students

Research paper accepted to the journal Reliability Engineering & System Safety

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BiSSL PhD student Abheek Chatterjee just had his full-length research paper accepted in the Journal Reliability Engineering &System Safety! The paper, titled “Mimicking Nature for Resilient Resource and Infrastructure Network Design,” investigates the use of ecological robustness – a functional characteristic of ecological food webs, to guide the design of a supply chain case study to improve its ability to survive network disturbances.

Abstract: “Increasingly prevalent extreme weather events have caused resilience to become an essential sustainable development component for resource and infrastructure networks. Existing resilience metrics require detailed knowledge of the system and potential disruptions, which is not available in the early design stage. The lack of quantitative tools to guide the early stages of design for resilience, forces engineers to rely on heuristics (use physical redundancy, localized capacity, etc.). This research asserts that the required quantitative guidelines can be developed using the architecting principles of biological ecosystems, which maintain a unique balance between pathway redundancy and efficiency, enabling them to be both productive under normal circumstances and survive disruptions. Ecologists quantify this network characteristic using the ecological fitness function. This paper presents the required reformulation required to enable the use of this metric in the design and analysis of resource and infrastructure networks with multiple distinct, but interdependent, interactions. The proposed framework is validated by comparing the resilience characteristics of two notional supply chain designs: one designed for minimum shipping cost and the other designed using the proposed bio-inspired framework. The results support using the proposed bio-inspired framework to guide designers in creating resilient and sustainable resource and infrastructure networks.”

Chatterjee, A., & Layton, A. (2020). “Mimicking Nature for Resilient Resource and Infrastructure Network Design.” Reliability Engineering and System Safety. DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2020.107142

ASEE 2020 Conference Presentation

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Exciting work done by MS alum Colton Brehm, in collaboration with Dr. Julie Linsey at Georgia Tech, was presented at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) 2020 conference virtually. Colton’s conference paper that was presented and discussed is titled: “Using a Modularity Analysis to Determine Tool and Student Roles within Makerspaces.” We’re really excited to continue this work with new A&M BiSSL PhD student Samuel Blair! The conference continues all week! https://www.asee.org/annual-conference/2020

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.