Over the Hedge – by Michael Fry and T Lewis
Learning Objectives – Class 9
After today’s lecture, and after working the homework problems, the student should be able to use various computer programming optimization techniques.
Engineering systems are optimized using several methods, including
- Engineering economics
- Fortran, C, Basic, and other computer languages (Brute force)
- Spreadsheets (Brute force)
- TK! Solver, EES, Maple, Matlab, and other engineering equation solvers
- Linear programming
- Engineering system simulation (BOSS, SIMAN, ARENA,
We will briefly review programming, spreadsheets and EES, to enable you to optimize engineering systems using these tools. The tools we will use are general, or generic, in that they handle a multitude of situations reasonable well, and none perfectly. In the real world you will probably utilize extremely specialized versions of these programs for specific engineering problems, such as traffic flow, hydraulic modeling, blast analysis, etc. However, understanding how generic simulations are performed is of great value in the proper utilization of the specialized programs.
Topics covered in today’s class
- EES and Excel bolted plate example
- The difference between spreadsheets and engineering equation solvers
- When should you use Excel
- When should you use EES
- Excel goal seeking
- Excel solver
- EES tables, plots, minimization, maximization
- YOU MUST MUST MUST HAVE AT LEAST ONE HAND SOLUTION CHECK FOR EACH AND EVERY COMPUTER SOLUTION ASSOCIATED WITH EXCEL AND EES. NOTE that when I say you must make hand solutions, I did not mean a separate calculation for every calculation you make, but at least one or two checks for every TYPE of calculation you make. Thus if you use a computer program to calculate the length of 20 pipes, you MUST have checked the lengths of at least one or two of those pipes by hand to make sure that your computer equations are correct. When you then calculate the cost of those pipes you must check that the computer is giving you the correct values for low vs. high pressure pipes.