Browsing by Subject "Reconfiguration"
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Item Host and Derivative Product Modeling and Synthesis(2010-10-12) Davis, Matthew Louis TurnerIn recent years, numerous methods to aid designers in conceptualizing new products have been developed. These methods intend to give structure to a process that was, at one time, considered to be a purely creative exercise. Resulting from the study, implementation, and refinement of design methodologies is the notion that both the structure of the development process and the structure of the developed product are key factors in creating value in a firm?s product line. With respect to the latter key factor, product architecture, but more specifically, modular product architecture has been the subject of much study. However, prior research in the area of modular product architecture has, with limited exception, focused on the construction of modules that are to be incorporated into a product before it becomes available to its end-users; that is, the modules are incorporated ?pre-market.? The research contained in this thesis is focused on two tasks: advancing the notion of a modular product architecture in which modules can be incorporated into a product ?post-market,? and creating a method that aids designers in synthesizing these post-market modules. Researchers have examined the idea of post-market modules; however, they do not fully formalize language used to describe these modules, and they also do not give the product space created by post-market modularization well-defined boundaries. Additionally, the prior work gives no method that can be used to create post-market modules. The research presented here addresses these shortcomings in the prior work by first, defining the terms ?derivative product? and ?host product? to describe the post-market module and the product that the module augments, respectively. Second, by establishing three guidelines that are used to assess the validity of potential derivative products, giving the newly termed host and derivative product space defined boundaries. And lastly, by developing a 7-step, biomimetic-based methodology that can be used to create derivative product concepts (post-market modules). This developed methodology is applied to four case studies in which it is used to create five derivative product concepts for a given host product. Thus, 20 derivative product concepts are developed in this study, demonstrating the qualitative effectiveness of the 7-step methodology.Item Multi-Agent System for predictive reconfiguration of Shipboard Power Systems(Texas A&M University, 2005-02-17) Srivastava, Sanjeev KumarThe electric power systems in U.S. Navy ships supply energy to sophisticated systems for weapons, communications, navigation and operation. The reliability and survivability of the Shipboard Power System (SPS) are critical to the mission of a surface combatant ship, especially under battle conditions. In the event of battle, various weapons might attack a ship. When a weapon hits the ship it can cause severe damage to the electrical system on the ship. This damage can lead to de-energization of critical loads on a ship that can eventually decrease a ship?s ability to survive the attack. It is very important, therefore, to maintain availability of energy to the connected loads that keep the power systems operational. Technology exists that enables the detection of an incoming weapon and prediction of the geographic area where the incoming weapon will hit the ship. This information can then be used to take reconfiguration actions before the actual hit so that the actual damage caused by the weapon hit is reduced. The Power System Automation Lab (PSAL) has proposed a unique concept called "Predictive Reconfiguration" which refers to performing reconfiguration of a ship?s power system before a weapon hit to reduce the potential damage to the electrical system caused by the impending weapon hit. The concept also includes reconfiguring the electrical system to restore power to as much of the healthy system as possible after the weapon hit. This dissertation presents a new methodology for Predictive Reconfiguration of a Shipboard Power System (SPS). This probabilistic approach includes a method to assess the damage that will be caused by a weapon hit. This method calculates the expected probability of damage for each electrical component on the ship. Also a heuristic method is included, which uses the expected probability of damage to determine reconfiguration steps to reconfigure the ship?s electrical network to reduce the damage caused by a weapon hit. This dissertation also presents a modified approach for performing a reconfiguration for restoration after the weapon hits the system. In this modified approach, an expert system based restoration method restores power to loads de-energized due to the weapon hit. These de-energized loads are restored in a priority order. The methods were implemented using multi-agent technology. A test SPS model based on the electrical layout of a non-nuclear surface combatant ship was presented. Complex scenarios representing electrical casualties caused due to a weapon hit, on the test SPS model, were presented. The results of the Predictive Reconfiguration methodology for complex scenarios were presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed methodology.