Journal of Materials Processing Technology 76 (1998) 23 28

Intelligent hybrid system for integration in design and manufacture

Daizhong Su *, Mark Wakelam
Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, The Nottingham Trent Uni6ersity, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, UK Received 23 May 1997; received in revised form 11 June 1997

Abstract An intelligent hybrid system (IHS) approach has been developed to integrate various stages in the process of design and manufacture, including product design specication, conceptual design, detail design, process planning, costing and CNC manufacture. The IHS approach blends a rule-based system (RBS), articial neural networks (ANNs), genetic algorithm (GA), hypermedia (HM) and CAD/CAE/CAM packages into a single environment. The design and manufacture expertise is captured by the RBS and ANNs, while the other tasks, such as numerical analysis, design optimisation, engineering drawing and data processing, are performed using GA, HM and CAD/CAE/CAM. The RBS works as a co-ordinator, controlling the whole process. As an application of the approach, an IHS for mechanical power transmission systems has been developed. 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Articial intelligence; Hybrid system; CAD/CAE/CAM; Mechanical transmission; Design; Manufacture

1. Introduction Due to various stages and complex activities involved, the process of product design and manufacture is tedious and time-consuming. In order to reduce production costs and time-to-market, it is highly desirable to integrate the whole process using advanced computing techniques. In this research, an intelligent hybrid system (IHS) approach has been developed to integrate various activities involved in design and manufacture. This is achieved by blending a rule-based system (RBS), articial neural networks (ANNs), genetic algorithms (GA), hypermedia (HM) and CAD/ CAE/CAM packages into a single environment. Both integration in design and manufacture and application of articial intelligence (AI) in engineering have attracted researchers attentions, for example [1 3], however, integration of multiple AI techniques, as mentioned above, into the whole process of design and manufacture has not been found in the literature.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: + 44 115 9418418; fax: + 44 115 9486506; e-mail: mec3sud@ntu.ac.uk 0924-0136/98/$19.00 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. PII S 0 9 2 4 - 0 1 3 6 ( 9 7 ) 0 0 3 1 0 - 5

Hence, the IHS is a novel research. Each individual type of AI system has advantages and disadvantages. The IHS combines the power of each technique, avoids their weak aspects, and thus, provides a more powerful tool for AI based integration. Nowadays, many CAD/CAM/CAE packages are applied in industries, however, in most cases, they are stand-alone types. As one of the important features of this approach, it provides a means to integrate such existing packages into a single environment. This is obviously cost effective for industrial users, particularly for medium and small size companies. In the following sections, the approach is briey described rst, to give an overview of the main structure, relationships of the software techniques involved, design and manufacturing activities considered, and the integrated process. Then, the important features of the IHS are presented in more detail, including the RBS, ANNs, GA, HM, and CAD/CAE/CAM integration. The approach has been applied into the design and manufacture of mechanical power transmission systems. The key features are presented in conjunction with the application.

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Fig. 1. Software integration.

2. Overview of the approach The software techniques and packages/programmes involved in the IHS and their relationship are shown in Fig. 1. Integration of the various elements into a single environment is achieved via the control, which is a RBS. The design and manufacture expertise is captured by the RBS and ANNs, while the other tasks within the design and manufacturing process, such as numerical analysis, engineering drawing and data processing, are performed using relevant CAD/CAE/CAM software packages. GA and HM are used to conduct design optimisation and to provide effective means for user interfaces and data transfer. The RBS communicates with the others and works as a co-ordinator, controlling the whole process. Using the IHS, the following activities are integrated throughout the whole process of design and manufacture: conceptual design:formulation of product design specication, concept generation and evaluation detail design: analysis, sub-assembly/component design and assembly, engineering drawings, design retrieval manufacture: process planning, costing and CNC manufacture. The integrated process is shown in Fig. 2, which indicates how the whole process is controlled by the RBS and how relevant software techniques/packages are involved at each stage. As an example to illustrate the approach, an IHS for the design and manufacture of mechanical power transmission systems has been developed to perform the following tasks: (a) Formulation of product design specication (PDS). 12 PDS items, such as orientation of input/output shafts, manufacture cost, etc. are considered. It is possible to extend the system to aid more PDS items.

(b) Conceptual design. The concepts to be constructed by the prototype IIS fall into the following range: stages of the transmission: one, two or three orientation of input/output shafts: parallel, cross and perpendicular components at each stage of the transmission: seven types of components including gears, belts and chains (c) Detail design. The IIS can conduct the detail design of gearboxes, belt drives or a combination of both, including the following: gear strength analysis, bearing selection, shaft design, case design, belt and pulley selection, design optimisation, component and assembly drawings and parametric design of components.

Fig. 2. The integrated process.

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(d) Manufacture. The IIS can perform the following tasks: cost analysis, process planning for the manufacture of major components and CNC programming for manufacture of shafts.

3. System control
Fig. 4. Fully connected networks.

As shown in Fig. 2, within the integrated process, the PDS are formulated rst, then the IHS creates all possible concepts to meet the specications and selects the best concept for detail design. At the detail design stage, two types of sub-systems are considered, belt drives and gearboxes, from which a power transmission system is built; and the design of components such as gears, shafts and bearings are also carried out. After completion of the detail design, the IHS moves to the manufacture stage where CNC, planning and costing are to be conducted. The IHS can also carry out any redesign task whenever it is necessary. The process is controlled by a system controller (SC) and sub-controllers (SubC). The SC controls the overall process by communication with the SubCs, while a SubC controls the activities within a particular stage. The SC and SubCs are RBS comprising two types of rules: control rules and information rules. The control rules hold the knowledge relating to the designs progress. These rules structure the design process and control its development, forming the inference engine and activating the appropriate information rules depending on the circumstances applied and the design stage. For example: IF facewidth ratio is not dened by user THEN acti6ate facewidth information rules The control rules also control the activation of other modules within the design systems. For example: IF THEN gear is through hardened acti6ate ANN module 1

The information rules contain information in the form of numerical values and design features or activate an equation that encapsulates the design information. For example: IF the gear is double helical and its heat treatment is nitrided and its mounting is symmetric THEN maximum facewidth ratio is 1.4 IF heat treatment is case carburised 11 THEN maximum number of teeth= gearratio 9 37.33



4. Articial neural networks (ANNs) within the IHS ANNs are applied at two stages within the integrated process: (1) at the conceptual design stage, four ANNs are developed for creation of concepts, and (2) at the detail design stage, four ANNs are used to obtain design factors in the process of initial gear sizing. All the ANNs are of feed-forward multi-layer perceptrons trained with the back-propagation technique, i.e. commonly known as back-propagation networks. This type of network has been selected for two main reasons: xed structure enabling a standard structure to be established within the design system for easy modication and update of knowledge. success in pattern recognition for similar applications, increasing the probability of success for their application within the project.

4.1. ANNs for conceptual design

An example of the concepts for the mechanical transmission system is shown in Fig. 3, indicating that a concept is formed by assembling a component(s) into the position(s) of an arrangement. Four networks are used for the task of concept generation: three for component selection and one for the arrangement.

Fig. 3. Concept construction.

4.1.1. Component networks Three networks are required to incorporate the hierarchy [4]. Each network is trained with variations of the

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Fig. 5. Combination of genes to form a chromosome.

same data with either none, one or two of the outputs permanently set to zero. Setting the elements to zero effectively removes the element from the network while maintaining a standard network structure.

4.1.2. Arrangement network The arrangement network incorporates the PDS, orientation and number of stages in its decision making process. The number of stages that are required is rstly dened by a series of production rules. However, a degree of ambiguity is introduced when the parameters of the production rule conditions overlap giving more than one resultant solution. The structure of the networks is such that the design specication form the ANNs input while the concepts represent the output. Fig. 4 illustrates this relationship. Training data has been prepared for the networks using an Excel programme which performs the suitability calculations, then scales the results between 0 and 1. The results are matched against the PDS, forming the training data similar to the form below which represent four inputs to the network and three outputs from the network.

which makes it difcult to include them into a computer integrated programme. However, the application of ANNs solved this problem. In this circumstance, four ANNs have been trained using the data obtained directly from the graphs, which provides a desirable solution to encode the design process into the system. For further details, see [5,6].

5. Application of genetic algorithms (GA) in the IHS There have been several optimisation search techniques available such as hill climbing and Neutron Raphson methods, however, due to the magnitude of the search area of a continuous search involved, they are too time consuming. An adaptive search technique appears to provide a suitable solution, as it is capable of covering the search space without analysing every point. Two GA programmes are implemented within the IHS: one for the optimisation of ANN architecture, the other for searching the best combination of gear design parameters. Due to the restriction on the length of the paper, only the former is described in this section, while the latter can be found in [7]. Training of a back-propagation network has proved to be a difcult process, due to the lack of effective rules and guides. To overcome this problem, a GA has been developed. Based upon the performance (tness) of the network, the GA is used to optimise the topology, transfer function and training period, which are the major factors affecting network performance. Optimisation of these factors is performed simultaneously, considering their combined effects upon performance and convergence. This obviously makes the optimisation more effective. The information relating to the factors that affect the performance of a network during training are encoded into the genes in binary form within chromosomes. Fig. 5 shows an example, which corresponds to a sigmoid transfer function, 19 elements in the rst hidden layer and 9 in the second and a training factor of 5. The optimisation process is shown in Fig. 6. Upon initiation, the values contained within the genes are randomly set from values within the search space. The networks corresponding to the information contained within all the chromosomes of the population are determined and sorted into order of descending tness.

For detailed information regarding the training method, see [4].

4.2. ANNs for initial gear sizing

In the detail design of gears, information about the required design, such as power, input speed, gear ratio and centre distance, is specied rst. Once the gear specications have been obtained, the IHS goes through the process of gear sizing to determine the geometric parameters including module, number of teeth, diameters, helical angle, etc. Then the IHS runs a programme for the gear rating of contact and bending strength. Within the gear sizing process, the values of safety factors, pitch accuracy, lead accuracy and load factor KHi have to be determined. Those values are initially provided by design graphs, which are for use in the manual design process, and normally, the original data that the graph was constructed from are unobtainable,

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Fig. 6. Basic optimisation process.

The tness value of the chromosome is determined by the test results from the test cases when applied to the trained network. The lower the average error between the desired and network outputs, the tter the chromosomes. As the proportion of the roulette wheel each chromosome occupies is allocated dependant upon its tness, the tness value is taken as the reciprocal of the error. Therefore, it is ensured for the tter chromosomes to get the larger proportion of the wheel and the greater probability of reproduction. Chromosomes are reproduced to form the majority of the next generation. The reproduction accounts for : 98% of the next generation. The remainders are random chromosomes, unaffected, that pass through to the next generation. Once the next generation is established, there is a probability of 2% of introducing an element of mutation into the population, helping to prevent a localised minimum being obtained. The probability of mutation is set low to allow eventual convergence upon an optimum. The next generation is now complete and ready for the new levels of tness to be determined. After the nal generation, the network represented by the ttest chromosome will become the nal network ready for application and all the connective weights recorded. As an example, Fig. 7 shows results of the optimisation using a GA to train the ANN of load factor KHi. The results indicate that as the number of generations proceeds, the performance of the networks increases. The average error between the target and actual outputs from the network decreases to a nal value of 0.01753, while the average number of elements producing an output below 2% of the target increases to 11.333. These values indicate that the GA is converging

upon an optimum and the general performance is encouraging.

6. Hypermedia (HM) and CAE/CAD/CAM HM has two types of applications within the IHS: the graphic user interface (GUI) and front ends for CAE packages. The GUI is used for the user to input the design parameters and to specify PDS, which is developed using Visual BASIC. The GUI is also used as a platform to exchange data between the system control and other elements of the IHS. The front end is developed using a HM tool, Linkway, that provides facilities for the user to input data requested by the package and to explain the terminology used in the design, for further details, see [8]. CAE packages employed in the IHS include GearRating and FennerBelt. The former is a gear strength analysis package based on BS 436 part 3, for further details, see [8]; and the latter is a belt drive design package which is used to select wedge belts and pulleys, for further details, see [9]. The completion of CAD drawings and linking CAD to CNC manufacture are conducted in either of the following ways: Completion within ProEngineer, which is an advanced CAD/CAM package. The drawings are produced in a parametric design manner, and the manufacture process planning and CNC manufacture are performed using the manufacture module built within the package. Connection between ProEngineer and the SC is achieved with the use of the customisation toolkit within ProEngineer, called ProDevelop. For further details, see [7].

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Fig. 7. GA training results for graph KHi.

Completion 6ia AutoCAD/Pascal/EMCO-F1. The CAD drawings are produced using AutoCAD with a parametric design manner. The parametric design is achieved using AutoLisp programmes. The completed drawings are saved as DXF les, and then the SubC invokes a Pascal programme to analyse the DXF les. Based on the analysis, the Pascal programme produces a CNC programme for the CNC machine EMCO-F1 to manufacture the components. For further details, see [10].

Wright, K. Chain and C.M. Liang. Thanks also go to Fenner Transmission Ltd. for providing their software for this research.

References
[1] D. Su, R.J. Forgie, Development of an expert system approach to an engineering design procedure, in: Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng.: Engineering Design, (ICED89), vol.2, Mechanical Engineering Publications, 1989, Bury St. Edmonds, UK, pp 975 989. [2] J.E.E. Sharpe, Computer tools for integrated conceptual design, in: Design Studies, vol 16, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1995, pp 471 488. [3] A. Scherer, Reuse of CAD Design by a neural-network approach, Eng. Appl. of Articial Intelligence 9 (4) (1996) 413 421. [4] D. Su, K. Henthorn, K. Jumbunathan, M. Wakelam, A rulebased and articial neural network system for conceptual design, Int. J. INGENIUM 96 (1), Scottish Maintenance Centre, UK, 1996, pp 1 8. [5] D. Su, M. Wakelam, Intelligent integrated system for the design of power transmission systems, Proc. Int. Conf. Mechanical Transmissions and Mechanisms, 1 4 July, Tianjin, China, 1997, pp. 1010 1014. [6] K. Jumbunathan, M. Wakelam, K. Henthorn, D. Su, Integration of multimedia, articial neural networks and rule based systems for gear design, Proc. Int. Conf. Theory and Practice of Gearing, 4 6 December, Izhevsk, Russia, 1996, pp. 453 468. [7] M. Wakelam, Intelligent integrated system approach for total design, report for transfer to the Degree of PhD, Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Nottingham Trent University, 1997. [8] D. Su, Integrating hypermedia technique into gear strength analysis, Proc. Int. Conf. Hypermedia in Shefeld 1995, 35 July, Shefeld, 1995, pp 473 480. [9] T. Wright, Integrating multimedia into the selection of wedge belt drives and worm geared motors, Project thesis, Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Nottingham Trent University, 1995. [10] C.M. Liang, Computer aided design and manufacture of shafts, Project thesis, Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Nottingham Trent University, 1996.

7. Concluding remarks

A novel AI based hybrid system approach has been developed to integrate various activities involved in the process of design and manufacture, including product design specications, conceptual design, detail design, process planning, costing and manufacture. It is a favourable computer aided tool for industrial users to reduce their production cost and time-to-market. Multiple AI techniques are employed in the approach. It combines the power of each technique, and avoids their weakness. Thus, a powerful AI based integration tool is provided. The IHS provides a means to integrate existing stand-alone packages into the integrated process, which is obviously cost effective for industrial users, particularly for medium and small size companies.

Acknowledgements The authors thank the following researchers/students for their contribution to this research: Dr X. Wang, T.