Using Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis in Biologically Inspired Design as a Multidisciplinary Tool to Assess Biology-to-Engineering Transfer Risk for Candidate Analogs

2014 ◽  
Vol 136 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Lindsey Williams ◽  
Atila Ertas ◽  
Derrick Tate

Inherent in biologically inspired design (BID) is the selection of one or more analogs from which one or more strategies are extracted and transferred into the engineering domain. The selection of an analog is a fundamental step in biomimetic process, but locating relevant biological analogies can be challenging. Often, designers may fixate on an analogy or choose an established analogy without rigorous examination of alternatives. This practice is problematic—as basing a new design on an invalid assumption can lead to suboptimal results. This paper makes contribution to evaluation of analogy utility. The contribution is made by combining stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) with a set of criteria, derived from BID, to assist multidisciplinary decision makers (DMs) in evaluating candidate design analogs. The resulting framework, which we call the biotransferability framework, is being developed to assist multidisciplinary teams to choose, rank, or sort candidate design analogs by assessing biology-to-engineering transfer risk.

Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Francesco Rosa ◽  
Gaetano Cascini ◽  
Runhua Tan

Function-Based (FB) representations of complex systems play an important role in Biologically Inspired Design (BID) by easing the knowledge interchange among biologists, engineers and designers. Many representations have been proposed by scholars over the years, but none of them has ever become a clear favorite. As a matter of fact, each model represents the system from a distinctive perspective. This paper explores the effects of these different representations as creative stimuli for students in order to obtain recommendations for fostering innovation in education and training practices. After introducing a selection of FB models for BID, the paper describes an experiment designed to allow a quantitative comparison of the outcomes of a BID design challenge among undergraduate students attending a course on methods and tools for conceptual design. An analysis of the results of the experiment is followed by the authors’ reflection on directions for educational development.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1and2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajeev Dhingra ◽  
Preetvanti Singh

Decision problems are usually complex and involve evaluation of several conflicting criteria (parameters). Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a promising field that considers the parallel influence of all criteria and aims at helping decision makers in expressing their preferences, over a set of predefined alternatives, on the basis of criteria (parameters) that are contradictory in nature. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a useful and widespread MCDM tool for solving such type of problems, as it allows the incorporation of conflicting objectives and decision makers preferences in the decision making. The AHP utilizes the concept of pair wise comparison to find the order of criteria (parameters) and alternatives. The comparison in a pairwise manner becomes quite tedious and complex for problems having eight alternatives or more, thereby, limiting the application of AHP. This paper presents a soft hierarchical process approach based on soft set decision making which eliminates the least promising candidate alternatives and selects the optimum(potential) ones that results in the significant reduction in the number of pairwise comparisons necessary for the selection of the best alternative using AHP, giving the approach a more realistic view. A supplier selection problem is used to illustrate the proposed approach.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Agboola-Dobson ◽  
Guowu Wei ◽  
Lei Ren

Recent advancements in powered lower limb prostheses have appeased several difficulties faced by lower limb amputees by using a series-elastic actuator (SEA) to provide powered sagittal plane flexion. Unfortunately, these devices are currently unable to provide both powered sagittal plane flexion and two degrees of freedom (2-DOF) at the ankle, removing the ankle’s capacity to invert/evert, thus severely limiting terrain adaption capabilities and user comfort. The developed 2-DOF ankle system in this paper allows both powered flexion in the sagittal plane and passive rotation in the frontal plane; an SEA emulates the biomechanics of the gastrocnemius and Achilles tendon for flexion while a novel universal-joint system provides the 2-DOF. Several studies were undertaken to thoroughly characterize the capabilities of the device. Under both level- and sloped-ground conditions, ankle torque and kinematic data were obtained by using force-plates and a motion capture system. The device was found to be fully capable of providing powered sagittal plane motion and torque very close to that of a biological ankle while simultaneously being able to adapt to sloped terrain by undergoing frontal plane motion, thus providing 2-DOF at the ankle. These findings demonstrate that the device presented in this paper poses radical improvements to powered prosthetic ankle-foot device (PAFD) design.


Author(s):  
Camila Freitas Salgueiredo ◽  
Armand Hatchuel

AbstractIs biologically inspired design only an analogical transfer from biology to engineering? Actually, nature does not always bring “hands-on” solutions that can be analogically applied in classic engineering. Then, what are the different operations that are involved in the bioinspiration process and what are the conditions allowing this process to produce a bioinspired design? In this paper, we model the whole design process in which bioinspiration is only one element. To build this model, we use a general design theory, concept–knowledge theory, because it allows one to capture analogy as well as all other knowledge changes that lead to the design of a bioinspired solution. We ground this model on well-described examples of biologically inspired designs available in the scientific literature. These examples include Flectofin®, a hingeless flapping mechanism conceived for façade shading, and WhalePower technology, the introduction of bumps on the leading edge of airfoils to improve aerodynamic properties. Our modeling disentangles the analogical aspects of the biologically inspired design process, and highlights the expansions occurring in both knowledge bases, scientific (nonbiological) and biological, as well as the impact of these expansions in the generation of new concepts (concept partitioning). This model also shows that bioinspired design requires a special form of collaboration between engineers and biologists. Contrasting with the classic one-way transfer between biology and engineering that is assumed in the literature, the concept–knowledge framework shows that these collaborations must be “mutually inspirational” because both biological and engineering knowledge expansions are needed to reach a novel solution.


Author(s):  
Swaroop S. Vattam ◽  
Michael Helms ◽  
Ashok K. Goel

Biologically inspired engineering design is an approach to design that espouses the adaptation of functions and mechanisms in biological sciences to solve engineering design problems. We have conducted an in situ study of designers engaged in biologically inspired design. Based on this study we develop here a macrocognitive information-processing model of biologically inspired design. We also compare and contrast the model with other information-processing models of analogical design such as TRIZ, case-based design, and design patterns.


The selection of hospital sites is one of the most important choice a decision maker has to take so as to resist the pandemic. The decision may considerably affect the outbreak transmission in terms of efficiency , budget, etc. The main targeted objective of this study is to find the ideal location where to set up a hospital in the willaya of Oran Alg. For this reason, we have used a geographic information system coupled to the multi-criteria analysis method AHP in order to evaluate diverse criteria of physiological positioning , environmental and economical. Another objective of this study is to evaluate the advanced techniques of the automatic learning . the method of the random forest (RF) for the patterning of the hospital site selection in the willaya of Oran. The result of our study may be useful to decision makers to know the suitability of the sites as it provides a high level of confidence and consequently accelerate the power to control the COVID19 pandemic.


1997 ◽  
Vol 479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohan Srinivasarao ◽  
Luis Padilla

Brilliant, iridescent colors found on the bodies and wings of many birds, butterflies and moths are produced by structural variations and have been the subject of study for centuries. Such brilliant colors have been described as metallic colors due to the saturation or purity of the color produced and have attracted the attention of great scientists like Newton, Michelson and Lord Rayleigh. It was recognized early on that such colors arise from physical effects such as interference or diffraction as opposed to colors that are normally produced due to the presence of chromophores which absorb or emit light. Common examples of physical colors are some butterfly wings [1], color of Indigo snake skin [2], hummingbird feathers [3,4], arthropod cuticles [which are due to selective reflection of color from the solidified cholesteric phase of chitin crystallites] [5], gemstones like opal [6,7], and some crystals like potassium chlorate [8]. While the origins of such colors are well understood the properties of color and color specification have not received much attention.


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