CoreLab: a component‐based integrated sizing environment

• Vincent Fischer ^[1] ; Laurent Gerbaud ^[1]
  1. [1] Laboratoire d'Electrotechnique de Grenoble, Francia
• Localización: Compel: International journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, ISSN 0332-1649, Vol. 24, Nº 3, 2005, págs. 753-766
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • Purpose – This paper presents CoreLab, a sizing environment for electrical devices, based on a new software component standard, ICAR, which offers the possibility of multifaceted components. CoreLab supports the different steps of the sizing procedure of an electrical device by using an optimisation algorithm. It is open, which means that modules can be added to perform new functionalities.

    Design/methodology/approach – The design of an electrical device has to comply with more and more constraints. In order to integrate and to manage all of these constraints during a design step, the paper proposes a sizing methodology based on an constrained optimisation by using analytical models of the device, and by encapsulating them into software components. Added to these services for the calculation of the sizing model, other services can be useful for the designer during the optimization phase, e.g. the geometry display of the device for each optimisation iteration. In this way, the approach proposes a new software component standard, Interfaces for Component Architecture (ICAR). It offers the possibility of multi‐facetted components. The paper also proposes an integrated environment to manage these software components, and their interactions: Core‐Lab. These components are then plugged to an optimisation component (algorithm), which manages the different constraints specified by the designer and finds the optimal sizing of the device.

    Findings – The paper presents the ICAR standard and an environment to manage ICAR components: Core‐Lab: the creation of the components (from an analytical model or an existing computation); the projection from one component standard to another; and the composition of components to create a more complex one.

    Originality/value – The use of software component approach is useful for the sizing of devices. The paper proposes a new standard to support the different aspects of the use of software components during the design of a device: ICAR. Complementary, an open integrated environment is proposed to use these components: CoreLab, but any environment being modified to accept ICAR standard can use ICAR component. So, components can be used in several environments, for example for calculation or optimisation. Components of different types can be gathered together to built a complete application for sizing, e.g. by connection of calculation components (for the sizing model), optimisation component and post‐processing components.