Maintaining the structural integrity against severe loading conditions and accidental loads is one of the primary concerns when designing multi-storey modular buildings. Connections between the ...modular units play a central role in providing integrity in modular buildings. This paper describes the development of an innovative interlocking system for improving the integrity of multi-storey modular buildings. The concept of Modular Integrating System (MIS) and the procedure used to develop an efficient interlocking system, which can be widely used in the construction of modular buildings, is investigated. MIS is a patented joining system including a set of interlocking connections and the method of assembly of modular units that provides a high level of integrity that prevents accidental disassembly and stress concentrations at the points of attachments in case of extreme loading occurrence. The creative easy to install, self-fit and self-locking mechanism of this system can also considerably facilitate the automated assembly of modular buildings and provide an effective solution for controlling construction tolerance. The robustness provided by the proposed system is demonstrated through numerical and experimental analysis.
•The role of interlocking connections between modular units and their contribution in load transfer mechanisms, controlling construction tolerance and the efficiency of modular construction are discussed.•The concept of structural integrity in modular buildings, challenges and the methods of controlling are explained.•An easy to install, self-fit and self-locking mechanism for improving the integrity of multi-storey modular buildings is introduced.•It is explained how this system can facilitate the automated assembly of modular buildings and provide an effective solution for controlling construction tolerance.•The robustness of the proposed system is demonstrated through numerical and experimental analysis.
Modular design is at the foundation of contemporary engineering, enabling rapid, efficient, and reproducible construction and maintenance of complex systems across applications. Remarkably, ...modularity has recently been discovered as a governing principle in natural biological systems from genes to proteins to complex networks within a cell and organism communities. The convergent knowledge of natural and engineered modular systems provides a key to drive modern biotechnology to address emergent challenges associated with health, food, energy, and the environment. Here, we first present the theory and application of modular design in traditional engineering fields. We then discuss the significance and impact of modular architectures on systems biology and biotechnology. Next, we focus on the very recent theoretical and experimental advances in modular cell engineering that seeks to enable rapid and systematic development of microbial catalysts capable of efficiently synthesizing a large space of useful chemicals. We conclude with an outlook towards theoretical and practical opportunities for a more systematic and effective application of modular cell engineering in biotechnology.
•Present the universal principles of modularity from conventional engineering to biological systems.•Overview general graph- and optimization-based models as a basis for modular product design.•Highlight the interrelationship between multi-scale biological modularity, robustness, and evolvability.•Present principles and prototypes of modular cell engineering for rapid microbial biocatalyst development.
•A novel modular liquid-cooled BTMS for cylindrical lithium ion cells is designed.•The cell physical parameters as the simulation input are obtained by experiments.•There is a limit to improve the ...cooling effect by increasing coolant flow rate.•Parallel cooling can effectively improve thermal equilibrium behavior.•The flow direction layout III demonstrates the optimum cooling effectiveness.
Effective battery thermal management system (BTMS) is significant for electric vehicle to maintain the properties and life-time of the battery packs. As an effective cooling method, liquid cooling appears in many publications, but the study of cooling performance based on practical modular structure is relatively scarce. This paper has proposed a novel modular liquid-cooled system for batteries and carried out the numerical simulation and experiment to study the effect of coolant flow rate and cooling mode (Serial cooling and parallel cooling) on the thermal behavior of the battery module. The results show that increasing the coolant flow rate can significantly lower the maximum temperature and improve the temperature uniformity of the battery module in a certain flow range; when the flow rate increases to a certain value, increasing the cooling water flow rate has no obvious effect on improving cooling effect. Compared with serial cooling, parallel cooling can evidently promote the temperature uniformity of the battery module. Furthermore, the designed flow direction layout III can control Tmax to 35.74 °C with ΔT as 4.17 °C. The modular structure can be suitable for industrial batch production and group the batteries flexibly to meet the actual demand. The present study can provide a new approach for the modular design of liquid-cooled battery thermal management system.
The facile preparation, modular design, and multi‐responsiveness are extremely critical for developing pervasive nanoplatforms to meet heterogeneous applications. Here, cationic nanogels (NGs) are ...modularly engineered with tunable responsiveness, versatility, and biodegradation. Cationic PVCL‐based NGs with core/shell structure are fabricated by facile one‐step synthesis. The formed PVCL‐NH2 NGs exhibit uniform size, thermal/pH dual‐responsive behaviors, and redox‐triggered degradation. Moreover, the NGs can be employed to modify or/and load with various functional agents to construct multipurpose nanoplatforms in a modular manner. Notably, the novel hybrid structure with copper sulfide (CuS) NPs loaded in the NGs shell is prepared, which leads to higher photothermal conversion efficiency (31.1%) than other CuS randomly loaded NGs reported. By personalized tailoring, these functionalized NGs display fluorescent property, r1 relaxivity, strong near‐infrared (NIR) absorption, good biocompatibility, and targeting specificity. The superior photothermal effect of hybrid NGs (CuS@NGs‐LA) is presented under NIR II over NIR I. Importantly, hybrid NGs encapsulated doxorubicin (CuS@NGs‐LA/DOX) show endogenous pH/redox and exogenous NIR multi‐triggered drug release for efficient photothermal‐chemotherapy, which can completely eliminate advanced tumors and effectively inhibit recurrence. Overall, the pervasive nanoplatforms based on intelligent cationic NGs with tunable responsiveness, versatility, and biodegradation are developed by engineered modular strategy for precision medicine applications.
Multi‐responsive biodegradable cationic nanogels (NGs) are designed by modular engineered strategy, and the novel hybrid structure with copper sulfide nanoparticles loaded in the NGs shell exhibit higher photothermal conversion efficiency. The intelligent NGs as pervasive platforms display fluorescent property, r1 relaxivity, strong photothermal effects, targeting specificity, endogenous/exogenous‐triggered drug release, and combined therapy upon safe near‐infrared irradiation for precise medicine.
This paper presents a resilient framework for fault-tolerant operation in modular multilevel converters (MMCs) to facilitate normal operation under internal and external fault conditions. This ...framework is realized by designing and implementing a supervisory algorithm and a postfault restoration scheme. The supervisory algorithm includes monitoring and decision-making units to detect and identify faults by analyzing the circulating current and submodule capacitor voltages in a very short time. The postfault restoration scheme is proposed to immediately replace the faulty submodule with the redundant healthy one. The restoration is achieved by virtue of a multilevel modular capacitor-clamped dc/dc converter (MMCCC), which is redundantly aggregated to each arm of the MMC. This design effectively guarantees smooth mode transition and handles the failure of multiple submodules in a short time interval. In addition, a modified modulation scheme is presented to ensure submodule capacitor voltage balancing of the MMC without implementing any additional hardware. Fast fault identification, a fully modular structure, and robust postfault restoration are the main features of the proposed framework. Digital time-domain simulation studies are conducted on a 21-level MMC to confirm the effectiveness and resilience of the proposed fault-tolerant framework during internal and external faults. Furthermore, the proposed framework is implemented in the FPGA-based RT-LAB real-time simulator platform to validate its resilience in a hardware-in-the-loop setup.
Reconfigurable modular structures are able to be assembled using prefabricated modules and reconfigured to promote automated construction and to improve sustainability and resilience of ...infrastructure, while the computer-aided design and modeling of the modules are unclear. This study develops a many-objective optimization approach to design the modules made using strain-hardening cementitious composite. The proposed approach integrates a sequential surrogate model, Latin hypercube sampling method, Unified Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm III, and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution to predict and optimize the properties of assemblages of the modules. Four objective functions were defined using the load-carrying capacity, deformability, stiffness, and volume. Results showed that the proposed method had reasonable prediction accuracy. The optimal design increased the load-carrying capacity, deformability, and stiffness by 22.8%, 11.5%, and 129.2%, respectively, and reduced the volume by 51.6%. This study is expected to effectively improve the design of reconfigurable modular structures.
•Innovative concrete modules are designed and optimized for reconfigurable modular structures.•An engineer-friendly framework is presented for many-objective optimization of the modules.•The load capacity, stiffness, deflection, and volume of the modules are optimized.•A sequential surrogate model method is developed to predict the mechanical behaviors.•The UNSGA-III algorithm is utilized for many-objective optimization of the modules.
Kirigami, the ancient paper art of cutting, has recently emerged as a new approach to construct metamaterials with novel properties imparted by cuts. However, most studies are limited to thin ...sheets‐based 2D kirigami metamaterials with specific forms and limited reconfigurability due to planar connection constraints of cut units. Here, 3D modular kirigami is introduced by cutting bulk materials into spatially closed‐loop connected cut cubes to construct a new class of 3D kirigami metamaterials. The module is transformable with multiple degrees of freedom that can transform into versatile distinct daughter building blocks. Their conformable assembly creates a wealth of reconfigurable and disassemblable metamaterials with diverse structures and unique properties, including reconfigurable 1D column‐like materials, 2D lattice‐like metamaterials with phase transition of chirality, as well as 3D frustration‐free multilayered metamaterials with 3D auxetic behaviors and programmable deformation modes. This study largely expands the design space of kirigami metamaterials from 2D to 3D.
A new class of 3D transformable modular kirigami with multiple degrees of freedom is developed by cutting 3D bulk materials into closed‐loop connected cubes. Spatial combinatorial arrangements of versatile transformed modules allow for constructing a wealth of 1D, 2D, and 3D reconfigurable and reusable modular architected materials with programmable tunable properties.
The recent development of modular origami structures has ushered in an era for active metamaterials with multiple degrees of freedom (multi-DOF). Notably, no systematic inverse design approach for 3D ...curvilinear modular origami structures has been reported. Moreover, very few modular origami topologies have been studied to design active metamaterials with multi-DOF. Herein, we develop an inverse design method for constructing 3D reconfigurable architected structures - we synthesize modular origami structures whose unit cells can be volumetrically mapped into a prescribed 3D curvilinear shape followed by volumetric shrinkage to construct modules. After modification of the tubular geometry, we search through all the possible geometric and topological combinations of the modular origami structures to attain the target mobility using a topological reconstruction of modules. Our inverse design using geometric and topological reconstructions can provide an effective solution to construct 3D curvilinear reconfigurable structures with multi-DOF. Our work opens a path toward 3D reconfigurable systems based on volumetric inverse design, such as 3D active metamaterials and 3D morphing devices for automotive, aerospace, and biomedical engineering applications.
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