1、Design and simulation of component-based manufacturing machine systemsJosef Adolfsson a, Amos Ng a,*, Petter Olofsgard a, Philip Moore b, Junsheng Pu b, Chi-Biu Wong bDepartment of Engineering Science, Centre for Intelligent Automation,University of Skovde, S-541 28 Skovde, SwedenFaculty of Computin
2、g Sciences and Engineering, Mechatronics Research Group,De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UKAbstract：This paper presents the modular machine design environment (MMDE), a software environmentthat enables the virtual design/engineering ofcomponent-based manufacturingmachine systems. It consis
3、ts of a suite of highly integrated tools supporting the visualisation,design, programming, verification and evaluation of machine systems built from mechanical, lectronic and software components/modules in a virtual environment. Using three-dimensional 3-D) graphical simulation with a number of add-
4、on tools, MMDE supports visualisation, esign, simulation and verification of both the physical model and control logic for esign and/or re-configuring machine systems to satisfy new or changed application/customer equirements before any real implementation is made. System design, implementation tech
5、niques, and evaluation of MMDE in a real industrial test case are covered in detail._ 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.Keywords: Modular machine design and control; Virtual machine components; 3-D graphical simulation;IEC-1131-31. IntroductionAgility has been recognised as one of the most impo
6、rtant attributes for manufacturing machine systems to satisfy the needs of global competitive markets. By agility, it means that manufacturing machine systems are able to respond rapidly and cost effectively to production changes both in terms of volume and variety. To accomplish such a requirement,
7、 re-configurability, re-usability and extendibility are characteristics, which are highly desirable to have embodied from an early phase in the design and implementation process of the manufacturing machine systems. One prevalent approach to achieve enhanced re-configurability of machine systems is
8、to adopt modular design and the use of standard components 1,2, so that gility is at least in-part realised by utilising existing components, simply by re-using and re-configuring machine elements, in response to new or changed application/ customer requirements. Numerous attempts, both from industr
9、y and academic sources have tried to address various aspects and levels of modular manufacturing machine system design and operation, from structural components, sensing and actuation components to control hardware and software. On one side, the endeavourof standardisation bodies is to address the o
10、pen systems issues, allowing components from different vendors to be inter-operable and inter-changeable. At the same time, the emergence of distributed control technology makes it possible to distribute control and intelligence down to the device level 3. It can be envisaged that such standards and
11、 advanced machine components with intelligent control capability could provide the basic building blocks of next-generation machine systems 4.Nevertheless, until and when the number and variety of such components become widespread, it is critically important to have the supporting tools for machine
12、builders to select, evaluate, aggregate and manage these building blocks in a systematic and flexible manner. Such tools should facilitate engineers to design a system conceptually, to analyse and prove the functionality of the design in a virtual environment(information/software) and then generate
13、the real machine system (e.g. control system configuration, control logic code, etc.) smoothly. 3-D graphical modelling and simulation tools have proven to be highly effective for rapid prototyping, visualisation and testing what-if scenarios in the manufacturing engineering domain 5. The design of
14、large scale manufacturing systems often utilises various discrete-event simulation tools for layout design, bottleneck analysis,throughput analysis, etc. 6. Whereas, continuous simulation tools, such as computer aided robotic systems 7 are often utilised for the design, analysis and programming of i
15、ndividual workstations. Such systems provide facilities for evaluating different automation designs and equipment capabilities, in particular industrial robot based applications. Moreover, the same environment can be used for off-line programming the real equipment via code generation, thereby furth
16、er shortening the machine delivery time. It can be seen that realisation of a virtual design/engineering environment for manufacturing machine systems can be achieved with existing oremerging computing platforms and software tools. However, when applying 3-D graphical simulation to the design of a component-based machine system, one critical issue is to ensure an effective and viable methodology for building machines from their asso
