Douglas H. Norrie – författare

Agent Technology, or Agent-Based Approaches, is a new paradigm for developing software applications. It has been hailed as 'the next significant breakthrough in software development', and 'the new revolution in software' after object technology or object-oriented programming.In this context, an agent is a computer system which is capable of acting autonomously in its environment in order to meet its design objectives. So in the area of concurrent design and manufacturing, a manufacturing resource, namely a machine or an operator, may cooperate and negotiate with other agents for task assignment; and an existing engineering software can be integrated with a distributed integrated engineering design and manufacturing system. Hence in agent-based systems, there is no centralized system control structure, and no pre-defined agenda for the system execution, as exist in traditional systems.This book systematically describes the principles, key issues, and applications of agent technology in relation to concurrent engineering design and manufacturing. It introduces the methodology, standards, frameworks, tools, and languages of agent-based approaches and presents a general procedure for building agent-based concurrent engineering design and manufacturing systems.Both professional and university researchers and postgraduates should find this an invaluable presentation of the corresponding theories and methods, with some practical examples for developing multi-agent systems in the domain.

The Finite Element Method: Fundamentals and Applications demonstrates the generality of the finite element method by providing a unified treatment of fundamentals and a broad coverage of applications. Topics covered include field problems and their approximate solutions; the variational method based on the Hilbert space; and the Ritz finite element method. Finite element applications in solid and structural mechanics are also discussed. Comprised of 16 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to the formulation and classification of physical problems, followed by a review of field or continuum problems and their approximate solutions by the method of trial functions. It is shown that the finite element method is a subclass of the method of trial functions and that a finite element formulation can, in principle, be developed for most trial function procedures. Variational and residual trial function methods are considered in some detail and their convergence is examined. After discussing the calculus of variations, both in classical and Hilbert space form, the fundamentals of the finite element method are analyzed. The variational approach is illustrated by outlining the Ritz finite element method. The application of the finite element method to solid and structural mechanics is also considered. This monograph will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students, engineers, scientists, and applied mathematicians.