Multidisciplinary Engineered Dynamic Systems

• Co-Investigator: Charles Van Karsen
• Co-Investigator: James DeClerck
• College/School: College of Engineering
• Department(s): Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Awarded Amount: $204,000
• Sponsor: Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC

Overview:

The goal of this program is to gain insight into tunable resonant plate testing procedures. The project will use a combination of modeling and testing to attempt to develop insight which reduces test time and expands the range of possible testing. The following is a breakdown of the tasks:

Statement of Work:

Research will explore how to model the resonant plate and fixture dynamics. Analytical and experimental studies will be performed to understand the critical parameters in more accurately controlling and understanding the design of the resonant plate and fixture to extend its range of testing.

• FEA models of the resonant plate and fixture will be created.
• FEA models will be used to understand how each parameter of the test system effects the shock response spectrum.
• Identify potential limits for the shock response spectrums which can be reproduced within the framework of the resonant plate test system.
• Propose design approaches and tailoring strategies which will enable the resonant plate test system to deliver a specified shock response spectrum (within the capability limits of the resonant plate test system framework).
• Mechanisms to add damping to the resonant plate will be explored both analytically and experimentally as a potential tailoring strategy.

Deliverable(s):

All FEA models and test data will be provided. A report will be written which summarizes the analytical and experimental modeling and testing as well as any damping mechanisms/devices which were evaluated and their effectiveness.

• Co-Investigator: Rush Robinett III
• College/School: College of Engineering
• Department(s): Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Awarded Amount: $405,139
• Sponsor: South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (NSF Pass Through)

Overview:

MTU will analyze and simulate the power capture from arrays of wave energy converters (WECs) with and without the presence of an object. Nonlinear WECs will be analyzed and exploited for more energy capture. For object detection, MTU will develop an estimator. In addition to having a model that detects the presence of an object, the estimator will use that model and account for uncertainties that we have in the model and also measurement errors; in any case we need to know statistical characteristics about these uncertainties and errors. MTU will participate in the WEC array overall design, analysis, modeling and simulations; control design for Design 2, nonlinear modeling and control, and topology optimization.

• College/School: College of Engineering
• Department(s): Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Awarded Amount: $139,231
• Sponsor: Office of Naval Research

This research is focused on development of innovative practical solutions for control of individual and multiple unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and address challenges such as underwater communication and localization that currently limit UUV use. More specifically, the Nonlinear and Autonomous Systems Laboratory (NAS Lab) team are developing a rigorous framework for analyzing and controlling underwater gliders (UGs) in harsh dynamic environments for the purpose of advancing efficient, collaborative behavior of UUVs.

Underwater gliders are now utilized for much more than long-term, basin-scale oceanographic sampling. In addition to environmental monitoring, UGs are increasingly depended on for littoral surveillance and other military applications. This research will facilitate the transition between academic modeling/simulation problem solving approach to real-world Navy applications. The importance of this research is evident in the Littoral BattleSpace Sensing (LBS) Program contract at the Naval Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command for 150 underwater gliders, designated the LBS-G. These gliders will be operated by the Navy in forward areas to rapidly assess and exploit environmental characteristics to improve the maneuvering of ships and submarines and advance the performance of fleet sensors.

Research results will provide the coordination tools necessary to enable the integration of these efficient and quiet vehicles as part of a heterogeneous network of autonomous vehicles capable of performing complex, tactical missions. The objective is to develop practical, energy-efficient motion control strategies for both individual and multiple UGs while performing in inhospitable, uncertain, and dynamic underwater environments.

The specific goals of this project are twofold. The first goal is to design and fabricate a fleet of low-cost highly maneuverable lightweight underwater gliders. The second goal is to evaluate the capability of the single and multiple developed UGs in littoral zones. The proposed work will develop UGs that would share the buoyancy-driven concept with the first generation of gliders called "legacy gliders." However, the NAS Lab UGs will be smaller in size, lighter in weight, and lower in price than legacy gliders. This will result in more affordable and novel UG applications. Moreover, the NAS Lab design to development approach allows for technological innovation that overcomes known challenges and responds to unexpected needs that arise during testing. Therefore, the significance of this research is that it will enable implementation of recently developed efficient motion planning algorithms, multi-vehicle coordination algorithms, and extension of these algorithms in realistic conditions where absolute location and orientation of each vehicle is not known and the time-varying flow field is not locally determined.

• College/School: College of Engineering
• Department(s): Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Awarded Amount: $268,953
• Sponsor: Craft Engineering Associates

Introduction:

There is a wide range of hydraulic extending-boom and knuckle-boom cranes in use on marine vessels. These cranes are often used in dynamic motion environments for cargo transfer and small boat handling. The ability to safely launch and recover small boats in elevated sea states for naval, Coast Guard and oceanographic purposes is currently a focus of investigation within these communities.

The purpose of this investigation is to extend the research begun under SBIR topic N06-

057, "Cargo Transfer from Offshore Supply Vessels to Large Deck Vessels" to improve the performance of hydraulic marine cranes in the dynamic offshore environment. In addition, the lessons learned during the development of the Integrated Rider Block Tagline System (IRBTS), the Platform Motion Compensation System (PMC) and the Pendulation Control System (PCS) for the rigid-boom, level-luffing marine cranes used for container handling on sealift ships will be incorporated into a final integrated, modular kit to improve cargo transfer with these extending-boom and knuckle-boom cranes.

Phase II Technical Objectives:

The goal of Phase II is to develop and demonstrate a modular solution for crane pendulation and motion control suitable for a wide range of existing U.S. Navy ship cranes. Phase I clearly showed that pendulation control can be modularized by implementing ship motion cancellation using the crane's existing drive system and active load damping using a retrofit damping device. In that work, a specific crane design was considered and the study was strictly proof-of-concept through simulation.

Phase II focuses on identifying the range of cranes for which the modular approach is feasible, developing the analysis and design work flow needed to design and deploy the modular solution, and demonstrating both the process and the performance on a particular crane. The incremental technical objectives of Phase II are listed below.

1. The analysis and design process for implementing modular pendulation and motion control on any crane,
2. The development of a modular crane control system (MCCS) "kit" including refinement of the key subsystems (sensors, actuation, algorithms),
3. A phased demonstration of MCCS using 1/12^th and larger scale testbeds.

At the conclusion of Phase II, the objective is to have a fully functioning MCCS system demonstrating ship motion cancellation, active payload damping on an articulated crane similar to those currently deployed on numerous U.S. Navy and civilian ships. The Phase II Option will focus this development on a design that can be implemented on the hydraulic extending-boom crane, currently proposed for use on the JHSV.

• College/School: College of Engineering
• Department(s): Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Awarded Amount: $269,735
• Sponsor: National Science Foundation

Overview:

Design optimization of cyber-physical systems (CPS) includes optimizing the system architecture (topology) in addition to the system variables. Optimizing the system architecture renders the dimension of the design space variable (the number of design variables to be optimized is a variable.) This class of Variable-Size Design Space (VSDS) optimization problems arises in many CPS applications including (1) microgrid design, (2) automated construction, (2) optimal grouping, and (3) space mission design optimization.

Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) present a paradigm for statistical inference that implements a simplified computational model of the mechanisms embedded in natural evolution, with potential to solve this problem. However, existing EAs cannot optimize among solutions of different architectures because of the inherent strategy for coding the variables in EAs. Existing EAs resembles natural evolution in which a given architecture can evolve by improving the state of its variables but cannot be revolutionized. Inspired by the concept of hidden genes in biology, this project investigates revolutionary optimization algorithms that can optimize among different solution architectures and autonomously develop new architectures that might not be known a priori, yet are more fit solution architectures. Efficacy of the new algorithms for CPS is evaluated in the context of space mission design optimization.

Intellectual Merit:

There is an increasing demand in the scientific community for autonomous design optimization tools that can revolutionize systems designs and capabilities. Most existing optimization algorithms can only search for optimal solutions in a fixed-size design space; and hence they cannot be used for solution architecture optimization. Few existing algorithms can search for optimal solutions in VSDS problems; however these are problem-specific algorithms and cannot be used as a general framework for VSDS optimization. This project investigates the novel concept of hidden genes in coding the variables in evolutionary algorithms so that the resulting algorithms can be used for optimizing VSDS problems. The key innovation in these new algorithms is the new coding strategies. In addition, in this project, the standard operations in EAs will be replaced by new operations that are defined to enable revolutionizing a current population of solution architectures using the new coding strategy. The Pl's recent research results, in the context of space mission design optimization, demonstrate that the hidden genes optimization algorithms can search for optimal solutions among different solution architectures, revolutionize an initial population of solutions, and construct new solution architectures that are more fit than the initial population solutions.