I-Corps: Bio-Inspired Predictive Engineering Analysis Tool

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是从定制设计制造行业的传统流程现代化中获得好处。传统上，用于分析潜在设计的数学过程本质上是非常线性的，并不能为制造商提供其设计的非线性部分的整体影响的完整图景。有了这里开发的预测工程分析工具，制造设施可以在实际制造和测试物理部件之前预览使用特定工程设计的结果。还可以将设计参数和环境条件插入到工具中，然后使用这些参数更好地预测零件在生产后的行为。这种创新的虚拟工具有可能被添加到已经使用的现有设计和测试工具集上，并让制造商预测部件的成败。该工具的影响将是缩短上市时间，消除目前在设计某些方面使用的猜测，并节省宝贵的物理资源。这个i-Corps项目定义了一个创新的可扩展软件工具，能够在生产之前虚拟地预测工程设计的成功或失败。该技术基于对生物系统协调行为的数学建模。这使该工具能够快速搜索并智能地预测给定设计空间中多目标问题的最佳解决方案集。该项目使用这些创新的生物启发技术来开发算法，这些算法应用于工程设计，以基于用户定义的目标产生一套理想的解决方案。受生物启发的算法已被证明是对当前标准严格数学技术的改进。该项目提供了实现方法的灵活性，该方法能够一次搜索整个问题空间，从而使所有可能的解决方案具有更好的可见性。由于隔离中没有特定的参数影响算法的结果，因此用户有机会改变输入参数并重新运行优化。此外，这个i-Corps项目试图探索和定义各种行业的输入参数，并帮助最终用户为他们的产品提出更好的设计。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to obtain the benefits available from modernizing legacy processes in the made-to-order design manufacturing industry. Traditionally the mathematical processes used to analyze potential designs are very linear in nature, and do not offer the manufacturer a complete picture of the overall impacts of the non-linear parts of their designs. With the predictive engineering analysis tool developed here, a manufacturing facility can preview the results available from using a particular engineering design prior to the actual manufacturing and testing of the physical parts. Design parameters and environmental conditions can also be inserted into the tool which are then used to better predict the behavior of the part after it is produced. This innovative virtual tool has the potential to be added to the set of existing design and testing tools already being used and let manufacturers predict the success or failure of a part. The impact of this tool would be decreased time to market, eliminating the guesswork now used in certain aspects of a design and saving valuable physical resources.This I-Corps project defines an innovative scalable software tool that is capable of virtually predicting the success or failure of an engineering design prior to production. The technique is based on the mathematical modeling of the coordinated behaviors of biological system. This allows the tool to quickly search and intelligently predict the best solution sets to a multi-objective problem in a given design space. This project employs these innovative bio-inspired techniques to develop algorithms which are applied to engineering designs to produce an ideal set of solutions based on user defined objectives. Bio-inspired algorithms have been shown to improve upon current standard rigid mathematical techniques. This project provides the flexibility to implement an approach that is able to search the entire problem space at once therefore giving better visibility to all of the possible solutions. Since no particular parameter in isolation impacts the outcome of the algorithm, the user is presented with the opportunity to shift the input parameters and rerun the optimization. Further this I-Corps project attempts to explore and define the input parameters for a variety of industries, and assist the end user in coming up with better designs for their products.