Modular Design Approach Research Articles

A comparative study of tough hydrogen bonding dissipating hydrogels made with different network structures.

Hydrogels are excellent soft materials to interface with biological systems. Precise control and tunability of dissipative properties of gels are particularly interesting in tissue engineering applications. In this work, we produced hydrogels with tunable dissipative properties by photopolymerizing a second polymer within a preformed cross-linked hydrogel network of poly(acrylamide). We explored second networks made with different structures and capacity to hydrogen bond with the first network, namely linear poly(acrylic acid) and branched poly(tannic acid). Gels incorporating a second network made with poly(tannic acid) exhibited excellent stiffness (0.35 ± 0.035 MPa) and toughness (1.64 ± 0.26 MJ m−3) compared to the poly(acrylic acid) counterparts. We also demonstrate a strategy to fabricate hydrogels where the dissipation (loss modulus) can be tuned independently from the elasticity (storage modulus) suitable for cell culture applications. We anticipate that this modular design approach for producing hydrogels will have applications in tailored substrates for cell culture studies and in load bearing tissue engineering applications.

A Novel Approach for Integrating IEC 61131-3 Engineering and Execution Into IEC 61499

Automation system engineering becomes more complex, due to the trend toward more flexible, reconfigurable, and modular design approaches, like Industry 4.0. For the modeling and design of the according software, two standards are present: IEC 61131-3 and IEC 61499. In order to satisfy the requirements for modern, large scale, highly distributed applications while also supporting still existing legacy systems, the demand for a combined development framework arises, where the best of breed tool can be chosen for a given automation task. Considering that, the IEC 61499 model is extended to allow the dual development and execution of IEC 61131-3 programs, and enabling easy and correct interaction between the two paradigms. In order to verify the validity of the chosen approach, an IEC 61499 development tool and a runtime environment is modified to support IEC 61131-3. A sample application is implemented, which comprises a pure IEC 61131-3 part with a 1 ms cycle time, a pure IEC 61499 part, and a part with interaction between both subparts, in order to evaluate possible interference between the runtime parts. Experimental results show that no interference is occurring, and the chosen development approach allows the seamless integration of IEC 61131-3 and IEC 61499 in one combined development framework.

A modular design strategy to integrate mechanotransduction concepts in scaffold-based bone tissue engineering

Repair or regeneration of load-bearing bones has long been an incentive for the tissue engineering community to develop a plethora of synthetic bone scaffolds. Despite the key role of physical forces and the mechanical environment in bone regeneration, the mechanotransduction concept has rarely been incorporated in structural design of bone tissue scaffolds, particularly those made of bioactive materials such as hydrogels and bioceramics. Herein, we introduce a modular design strategy to fabricate a load bearing device that can support a wide range of hydrogel- and ceramic-based scaffolds against complex in-vivo loading conditions to induce desirable mechanical strains for bone regeneration within the scaffolds. The device is comprised of a fenestrated polymeric shell and ceramic structural pillars arranged in a sophisticated configuration to provide ample internal space for the scaffold, also enabling it to purposely regulate the levels of strains and stresses within the scaffolds. Utilizing this top-down design approach, we demonstrate that the failure load of alginate hydrogels increases 3200-fold in compression, 300-fold in shear and 75-fold in impact, achieving the values that enable them to withstand physiological loads in weight-bearing sites, while allowing generation of osteoinductive strains (i.e., 0.2-0.4%) in the hydrogel. This modular design approach opens a broad range of opportunities to utilize various bioactive but mechanically weak scaffolds for the treatment of load-bearing defects and exploiting mechanobiology strategies to improve bone regeneration.

Photoconversion of anthropogenic CO2 into tunable syngas over industrial wastes derived metal-organic frameworks

Industrial wastes such as electroplating sludges and anthropogenic CO2, are misplaced resources whose utilization is severely hampered by their complex compositions or low concentration. Herein, on the basis of the specific binding characteristic of metal ions with small molecules, we demonstrate gradient-upcycling of solid wastes into different metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for anthropogenic CO2-to-syngas photoconversion. In low-concentration CO2 (10%), the as-prepared Ni MOFs exhibits record-high performance for CO2-to-CO photoconversion, while Fe MOFs favors for H2 production. By taking Fe/Ni MOFs as the modular catalysts and adjusting their ratio, syngas with a widely tunable CO/H2 ratio (1:15-14:1) was produced from CO2 photoreduction. The diverse catalytic performance of Fe/Ni MOFs originates from the different affinities towards CO2/H2O, which relates to the 3d electron numbers of metal ions. We further confirm the universality of the gradient recovery approach to upcycle metal resources from solid wastes and the modular catalysts design approach for CO2-to-syngas photoconversion.

Data Badges: Making an Academic Profile Through a DIY Wearable Physicalization.

In this pictorial, we present the design and making process of Data Badges as they were deployed during a one-week academic seminar. Data Badges are customizable physical conference badges that invite participants to make their own independent and personalized expressions of their academic profile by choosing and assembling a collection of predefined physical tokens on a flat wearable canvas. As our modular and intuitive design approach allows the construction to occur as a shared, collective activity, Data Badges take advantage of the creative, affective, and social values that underlie physicalization and its construction to engage participants in reflecting on personal data. Among other unexpected phenomena, we noticed how the freedom of assembly and interpretation encouraged a variety of appropriations, which expanded its intended representational space from fully representative to more resistive and provocative forms of data expression.

Modular change impact analysis in factory systems

Shorter product innovation cycles, high variant products, and demand fluctuation, as well as equipment life cycles and technology life cycles force manufacturing companies to regularly change their manufacturing system. In order to address this challenge, an efficient and structured change management is required. As change causes and factory elements are connected via a complex network of relations and flows, an essential step in change management is the evaluation of considered adjustments with regard to their effects on the current production system. Depending on the context of the application, change impact analysis must process specific inputs and deliver different results. Current approaches, however, each focus only on selected aspects of the versatility of change effects. To address this challenge, this paper presents a modular approach for the individual design of change impact analysis.

Order review and release in make-to-order flow shops: analysis and design of new methods

Increased customization has strengthened the importance of make-to-order companies. The advent of lean management and the introduction of smart and flexible technologies has enabled many of these companies to create flow shop routings. Order review and release (ORR) research, which originally focused on job shops, has started paying attention to flow shops. However, the results have not provided clarity on the best ORR method for flow shops. This study aims at developing such a method by applying a modular design approach. It identifies the relevant elements of ORR methods for flow shops, combines them into new methods and evaluates them in a simulation study. The simulation results demonstrate that performance in pure flow shops can be strongly improved by applying the right combination of workload measures, load balancing, and order dispatching. Specifically, the results show that (1) classical workload measures are still as effective as novel measures that have been suggested for flow shops, (2) balancing workloads explicitly through optimization at the order release stage strongly improves performance, and (3) shortest processing time dispatching is highly effective in flow shops as it avoids starvation of stations. In-depth analyses have been executed to unravel the reasons of performance improvements. As such, the article provides clarity on the improvement potential that is available for ORR in flow shops, while the new modular methods provide a first step in exploiting this potential.

Key Challenges in Designing CHO Chassis Platforms

Following the success of and the high demand for recombinant protein-based therapeutics during the last 25 years, the pharmaceutical industry has invested significantly in the development of novel treatments based on biologics. Mammalian cells are the major production systems for these complex biopharmaceuticals, with Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines as the most important players. Over the years, various engineering strategies and modeling approaches have been used to improve microbial production platforms, such as bacteria and yeasts, as well as to create pre-optimized chassis host strains. However, the complexity of mammalian cells curtailed the optimization of these host cells by metabolic engineering. Most of the improvements of titer and productivity were achieved by media optimization and large-scale screening of producer clones. The advances made in recent years now open the door to again consider the potential application of systems biology approaches and metabolic engineering also to CHO. The availability of a reference genome sequence, genome-scale metabolic models and the growing number of various “omics” datasets can help overcome the complexity of CHO cells and support design strategies to boost their production performance. Modular design approaches applied to engineer industrially relevant cell lines have evolved to reduce the time and effort needed for the generation of new producer cells and to allow the achievement of desired product titers and quality. Nevertheless, important steps to enable the design of a chassis platform similar to those in use in the microbial world are still missing. In this review, we highlight the importance of mammalian cellular platforms for the production of biopharmaceuticals and compare them to microbial platforms, with an emphasis on describing novel approaches and discussing still open questions that need to be resolved to reach the objective of designing enhanced modular chassis CHO cell lines.

A Modular Design Approach for Ka-Band Front-End Receiver of Synthetic Aperture Interferometric Passive Imager

Electromagnetic Laboratory of Beihang University is engaged in the development of Ka-band synthetic aperture interferometric based passive imager named as BHU-2D-U. The imager is intended for detection of concealed weapons on human body. Noise figure of front-end receiver dictates the dynamic range and consequently the imaging performance of the imager. A modular design approach is presented to obtain improved noise figure as compared to the previous work. Additionally, the modular design gives a flexibility to adopt any desired receiver gain, instantaneous bandwidth, and noise figure and image rejection suppression. The measured gain, noise figure and image rejection is 42 dB, 4.1 dB and 60 dB respectively with 80 dB excellent spurious free spectral response. The reconstructed image performance of the imager is found satisfactory

Coiled-Coils: the Molecular Zippers that Self-Assemble Protein Nanostructures.

Coiled-coils, the bundles of intertwined helical protein motifs, have drawn much attention as versatile molecular toolkits. Because of programmable interaction specificity and affinity as well as well-established sequence-to-structure relationships, coiled-coils have been used as subunits that self-assemble various molecular complexes in a range of fields. In this review, I describe recent advances in the field of protein nanotechnology, with a focus on programming assembly of protein nanostructures using coiled-coil modules. Modular design approaches to converting the helical motifs into self-assembling building blocks are described, followed by a discussion on the molecular basis and principles underlying the modular designs. This review also provides a summary of recently developed nanostructures with a variety of structural features, which are in categories of unbounded nanostructures, discrete nanoparticles, and well-defined origami nanostructures. Challenges existing in current design strategies, as well as desired improvements for controls over material properties and functionalities for applications, are also provided.

Global catalyst market is forecast to expand significantly through mid-2020's

This paper describes how modularity is implemented in a roadmapping framework so that from a set of stand-alone roadmaps each could be used as an interconnected module, vertically and horizontally perfectly fitting together in an overall integrated roadmap describing a broad landscape of corresponding developments in technologies, products, applications, markets and society. The concept of modular roadmapping is illustrated by the example of a huge roadmapping project accompanying the innovation alliance “Lithium-ion batteries LIB 2015”, carried out by Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. The roadmapping framework addresses a broad technology landscape covering three focal domains: (i) Energy storage with lithium-ion battery technologies in general, addressing all kinds of corresponding battery applications, (ii) energy storage for electric mobility and (iii) stationary energy storage specifically. Each domain is represented and specified through a certain technology roadmap covering technological developments, a product roadmap assessing corresponding market trends and product requirements, and an integrated, unified roadmap linking technology push and market pull in a broader integrated view. In order to further specific insights for next generations of batteries in the above-mentioned roadmapping project, modularity for integrated roadmapping helps to systematically link expertise on technologies, products, applications, markets and society in regards to overarching (inter-)national challenges (e.g. the German energy transition). Every roadmap forms an independent module for itself, showing different paths of future development and critical dependencies in each of the three highly dependent but also highly complex domains mentioned. Yet only through the integration of all perspectives in technologies, products, applications, markets and society, the aim of analyzing and documenting changes of innovation systems as a whole can be accomplished. From an academic perspective, a modular design approach in roadmapping contributes to more conceptual clarity, especially when providing roadmaps for a technology-driven innovation system with a core technology in the focus and multiple other competing or complementary technologies around. From a practitioner's point of view, guidance is provided on how to link developments and progression made in basic and applied science, industrial R&D and socio-political trends, for current and emerging technologies and applications. The experience made and insights from various stakeholders involved in this roadmapping project are of interest and relevance for all actors, be they from science, industry or policy, as they may trigger the development of existing and emergence of new industries.

The versatile ethanol molecule

This paper describes how modularity is implemented in a roadmapping framework so that from a set of stand-alone roadmaps each could be used as an interconnected module, vertically and horizontally perfectly fitting together in an overall integrated roadmap describing a broad landscape of corresponding developments in technologies, products, applications, markets and society. The concept of modular roadmapping is illustrated by the example of a huge roadmapping project accompanying the innovation alliance “Lithium-ion batteries LIB 2015”, carried out by Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. The roadmapping framework addresses a broad technology landscape covering three focal domains: (i) Energy storage with lithium-ion battery technologies in general, addressing all kinds of corresponding battery applications, (ii) energy storage for electric mobility and (iii) stationary energy storage specifically. Each domain is represented and specified through a certain technology roadmap covering technological developments, a product roadmap assessing corresponding market trends and product requirements, and an integrated, unified roadmap linking technology push and market pull in a broader integrated view. In order to further specific insights for next generations of batteries in the above-mentioned roadmapping project, modularity for integrated roadmapping helps to systematically link expertise on technologies, products, applications, markets and society in regards to overarching (inter-)national challenges (e.g. the German energy transition). Every roadmap forms an independent module for itself, showing different paths of future development and critical dependencies in each of the three highly dependent but also highly complex domains mentioned. Yet only through the integration of all perspectives in technologies, products, applications, markets and society, the aim of analyzing and documenting changes of innovation systems as a whole can be accomplished. From an academic perspective, a modular design approach in roadmapping contributes to more conceptual clarity, especially when providing roadmaps for a technology-driven innovation system with a core technology in the focus and multiple other competing or complementary technologies around. From a practitioner's point of view, guidance is provided on how to link developments and progression made in basic and applied science, industrial R&D and socio-political trends, for current and emerging technologies and applications. The experience made and insights from various stakeholders involved in this roadmapping project are of interest and relevance for all actors, be they from science, industry or policy, as they may trigger the development of existing and emergence of new industries.

World's largest ATR-based gas-to-gasoline plant has been put into successful operation by Haldor Topsoe

This paper describes how modularity is implemented in a roadmapping framework so that from a set of stand-alone roadmaps each could be used as an interconnected module, vertically and horizontally perfectly fitting together in an overall integrated roadmap describing a broad landscape of corresponding developments in technologies, products, applications, markets and society. The concept of modular roadmapping is illustrated by the example of a huge roadmapping project accompanying the innovation alliance “Lithium-ion batteries LIB 2015”, carried out by Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany. The roadmapping framework addresses a broad technology landscape covering three focal domains: (i) Energy storage with lithium-ion battery technologies in general, addressing all kinds of corresponding battery applications, (ii) energy storage for electric mobility and (iii) stationary energy storage specifically. Each domain is represented and specified through a certain technology roadmap covering technological developments, a product roadmap assessing corresponding market trends and product requirements, and an integrated, unified roadmap linking technology push and market pull in a broader integrated view. In order to further specific insights for next generations of batteries in the above-mentioned roadmapping project, modularity for integrated roadmapping helps to systematically link expertise on technologies, products, applications, markets and society in regards to overarching (inter-)national challenges (e.g. the German energy transition). Every roadmap forms an independent module for itself, showing different paths of future development and critical dependencies in each of the three highly dependent but also highly complex domains mentioned. Yet only through the integration of all perspectives in technologies, products, applications, markets and society, the aim of analyzing and documenting changes of innovation systems as a whole can be accomplished. From an academic perspective, a modular design approach in roadmapping contributes to more conceptual clarity, especially when providing roadmaps for a technology-driven innovation system with a core technology in the focus and multiple other competing or complementary technologies around. From a practitioner's point of view, guidance is provided on how to link developments and progression made in basic and applied science, industrial R&D and socio-political trends, for current and emerging technologies and applications. The experience made and insights from various stakeholders involved in this roadmapping project are of interest and relevance for all actors, be they from science, industry or policy, as they may trigger the development of existing and emergence of new industries.

Event-Triggered Dynamic Surface Control of an Underactuated Autonomous Surface Vehicle for Target Enclosing

This article addresses the event-triggered dynamic surface control of an underactuated autonomous surface vehicle with unknown kinetics for circumnavigating a dynamic target with unknown velocity. A modular design approach to the event-triggered dynamic surface control is proposed for target enclosing. In the estimator module, an extended state observer is employed for estimating the relative motion between the target and the surface vehicle. A fuzzy system is used for online modeling the unknown vehicle kinetics. In the controller module, an event-triggered dynamic surface control law is constructed by using the estimated relative velocities and vehicle kinetics in the estimator module. In the control law, a triggered mechanism is introduced to reduce the transmission load and the execution rate of actuators. Besides, the control inputs are bounded with the aid of a projection operator and saturated functions. The input-to-state stability of the closed-loop target enclosing system is proven through Lyapunov analysis. Simulation results substantiate the effectiveness of the event-triggered dynamic surface control method for circumnavigating a maneuvering target.

ObsCovgTools: Assessing observer coverage needed to document and estimate rare event bycatch

Observer program design and evaluation often overlook the challenges of documenting rare-event bycatch. To support and facilitate consideration of threatened, endangered, and protected species bycatch in evaluating observer programs and assessing fisheries impacts, we developed a software tool to assess observer coverage with respect to several objectives for documenting or estimating rare-event bycatch. The ObsCovgTools package for the R programming language, also available as an online application, predicts observer coverage performance for a given total fishery effort in relation to three metrics: (1) the conditional probability of observing any bycatch given that bycatch occurred in the fishery and the probability of any bycatch in the total fishery effort, (2) the upper confidence limit for total bycatch when none is observed, and (3) precision (coefficient of variation) of the bycatch estimate. We describe the tool; explore how specific observer coverage targets for these metrics vary with total effort, BPUE, and dispersion index; and apply it to evaluate observer coverage in the California drift gillnet fishery. Our results underscore the importance of considering effort as well as percentage in assessing how well an observer program documents bycatch. We caution that rare species interactions may not be documented in many observer programs, and should be anticipated through a complementary risk assessment approach. The tool’s modular design and open source programming approach encourage adaptation and augmentation to address additional objectives or complexities in sampling design or estimation.

Design and optimization of distillation column sequencing for NGL fractionation processes

NGL fractionation is one of the most energy-intensive facilities in hydrocarbon processing plants playing an important role in the petrochemical supply chain. Innovative schemes for multicomponent distillation processes made the opportunity to attain more justifiable fractionation processes. The current study presents a systematic procedure to design and optimize both simple and complex distillation schemes based on the separation matrix approach and applies it to a NGL feedstock. A modular design approach is presented for the ultimate rigorous evaluation. The genetic algorithm with a hybrid objective function that minimizes the TAC and checks products specifications simultaneously carries out optimization. The results demonstrate the capability of complex distillation sequences in process improvements, reducing costs and saving energy in NGL fractionation plants resulting in reductions of up to 3.5% in annual operating costs, which is very significant bearing in mind the huge NGL fractionation scale of operation.

Smart Soft Actuators and Grippers Enabled by Self‐Powered Tribo‐Skins

AbstractSoft end effectors or grippers capable of grasping objects dexterously and efficiently have attracted increasing attention in a broad range of applications. This article describes a smart soft finger‐like actuator with fast response, accurate control, self‐powered pressure, and bending sensing capability by combing the cable‐driven actuation with soft triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). The soft actuator, driven by a miniature DC motor, is designed to have multiple segments of elastomer body split with triangular cuts to facilitate the bending actuation and conformal contact with target objects. Two types of TENGs are integrated with the soft actuator: a single‐electrode‐mode TENG to measure the contact pressure and an inner contact–separation‐mode TENG to detect the bending. With micropyramid structures, the tribo‐skin patches possess high sensitivity and good compatibility with the actuator and can actively detect proximity, contact, and pressure via self‐generated electricity. Based on the modular design approach, a gripper with three fingers is fabricated and tested for its grasping, sensing, and self‐powering performance. This gripper is capable of picking up different kinds of objects, providing sensory feedback, and generating electricity, which shows great potential for use in robot–human and robot–environment interaction applications.

An Adaptive and Flexible Brain Energized Full Body Exoskeleton With IoT Edge for Assisting the Paralyzed Patients

The paralyzed population is increasing worldwide due to stroke, spinal code injury, post-polio, and other related diseases. Different assistive technologies are used to improve the physical and mental health of the affected patients. Exoskeletons have emerged as one of the most promising technology to provide movement and rehabilitation for the paralyzed. But exoskeletons are limited by the constraints of weight, flexibility, and adaptability. To resolve these issues, we propose an adaptive and flexible Brain Energized Full Body Exoskeleton (BFBE) for assisting the paralyzed people. This paper describes the design, control, and testing of BFBE with 15 degrees of freedom (DoF) for assisting the users in their daily activities. The flexibility is incorporated into the system by a modular design approach. The brain signals captured by the Electroencephalogram (EEG) sensors are used for controlling the movements of BFBE. The processing happens at the edge, reducing delay in decision making and the system is further integrated with an IoT module that helps to send an alert message to multiple caregivers in case of an emergency. The potential energy harvesting is used in the system to solve the power issues related to the exoskeleton. The stability in the gait cycle is ensured by using adaptive sensory feedback. The system validation is done by using six natural movements on ten different paralyzed persons. The system recognizes human intensions with an accuracy of 85%. The result shows that BFBE can be an efficient method for providing assistance and rehabilitation for paralyzed patients.

The Research of Co-design Approaches Based on Designer Guidance in the Renovation of Old Community in Shanghai- Illustrated in the Case of Zhuyuan Community Center

With the decrease in usable land in recent years, people have begun to pay more attention to the renovation of small and micro space in old community space and discussion on urban space have gradually shifted from spatial to social attributes and social meanings. The demonstration of public participation process has been exactly being of significance on urban updating and adaptive reusing of existing stocks. Simultaneously, it has caused rethink about conventional designer-leading projects and enlightened academics about bottom-up concept for renovation. Nevertheless, the existing approaches of public participation is still facing certain issues such as imperfect participation mechanism, unclear-defined authorities and responsibilities, halfway involvement and so on. Through analyzing the renovation progress of the public space of Zhuyuan community, this article is aimed to argue whether the public might continuously and authentically participate to the holistic processes from preliminary design to construction and final operation based on multi-collaborations. And modular design approaches are experimented in order to integrate the variable resources, optimize the spatial functions and provide the ease of construction and assembly. Eventually, the public participation principles and strategies based on the guidance of designers are posed, which might provide a reference for the follow-up researches.

FPGA-Based Digital Lock-in Amplifier With High-Precision Automatic Frequency Tracking

Aiming to overcome the problem of the frequency error between the reference signal and the measured signal in an analog lock-in amplifier, this paper presented a digital lock-in amplifier (DLIA) with accurate frequency automatic tracking to improve its performance. In this paper, a modular design approach based on DSP Builder was employed to develop a quadrature vector type lock-in amplifier with automatic frequency tracking. A reference signal generator with high-frequency resolution and a digital filter with good performance were implemented. The performance of the design was tested by determining the linearity, the Q value, and the noise immunity of the DLIA. The experimental results showed that the proposed DLIA has good linearity and the Q value can reach up to 82. The relative errors of the signals with amplitudes greater than 10 mV were less than 1% when the equivalent input was a sine wave signal with a frequency of 1 kHz and an amplitude of 500 mV. When the superimposed noise was less than or equal to 400 mV, the relative error was less than 2% in the same condition. The proposed DLIA has higher precision and efficient noise immunity.