolerances with alternative manufacturing process selection

Tolerance specification is an important part of mechanical design. Design tolerances strongly influence the functional performance and manufacturing cost of a mechanical product. Tighter tolerances normally produce superior components, better performing mechanical systems and good assemblability with assured exchangeability at the assembly line. However, unnecessarily tight tolerances lead to excessive manufacturing costs for a given application. The balancing of performance and manufacturing cost through identification of optimal design tolerances is a major concern in modern design. Traditionally, design tolerances are specified based on the designer’s experience. Computer-aided (or software-based) tolerance synthesis and alternative manufacturing process selection programs allow a designer to verify the relations between all design tolerances to produce a consistent and feasible design. In this paper, a general new methodology using intelligent algorithms viz., Elitist Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) and Multi Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) for simultaneous optimal selection of design and manufacturing tolerances with alternative manufacturing process selection is presented. The problem has a multi-criterion character in which 3 objective functions, 3 constraints and 5 variables are considered. The average fitness factor method and normalized weighted objective functions method are separately used to select the best optimal solution from Pareto optimal fronts. Two multi-objective performance measures namely solution spread measure and ratio of non-dominated individuals are used to evaluate the strength of Pareto optimal fronts. Two more multi-objective performance measures namely optimiser overhead and algorithm effort are used to find the computational effort of NSGA-II and MOPSO algorithms. The Pareto optimal fronts and results obtained from various techniques are compared and analysed.     

Evolutionary multi objective optimization for rule mining: a review

Evolutionary multi objective optimization (EMOO) systems are evolutionary systems which are used for optimizing various measures of the evolving system. Rule mining has gained attention in the knowledge discovery literature. The problem of discovering rules with specific properties is treated as a multi objective optimization problem. The objectives to be optimized being the metrics like accuracy, comprehensibility, surprisingness, novelty to name a few. There are a variety of EMOO algorithms in the literature. The performance of these EMOO algorithms is influenced by various characteristics including evolutionary technique used, chromosome representation, parameters like population size, number of generations, crossover rate, mutation rate, stopping criteria, Reproduction operators used, objectives taken for optimization, the fitness function used, optimization strategy, the type of data, number of class attributes and the area of application. This study reviews EMOO systems taking the above criteria into consideration. There are other hybridization strategies like use of intelligent agents, fuzzification, meta data and meta heuristics, parallelization, interactiveness with the user, visualization, etc., which further enhance the performance and usability of the system. Genetic Algorithms (GAs) and Genetic Programming (GPs) are two widely used evolutionary strategies for rule knowledge discovery in Data mining. Thus the proposed study aims at studying the various characteristics of the EMOO systems taking into consideration the two evolutionary strategies of Genetic Algorithm and Genetic programming.     

Classification of electrocardiogram signals with support vector machines and extreme learning machine

An Electrocardiogram or ECG is an electrical recording of the heart and is used in the investigation of heart disease. This ECG can be classified as normal and abnormal signals. The classification of the ECG signals is presently performed with the support vector machine. The generalization performance of the SVM classifier is not sufficient for the correct classification of ECG signals. To overcome this problem, the ELM classifier is used which works by searching for the best value of the parameters that tune its discriminant function and upstream by looking for the best subset of features that feed the classifier. The experiments were conducted on the ECG data from the Physionet arrhythmia database to classify five kinds of abnormal waveforms and normal beats. In this paper, a thorough experimental study was done to show the superiority of the generalization capability of the Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) that is presented and compared with support vector machine (SVM) approach in the automatic classification of ECG beats. In particular, the sensitivity of the ELM classifier is tested and that is compared with SVM combined with two classifiers, and they are the k-nearest Neighbor Classifier and the radial basis function neural network classifier, with respect to the curse of dimensionality and the number of available training beats. The obtained results clearly confirm the superiority of the ELM approach as compared with traditional classifiers.     

Describing Near Surface, Transient Flow Processes in Unconfined Aquifers below Irrigated Lands: Model Application in the Western San Joaquin Valley, California

In order to rigorously examine near surface, field to field interactions between irrigation management regimes and a shallow fluctuating water table, an enhanced deforming finite element (DFE) model was recently developed. The enhanced DFE model, through a process of iteration within each time step, avoids making common assumptions regarding the changing geometry of an aquifer free surface. This paper demonstrates the usefulness and effectiveness of the model by employing it to an irrigated region in the western San Joaquin Valley, Calif., where shallow subsurface tile drains have been installed to control shallow water tables. By virtue of the problems created by the need to dispose off the drainage water, this region has been the focus of several important regional scale modeling exercises, which have evaluated the utility of management strategies, such as source control, groundwater pumping, and land retirement. By refining the focus of the analysis, the enhanced DFE model is found to be able to show that both sources control and managed pumping could be more effective drainage control strategies than predicted based on the results of regional models.     

Object-Oriented Optimization Approach Using Genetic Algorithms for Lattice Towers

A new approach is presented for the optimization of steel lattice towers by combining genetic algorithms and an object-oriented approach. The purpose of this approach is to eliminate the difficulties in the handling of large size problems such as lattice towers. Improved search and rapid convergence are obtained by considering the lattice tower as a set of small objects and combining these objects into a system. This is possible with serial cantilever structures such as lattice towers. A tower consists of panel objects, which can be classified as separate objects, as they possess an independent property as well as inherent properties. This can considerably reduce the design space of the problem and enhance the result. An optimization approach for the steel lattice tower problem using objects and genetic algorithms is presented here. The paper also describes the algorithm with practical design considerations used for this approach. To demonstrate the approach, a typical tower configuration with practical constraints has been considered for discrete optimization with the new approach and compared with the results of a normal approach in which the full tower is considered.     

A literature review, classification and simple meta-analysis on scheduling of batch processors in semiconductor

In this paper, we present a literature review, classification schemes and a simple meta-analysis for scheduling of batch processors (SBP) research in semiconductor manufacturing (SM). This review is based on a study of journals and web-based documents/articles, which include conference materials, lecture notes in computer science, working papers, etc. There are 98 articles published in various publication outlets between 1986 and October 2004. Based on the literature review carried out and the nature of SBP research observed in SM, we have introduced two classification schemes to systematically organize the published articles. The first classification scheme is based on the problem configurations of SBP research in SM and the second one is based on the solution methodology followed by the researchers. These classification schemes indicate that there is much research scope on SBP research in SM. Furthermore, a simple meta-analysis is carried out to enhance understanding on the development and evolution of SBP research in SM and to identify potential research areas for further research and for improvement. The results show that there is an increasing trend in SBP research in SM. A comprehensive list of references is presented. This study is expected to provide a source of reference for other researchers (or readers), who are interested in SBP research particularly in SM and help stimulate further interest.     

Multiobjective optimization and analysis of copper–titanium diboride electrode in EDM of monel 400™ alloy

Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is one of the most accepted machining processes in the precision manufacturing industry. In EDM process, finding an alternative tool material is the demand in modern manufacturing industry. Therefore, an attempt had been made to fabricate copper–titanium diboride powder metallurgy electrode to test in EDM on monel 400? material. The experiments are planned using center composite second-order rotatable design and the model is developed by response surface methodology. The machining characteristics have analyzed using the developed model. In this study, four input parameters such as titanium diboride percentage, pulse current, pulse on time, and flushing pressure are selected to evaluate the material removal rate (MRR) and tool wear rate (TWR). The adequacy of the developed regression model has tested through analysis of variance test. The desirability-based multiobjective optimization is used to find the optimal process parameter which has given maximum MRR and minimum TWR. The optimum process parameters obtained were titanium diboride of 16%, pulse current of 6 A, flushing pressure of 1 Mpa, and pulse on time of 35?µs. The validity of the response surface model is further verified by conducting confirmation experiments.     

Information-Lossless Space–Time Block Codes From Crossed-Product Algebras

It is known that the Alamouti code is the only complex orthogonal design (COD) which achieves capacity and that too for the case of two transmit and one receive antenna only. Damen proposed a design for two transmit antennas, which achieves capacity for any number of receive antennas, calling the resulting space-time block code (STBC) when used with a signal set an information-lossless STBC. In this paper, using crossed-product central simple algebras, we construct STBCs for arbitrary number of transmit antennas over an a priori specified signal set. Alamouti code and quasi-orthogonal designs are the simplest special cases of our constructions. We obtain a condition under which these STBCs from crossed-product algebras are information-lossless. We give some classes of crossed-product algebras, from which the STBCs obtained are information-lossless and also of full rank. We present some simulation results for two, three, and four transmit antennas to show that our STBCs perform better than some of the best known STBCs and also that these STBCs are approximately 1 dB away from the capacity of the channel with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) symbols as input