Sharif Digital Repository

Exploitation of distributed resources spread in diverse enterprises is a new and critical issue in the course of product development cycles. Although the development of IT technology has provided a base for realisation of this paradigm and assisted different CAx agents, such as designers and engineers, to exchange their ideas and design information, but still many CAx software agents are working separately and locally in manufacturing environments and most of the current CAx software suites have been known to be inconvenient for enabling collaboration among manufacturing agents in distributed manufacturing enterprises. The distributed CAx collaboration and data integrity play a major role in... 

In competitive environment of quick market changes, developing an interoperable manufacturing system is a necessity. To realise interoperability, the exchange of part and product data must be independent of their platforms. There are two basic approaches for this purpose: i utilising interfaces ii utilising neutral formats. Standard for the Exchange of Product data (STEP) plays a significant role as a neutral data model to integrate design, manufacturing and other activities in product life cycle. To implement a Universal Manufacturing Platform (UMP), a systematic roadmap is required. The current paper proposes such a roadmap using the methodology of Axiomatic Design (AD)  

Utilizing the Axiomatic Design (AD) principles to develop a perfect product, design of a manufacturing system with minimal complexity is required. For the purpose of reducing the manufacturing system complexity, theoretically, it is preferred to integrate multiple Process Variables (PVs) of the product into a single process unit. However, due to significant presence of some active noise factors, this integration practice may result in failing to maintain the independence among some of Functional Requirements (FRs) of the product. This event is the result of statistical causal relationships unintentionally developed among a subset of the integrated PVs. In such a condition, the AD's... 

In this part of the work, to illustrate the strength of the "partial and semipartial correlation analysis, as the proposed solution described in detail in part 1, we consider design problem of the manufacturing system of a given product based on a set of hypothetical data and show how to explore the most appropriate integration choices in which the (causal) dependencies of the concerned PVs are minimal. Based on the results of this study, we emphasize that incorporating the identified sensitive PVs into the integration process will eventually lead to coupling among a subset of the product's FRs and isolation of these PVs is recommended as an ideal solution. However, sometimes, in the real... 

The dynamic nature of today’s manufacturing industry, which is caused by the intense global competition and constant technological advancements, requires systems that are highly adaptive and responsive to demand fluctuations. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) enable such responsiveness through their main characteristics. This paper addresses the problem of RMS configuration design, where the demand of a single product varies throughout its production life cycle, and the system configuration must change accordingly to satisfy the required demand with minimum cost. A two-phased method is developed to handle the primary system configuration design and the necessary system... 

In recent years, the technological advancement of supercapacitors has been increasing exponentially due to the high demand in electronic consumer products. As so, researchers have found a way to meet that demand by fabricating graphene. As developments are made toward the future, two big advancements to be made are large-scale fabrication of graphene and fabricating graphene as a flexible electrode. This would allow for use in larger products and for manipulation of the unique properties of graphene to accommodate superior design alternatives. While large scale production is still mentioned, this review is specifically focusing on different methods used to fabricate graphene as a flexible... 

The dynamic nature of today’s manufacturing industry, which is caused by the intense global competition and constant technological advancements, requires systems that are highly adaptive and responsive to demand fluctuations. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) enable such responsiveness through their main characteristics. This paper addresses the problem of RMS configuration design, where the demand of a single product varies throughout its production life cycle, and the system configuration must change accordingly to satisfy the required demand with minimum cost. A two-phased method is developed to handle the primary system configuration design and the necessary system... 

Maximizing the value of resources and producing less waste are strategic decisions affecting sustainability and competitive advantage. Sustainable closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) are designed to minimize waste by circling back (repairing, reselling, or dismantling for parts) previously discarded products into the value chain. This study presents a novel two-stage fuzzy supplier selection and order allocation model in a CLSC. In Stage 1, we use the fuzzy best-worst method (BWM) to select the most suitable suppliers according to economic, environmental, social, and circular criteria. In Stage 2, we use a multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MOMILP) model to design a... 

Real-time measurement of soil water pressure has been recognized as an essential part of investigating water ow in unsaturated soils. Tensiometry, amongst different measuring techniques, is a common method for direct evaluation of water pressure. However, the lower limit of measurable water pressure by a conventional tensiometer becomes even more limited by increasing its length in the vertical installation. This paper describes the development of a Vacuum-Refilled Tensiometer (VRT) for monitoring soil water pressure independent of installation depth. This is achieved by fixing the distance between pressure sensor and ceramic cup together with incorporating an ancillary vacuumre filling... 

This article investigates the basis for pressure sensor application based on the magnetic shape memory effect in membranes. Von Karmans nonlinear terms are considered in strain–displacement relationships of thin films, and a new method is presented for solution of large deflections of thin films with arbitrary boundary condition. In this study, the equations of motion of magnetic shape memory alloys are extended. In pressurized membranes, the complex distribution of mechanical stress can cause the martensitic reorientation, which is the underlying mechanism for sensing applications in magnetic shape memory alloys. To examine the obtained model, the governing equations of magnetic shape... 

The growth of process industries has escalated the probability of loss containment scenarios of hazardous materials that can be tackled via process safety schemes. For preliminary design stage, the inherent scheme is more promising to generate sustainable process designs. For this purpose, various process routes are typically compared to recognize the safer one via numerous indexing methods to eliminate routes with hazardous materials. However, these indices lack in accommodating the equipment characteristics and the underutilization of process and chemical characteristics. Specifically for chemical characteristics, the toxicity aspect has not been engaged for process route selection in... 

Enhancing the quality of the product has always been one considerable concern of production process management, and this subject gave way to implementing so many methods including robust design. In this paper, robust design utilizes response surface methodology (RSM) considering the mean and variance of the response variable regarding system design, parameter design, and tolerance design. In this paper, customer requirements and robust design are regarded simultaneously to achieve enriched quality. Subsequently, with a non-linear programming, a novel method for integrating RSM and quality function deployment has been proposed to achieve robustness in design. The customer requirements are... 

The integration of materials selection and design are essential to the success of new product development, especially when applied to biomedical devices. The knee prosthesis, like any other implant, is a product that still lacks satisfactory design solutions for solving the problem of aseptic loosening. Stress shielding is one of the main causes of aseptic loosening that is intimately related to the overall design of the knee prosthesis. The design of the location pegs in the femoral component of the knee prosthesis is seen to have a critical effect on the stress shielding. In this study, therefore, different combinations of location peg geometries and material designs were assessed using... 

A series of V2O5 catalysts supported on multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT), single wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT), and graphene were synthesized by hydrothermal and reflux methods for oxidative dehydrogenation of propane (ODHP) to propylene. The catalysts were characterized by techniques including the BET surface area measurements, XRD, FTIR, H2-TPR, NH3-TPD, FESEM, and UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The performance of the catalysts and the supports were subsequently examined in a fixed bed reactor. The main products were propylene, ethylene and CO x. The vanadium catalyst supported on graphene with C/V molar ratio of 1:1 synthesized through the hydrothermal method had the best... 

The overall design of cold gas propulsion systems is pretty complicated when considering the mission requirements, operating constraints and functional limitations imposed by the mechanical components. To address this complication, a precise design process is proposed, which attempts to optimize the cost of operation as well as to minimize the waste volume and weight by using multi-objective trade-off analysis. This analysis is based on a set of ordinary differential equations that are solved iteratively to describe the optimal behavior of the system. Therefore, a numerical code is being developed to give insight on the design sensitivity with respect to uncertainties on the design... 

Nowadays, companies strive to survive in a competitive global environment. Reduction of product development cycle plays a major role in market penetration and cost reduction. To speed up product development/modifications, it is suggested to adopt a collaborative product development approach. Collaborative design and manufacture requires an integrated platform to support related CAx product data models. To integrate CAx product data, a number of solutions are proposed. The most successful solution is adopting the STandard for Exchange of Product Data (STEP). In the course of the STEP standard structure and procedure development, two approaches can be recognised: classical and modular. The... 

Fruit and vegetable wastes are produced in large quantities in Iran, and constitute a source of nuisance in municipal landfills. The objective of this study was to optimize the applications of anaerobic digestion for the treatment of municipal organic wastes. We studied the effect of organic loading rates on anaerobic digestion of vegetable wastes. The complete-mix, pilot-scale digester with working volume of 70 1 was used. The experiments were conducted at 34°C with a fixed hydraulic retention time of 25 days. The digester was operated at different organic feeding rates of 1.4, 2 and 2.75 kg VS/(m3.d). The biogas produced had methane composition of 49.7- 64% and biogas production rates of... 

In this paper, a design of the supply chain distributer-retailer network for a seasonal multiple-product location allocation-inventory control problem in a planning horizon consisting of multiple periods is modeled. The distance between the distributers and retailers are assumed to be Euclidean and square Euclidean while retailers purchase the products from the distributers under all-unit and incremental quantity discount policies. Furthermore, the products are delivered in packets of known size of items and in case of shortage, a fraction of demand is considered backorder and a fraction lost sale. Besides, the distributers store the manufactured products in their warehouses before... 

This paper investigates the accumulation of technological capability in latecomer suppliers of complex capital goods by exploring the issue in an Iranian supplier of large hydro electricity generation systems. The findings suggest that, contrary to the conventional paths of catch-up in Asian and Latin American mass-producing electronics firms, and instead of starting from early stages of product lifecycle, the technological capabilities in this case were acquired through a non-linear movement within the stages of designing and installing complex capital goods in projects: starting from the middle stage (engineering and realisation of complex goods in projects), moving to the last stage... 

Imprecise productions with low quality are produced by the incapable manufacturing processes. Prediction of the process capability in the design stage plays a key role to improve the product quality. In this paper, a new method is proposed to optimally reduce the locating error by allocating the minimum adjustments of locators. To quantify the precision of the manufacturing process, a proper tool that is called the geometric capability ratio (GCR) of the manufacturing process is introduced. First, based on a part fixture model, the relationship between the locating error and its sources is developed. Then, using the proposed geometric capability ratio, the manufacturing process capability is...