a hybrid simulation system for juicing and filling production line

International Journal of Smart Home

Vol. 8, No. 6 (2014), pp. 157-168

http://dx.doi.org/10.14257/ijsh.2014.8.6.15

ISSN: 1975-4094 IJSH

Copyright ⓒ 2014 SERSC

A Hybrid Simulation System for Juicing and Filling Production Line

Changyu Liu 1, 4

, Bin Lu 2, *

, Cong Li 3

1 School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology,

Guangzhou 510006, China 2 School of Computer Science, Wuyi University, Jiangmen 529020, China

3 College of Computer Science, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610068, China

4 School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

[email protected], *[email protected] (corresponding author), [email protected]

Abstract

As one kind of high quantity standardized commodities, the fruit juice product is an

essential part to our daily life and overall economy. Therefore, it is necessary and important

to design an efficient juicing and filling production line. According to deficiencies of

traditional design methods, we propose a new design method by introducing virtual design

technologies to develop a hybrid simulation system for juicing and filling production line,

based on modeling software SolidWorks, virtual reality software EON Studio and application

development software C++ Builder. We also describe our design method from aspects of

process design and layout design, scene modeling, model import and route configuration, and

interactive simulation control. Besides, we compare our design method with one traditional

design method. Results show that our method can not only shorten effectively the design

period but also improve greatly the design quality of the juicing and filling production line.

Keywords: hybrid simulation system, juicing and filling production line, SolidWorks, EON

Studio, C++ Builder

1. Introduction

As the basis of the manufacturing system, the design of production line is a very important

process. However, the traditional design methods have many deficiencies, such as depending

strongly on designer experience as well as longer design period, reflecting hardly the operation

status of system part in initial stages of design, and diagnosing inaccurately the bottleneck

process based on theoretical calculation. Fortunately, the recent emergence of virtual reality

technology could make up well for the deficiencies of traditional design methods. As a

multidisciplinary technology, virtual reality integrates three dimensional graphics technology,

simulation technology, Multi-sensor interaction technology and display technology into

extensive applications, where the most typical one is the mechanism design and simulation. In

this paper, we develop a hybrid simulation system for juicing and filling production line, based

on the modeling software SolidWorks, the virtual reality software EON Studio and the

application development software C++ Builder.

SolidWorks is a three-dimension mechanical computer-aided design (CAD) program that is

being developed by the SolidWorks Corporation. The well known top-down design method is

used in SolidWorks to save time for designing parts, assembling parts and drawing engineering

graphics. Being the world’ s most popular CAD software, SolidWorks also partners with third

party developers.

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158 Copyright ⓒ 2014 SERSC

EON Studio is the flagship 3D simulation software for developing interactive 3D

applications of the EON Reality Corporation, which is the world’s leading provider of virtual

reality software, systems and applications. Even with no programming experience, users could

build also complex and high-quality interactive 3D simulation scenes. Besides, we can use

EON Studio to import easily many types of 3D models, such as 3D Studio Max models,

LightWave 3D models, SolidWorks models and AutoCAD models.

C++Builder is a rapid application development environment that originally developed

by Borland corporation, which combines the Visual Component Library of Delphi and the C++

compiler. Compared with many other application development environments, the

C++Builder has many advantages, such as powerful functions for database development and

powerful functions for network programming.

Furthermore, we would like to describe our hybrid simulation system of juicing and filling

production line by the following steps: (1) AutoCAD based process design and layout design,

(2) SolidWorks based scene modeling, (3) EON Studio based model import and route

configuration, (4) C++Builder based interactive simulation control.

2. Message Passing Mechanism

The developed simulation system for juicing and filling production line is based on the

EON studio platform, which is a very powerful 3D real time simulation software. After the

import of physic SolidWorks models and the route configuration of EON studio, the C++

Builder platform is then adopted to import further the configured models from the EON

studio for providing interactive simulations based on the EONX control. As one kind of

ActiveX controls, the EONX control could provide versatile message interfaces between

applications of EON studio and that of some other platforms. The outside host application

could then send messages to EONX control in real time to extend the system interactivity. A

large number of properties and methods are encapsulated in the EONX control, where

SimulationFile is one of the most commonly used properties for specifying paths of

simulation model files. Table 1 shows the most commonly used methods of the EONX

control.

Table 1. The Most Commonly used Methods of EONX Control

Method Names Descriptions

Start() Execute specified EON files

Stop() Stop specified EON files

Pause(long) Suspend specified EON files

SendEvent(wchar_t*,tagVARIANT*) Send messages to EONX control

GetNumberOfInEvents() Get the number of obtained messages

GetNumberOfOutEvents() Get the number of sent messages

GetInEventName(long) Get the name of obtained message

GetOutEventName(long) Get the name of sent message

GetInEventType(long) Get the type of obtained message

GetOutEventType(long) Get the type of sent message

Then, C++Builder could communicate with EONX control by carrying out the following

procedures, based on the provided methods.

(1) Create nodes of InEvent or OutEvent in the EON studio platform.

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(2) Connect related InEvent nodes or OutEvent nodes, which is also called the route

configuration of the EON studio platform.

(3) Add the OnEvent function of EONX control to C++Builder and monitor events in the

InEvent function of EONX control, where the event monitoring function is as follows.

void __fastcall TfrmNewConfig::ctrEonEvent(TObject *Sender,

BSTR bstrNodeName, Variant *pvarNodeValue) // Monitor events

{

if(bstrNodeName = = “OutEvent”)

{

//…Monitoring and processing of OutEvent nodes of the EON studio platform

}

}

3. Process Design and Layout Design

3.1. Process Design

According to the previous general framework, the process design is the first step for

developing our production line system, which consisted traditionally of a juicing production

line (JPL) and a filling production line (FPL). As one of two major production lines, the JPL

contains cracking and pitting machine, cleaning machine, enzyme digestion chamber, juice

extractor, filter, sterilization chamber, etc., Figure 1 shows a typical juicing process.

Cracking

and pitting

vacuum pump

Cleaning Enzyme digestion

Juice extraction

Sterilization Filtering

Figure 1. A Typical Juicing Process

As the other one of two major production lines, the FPL contains bottle washing machine,

blowing machine, filling machine, capper, labeling machine, etc. Being different to the

process of JPL, the process of FPL is susceptile to materials of filling containers, such as

paper container, metal container, glass container, and plastic container. Figure 2 shows a

typical paper container based filling process.

Storage

FillingContainer feeding Capping Sealing

vacuum pump

Figure 2. A Typical Paper Container based Filling Process

Figure 3 shows a typical metal container based filling process.

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Storage

FillingContainer feeding

CappingSealing

vacuum pump

Blowing

Labeling

Figure 3. A Typical Metal Container based Filling Process

Figure 4 shows a typical glass container based filling process.

Storage

FillingContainer feeding Capping SealingLabeling

vacuum pump

Figure 4. A Typical Glass Container based Filling Process

Figure 5 shows a typical plastic container based filling process.

Storage

FillingContainer feeding

CappingSealing

vacuum pump

Blowing

Labeling

Container washing

Figure 5. A Typical Plastic Container based Filling Process

3.2. Layout Design

According to the previous general framework, the layout design is the second step for

developing our simulation system of the juicing and filling production line. In order to

improve capital utilization rates, solve restrictions of land usage, and ensure a safe production,

the layout design is required by enterprises to allocate resources efficiently. The task of a

layout design is to conduct a reasonable combination and configuration of buildings, devices,

transportation roads, and production areas for unobstructed communications, according to

requirements from free movements of people, goods and information.

There are many types of layouts for the production line. According to workflows, layouts

of the production line can be categorized into four typical types, which are product oriented

layout, process oriented layout, group production unit layout and fixed layout. According to

arrangement shapes of production devices and logistics routes, layouts of the production line

can be categorized into another four types, which are circular layout, U-shaped layout, linear

layout and serpentine layout. Furthermore, layouts of the production line can be also

classified into another two types which are adopted in this paper, decided by whether

cracking and pitting process are required or easily removable peels are existed. The first type

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consists of a cracking and pitting production line for fruits, such as litchi and longan, as

shown in Figure 6, which is designed in the AutoCAD 2007 software.

The second type consists of a peeling production line for fruits, such as orange, pineapple,

pawpaw, banana, guava, carambola starfruit, kiwifruit, strawberry, passionflower, mango and

loquat, as shown in Figure 7, which is also designed in the AutoCAD 2007 software.

Figure 6. Layout of the Cracking and Pitting Production Line

Figure 7. Layout of the Peeling Production Line

4. Scene Modeling

4.1. Cracking and Pitting Machine

The main working parts of a cracking and pitting machine involve cylindrical cam,

charging tray, plastic roller, feeding pawl, blowpit, peeling roller, geneva mechanism, bevel

drive, straight gear drive and sprocket drive.

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Because there are three key processes related to a cracking and pitting machine, which are

fruit feeding, fruit cracking and fruit pitting, we can categorize main parts of a cracking and

pitting machine into feeding mechanism, cracking mechanism and pitting mechanism.

(1) Feeding mechanism. The main working parts and transmission parts of a feeding

mechanism, as shown in Figure 3(a) of paper [1], include plastic roller, feeding pawl, geneva

mechanism and bevel drive, where the plastic roller is arranged between two plastic rollers.

(2) Cracking mechanism. The main working parts and transmission parts of a cracking

mechanism, as shown in Figure 3(b) of paper [1], include cylindrical cam, charging tray and

geneva mechanism, where axes of cylindrical cam should coincide with axes of charging tray

that rotates to the horizontal plane.

(3) Pitting mechanism. The main working parts and transmission parts of a pitting

mechanism, as shown in Figure 3(c) of paper [1], include peeling roller, cylindrical cam and

recovery scraper.

(4) Whole assembly model. All the parts models are further assembled to form the whole

assembly model of the cracking and pitting machine. Special attention should be paid to the

coordinate system, which could influence the relationship of parts and nodes when they are

imported into the EON studio platform. Hence, a reasonable choose of coordinate position

plays a key role in determining the relationship of simulated nodes. Figure 8 shows the whole

assembly model of the cracking and pitting machine, which is developed by the SolidWorks

software.

Figure 8. The Whole Assembly Model of the Cracking and Pitting Machine

4.2. Filling Machine

The main working parts of a rotary filling machine involve engine base, conveying belt,

bottle screw, inlet field spider, outlet field spider, fluid reservoir, filling valve, filling station,

and bottle lifting mechanism.

In our simulation system, we want to simulate the process of containers import or export of

the filling machine and the process of the rotation of the filling station, so we should model

carefully each of above working parts for a rotary filling machine.

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(1) Engine base. The container experiences successively a linear motion, a circular motion

and a linear motion when enters into the filling machine. The engine base carries conveyor

chain, field spider, filling station and fluid reservoir.

(2) Filling station and fluid reservoir. There are 12 filling valves and 12 detents on a filling

station. Besides, the filling station and the fluid reservoir share a coaxial main shaft.

(3) Inlet field spider and outlet field spider. We set the diameter of the inlet field spider to

be one half of the diameter of the filling station and their outer annulus linear velocity to be

the same. There are 6 detents on a inlet field spider, which causes the change of the container

from linear motion to circular motion. Furthermore, we use the same model of inlet field

spider as that of outlet field spider.

(a) No Load Model

(b) Full Load Model

Figure 9. The Whole Assembly Model of the Filling Machine

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(4) Container. Containers are supposed to be assembled to corresponding positions of the

filling machine. We could either determine firstly the filling station size and then choose

corresponding suitable container or determine firstly the container size and then choose

corresponding suitable filling station. Once models are import into the EON studio platform,

the container circulates not around its central axis, but around the filling station or the field

spider. So, we should set the distance between its central axis and the z axis to be the same as

the diameter of the filling station or field spider, which would bring convenience not only for

EON debug but also for model assembly .

(5) Whole assembly model. All the parts models are further assembled to form the whole

assembly model of the filling machine. We should also pay special attention to the coordinate

system as that of the cracking and pitting machine. Figure 9 shows the whole assembly model

of the filling machine, which is also developed by the SolidWorks software.

5. Simulation

5.1. Model Import and Route Configuration

Since we obtain the physic scene models by above steps, we can then proceed to import

and configure these models in EON studio, as follows: (1) Open the EON studio platform and

click the Window item in the menu bar. Then, tick both Simulation Tree and Routes. (2)

Click Scene node item. Then, select the Scene node in the Simulation Tree window. (3) Click

successively the File item, the Import item and the Solidworks item. Then, select the needed

SolidWorks model files. (4) Open the Model Import dialog box. Then, click Next by using

default configurations until Finish. (5) Last, click the OK button in the Geometry Import

dialog box to import the selected SolidWorks model into the EON studio platform.

Thus, we finish importing the needed SolidWorks models. Next, we should add different

kinds of nodes, such as the Rotate Node and the Viewports Node, to the Simulation Tree

window and the Route window, as shown separately in the left part and right top part of

Figure 10. Furthermore, we configure the routes of these nodes, such as the line between node

1-1 and node 1-2. Last, we can start to simulate the production line by click the Start

Simulation menu and stop simulation by click the Stop Simulation menu in the EON studio

platform. Figure 10 shows also the preliminary simulation result.

Figure 10. Model Import and Route Configuration in the EON Studio Platform

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5.2. Interactive Simulation Control

We want to achieve some other advanced interactive functions, such as the configuration

of the production line by our customs and the online customizable quotation system, which

can’t be realized by using only the EON studio platform. Fortunately, we can achieve this

goal by using the message mechanism between the C++ Builder platform and the EON studio

platform, as described in Section 2. Figure 11 shows our final interactive simulation system of

the juicing and filling production line.

Figure 11. Interactive Simulation Control in the C++ Builder Platform

5.3. Performance Evaluation

For performance evaluation, we use the same three metrics as in paper [1], which are: (1)

Relative design period 𝑡𝑟𝑑. It is a ratio of design period from other methods to design period

from the traditional method. A lower 𝑡𝑟𝑑 means a shorter design period; (2) Balance value of

the production line 𝑣𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒. It includes mainly reciprocal values of beat evaluation 𝑏, quality

evaluation 𝑞 and flexible evaluation 𝑓. A lower 𝑣𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 means a better balance; (3) Layout

value of the workshop 𝑣𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑡. It reflects the overall performance of the production line, such

as logistics, information flow, production capacity, production efficiency and production cost.

A lower value of 𝑣𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑡 means a better layout.

Then, we compare our design method with the traditional design method based on these

three evaluation metrics. Figure 12 shows the results. It can been seen that the 𝑣𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒, the

𝑣𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑡 and the 𝑡𝑟𝑑 of our design method are all lower than that of the traditional design

method, demonstrating that our method can not only shorten effectively the design period but

also improve greatly the design quality of the juicing and filling production line.

6. Conclusion

Virtual reality, as one of the most vigorous interdisciplinary technologies, is maturing

gradually and involving more and more areas, such as aviation, aerospace, education,

healthcare, military affair, entertainment and manufacturing industry. The usage of virtual

reality technology in the juicing and filling production line, which will certainly increase

productivities and bring subversive changes, is an inevitable result of developments for the

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modern manufacturing industry. In the future, we will use the proposed hybrid framework in

other useful applications, such as virtual campus simulation system and virtual factory

simulation system.

(a) Performance with Respect to 𝑣𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒

(b) Performance with Respect to 𝑣𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑡 and 𝑡𝑟𝑑

Figure 12. Comparison of Different Design Methods

Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by the Doctor Startup Foundation of Wuyi University under

Grant No. 2014BS07, the Basic Theory and Scientific Research Project of Jiangmen City

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under title “Research on complex network evolution model and link prediction”, and the

National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 71202165. We would like to

thank anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

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Authors

Changyu Liu, he joined the Communication and Computer

Network Lab of Guangdong as a PhD student in 2010 at South China

University of Technology, advised by Prof. Shoubin Dong. Then, he

joined the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University

as a Visiting Scholar in September 2012 to work with his advisor Dr.

Alex Hauptmann. His research interests include machine learningand

computer vision.

Bin Lu, he is currently a lecturer in the School of Computer Science

at Wuyi University. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2013 from South

China University of Technology. He is a reviewer of the Journal of

Yangtze River Scientific Research Institute since 2010. His main

research interests include complex network and machine learning.

Cong Li, received the PhD degree in Management Science and

Engineering from Hefei University of Technology in 2009. He is an

associate professor at the College of Computer Science, Sichuan

Normal University. His research interests include E-commerce and

business intelligence. He is a member of the ACM, and also is a senior

member of the China Computer Federation.

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a hybrid simulation system for juicing and filling production line

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