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- Ingenieurbau (25) (remove)
Assuring global consistency in a cooperative working environment is the main focus of many nowaday research projects in the field of civil engineering and others. In this paper, a new approach based on octrees will be discussed. It will be shown that by the usage of octrees not only the management and control of processes in a network-based working environment can be optimised but also an efficient integration platform for processes from various disciplines – such as architecture and civil engineering – can be provided. By means of an octree-based collision detection resp. consistency assurance a client-server-architecture will be described as well as sophisticated information services for a further support of cooperative work.
In the AEC (Architecture / Engineering / Construction) industry a number of individuals and organisations collaborate and work jointly on a construction project. The resulting consortium has large pool of expertise and experience and can be defined as a Virtual Organisation (VO) formed for the duration of the project. VOs are electronically networked organisations where IT and web based communication technology play an important role in coordinating various activities of these organisations. This paper describes the design, development and implementation of a Grid enabled application called the Product Supplier Catalogue Database (PSCD) which supports collaborative working in consortia. As part of the Grid-enabling process, specialised metadata is being developed to enable PSCD to effectively utilise Grid middleware such as Globus and Java CoG toolkits. We also describe our experience whilst designing, developing and deploying the security service of the application using the Globus Security Interface (GSI).
Building design in Civil Engineering is characterized by the cooperation of experts in multiple disciplines. Close cooperation of engineers in different fields is the basis of high product quality, short development periods and a minimum of investment costs. For each building the engineers have to create a new fire engineering model. The consistent realization of the fire engineering model in all details has high demands on communication, collaboration and building models. Thereby, to preserve the related design models consistent to each other and compatible with the rules of fire engineering is a complex task. In addition, regulations and guidelines vary according to the building location, so the knowledge base must be integrated dynamically into the planning process. This contribution covers the integration of engineers and design models into a cooperation network on the basis of mobile agents. The distributed models of architectural design, structural planning and fire engineering are supported. These models are implemented as XML-based models which can be accessed by mobile agents for information retrieval and for processing tasks. Agents are provided to all planners, they are enabled to check up the distributed design models with the knowledge base of the fire protection regulations,. With the use of such an agent each planner is supported to check up his planning for accordance with the fire protection requirements. The fire-engineering-agent analyzes the design and detects inconsistencies by processing fire protection requirements and design model facts in a rule-based expert system. The possibility to check the planning information at an early state in the sense of compatibility to the fire protection regulations enables a comprehensive diagnosis of the design and the reduction of planning errors.
In this contribution, the design of an analysis environment is presented, that supports an analyst to come to a decision within a gradual collaborative planning process. An analyst represents a project manager, planner or any other person, involved in the planning process. Today, planning processes are managed by several geographically distributed planners and project managers. Thus, complexity of such a process rises even more. Prediction of consequences of many planning decisions is not possible, in particular since assessment of a planning advance is not trivial. There have to be considered several viewpoints, that depend on individual perceptions. In the following, methods are presented to realize planning decision support.
Although there are some good reasons to design engineering software as a stand-alone application for a single computer, there are also numerous possibilities for creating distributed engineering applications, in particular using the Internet. This paper presents some typical scenarios how engineering applications can benefit from including network capabilities. Also, some examples of Internet-based engineering applications are discussed to show how the concepts presented can be implemented.
Es wird gezeigt, daß im allgemeinen die Zeichnungsinhalte von Entwurfsplänen im konstruktiven Ingenieurbau in Teilzeichnungen zerlegt werden können, denen fachspezifische Objekte des Bauwesen entsprechen. Solche Objekte sind beispiels- weise Querschnitte, Träger, Stützen und Fundamente. Diese Teilobjekte werden durch eine unterschiedliche Anzahl von Parametern festgelegt werden. Wählt man für diese Parameter die entsprechendnen Fachbegriffe, so hat man durch diese die Möglichkeit die Teilobjekte auch in Datenbanken zu speichern. Neben den Sachparametern müssen auch zeichnungs- technische Werte, wie Maßstab, gewählte Längeneinheiten (m,cm..) und Einsatzpunkt - für die Lage des Teilobjektes im Gesamtplan - gespeichert werden. Zeichenmodule für jedes Teilobjekt können dann bei Aufruf eines bestimmten Planes aus den Daten der Datenbank die Teilzeichnungen generieren, sodaß eine Planspeicherung in der übliche Speicherform (Speicherelemente Punkt, Linie usw.) nicht mehr erforderlich ist. Neben der reinen Darstellung können die Programmodule auch dahingehend erweitert werden, daß auch die zugehörigen Berechnungen durchgeführt werden. Die numerischen Ergebnisse wie auch die Eingabewerte werden in einem alfanumerischen Dokument abgelegt. Damit ergibt sich dann ein Konstruktionsystem für den Entwurf, das insbesondere die Berechnung von Varianten sehr erleichertert. In Sonderfällen können auch die Pläne in ein Standard CAD Programm eingelesen werden, um allfällige Besonderheiten interaktiv zu ergänzen. Das relationale Modell wird weiters vorgestellt, nach dem die Zeichnungsinhalte gespeichert werden. Neben reinen Teilobjektsätzen werden auch Tabellensätze verwendet, um unter einem Namen mehrere numersiche Daten verwalten zu können. Es werden auch sogenannte Fort- setzungssätze besprochen, die in Entsprechung der stark unterschiedlichen Anzahl der Objektattibute verwendet werden.
Bridge vibration due to traffic loading has been a subject of extensive research in the last decades. The focus of such research has been to develop solution algorithms and investigate responses or behaviors of interest. However, proving the quality and reliability of the model output in structural engineering has become a topic of increasing importance. Therefore, this study is an attempt to extend concepts of uncertainty and sensitivity analyses to assess the dynamic response of a coupled model in bridge engineering considering time-dependent vehicular loading. A setting for the sensitivity analysis is proposed, which enables performing the sensitivity analysis considering random stochastic processes. The classical and proposed sensitivity settings are used to identify the relevant input parameters and models that have the most influence on the variance of the dynamic response. The sensitivity analysis exercises the model itself and extracts results without the need for measurements or reference solutions; however, it does not offer a means of ranking the coupled models studied. Therefore, concepts of total uncertainty are employed to rank the coupled models studied according to their fitness in describing the dynamic problem.
The proposed procedures are applied in two examples to assess the output of coupled subsystems and coupled partial models in bridge engineering considering the passage of a heavy vehicle at various speeds.
Collaboration in AEC Design : Web-enabling Applications using Peer-to-Peer Office Communicator
(2004)
A market analysis conducted by Gartner Dataquest in August 2001 has shown the typical characteristics of the AEC design process. High volatility in membership of AEC design groups and members dispersed over several external offices is the common collaboration scenario. Membership is most times short lived, compared to the overall duration of the process. A technical solution has to take that into account by making joining and leaving a collaborative work group very easy. The modelling of roles of collaboration between group members must be based on a commonly understood principle like the publisher / subscriber model, where the individual that is responsible for the distribution of vital information is clear. Security issues and trust in the confidentiality of the system is a central concern for the acceptance of the system. Therefore, keeping the subset of data that will be published under the absolute control of the publisher is a must. This is not the case with server-based scenarios, sometimes even due to psychological reasons. A loosely bound Peer-to-Peer network offers advantages over a server-based solution, because of less administrative overhead and simple installation procedures. In a peer-to-peer environment, a publish/subscribe role model can be more easily implemented. The publish/subscribe model matches the way AEC processes are modelled in real world scenarios today, where legal proof of information exchange between external offices is of high importance. Workflow management systems for small to midsize companies of the AEC industry may adopt the peer-to-peer approach to collaboration in the future. Further investigations are being made on the research level (WINDS) by integrating the viewer and redlining application Collaborate! into a collaborative environment.
This paper deals with two different agent-based approaches aimed at the incorporation of complex design information into multi-agent planning systems. The first system facilitates collaborative structural design processes, the second one supports fire engineering in buildings. Both approaches are part of two different research projects that belong to the DFG1 priority program 1103 entitled “Network-based Co-operative Planning Processes in Structural Engineering“ (DFG 2000). The two approaches provide similar database wrapper agents to integrate relevant design information into two multi-agent systems: Database wrapper agents make the relevant product model data usable for further agents in the multi-agent system, independent on their physical location. Thus, database wrapper agents act as an interface between multi-agent system and heterogeneous database systems. The communication between the database wrapper agents and other requesting agents presumes a common vocabulary: a specific database ontology that maps database related message contents into database objects. Hereby, the software-wrapping technology enables the various design experts to plug in existing database systems and data resources into a specific multi-agent system easily. As a consequence, dynamic changes in the design information of large collaborative engineering projects are adequately supported. The flexible architecture of the database wrapper agent concept is demonstrated by the integration of an XML and a relational database system.
Re-examination of the behaviour of structures can be necessary due to deterioration or changes in the traffic situation during their lifetime. The Finite Element Method (FEM) is widely used in order to accomplish numerical analysis. Considering the development of computer performance, more detailed FEM models can be analyzed, even on site, with mobile computers. To compensate the increasing amount of data needed for the model input, measures need to be taken to save time, by distributing the work. In order to provide consistency to the model, fedback data must be checked upon reception. A local wireless computer network of ultra-portable devices linked together with a computer can provide the coordination necessary for efficient parallel working. Based on a digital model consisting of all data gathered, structural modelling and numerical analysis are performed automatically. Thus, the user is released from the work that can be automatized and the time needed for the overall analysis of a structure is decreased.