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Utilizing the enterprise capital related the knowledge of design processes has become crucial to improve enterprise agility and respond to shifts or changes in markets. The complexity and uncertainty of design raise the challenge of capturing tacit knowledge and the ability to aid in designing design processes. In this paper, ontology is proposed for capturing, representing, and documenting the knowledge related to hierarchical decision workflows in the meta-design of complex engineered systems. The ontology is developed in the context of decision support problem technique (DSPT), considering the requirements being able to guide assistance in designing design workflows, and integrating problem, product, and process information in a design decision-making process. Then, the approach for building procedure of process templates is presented to facilitate the reuse of the populated template instances in future design. Finally, the meta-design of the heat exchanger in a small thermal system is presented as an example to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.

Radial forging is a process in which one or two punches move axially causing a radial flow into a die cavity by means of which a flange is formed. During forging, warping, in which the lower face of thin flange rises from the die face may occur. To better understand the effect of parameters affecting the warping in radial forging a Finite Element analysis was used to simulate the process with isotropic elastic-plastic material model. Parameters such as die corner Radius (r) or shape and ring gap Height (H), on the warping, were investigated and results were compared with experimental work. It has been shown that increasing ring gap height and die corner radius will lead to warping reduction. Also it has been shown that special profile such as chamfered die, tapered ring gap, cosine profile and polynomial function may be used to reduce the warping

This paper is the product of thoughts for exploring the model-based realization of engineered systems. The question addressed is that given a relevant model, what new knowledge, understanding of emergent properties and insights can be gained by exercising the model? From the perspective that the activity of designing is a decision making process, it follows that better decisions will be made when a decision maker is better informed about the available choices and the ramification of these choices. In the context of an example of designing a small thermal plant, a description of an approach to exploring the solution space in the process of designing complex systems and uncovering emergent properties is presented.

Continuous casting is the process of solidifying molten metal to produce different products such as billet, bloom, or slab. This process can be formulated mathematically in terms of conflicting objectives including productivity, yield, quality and production costs to satisfy sets of constraints such as oscillation mark depth, metallurgical length and center line segregation. The objectives are conflicting in the sense that, if the productivity is increased, there is a reduction in other performance measures. These performance specifications are greatly influenced by operating conditions such as casting speed, superheat, mold oscillation frequency, and secondary cooling conditions. The process of identifying the set points for the continuous casting operation is iterative and expensive. The uncertainties inherent in modeling the phenomena computationally behooves exploration of the solution space to determine the quality of the solution and gain insight. In this paper, a method to explore the solution space is introduced. The method includes weight sensitivity and constraint sensitivity analysis. This analysis allows a designer to ascertain to what extent the solution is insensitive to uncertainties inherent in the modeling of the decision problem. This is a crucial step towards determining robust solutions for performance measures. The utility of the method is illustrated in providing decision support for the continuous casting operation in presence of variability in the operating parameters and conflicting end requirements, such as productivity and quality parameters. This method can be instantiated for exploring the solution space for ladle, tundish, rolling and annealing and thereby facilitating the exploration of the solution space for critical unit operations associated with steel product manufacturing. This development has the potential to reduce the number of plant trials necessary to determine the set points for manufacturing a new product mix with a new grade of steel using the existing equipment in a steel mill. The focus in this paper is on the method and not the results per se.