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Abstract:
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Mechatronics is a natural stage in the evolution of modern products. As part of concurrent engineering practice, mechatronics is a synergistic system design philosophy to optimize the system as a whole simultaneously. Yet there is still lack of support of this design principle in practice. In this work, an extended multi-port bond graph representation is developed to unify power and signal flows at a high-level abstraction across engineering domains. The unified representation of both physical systems and their control systems in bond graphs is achieved by applying "controller design in the physical domain" philosophy, to design and synthesize the whole system simultaneously. This approach makes full use of computational power to automatically explore the design space for both design configuration and parameterization utilizing biology-inspired optimization techniques: genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and coevolution. Bond graph elements are encoded as genetic programming functional and terminal primitives, to evolve low-level building blocks to high-level functionality. It aids design exploration of a wider range of possible creative design options and achieves synergy in coevolving different subsystems, including both active control strategies and physical system design configurations, for overall system optimality. Two mechatronic design case studies are provided: a quarter-car suspension system and MEMS.
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