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CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) 2020 Virtual Conference

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Two BiSSL students, PhD student Abheek Chatterjee and recent MS graduate Colton Brehm, had their first authored peer-reviewed publications presented at the 2020 CIRP Life Cycle Engineering conference. The conference, originally meant to be in Grenoble, France was entirely virtual due to COVID-19.

Abstract: “Supply chain design has traditionally focused on using the shortest path or the minimum number of paths to reduce operational costs. This approach, however, fails to account for a system’s response to external disruptions. A novel supply chain design is proposed that mimics the optimal balance of efficient and redundant pathways found in nature’s resilient ecosystems. A comparison of traditional and bio-inspired supply chain designs are done using a disruption scenario, showing that the bio-inspiration significantly reduces the supply chain’s vulnerability to cascading failures.”Chatterjee, A., & Layton, A. (2020). Bio-inspired Design for Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chains. Paper presented at the 27th CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) Conference, Grenoble, France.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-djMmo7RRiU?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&start=14146&wmode=transparentYou can see the 10 minute presentation from Day 2 (May 14) of the CIRP LCE 2020, Circular Economy track, given by Abheek Chatterjee, here on YouTube (start 2:55:47).

“The sustainability of industrial practices is a growing point of emphasis in the research and business communities demanding effective systems-level solutions. Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs), networks of co-located industries connected through mutually beneficial collaborations are a popular systems-level solution but have experienced highly variable degrees of success. Nestedness, a structure prevalent in mutualistic networks found in nature is our design focus for improved outcomes. This paper investigates how ecologically-similar nestedness values in EIPs relate to reductions of freshwater imports. The results indicate a range of nestedness values that support water conservation and critical thresholds for maximizing capital investments.”Brehm, C., Chatterjee, A., & Layton, A. (2020). Mimicking the nested structures of ecosystems in the design of industrial water networks. Paper presented at the 27th CIRP Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) Conference, Grenoble, France.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dpAxPXpEymc?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&start=7725&wmode=transparentYou can see the 10 minute presentation from Day 1 (May 13) of the CIRP LCE 2020, Eco-Design track, given by Colton Brehm, here on YouTube (start 2:08:47).

Two students become the latest successful BiSSL Graduates!

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Colton Brehm
Shelby Warrington

Congratulations to two of BiSSL’s research students for graduating today! Graduate student Colton Brehm graduates with his MS in Mechanical Engineering. He’ll be starting at SAIC in their Mission Support division doing Probabilistic Risk Assessment in June. Undergraduate student Shelby Warrington graduates with her BS in Mechanical Engineering. She’ll be starting graduate school at Yale for a Masters of Environmental Management, specializing in Urban or Industrial Ecology in the Fall. We will sincerely miss them both in the BiSSL group and wish them the best moving forward!

Two BiSSL students get papers accepted to 2020’s IDETC-CIE conference

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Two BiSSL students, PhD student Abheek Chatterjee and MS almuni Tirth Dave, have had their “International Design Engineering Technical Conference & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference” (IDETC-CIE) papers accepted to the 2020 conference, to be held in St. Louis, MO August 16-19, 2020.

Abheek’s paper was accepted to the CIE sub-conference on Systems Engineering Information Knowledge Management (SEIKM):

Chatterjee, A., Malak, R., & Layton, A. (2020). Exploring a Bio-Inspired System of Systems Resilience vs. Affordability Tradespace. ASME 2020 Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, St. Louis, MO.

Tirth’s paper was accepted to the IDETC sub-conference on Design Theory and Methodology (DTM):

Dave, T., & Layton, A. (2020). Extending the Use of Bio-Inspiration for Water Distribution Networks to Urban Settings. ASME 2020 International Design Engineering Technical Conference, St. Louis, MO.

BiSSL Presentation at 18th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER 2020)

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BiSSL is looking forward to representing our bio-inspired systems of systems (SoS) design work at this year’s 18th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research in Redondo Beach, CA. The conference this year is focused on “Recent Trends and Advances in Model-based Systems” and will be going on from March 19-21, 2020. PhD student Abheek Chatterjee is first author on a paper with our collaborator Dr. Richard Malak titled: “A Bio-inspired Framework for Analyzing and Predicting the Trade-off between System of Systems Attributes.” We hope to see you all there!

BiSSL Student Led Publication in Journal of Cleaner Production

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Congratulations to BiSSL alumni Tirth Dave (MS graduate December 2019) on the publication of his paper in the Journal of Cleaner Production! “Designing ecologically-inspired robustness into a water distribution network” covers Tirth’s work on bio-inspired network design coupled with modeling of a water distribution network, showing that we can draw inspiration from nature to improve the resilience and reduce freshwater use in industrial resource networks.

ABSTRACT: Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs), network of industries that collaborate by utilizing each other’s byproducts and wastes, are highly desirable for both the industries themselves, their environment, and governments due to their economic, environmental, and social advantages. Previous work has shown that EIPs are not as successful as they could be in terms of mimicking the behavior of biological ecosystems, highlighting that more work needs to be done for EIPs to truly mimic their biological-counterparts. The Kalundborg EIP, located in Kalundborg, Denmark, is a well documented example of an EIP with long-term success. Using the water network within the Kalundborg EIP as a case study, two bio-inspired networks are selected from an optimization based on the ecosystem metric robustness. The bio-inspired solutions are compared with a traditionally cost-minimized solution to understand what bio-inspired design can offer when a network is disturbed. Disturbances such as connection breakages and industry shutdowns are tested, showing that the bio-inspired designs require minimal recovery costs – in stark contrast to the traditional network solution. The results show that the bio-inspired designs reduce the network’s dependence on a scarce import (freshwater) and have higher overall network resilience in the event of disturbances. The three network solutions are discussed from a ecological perspective, explaining differences from the standpoint of ecosystem characteristics. The analysis highlights the benefits of using ecology to understand the nature of and improve the design of industrial networks.

JCP (2020) “Designing ecologically-inspired robustness into a water distribution network” Dave, T. and Layton, A.

BiSSL Student Led PLOS ONE Publication

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We can finally share this open access PLOS ONE publication “A quantitative engineering study of ecosystem robustness using thermodynamic power cycles as case studies” written with MS BiSSL alumni Varuneswara Panyam (TAMU graduate December 2019). Understanding the characteristics of biological systems from an engineering perspective is an important part of bio-inspired engineering design!

ABSTRACT: Human networks and engineered systems are traditionally designed to maximize efficiency. Ecosystems on the other hand, achieve long-term robustness and sustainability by maintaining a unique balance between pathway efficiency and redundancy, measured in terms of the number of flow pathways available for a given unit of flow at any node in the network. Translating this flow-based ecosystem robustness into an engineering context supports the creation of new robust and sustainable design guidelines for engineered systems. Thermodynamic cycles provide good examples of human systems where simple and clearly defined modifications can be made to increase efficiency. Twenty-three variations on the Brayton and Rankine cycles are used to understand the relationship between design decisions that maximize a system’s efficient use of energy (measured by thermodynamic first law efficiency) and ecological measures of robustness and structural efficiency. The results reveal that thermodynamic efficiency and ecological pathway efficiency do not always correlate and that while on average modifications to increase energy efficiency reduce the robustness of the system, the engineering understanding of ecological network design presented here can enable decisions that are able to increase both energy efficiency and robustness.

PLOS ONE (2019) “A quantitative engineering study of ecosystem robustness using thermodynamic power cycles as case studies” Panyam, V. and Layton, A.

2 BiSSL Papers Accepted to the 27th CIRP-Life Cycle Engineering Conference

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Two BiSSL students, MS student Colton Brehm and PhD student Abheek Chatterjee, have had full papers accepted to 2020’s CIRP LCE conference! The 2020 conference focuses on “the role that engineering must play in the achievement of the sustainable future that people wish.” The conference this year is hosted by Grenoble INP – Institut d’Ingénierie Univ. Grenoble Alpes and will be held in Grenoble, France May 13-15, 2020.

  • Abheek Chatterjee, Colton Brehm, and Astrid Layton (2020) “Mimicking the nested structures of ecosystems in the design of industrial water networks.”
  • Abheek Chatterjee and Astrid Layton (2020) “Bio-inspired Design for Sustainable and Resilient Supply Chains.”