Jamal O. Wilson

Systematic Reverse Engineering of Biological Systems

The duality between biological systems and engineering systems exists in the pursuit of economical and efficient solutions. By adapting biological design principles, nature’s technology can be harnessed. In this paper, we present a systematic method for reverse engineering biological systems to assist the designer in searching for solutions in nature to current engineering problems. Specifically, we present methods for decomposing the physical and functional biological architectures, representing dynamic functions, and abstracting biological design principles to guide conceptual design. We illustrate this method with an example of the design of a variable stiffness skin for a morphable airplane wing based on the mutable connective tissue of the sea cucumber.Copyright

SELECTION FOR RAPID MANUFACTURING UNDER EPISTEMIC UNCERTAINTY

Rapid Prototyping (RP) is the process of building three-dimensional objects, in layers, using additive manufacturing. Rapid Manufacturing (RM) is the use of RP technologies to manufacture end-use, or finished, products. At small lot sizes, such as with customized products, traditional manufacturing technologies become infeasible due to the high costs of tooling and setup. RM offers the opportunity to produce these customized products economically. Coupled with the customization opportunities afforded by RM is a certain degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty is mainly attributed to the lack of information known about what the customer’s specific requirements and preferences are at the time of production. In this paper, we present an overall method for selection of a RM technology under the geometric uncertainty inherent to mass customization. Specifically, we define the types of uncertainty inherent to RM (epistemic), propose a method to account for this uncertainty in a selection process (interval analysis), and propose a method to select a technology under uncertainty (Hurwicz selection criterion). We illustrate our method with an example on the selection of an RM technology to produce custom caster wheels.Copyright

Developing a Bio-Inspired Design Repository Using Ontologies

Efficient identification of relevant biological strategies to use in Conceptual Design is key to harnessing biological technologies in engineering. However, identification of these strategies is not straight forward. There are several approaches developed to aid in identifying these strategies, including searchable databases and functional keyword searches. Although these approaches offer access to these biological solutions, the generic keyword-based retrieval mechanisms utilized by these approaches often suffer from providing either too many and/or irrelevant results. In this paper, we present a design repository for storing and retrieving biological (and engineering) design strategies. The backbone of this repository is an ontology structuring information from the biological and engineering domains. This ontology is encoded using Description Logics, a subset of first-order logic that have been used for information modeling in several application areas, including engineering information management. Subsumption, an inference mechanism afforded in Description Logics, is used to retrieve relevant biological strategies from the repository. In this paper, we demonstrate that subsumption allows precise retrieval of relevant biological strategies from the repository.Copyright

A study of biologically-inspired design as a context for enhancing student innovation

This article describes an investigation of the use of biologically-inspired design as a context from which to teach innovative design. The research compared ideation behavior among mechanical engineering students from a capstone design class to mechanical engineering students who had taken a semester-long course specifically focused on biologicallyinspired design. Both groups of students were presented with the same design challenge, and pre-established metrics were used to characterize the novelty and variety of the resultant designs generated by the students. The designs from the biologically-inspired design students had an average novelty score 80% higher than those from the control group of capstone students, and the result was statistically-significant. The biologically-inspired design students also had a 37% higher average variety score, although a small sample size led to a high variance and prevented statistical significance. The increased scores for novelty and variety imply a greater tendency toward innovative design among the biologically-inspired design students. The source of greater innovation is unclear but may be due to improved analogical reasoning capabilities among the biologically-inspired design students.

Selection of Rapid Manufacturing Technologies Under Epistemic Uncertainty

Rapid Prototyping (RP) is the process of building three-dimensional objects, in layers, using additive manufacturing. Rapid Manufacturing (RM) is the use of RP technologies to manufacture end-use, or finished, products. At small lot sizes, such as with customized products, traditional manufacturing technologies become infeasible due to the high costs of tooling and setup. RM offers the opportunity to produce these customized products economically. Coupled with the customization opportunities afforded by RM is a certain degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty is mainly attributed to the lack of information known about what the customer’s specific requirements and preferences are at the time of production. In this paper, we present an overall method for selection of a RM technology under the geometric uncertainty inherent to mass customization. Specifically, we define the types of uncertainty inherent to RM (epistemic), propose a method to account for this uncertainty in a selection process (interval analysis), and propose a method to select a technology under uncertainty (Hurwicz selection criterion). We illustrate our method with examples on the selection of an RM technology to produce custom caster wheels and custom hearing aid shells.