A Model-based Method for System Reconfiguration

System Reconfiguration is essential in complex systems management, as it is an enabler of system adaptability with regard to system evolutions. System evolutions have to be managed to ensure system effectiveness and efficiency through its whole life cycle, particularly when it comes to complex systems that take years of development and dozens of years of usage. In this context, system reconfiguration ensures system operation and maintains system “ilities” (e.g., reliability, availability, maintainability, testability, and safety). This research has been conducted in the context of a large international aerospace, space, ground transportation, defense, and security company. This research aims at supporting system reconfiguration during operations. Within current industrial practices, the development of reconfiguration support is challenging as it requires integrating data related to observations (from operations) and system design (from engineering). More specifically, there is a need to integrate and link relevant reconfiguration data concerning the system objectives, operational context, and level of functioning. This paper proposes integrating and linking this fundamental data within a reconfiguration method. MBSysRec is a multidisciplinary method that involves configuration generation and a multi-criteria decision-making method for configuration evaluation and selection to support system reconfiguration during operations. The method has been implemented on two projects based on historical data. Resulting configurations have been discussed and assessed by system reconfiguration experts. A SAR case study is used to demonstrate the method. The method is proven effective for finding relevant system configurations for reconfiguring the already deployed system to achieve search and rescue missions.

Evolving CERN’s Network Configuration Management System

CERN’s networks comprise several thousands network devices from multiple vendors and from different generations, fulfilling various purposes (campus network, data centre network, and dedicated networks for the LHC accelerator and experiments control). To ensure the reliability of the networks, the IT Communication Systems group has developed an in-house, Perl-based software called “cfmgr”, capable of deriving and enforcing the appropriate configuration on all these network devices, based on information from a central network database. Due to the decrease in popularity of the technologies it relies upon, maintaining and expanding the current network configuration management system has become increasingly challenging. Hence, we have evaluated the functionality of various open-source network configuration tools, in view of leveraging them for evolving the cfmgr platform. We will present the result of this evaluation, as well as the plan for evolving CERN’s network configuration management system by decoupling the configuration generation (CERN specific) from the configuration enforcement (generic problem, partially addressed by vendor or community Python based libraries).

Configuration Optimization Design of Ti6Al4V Lattice Structure Formed by SLM

Previous studies have revealed the influence of various lattice structures on the material density and mechanical properties. However, the majority of the topologies that are considered as study objects directly refer to metal/non-crystal lattice cell configurations. Therefore, this paper proposes a configuration generation approach for generating a lattice structure, which can obtain a lattice configuration that enjoys the advantages of both ultra-low weight and favorable mechanical properties. Based on this approach, a new type of face-centered cubic lattice (all face-centered cubic, AFCC) structure with comprehensively optimal properties in terms of mass and mechanical properties is obtained. The experimental samples are formed with Ti6Al4V by the selective laser melting (SLM) method. Quasi-static uniaxial compression performance experiments and finite element analysis (FEA) are conducted on an AFCC structure and the control group body-centered cubic (BCC) structure. The results demonstrates that our optimized AFCC lattice structure is superior to the BCC structure, with elastic modulus and yield limit increases of 143% and 120%, respectively. For the same degree of deformation, the energy absorbed increases approximately 2.4 times. The AFCC demonstrates significant advantages in terms of its mechanical properties and anti-explosion impact resistance while maintaining favorable ultra-low weight, which validates the hypothesis that the proposed configuration generation approach can provide guidance for the design and further research on ultra-light lattice structures in related fields.