Holistic Engineering Research Articles

A holistic engineering approach to aeronautical product development

ABSTRACTProduct development, especially in aerospace, has become more and more interconnected with its operational environment. In a constant changing world, the operational environment will be subjected to changes during the life cycle of the product. The operational environment will be affected by not only technical and non-technical perturbations, but also economical, managerial and regulatory decisions, thus requiring a more global product development approach. One way to try tackling such complex and intertwined problem advocates studying the envisioned product or system in the context of system of systems (SoS) engineering. SoSs are all around us, probably in any field of engineering, ranging from integrated transport systems, public infrastructure systems to modern homes equipped with sensors and smart appliances; from cities filling with autonomous vehicle to defence systems.Since also aerospace systems are certainly affected, this work will present a holistic approach to aerospace product development that tries spanning from needs to technology assessment. The proposed approach will be presented and analysed and key enablers and future research directions will be highlighted from an interdisciplinary point of view. Consideration of the surrounding world will require to look beyond classical engineering disciplines.

STEAM without hot air: strategy for educating creative engineers

ABSTRACTAt a time when the routine tasks traditionally carried out by engineers are being undertaken by either technicians or technologists with access to powerful IT systems or AI with machine learning algorithms, there is an urgent need to reframe the education of engineering students beyond rote learning. This involves providing a learning framework to support creative problem-solving as specified by many of the Graduate Attributes required by the Washington Accord for accreditation of tertiary engineering degrees. At the same time, there is a growing movement towards STEAM led education that couples the traditional STEM subjects with the Arts in order to produce more creative and innovative engineers. Based on experience of developing a new design paper for undergraduate students that meets the needs of a specific group of people in society, this paper explores options to incorporate STEAM style education into engineering degree programs that builds on lessons learnt from the best of professional practice. The result is a multi-disciplinary framework coupled with pedagogical practices from the Arts and Design that focuses learning on the human sciences, natural sciences, craftsmanship and design thinking to provide holistic engineering education under pinned by technical competencies.

A Holistic Approach to Characterize Mud Loss Using Dynamic Mud Filtration Data

Drilling mud loss in highly porous media and fractured formations has been one of the industry's focuses in the past decades. Wellbore dynamics and lithology complexities continue to push for more research into accurate quantification and mitigation strategies for lost circulation and mud filtration. Conventional methods of characterizing mud loss with filtration data for field application can be time-consuming, particularly because of the interaction between several factors that impact mud loss and filtration. This paper presents a holistic engineering approach for characterizing lost circulation using pore-scale dynamic water-based mud (WBM) filtration data. The approaches used in this study include: factorial design of experiment (DoE), hypothesis testing, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and multiple regression analysis. The results show that an increase in temperature and rotary speed can increase dynamic mud filtration significantly. An increase in lost circulation material (LCM) concentration showed a significant decrease dynamic mud filtration. A combination of LCM concentration and rotary speed showed a significant decrease in dynamic mud filtration, while a combination of LCM concentration and temperature revealed a significant increase in dynamic mud filtration. Rotary speed and temperature combination showed an increase in dynamic mud filtration. The combined effect of these three factors was not significant in increasing or decreasing dynamic mud filtration. For the experimental conditions in this study, the regression analysis for one of the rocks showed that dynamic mud filtration can be predicted from changes in LCM concentration and rotary speed. The results and approach from this study can provide reliable information for drilling fluids design and selecting operating conditions for field application.

Holistic Diesel Engine and Exhaust After-Treatment Model Predictive Control

Abstract Today’s and future more stringent Diesel on-road emission regulations requires low emissions during normal operation with fewer exceptions. This together with the demand for low fuel consumption resulting that the control strategy must be able to fulfill both objectives simultaneously. In this work we present a holistic engine and Exhaust After-Treatment System (EATS) control which robustly fulfill the emission legislation together with optimal fuel consumption. With traditional PID control schemes it is typically non intuitive how to create a holistic controller that obtain both these objectives. The proposed holistic scheme is based on Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework in an intuitive straight forward way. The EATS system used in this paper does not include any external heating device and the SCR system was setup to always target NH3 storage levels to secure high NOx conversion efficiency. The holistic MPC controller is therefore setup to control the engine out NOx and temperature to meet the EATS demands. The holistic MPC controls the gas exchange actuators, while the injection strategy is controlled with a traditional map-based structure. The designed controller is integrated in a production Engine Electrical Control Unit (EECU) and tests are performed in engine test bench. The engine used in this work is a Heavy Duty 13L Diesel engine with turbo compound as a waste heat recovery device. The results show that using the proposed holistic MPC scheme the controller can be on a high level intuitively tuned to fulfill the emissions robustness while maintaining low fuel consumption in on-road cycles.

Moray: Bridging an Ancient Culture of Innovation with Emerging Pedagogies in Engineering

From its inception, Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC) has functioned under the mandate of causing a disruptive effect in society by educating a new generation of holistic engineers bound to become empowered change agents. The university has recently embarked on a radical transformation of its educational model, in order to deliver this promise. A flexible curriculum provides students not only with a strong STHEAM backbone imparted in a student-centered active-learning format, but also exposes them to real engineering challenges and promotes the acquisition of professional skills from the onset. For this change to be implemented successfully, UTEC has decided to design and launch a Laboratory for Educational Innovation, called Moray. Conceived as an open platform, Moray sits at the intersection of physical and virtual spaces and is organized around flexible protocols that allow faculty, students, staff, and experts from top universities worldwide to work interdisciplinarily and collaboratively, towards the enhancement of teaching and learning dynamics in higher education.

Using design rules to guide the PSS design in an engineering platform based on the product service lifecycle management paradigm

Nowadays, product service systems (PSSs) and smart products are surging in the market and acquiring a strategic role for companies' survival. Manufacturers, compelled towards the transformation process into PSS providers, have to face the challenge of building up knowledge for successfully providing such complex solutions, also resorting to the help of more effective IT systems and tools. The need to adopt a collaborative design platform is starting to be raised also in the PSS context, since companies often have a lack of knowledge for providing PSS. This work, grounded on a combination of lean and DfX-based theories, is aimed at improving the knowledge formalisation and sharing with the support of IT tools. In this sense, the lean design rules tool (LDRT), able to manage the PSS design knowledge generated is proposed and integrated in a more holistic engineering environment able to interact with product lifecycle management (PLM) systems.

Sustainable Innovation in a Multi-University Master Course

Mobility, multi-locality, and transnational migration are current social developments among the population of the European Union. These social developments in society and companies, linked to the challenges of sustainability, lead to new requirements for working in the European Union. Teaching and learning in higher education needs to adapt to these requirements. As a result, new and innovative teaching and learning practices in higher education should provide competencies for transnational teamwork in the curriculum of tomorrow’s engineers in order to ensure their competitiveness in the job market and advantage in their future careers. Thirteen European students from four countries participated in a new project-based course, called the “European Engineering Team”. Students focused on the development of two innovative and sustainable products. The goal of this paper is to present the thermal pallet cover, which is the result of the first one-year transnational and sustainability-oriented project. This paper also aims to present the process of performing the project. It provides the overview and discussion of engineering and management tasks that students completed in the transnational environment, working remotely at their own campuses between scheduled transnational meetings. The work contributes to project-oriented learning that may constitute a basis for teaching holistic engineering courses at mechanical and industrial engineering departments.

Using design rules to guide the PSS design in an Engineering Platform based on the Product Service Lifecycle Management (PSLM) paradigm

Nowadays, product service systems (PSSs) and smart products are surging in the market and acquiring a strategic role for companies’ survival. Manufacturers, compelled towards the transformation process into PSS providers, have to face the challenge of building up knowledge for successfully providing such complex solutions, also resorting to the help of more effective IT systems and tools. The need to adopt a collaborative design platform is starting to be raised also in the PSS context, since companies often have a lack of knowledge for providing PSS. This work, grounded on a combination of lean and DfX-based theories, is aimed at improving the knowledge formalisation and sharing with the support of IT tools. In this sense, the lean design rules tool (LDRT), able to manage the PSS design knowledge generated is proposed and integrated in a more holistic engineering environment able to interact with product lifecycle management (PLM) systems.

How engineers perceive the importance of ethics in Finland

ABSTRACTSuccess in complex and holistic engineering practices requires more than problem-solving abilities and technical competencies. Engineering education must offer proficient technical competences and also train engineers to think and act ethically. A technical ‘engineering-like’ focus and demand have made educators and students overlook the importance of ethical awareness and transversal competences. Using two Finnish surveys, conducted in 2014 and 2016, we examine how engineers perceive working life needs regarding ethics. The data consider different age groups. We research whether an engineer’s age affects their perception of the importance of ethics in their work and if there are differences between young experts and young managers in their use of ethics within work. The results indicate that practising engineers do not consider ethical issues important in their work. This especially applies to younger engineers; the older an engineer, the more important they consider ethics. No statistically significant difference was found between young engineering experts and managers.

Integrative Clinical Trials: Holistic and Tissue Engineering

Any holistic medicine, if it is to be truly “holistic”, cannot possibly take the policy of escapism from Clinical Trials. The intention to design experimental trials on animals before coming over to humankind has been focused on to procreate the most state-of-the-art clinical trials for human holistic medicine. Thus, split-plots (and even: Split-split plots) are brought at work to employ the full efficiency of Bayesian statistics for purposes of holistically infer posterior likelihood in cases of predictions based on “priors”. This spells that on the on the one hand clinical trials are not necessarily to be of randomized nature. On the other hand, the basic ideas of HCT (Holistic Clinical Trials) and ICT (Integrative Clinical Trials) by means of incorporating Algebraic-Topologic notions (rather than simple numerically crunched data analysis) into the main body of any trial of clinical essence, thence, emerges to be the most applicable handy clinical trials of near-future medicine.

Formation-Evaluation Log-Off Results for Coalbed-Methane-Field Development

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 176823, “Formation-Evaluation Log-Off Results Comparing New- Generation Mining-Style Logging Tools With Conventional Oil-and-Gas Logging Tools for Application in Coalbed-Methane-Field Development,” by T. Gan, B. Balmain, A. Sibgatullin, M. Ward, and F. Liu, Arrow Energy, and E. Murphy and L. Cook, Shell, prepared for the 2015 SPE Asia Pacific Unconventional Resources Conference and Exhibition, Brisbane, Australia, 9–11 November. The paper has not been peer reviewed. An operator’s coalbed-methane (CBM) -development projects in Queensland, Australia, are designed with a large volume of wells that will need to be drilled and evaluated over the next decade. At present, the cost of logging is forcing the operator to choose between early data coverage vs. restricted logging. To resolve this issue, the operator has embarked on a series of technology trials to investigate various cost-effective formation-evaluation solutions. This paper presents the results of a comparison of state-of-the-art mining logging technology and conventional oil-and- gas logging technology. Introduction The Surat basin is a broad intracratonic downward that covers an area of approximately 300 000 km2 in southeastern Queensland and northeastern New South Wales. The operator’s interests are solely in Queensland. The basin comprises a primarily nonmarine Jurassic succession overlain by a mixed nonmarine and marine Early Cretaceous succession. (For detailed geological information, please see the complete paper.) The operator’s proposed Surat CBM project is located in the eastern part of the basin, in Queensland only, with an area of 22 000 km2. It is important to use geophysical logs as part of the data-acquisition program, especially during the early development phase. The geophysical logs are used for coal identification, derivation of coal properties, and coal ranking. Current mining logging technology consists of a basic logging suite such as gamma ray, density/photoelectric factor, and neutron and resistivity tools. For advanced logging operations in exploration and appraisal wells, these must be replaced by conventional oil-and-gas logging tools to ensure holistic subsurface characterizations and front-end engineering work for future project- development decision making. Logging-Technology-Trial Results for CBM Data Acquisition Trials proved the availability of a cost-saving proposal for logging vertical development wells, which can meet formation-evaluation objectives while minimizing the costs of openhole logging. This is primarily achieved by running a basic logging suite of density, gamma, caliper, and deviation. An important distinction to consider is that, in conventional oil and gas, density sensitivity is usually down to approximately 2.0 g/c m3 because of the use of weighted muds. In CBM, formation water or very lightweight muds are used and coal densities can be as low as 1.2 g/cm3, pushing the boundaries of density-tool measurements to obtain such low readings. Mining-Drillpipe-Push (MDP) Logging Tools. This logging-conveyance method involves the addition of a composite collar within the drilling bottomhole assembly before the production section is drilled. Once total depth (TD) is reached, the drillpipe is broken open at surface and the logging tools are pumped down and latched into the composite collar. The pipe is then tripped out of the well, and the logging occurs through the composite collar in memory mode. The logging tools for this trial included density, gamma, dual-neutron, and resistivity.

Validity and Reliability Evidence of the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment Tool

Background The development of social responsibility is important for educating holistic engineers, able to work across social and cultural boundaries to solve complex social issues. A way is needed to measure effective interventions for increasing social responsibility. Purpose/Hypothesis This article describes the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) instrument and provides evidence of its usability, validity, and reliability. The EPRA measures students' social responsibility attitudes and operationalizes the professional social responsibility development model, which describes the development of personal and professional social responsibility in engineers. The EPRA is intended to be used by educators to assess curricular interventions aimed at changing students' views of social responsibility. Design/Method The EPRA was developed in an iterative manner, using five different survey administrations with adjustments made to the instrument between each. Data from the final survey with 1,000 student responses were used to develop evidence of validity through expert feedback, structural equation modeling, multidimensional item response theory, and convergent evidence of validity and evidence of reliability using ordinal alpha. Results Evidence of validity and reliability indicates the appropriateness of the EPRA to measure social responsibility attitudes in engineering students. Conclusions The evidence of reliability and validity shows that the EPRA may be a useful tool to assess engineering student views of social responsibility, changes in those views over time, and the effectiveness of educational interventions intended to affect these attitudes.

Ideas of holistic engineering meet engineering work practices

ABSTRACTThis article critically reflects on the viability of the idea that reforming engineering education will result in more holistic engineering work practices. Drawing on an empirical study, the article aims to demonstrate that in order to change existing engineering work practices, it might be necessary to change engineers’ knowledge and skills; however, such changes are far from sufficient. Conditions and circumstances external to practitioners’ knowledge and skills are crucial if engineering work is to become more holistic. To illustrate this point, the article outlines an empirical study of a small team of professionals who engage in holistic engineering work practices in an engineering consultancy company. The work practices are investigated using a philosophical empirical method that inquires into the doings, sayings, and relatings of the practitioners. The study describes the practice architecture that shapes and is shaped by the practitioners’ activities, and it demonstrate how the practice landscape prevents enactments of holistic engineering work practices.

A holistic engineering approach for utilization of olive pomace

Olive pomace is a by-product of olive oil production and an important biomass for the Mediterranean countries. The aim of this study was to optimize the oil extraction from olive pomace by supercritical CO2 and utilize the remaining biomass by hydrolysis. A Box–Behnken statistical design was used to evaluate the effect of temperature (30–80°C), pressure (120–300bar) and CO2 flow rate (10–20g/min) for 60min. The most effective variable was pressure (p<0.005) and optimum extraction conditions were elicited as 68°C, 280bar and 20g/min flow rate yielding 4.8% of oil. Additionally, the effect of particle size was investigated on extraction efficiency. Indeed, the oil yield was increased to 13.8% by decreasing the particle size from 2000 to 850–500μm. For utilization of remaining biomass, both supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2) and hexane de-oiled pomaces were subjected to acid and enzymatic hydrolyses. Hydrolyses with 2% of sulfuric acid for 90min yielded 12.30 and 12.65g/l reducing sugar from SC-CO2 and hexane treated biomasses, whereas the highest reducing sugar concentrations achieved with enzymatic hydrolysis with a substrate amount of 6g, 20–27% Cellic CTec2/Novozyme 188 for 24h were 12.72g/l and 10.13g/l, respectively. A holistic engineering approach is proposed where supercritical CO2 can be used as a main process to extract remaining oil in olive pomace and as a pretreatment loosen the structure in order to obtain liquor which can be converted to a biofuel.

Investigating property damage along Dublin Port Tunnel alignment

During the winter of 2002/2003, Dublin City Council received various complaints regarding aesthetic and serviceability damage of several residential buildings located within the highly populated residential area of Marino (1ṡ8 km north-east of Dublin centre, in the Republic of Ireland) allegedly caused by rock-tunnelling operations of the southwards tunnel-boring machine in the northbound tunnel carried out in execution of the Dublin Port Tunnel scheme. A holistic engineering–geological ground model for the area north of Dublin centre shows that structural elements crossing the bedrock have markedly affected the geological evolution and post-glacial drainage of the site, including the formation of buried valleys. A review of groundwater monitoring and tunnel construction records has allowed the causes of settlement at ground level to be identified. These include volume loss of the ground due to deformation and local failure of the tunnel excavation, dewatering of the bedrock and of coarse strata embedded in the Boulder Clay, resulting in the removal of fine soil particles, vibro-densification due to tunnel-boring machine ground-borne vibrations, and slow production and possibly consolidation of clayey strata. A comparison between the position of the properties where damages are being claimed and that of post-glacial rivulets and lakes, backfilled in the 1920s following a rapid expansion of Dublin suburbs, clearly indicates a direct linkage between the two.

Towards a flexible framework to support a generalized extension of XACML for spatio-temporal RBAC model with reasoning ability

Purpose – The paper aims to propose a flexible framework to support X-STROWL model. Extensible access control markup language (XACML) is an international standard used for access control in distributed systems. However, XACML and its existing extensions are not sufficient to fulfill sophisticated security requirements (e.g. access control based on user’s roles, context-aware authorizations and the ability of reasoning). Remarkably, X-STROWL, a generalized extension of XACML for spatiotemporal role-based access control (RBAC) model with reasoning ability, is a comprehensive model that overcomes these shortcomings. It mainly focuses on the architecture design as well as the implementation and evaluation of proposed framework and the comparison with others. Design/methodology/approach – Based on the concept of X-STROWL model, the paper reviewed a large amount of open sources implementing XACML with defined criteria and chose the most suitable framework to be extended for the implementation. The paper also presented a case study used to evaluate the research result. Findings – Holistic enterprise-ready application security framework – architecture framework (HERAS-AF) is chosen as the most suitable framework to be extended to implement X-STROWL model. Extending HERAS-AF to support spatiotemporal aspect and other contextual conditions as well as the way to integrate security in the access request, together with ability of reasoning for hierarchical roles, are striking features that make the proposed framework able to meet more sophisticated security requirements in comparison with others. Research limitations/implications – Due to the research content, the performance of proposed framework is not the focused issue of this work. Originality/value – The proposed framework is a crucial contribution of our research to provide a holistic, extensible and intelligent authorization decision engine.

Challenges for Holistic Engineering Education Development in India

The new challenges for engineering education go more than the need to keep students abreast of cutting edge technology and calls for a better equilibrium in the various areas of engineering. There is considerable concern that upholding of the old standard by engineering institutions will all but degrade the quality of engineers as well as difficulty in adapting to the growing difficulties of the worldwide marketplace globally. This requires the new development model for the holistic growth of engineering education. However, adaptation of new development model will not be easy since lots of our research universities are faced with monetary pressures. Indian government has made significant contribution toward this growth phase for the development of nation. This paper addresses for an assessment study of the methods developed by reputed engineering institutions in India to lay the foundation for future engineering education. The looking forward segment provides suggestions and plans for engineering education in India. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v3i1.5580

E-participation and enterprise architecture frameworks: An analysis

The success of innovative e-participation solutions depends heavily on the organizational planning and the incorporation of such initiatives into the different stages of the policy life-cycle. E-participation often demands to introduce new participation facilities into the traditional processes of policy formulation and decision making. Accommodating the various requirements from distinct perspectives calls for a holistic engineering approach for e-participation systems analysis and design. Enterprise Architectures (EA) have evolved in information systems research as an approach to give guidance in developing complex socio-technical systems. This paper analyzes the application of EA frameworks in the context of e-participation. Eparticipation domain and implementation models are investigated to identify crucial tasks and aspects in e-participation project development and implementation. Related to the tasks identified, two EA frameworks are analyzed: the Zachman Framework and TOGAF. We explain how EA frameworks can support the development and implementation of e-participation projects. Finally, the needs for a reference framework for e-participation are argued and a reference framework is presented.

Spatial ability through engineering graphics education

Spatial ability has been confirmed to be of particular importance for successful engineering graphics education and to be a component of human intelligence that can be improved through instruction and training. Consequently, the creation and communication by means of graphics demand careful development of spatial skills provided by the balanced curricula based on the research results in multi disciplinary area. The approach to engineering graphics education had been transformed to meet spatial skills improvement even before significant and fast changes arose from the development of computer technology enabling the engineer powerful tools and techniques. The correlation and interference between new technologies widely introduced in engineering graphics education and spatial ability/skills, have initiated new studies to establish the basis of holistic engineering graphics education. This paper presents the overview of some efforts and possible answers resulting from intensive research into spatial ability and skills and their implementation in the conception of graphics education in engineering environment.

Reconfigurable high-speed platform: shifting the paradigm in education, research and engineering

Keeping students acclimatized with the increasingly rapid advancement in technology requires major changes in the manner in which education is designed and conducted. With the utilization of more sophisticated equipment in the classroom and laboratory, students are better exposed to real-world design techniques and multidisciplinary problem-solving, providing a positive link between education and industry. Much of the impetus for this change is the availability of more affordable and easy to use microcontrollers and embedded systems, including reconfigurable multipurpose hardware platforms. At the heart of this paradigm shift is the proliferation of Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs), Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGAs), and the growth of system-on-a-chip (SOC) design. SOC designs facilitate innovation by incorporating the speed of dedicated hardware and memory with the flexibility of general purpose processors on a single chip. The use of this reprogrammable high-speed platform helps students reach a stage of true emancipation, combining their coursework knowledge in a more holistic engineering approach. In this article, we discuss the benefits of the reconfigurable highspeed platform in academia. By enhancing information sharing and collaboration between research and education, undergraduate students can gain more exposure to cutting edge research. In addition, the use of this platform for research prototyping serves to enhance the visibility of research projects to the industrial community. We illustrate how this platform can be co-opted into current practices via several case studies and the associated benefits that can be gained.