Robotic manufacturing systems have proven to be an effective solution for modern manufacturing enterprises to deal with increasing in customer demands and market competition. However, these systems may be unable to completely satisfy user requirements because of the difference between user and design perspectives. Thus, designing robotic manufacturing systems requires iterative processes that significantly increase development costs and lead time. A user-customised design approach is needed that enables users to customise robotic manufacturing systems as well as alleviate the burden on designers of eliciting user requirements. However, most users may not be able to customise their systems because of a lack of engineering knowledge. The authors propose a knowledge-based engineering approach to aid users in customising the architectures of robotic manufacturing systems. Two models — an ontological knowledge model and a multi-attribute decision-making model — are defined and integrated in the proposed KBE architecture definition method. A rule-based reasoning process is proposed in the ontological knowledge model based on explicit semantic descriptions of users’ unstructured or semi-structured requirements and the components of robotic manufacturing systems, which infers the possible architecture of the required system. The MADM model is adopted to evaluate the architecture alternatives to determine the optimal solution.

Additive manufacturing of metals using gas metal arc welding has an associated problem of variations of height in the onset and extinguishing parts of the weld bead. In this research, robot-assisted welding has been performed to investigate the problem, using AWS ER70S-6 low alloy steel welding electrode wire. After adjustment of welding parameters for a single-layer, single-pass, an optimal profile of welding energy was used to construct a thin wall which exhibited good forming characteristics with an effective area of approximately 97%. The resulting structure was ductile in nature with better tensile strength and microhardness as compared to the rolled steel available in industry with similar carbon content. The microstructure analysis revealed equiaxed grains in most parts of the structure having a fine grain size.

In this study, gas metal arc welding (GMAW) was used to construct a thin wall structure in a layer-by-layer fashion using an AWS ER70S-6 electrode wire with the help of a robot. The Charpy impact test was performed after extracting samples in directions both parallel and perpendicular to the deposition direction. In this study, multiple factors related to the resulting absorbed energy have been discussed. Despite being a layered structure, homogeneous behavior with acceptable deviation was observed in the microstructure, hardness, and fracture toughness of the structure in both directions. The fracture is extremely ductile with a dimpled fibrous surface and secondary cracks. An estimate for fracture toughness based on Charpy impact absorbed energy is also given.

Designers specify design requirements and determine the interconnections between the design requirements and main components of the system architecture during the conceptual design phase. To define the architecture of a mechatronic system, two resear

Due to the growing number of requirements and the introduction of new technologies, current trends indicate that more disciplines have been involved into the system design. The design of such multidisciplinary systems, especially during the detailed design phase, requires designers and expertise from different disciplines. Therefore, the research question about how to achieve an integrated design for multidisciplinary systems has attracted the attention from both academia and industry. In order to achieve such integrated design for multidisciplinary systems, more and more researchers focus on the interface of multidisciplinary systems because the interface plays a quite significant role to guarantee the components defined by the designers of different disciplines integrate correctly and to eventually help them to achieve the integrated design. This article presents an interface knowledge base to manage the design data and rules related to the interfaces. A knowledge-based engineering approach is then proposed. By applying the knowledge-based engineering approach, a synergistic integration of the discipline-specific components can be realised; however, the unnecessary iterations can be avoided so that a concurrent design process during the detailed design phase can be achieved. This knowledge-based engineering approach is demonstrated by the case studies based on a partial discharge detection system and a belt conveyor system.