In this thesis, the management of product information in concurrent design systems has been investigated with particular reference to product development in small and medium enterprise (SME) industry and design education at polytechnic level in Singapore. From a critical review of the relevant literature on product design and development processes, concurrent engineering, concurrent design systems, product data management and related methods, it is found that there is a clear need for a new design of a system for organizing and managing product information in a concurrent design environment in the above contexts. This finding has led to the development of a conceptual rationale, termed the Design Tensor Method, and the design and development of an innovative product information management system called PRIMAS. PRIMAS is a systematic methodology for the classification, organization, integration, communication, storage and management of product information in the product development process. A software prototype based on PRIMAS has been subsequently developed. PRIMAS along with its conceptual principles have been applied and tested in a product design project in a tertiary educational institution and in two significant industrial product development projects based respectively in two SMEs. Positive evaluation feedback on PRIMAS has been obtained in these studies. The product development projects investigated with PRIMAS have also produced outcomes that meet the original specified design requirements. The findings from this research have led to the conclusion that PRIMAS is a viable product information management system that can be used effectively for managing product information in concurrent design projects in SME industry and design education. Substantial PRIMAS databases of useful product information have been compiled for the product development projects investigated with PRIMAS. Finally, recommendations are made for future research.

This thesis discusses a practical approach to the concurrent analysis and synthesis of reconfigurable robot manipulators based on the alternative design methodology of Linguistic Mechatronics (LM) as well as the utilization of a modular Robotic Hardware-In-the-Loop Simulation (RHILS) platform. Linguistic Mechatronics is a systematic design methodology for mechatronic systems, which formalizes subjective notions and simplifies the optimization process, in the hope that numerous naturally different design variables can be considered concurrently. The methodology redefines the ultimate goal of design based on the qualitative notions of wish and must satisfactions. The underlying concepts of LM are investigated through a simulation case study. In addition, the RHILS platform involving physical joint modules and a control unit, which takes into account various physical phenomena and reduces the simulation complexities, is employed to the design architecture. Ultimately, the new approach is applied to redesigning kinematic, dynamic and control parameters of an industrial manipulator.

This thesis discusses a practical approach to the concurrent analysis and synthesis of reconfigurable robot manipulators based on the alternative design methodology of Linguistic Mechatronics (LM) as well as the utilization of a modular Robotic Hardware-In-the-Loop Simulation (RHILS) platform. Linguistic Mechatronics is a systematic design methodology for mechatronic systems, which formalizes subjective notions and simplifies the optimization process, in the hope that numerous naturally different design variables can be considered concurrently. The methodology redefines the ultimate goal of design based on the qualitative notions of wish and must satisfactions. The underlying concepts of LM are investigated through a simulation case study. In addition, the RHILS platform involving physical joint modules and a control unit, which takes into account various physical phenomena and reduces the simulation complexities, is employed to the design architecture. Ultimately, the new approach is applied to redesigning kinematic, dynamic and control parameters of an industrial manipulator.

As progress pushes the boundaries of both the performance of new hardware components and the computational capacity of modern computers, the requirements on the performance of robotic systems are becoming more and more demanding. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate that concurrent design (Co-Design) is the approach to follow to design hardware and control for such high-performance robots. In particular, this work proposes a co-design framework and an algorithm to tackle two main issues: i) how to use Co-Design to benchmark different robotic systems, and ii) how to effectively warm-start the trajectory optimization (TO) problem underlying the co-design problem aiming at global optimality. The first contribution of this thesis is a co-design framework for the energy efficiency analysis of a redundant actuation architecture combining Quasi-Direct Drive (QDD) motors and Series Elastic Actuators (SEAs). The energy consumption of the redundant actuation system is compared to that of Geared Motors (GMs) and SEAs alone. This comparison is made considering two robotic systems performing different tasks. The results show that, using the redundant actuation, one can save up to 99% of energy with respect to SEA for sinusoidal movements. This efficiency is achieved by exploiting the coupled dynamics of the two actuators, resulting in a latching-like control strategy. The analysis also shows that these large energy savings are not straightforwardly extendable to non-sinusoidal movements, but smaller savings (e.g., 7%) are nonetheless possible. The results highlight that the combination of complex hardware morphologies and advanced numerical Co-Design can lead to peak hardware performance that would be unattainable by human intuition alone. Moreover, it is also shown how to leverage Stochastic Programming (SP) to extend a similar co-design framework to design robots that are robust to disturbances by combining TO, morphology and feedback control optimization. The second contribution is a first step towards addressing the non-convexity of complex co-design optimization problems. To this aim, an algorithm for the optimal control of dynamical systems is designed that combines TO and Reinforcement Learning (RL) in a single framework. This algorithm tackles the two main limitations of TO and RL when applied to continuous-space non-linear systems to minimize a non-convex cost function: TO can get stuck in poor local minima when the search is not initialized close to a “good” minimum, whereas the RL training process may be excessively long and strongly dependent on the exploration strategy. Thus, the proposed algorithm learns a “good” control policy via TO-guided RL policy search. Using this policy to compute an initial guess for TO, makes the trajectory optimization process less prone to converge to poor local optima. The method is validated on several reaching problems featuring non-convex obstacle avoidance with different dynamical systems. The results show the great capabilities of the algorithm in escaping local minima, while being more computationally efficient than the state-of-the-art RL algorithms Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and Proximal Policy Optimization. The current algorithm deals only with the control side of a co-design problem, but future work will extend it to include also hardware optimization. All things considered, this work advanced the state of the art on Co-Design, providing a framework and an algorithm to design both hardware and control for high-performance robots and aiming to the global optimality.

A falta de integração entre áreas de conhecimento pode gerar efeitos negativos no processo de projeto em uma construtora-incorporadora. Em muitos casos, o projeto do produto é elaborado pela incorporadora sem qualquer participação da área responsável pela produção e de outras áreas da construtora. O trabalho apresenta uma análise sobre a gestão de projetos na construção de edifícios, valorizando a participação da engenharia de produção nessa fase, apoiando-se nos conceitos de Projeto Simultâneo, e propõe diretrizes para sua aplicação na construtora-incorporadora Cyrela, com enfoque na construtibilidade e manutenibilidade. Para desenvolver a pesquisa foi realizada uma revisão bibliográfica sobre as características da gestão de projetos, da Engenharia de Produção na construção de edifícios, e sobre a Engenharia Simultânea no desenvolvimento de produtos com comparativo de modelos de indústrias seriadas para a construção civil, incluindo a interação entre os agentes do processo. Como resultados são apresentados: uma análise da interação entre os agentes do processo; a ligação entre pessoas, processos e tecnologia; os conceitos de construtibilidade, manutenibilidade e retroalimentação na interface com projetos. São igualmente feitas análises das tendências de modernização na gestão dos projetos por meio da modelagem da informação da construção e, apoiado em estudo de caso, são apresentadas as experiências do Projeto Simultâneo aplicadas na Cyrela. Por fim, são apresentadas as diretrizes para participação da Engenharia de Produção da Construtora e Incorporadora Cyrela no Projeto Simultâneo, sendo essa a principal contribuição do trabalho. Embora suas contribuições possam servir de referência para demais empresas do setor, essa pesquisa foi desenvolvida para aplicações práticas da Cyrela, construtora-incorporadora que atua na construção de edifícios em todas as regiões do Brasil. / The lack of integration between knowledge areas can generate negative effects in the design process in a construction-real estate developer. In many cases, the product design is prepared by the real estate developer without any involvement of the area responsible for production and other areas of construction. This thesis presents an analysis of the project management in building construction, valuing the participation of engineering production in this stage, basing on the concepts of Concurrent Design and proposes guidelines for its application at Cyrela constructionreal estate developer company, focusing on constructability and maintainability. To develop the research was performed a literature review about the characteristics of Project Management, Production Engineering in building construction, and the Concurrent Engineering in the development of products with comparative serial industries models for the construction industry, including interaction between agents of the process. As results are presented: an analysis of the interaction between the agents of the process; a link between people, processes and technology; the concepts of constructability, maintainability and feedback on interface with projects. Modernization trends in project management are analyzed also through building information modeling and, through case study, are presented the Concurrent Design experiences applied at Cyrela. Finally are presented the guidelines to the participation of the Production Engineering of Cyrela construction-real estate developer on Concurrent Design, being the main contribution of this thesis. Although the contributions may serve as a reference for other companies in the sector, this research was developed for practical applications at Cyrela, constructionreal estate developer that acts in the construction of buildings in all regions of Brazil.

A falta de integração entre áreas de conhecimento pode gerar efeitos negativos no processo de projeto em uma construtora-incorporadora. Em muitos casos, o projeto do produto é elaborado pela incorporadora sem qualquer participação da área responsável pela produção e de outras áreas da construtora. O trabalho apresenta uma análise sobre a gestão de projetos na construção de edifícios, valorizando a participação da engenharia de produção nessa fase, apoiando-se nos conceitos de Projeto Simultâneo, e propõe diretrizes para sua aplicação na construtora-incorporadora Cyrela, com enfoque na construtibilidade e manutenibilidade. Para desenvolver a pesquisa foi realizada uma revisão bibliográfica sobre as características da gestão de projetos, da Engenharia de Produção na construção de edifícios, e sobre a Engenharia Simultânea no desenvolvimento de produtos com comparativo de modelos de indústrias seriadas para a construção civil, incluindo a interação entre os agentes do processo. Como resultados são apresentados: uma análise da interação entre os agentes do processo; a ligação entre pessoas, processos e tecnologia; os conceitos de construtibilidade, manutenibilidade e retroalimentação na interface com projetos. São igualmente feitas análises das tendências de modernização na gestão dos projetos por meio da modelagem da informação da construção e, apoiado em estudo de caso, são apresentadas as experiências do Projeto Simultâneo aplicadas na Cyrela. Por fim, são apresentadas as diretrizes para participação da Engenharia de Produção da Construtora e Incorporadora Cyrela no Projeto Simultâneo, sendo essa a principal contribuição do trabalho. Embora suas contribuições possam servir de referência para demais empresas do setor, essa pesquisa foi desenvolvida para aplicações práticas da Cyrela, construtora-incorporadora que atua na construção de edifícios em todas as regiões do Brasil. / The lack of integration between knowledge areas can generate negative effects in the design process in a construction-real estate developer. In many cases, the product design is prepared by the real estate developer without any involvement of the area responsible for production and other areas of construction. This thesis presents an analysis of the project management in building construction, valuing the participation of engineering production in this stage, basing on the concepts of Concurrent Design and proposes guidelines for its application at Cyrela constructionreal estate developer company, focusing on constructability and maintainability. To develop the research was performed a literature review about the characteristics of Project Management, Production Engineering in building construction, and the Concurrent Engineering in the development of products with comparative serial industries models for the construction industry, including interaction between agents of the process. As results are presented: an analysis of the interaction between the agents of the process; a link between people, processes and technology; the concepts of constructability, maintainability and feedback on interface with projects. Modernization trends in project management are analyzed also through building information modeling and, through case study, are presented the Concurrent Design experiences applied at Cyrela. Finally are presented the guidelines to the participation of the Production Engineering of Cyrela construction-real estate developer on Concurrent Design, being the main contribution of this thesis. Although the contributions may serve as a reference for other companies in the sector, this research was developed for practical applications at Cyrela, constructionreal estate developer that acts in the construction of buildings in all regions of Brazil.

"Current approaches to design are often serial and iterative in nature, leading to poor quality of design and reduced productivity. Complex artifacts are designed by groups of experts, each with his/her own area of expertise. Hence design can be modeled as a cooperative multi-agent problem-solving task, where different agents possess different expertise and evaluation criteria. New techniques for Concurrent Design, which emphasize parallel interaction among design experts involved, are needed. During this concurrent design process, disagreements may arise among the expert agents as the design is being produced. The process by which these differences are resolve to arrive at a common set of design decisions is called Negotiation. The main issues associated with the negotiation process are, whether negotiation should be centralized or distributed, the language of communication and the negotiation strategy. The goals of this thesis are to study the work done by various researchers in this field, to do a comarative analysis of their work and to design and implement an approach to handle negotiation between expert agents in an existing Concurrent Engineering Design System."

Concurrent Design studies have become of great importance in the space industry reducing the time and costs associated to the feasibility assessments for future space missions. This has also helped companies and space agencies to be at the forefront of this fast-developing sector. These collaborative sessions are carried out by an interdisciplinary group of engineers, experts and customers who are capable of achieving an optimal design solution within a short period of time, typically a few weeks. They make use of dedicated tools, like COMET® which is developed by RHEA Group, to store and share the data within the team, as well as with other partners or stakeholders. As new software tools are developed for Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) applications, parallel improvements are needed for Concurrent Engineering teams, since this can be one of the first steps for a model-based approach. One of the main constraints during Concurrent Design studies is the limited number of analysed options, since evaluating the entire design space would require longer sessions and increased time availability from the experts, and would consequently result in more expensive projects. One solution for this problem can be the application of generative engineering technologies to Concurrent Design studies. This method would allow to explore the entire design space by first defining the study model together with the system constraints, and then using a software to automatically generate all the possible architecture variants for that specific model. An example of state-of-the-art technologies for generative design is Simcenter™ Studio, a recently released tool from Siemens Digital Industries Software. The complexity of space missions requires a very detailed definition and evaluation of the system architecture, even at the early stages of the design process. Therefore, research is needed on the use and implementation of new methodologies that will tackle the challenges related to Concurrent Design. The context of the research presented in this thesis is the new project proposed by RHEA Group, Siemens and OHB, called Generative Concurrent Design (GCD). It aims to combine their software tools COMET® and Simcenter Studio, bringing generative engineering to Concurrent Design. One of the main advantages is achieving more optimised solutions in shorter times, reducing the number of necessary iterations on the system architecture during the entire project lifecycle. An enhanced feature of this tool is the possibility for the users to explore the solutions trade space with the support of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based system. This thesis presents and demonstrates the application of the GCD methodology to a use case at system level, focused on the evaluation of configuration and assembly options in the design of a spacecraft. Using the mission EnVision, selected in 2021 by ESA’s Science Programme Committee, as the design baseline, the GCD methodology has been implemented in this use case study making use of both software tools and showing potential future features and applications. / Les études de conception concourante ont pris une grande importance dans l'industrie spatiale, en réduisant le temps et les coûts associés aux évaluations de faisabilité des futures missions spatiales. Cela a également permis aux entreprises et aux agences spatiales d'être à l'avant-garde de ce secteur en plein essor. Ces sessions de collaboration sont menées par un groupe interdisciplinaire d'ingénieurs, d'experts et de clients qui sont capables d'obtenir une solution de conception optimale dans un délai court, généralement quelques semaines. Ils utilisent des outils dédiés, comme COMET® qui est développé par RHEA Group, pour stocker et partager les données au sein de l'équipe, ainsi qu'avec d'autres partenaires ou parties prenantes. Au fur et à mesure que de nouveaux outils logiciels sont développés pour les applications d'ingénierie des systèmes basés sur les modèles (MBSE), des améliorations parallèles sont nécessaires pour les équipes d'ingénierie concourante, car cela peut constituer l'une des premières étapes d'une approche basée sur les modèles. L'une des principales contraintes lors des études de conception concourante est le nombre limité d'options analysées, car l'évaluation de l'ensemble de l'espace de conception nécessiterait des sessions plus longues et une plus grande disponibilité des experts, ce qui se traduirait par des projets plus coûteux.  Une solution à ce problème pourrait être l'application des technologies d'ingénierie générative aux études de conception concourante. Cette méthode permettrait d'explorer l'ensemble de l'espace de conception en définissant d'abord le modèle d'étude ainsi que les contraintes du système, puis en utilisant un logiciel pour générer automatiquement toutes les variantes possibles du système pour ce modèle spécifique. Un exemple de technologies de pointe pour la conception générative est Simcenter™ Studio, un outil récemment publié par Siemens Digital Industries Software.  La complexité des missions spatiales exige une définition et une évaluation très détaillées de l'architecture du système, même aux premiers stades du processus de conception. Par conséquent, des recherches sont nécessaires sur l'utilisation et la mise en œuvre de nouvelles méthodologies qui permettront de relever les défis liés à la conception concourante. Le contexte de la recherche présentée dans cette thèse est le nouveau projet proposé par RHEA Group, Siemens et OHB, appelé Conception Concurrente Générative (Generative Concurrent Design ou GCD en anglais). Il vise à combiner leurs outils logiciels COMET® et Simcenter Studio, en apportant l'ingénierie générative à la conception concourante. L'un des principaux avantages est de parvenir à des solutions plus optimisées dans des délais plus courts, en réduisant le nombre d'itérations nécessaires sur l'architecture du système pendant tout le cycle de vie du projet. Une caractéristique améliorée de cet outil est la possibilité, pour les utilisateurs, d'explorer l'espace commercial des solutions avec le soutien d'un système basé sur l'intelligence artificielle (IA). Cette thèse présente et démontre l'application de la méthodologie GCD à un cas d'utilisation au niveau système, centré sur l'évaluation des options de configuration et d'assemblage dans la conception d'un vaisseau spatial. En utilisant la mission EnVision, sélectionnée en 2021 par le Comité du Programme Scientifique de l'ESA, comme base de conception, la méthodologie GCD a été mise en œuvre dans cette étude de cas d'utilisation, en employant les deux outils logiciels et en montrant les fonctionnalités et applications potentielles futures.

An approach was developed which allows for design studies of commercial aircraft using physics-based noise analysis methods while retaining the ability to perform the rapid tradeoff and risk analysis studies needed at the conceptual design stage. A prototype integrated analysis process was created for computing the total aircraft EPNL at the Federal Aviation Regulations Part 36 certification measurement locations using physics-based methods for fan rotor-stator interaction tones and jet mixing noise. The analysis process was then used in combination with design of experiments to create response surface equations (RSEs) for the engine and aircraft performance metrics, geometric constraints and takeoff and landing noise levels. In addition, Monte Carlo analysis was used to assess the expected variability of the metrics under the influence of uncertainty, and to determine how the variability is affected by the choice of engine cycle. Finally, the RSEs were used to conduct a series of proof-of-concept conceptual-level design studies demonstrating the utility of the approach. The study found that a key advantage to using physics-based analysis during conceptual design lies in the ability to assess the benefits of new technologies as a function of the design to which they are applied. The greatest difficulty in implementing the physics-based analysis proved to be the generation of design geometry at a sufficient level of detail for high-fidelity analysis.

The Concurrent Design Platform 4 (CDP4®) is a collaborative Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) software tool conceived for architecting complex systems. Nevertheless, there are limitations concerning the manageable number of system options. The upcoming Siemens tool for generative engineering, Simcenter™ Studio, is attempting to overcome this limitation by enabling automatic synthesis and evaluation of architecture variants. The motivation for the Generative Concurrent Design (GCD) project as a collaboration between RHEA, Siemens and OHB is to develop a combined prototype of these two tools. This thesis presents a modelling of Copernicus Next Generation (CNG) space component, using generative capabilities in a typical Phase-0 study. It represents the third step of the bottom-up GCD validation process, intended to investigate how architecting differs among “Sub-system”, “Systems” and “Systems of Systems (SoS)”. Therefore, this work provides an architecting strategy which is generalizable for other SoS use-cases and contributes to assess whether extensions to ECSS-E-TM-10-25 are necessary to successfully support GCD. / Concurrent Design Platform 4 (CDP4®) är ett samarbetsverktyg för modellbaserad systemteknik (MBSE) som utformats för att bygga komplexa system. Dock finns det begränsningar vad gäller det antalet hanterbara systemalternativ. Det kommande Siemens-verktyget för generativ teknik, Simcenter™ Studio, försöker övervinna denna begränsning genom att möjliggöra automatisk syntes och utvärdering av arkitekturvarianter. Motivationen för Generative Concurrent Design (GCD) -projektet som ett samarbete mellan RHEA, Siemens och OHB är att utveckla en kombinerad prototyp av verktygen CDP4® och Simcenter™. Detta examensarbete presenterar en modellering av rymdkomponenten Copernicus Next Generation (CNG) med användning av generativa funktioner i en typisk fas-0-studie. Den representerar det tredje steget i GCD-valideringsprocessen nedifrån och upp, avsedd att undersöka hur arkitekturen skiljer sig åt mellan "Sub-system", "Systems" och "Systems of Systems (SoS)". Detta arbete ger därför en arkitektonisk strategi som är generaliserbar för andra SoS-användningsfall och bidrar till att bedöma om förlängningar till ECSS-E-TM-10-25 är nödvändiga för att framgångsrikt stödja GCD.