Mastering the complexity of innovative systems is a challenging aspect of design and product development. Only a systematic approach can help to embed an increasing degree of smartness in devices and machines, allowing them to adapt to variable conditions or harsh environments. At the same time, customer needs have to be identified before they can be translated into consistent technical requirements. The field of Systems Engineering provides a method, a process, suitable tools and languages to cope with the complexity of various systems such as motor vehicles, robots, railways systems, aircraft and spacecraft, smart manufacturing systems, microsystems, and bio-inspired devices. It makes it possible to trace the entire product lifecycle, by ensuring that requirements are matched to system functions, and functions are matched to components and subsystems, down to the level of assembled parts. This book discusses how Systems Engineering can be suitably deployed and how its benefits are currently being exploited by Product Lifecycle Management. It investigates the fundamentals of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) through a general introduction to this topic and provides two examples of real systems, helping readers understand how these tools are used. The first, which involves the mechatronics of industrial systems, serves to reinforce the main content of the book, while the second describes an industrial implementation of the MBSE tools in the context of developing the on-board systems of a commercial aircraft.

Mastering the complexity of innovative systems is a challenging aspect of design and product development. Only a systematic approach can help to embed an increasing degree of smartness in devices and machines, allowing them to adapt to variable conditions or harsh environments. At the same time, customer needs have to be identified before they can be translated into consistent technical requirements. The field of Systems Engineering provides a method, a process, suitable tools and languages to cope with the complexity of various systems such as motor vehicles, robots, railways systems, aircraft and spacecraft, smart manufacturing systems, microsystems, and bio-inspired devices. It makes it possible to trace the entire product lifecycle, by ensuring that requirements are matched to system functions, and functions are matched to components and subsystems, down to the level of assembled parts. This book discusses how Systems Engineering can be suitably deployed and how its benefits are currently being exploited by Product Lifecycle Management. It investigates the fundamentals of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) through a general introduction to this topic and provides two examples of real systems, helping readers understand how these tools are used. The first, which involves the mechatronics of industrial systems, serves to reinforce the main content of the book, while the second describes an industrial implementation of the MBSE tools in the context of developing the on-board systems of a commercial aircraft.

Mastering the art of mechatronics' currently looks like one of the most attractive tasks of modern engineering technology and science. Many applications resort to the interdisciplinary approach of mechatronics to enhance the performance, quality and safety of either product or process. Some are very traditional (like hard disk drives, biomedical, automotive and aerospace systems) while others are fairly new (like micro and nano electromechanical systems, unmanned air vehicles, intelligent machining, manufacturing systems or bioinspired devices). This book describe some practical examples, which demonstrate how different competences, disciplines and technologies meet in an innovative mechatronic system. They deal with several domains like the hard disk drive technology, biomedical prostheses, fluidic automation, UAV Vision System, vibration monitoring and suppression in steelmaking plants, materials machining and smart composites. These examples will show the reader, who is still looking for the real meaning of mechatronics, how some innovative technologies allow implementing a sort of artificial intelligence in several systems currently produced. Examples describe neural network positioning control, chaos prevention, myoelectric stimulation of prosthesis, human detection by vision system, multi-physics modeling and control of dynamics. Some topics are related to small scale, as in the case of a finger of a biotronic hand. Nevertheless, the same approach is applied even to huge machines, like the electric arc furnace. It is worth noticing that the authors resorted even to the additive manufacturing, as in prototyping bio-prostheses, or to fiber optics embedded into composite structures. Those technologies allow reducing cost, weight or volume of product. In some cases, the mechatronic approach improves the quality and the accuracy of some material processing, like in rolling or in turning against the risk of selfexcited chatter vibration. The examples described in this book cover a wide range of mechatronic applications