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Resilient Design and Operation of Complex Manufacturing

Description:

TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Materials 

OBJECTIVE: Develop the ability for an air logistics center to compensate in real time on-line for unanticipated faults/failures that often contribute to machine downtime in complex manufacturing processes. 

DESCRIPTION: A solution is needed because modern production systems contain an ever-increasing number of components and subsystems that interact with each other in often-unpredictable ways. Unintended interactions lead to unexpected behaviors and consequences, some of which have proven to be catastrophic to production efficiencies and effectiveness. 

PHASE I: The contractor will conceptualize the framework for resilient design and operation of a typical ALC manufacturing process to be designated jointly with ALC personnel. Typical process fault/failure modes and means to detect them will be identified. A control reconfiguration strategy will be developed and applied to the chosen process in simulation. The simulation results must demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed reconfiguration technology. 

PHASE II: The control reconfiguration strategy, identified in Phase I, will be transitioned to the actual manufacturing process; the latter will be monitored for a period and success criteria applied to identify potential and quantifiable benefits. The contractor will suggest how these technologies for resilient design and operation can be transitioned to other manufacturing processes. 

PHASE III: Resilient design and operation of complex aerospace, transportation, industrial and manufacturing processes occupy the interest of technology practitioners and researchers as such systems are subjected to severe fault/failure modes and must be attended to avoid catastrophic events. The development and application of these emerging technologies will benefit a wide variety of industry sectors. 

REFERENCES: 

1: Vachtsevanos, G., Lewis, F., Roemer, M., Hess, A. and Wu, B., Intelligent Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis for Engineering Systems, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2006

2:  Stengel, R.F. (1991). "Intelligent Failure Tolerant Control" (PDF). IEEE Control Systems Magazine 11 (4): 14–2doi:10.1109/388586

3:  Antoine Cully, Jeff Clune, Danesh Tarapore & Jean-Baptiste Mouret, Robots that can adapt like animals, Nature, 521, 503–507, (28 May 2015)

4:  Brown, D., Georgoulas, G., Bole, B., Pei, H.-L., Orchard, M., Tang, L., Saha, B., Saxena, A., Goebel, K., and Vachtsevanos, G., "Prognostics enhanced reconfigurable control of electro-mechanical actuators," in Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Prognostics and Health Management (PHM), San Diego, CA, USA, September 27 - October 1 2009

KEYWORDS: Resilience, Fault Modes, Failures, Reconfiguration, Control, Manufacturing Process 

CONTACT(S): 

Frank Zahiri 

(478) 714-1866 

feraidoon.zahiri@us.af.mil 

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