A Decision Systems19-20
A Decision Systems19-20
Assignment 2019/2020
ACS6124 incorporates two assignments – one for each part of the module. This document introduces the
assignment for Part II, providing submission instructions, a detailed assignment briefing, and the marking
criteria.
Unfair means
This is an individual assignment. You should not discuss the assignment with other students or work
together with other students in its completion. The assignment must be wholly your own work.
References must be provided to any other work that is used as part of the assignment. Any suspicion of
the use of unfair means will be investigated and may lead to penalties. For more information see
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/unfair-means
Extenuating circumstances
If you have any medical or special circumstances that you believe may affect your performance on the
assignment, then you should raise these with the Module Leader at the earliest opportunity. You will also
need to submit an extenuating circumstances form. For more information, see
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/forms/circs
Help
If you have any questions on the assignment, please post them on the Discussion Board on
Blackboard(MOLE) or email them to me at: [email protected]
Feedback
Written feedback will be provided on Blackboard(MOLE). Feedback will be provided within 15 working
days, in line with Departmental expectations.
Assignment briefing
Image you are a recently graduate student that has decided to build his own start-up company working on
decision systems for engineering design. Your first possible client is a company working on a new type of
nuclear-powered vehicle. While their team is very good at designing the new powertrain, they have limited
experience in designing the rest of the vehicle and they are not sure how the new propulsion system will
affect the dynamic performance of the car.
Your task is to convince them that your start-up company is perfectly suited to help them in the decision
making process. To do that, they have asked you to prepare a report to highlight the capabilities of the
tools you are proposing to use. Because at this stage they are reluctant to share their Simulink models,
your pilot study will focus on tuning the gains for a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller, such that a
feedback control system satisfies a set of requirements.
The system to be controlled, and the performance criteria against which a set of controller gains are
assessed, are described in the Laboratory A instructions. The goals for the performance criteria are given
in the instructions for Laboratory B.
During Laboratory A, you learned about the relationships between the design variables and the
performance criteria for the given system. In Laboratory B, you attempted to optimize the gains to meet
the goals for the performance criteria.
Now you need to write a report that would appeal to both the CEO of your possible client and their Chief
Engineer. You need to convince the CEO that multi-objective optimization is the best way to do decision
making. So far his company used opinions from experts and developed prototypes to validate their
designs. In addition, you need to have a technical part in which you show their Chief Engineer what your
pilot study has managed to achieve, explaining any challenges encountered in satisfying all the
requirements, and making recommendations for tuning options.
Bibliography
Include references to any works and examples used in the report. This section does not contribute
to the page limit for the report.
Listings
Provide your Matlab code listings as an appendix to the report. The listings do not count towards
the page count for the report.
Marking criteria
The assignment will be marked out of 100. The marking criteria below provide guidance on the
relationship between the quality of submission and the marks awarded.