Systems Engineering laboratory

The paint factory mock-up

Location GEM-Z 0.07

GEM-Z 0.07 is the place where you may find most of the graduate students that do their MSc assignment 'in-house', as opposed to those that work on their assignment at one of the industrial companies the we coorporate with. The latter students may also wish to spend part of their time working in-house.

Each graduate student has a desk, computer, and some storage space at his/her disposal. Being in the same room with other CST graduate students creates a lively and stimulating evironment to work in. Some like it so much that they stay a bit longer than the usual time it takes to do an MSc assignment. 

The process station, one of the FESTO stations.

The process station, one of the FESTO stations.

GEM-Z 0.08

GEM-Z 0.08 is used for educational and research purposes. Some of the practical exercises of our master courses are performed there, but also parts of BSc and MSc assigments.
It is also used as a space to place experimatal setups, or (parts of) complete machines that are used to check or test the practical feasability of newly devoloped research ideas and concepts. (Proof of concept)
Most of the setups are small, but contain the very essence of the problem(s) that are researched.

Two examples of these small setups are:

  • The processing station, which is used as a case for students that take the Supervisory Machine Control course (4K420)
  • The Liquitrol setup, which is a system used for researching the control of fluidic networks like traffic intersections, or production systems that behave like the 'Kumar-Seidmann' network.

The Liquitrol system

In the Liquitrol system the vessels act as the buffers and the pumps (not visible) act as the production machines of the manufacturing network. The switchpanel in front allows the user to make all kinds of configurations. Flexible tubing is used to make the desired connections between vessels and pumps.

The Kumar-Seidmann network is an example of a manufacturing network that will show unstable behavior when controlled in the obvious way. With the Liquitrol system the effects of both the obvious and the correct control strategy can be shown.

Computing facilities

Assignments may involve stochastic calculations that need to be done. Usually, running simulations can help here. Simulations may be time and/or computer resource intensive.

SE/MN has developed several simulation tools and languages. These ar mostly developed under Linux and cannot be run on your Windows system. That is why there are several 19" rack based computer systems that can be used for this. This way, simulations can be run from your Windows system on one of the Systems Engineering rack systems; serack-xxx.

Background info about the serack systems is on our MN/SE wiki.

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