Development of an e-Engineering Environment for Mechanical Systems Design and Optimization

This paper presents an ongoing project on the development of an e-Engineering environment for mechanical systems design and optimization. In this project, a prototype of agent-based engineering system is developed based on the AADE (autonomous agent development environment), a FIPA compliant agent platform developed at IMTI. By applying several advanced technologies including intelligent software agents, Internet/Web, workflow and database, the developed system is able to successfully fulfill our target of integrating personnel, design activities and engineering resources along a predefined engineering design project (workflow). A software prototype is implemented to integrate various engineering software tools including CAD, structural analysis (FEA), dynamic analysis, fatigue analysis, and optimization. A wheel-axle-assembly (part of a bogie system) is chosen as a test case for the validation of the prototype system.