SIMULATION: Transactions of The Society for Modeling and Simulation International

Abdulhussain, Yasmin; Ghelani, Hardik; Henderson, Helen; Sudhir, Meghana; Mascarenhas, Sharon; Radhakrishnan, Rajan; Jan, Reem Kais

doi: 10.1177/00375497221101066pmid: N/A

Over the past 10 years, there has been an increase in the use of high-fidelity simulation (HFS) as a tool to support and enhance learning in health profession programs. In this article, we review the utilization of HFS in biomedical (basic science) courses for health professions students, and we compare its effectiveness to traditional teaching methods. Studies exploring the impact of HFS on students and residents were included in the review. The use of HFS is more prevalent in advanced clinical settings such as in training residents and nurses than in teaching students in preclinical years. When compared to traditional teaching methods, HFS is noted to be superior in delivering core biomedical concepts to students and healthcare professionals. However, a few studies showed no significant differences between HFS and traditional teaching methods when assessing clinical management skills. Overall, HFS is a valuable teaching tool which enhances knowledge retention and clinical skill acquisition in medical education.

Jen, Hui-Chiao; Huff, Brian L; LeBoulluec, Aera K; Nasirian, Bahareh; Bum Kim, Seoung; Rosenberger, Jay M; Chen, Victoria CP

doi: 10.1177/00375497221101064pmid: N/A

Aircraft deicing/anti-icing fluids (ADFs) are applied to remove and prevent icing on aircraft during taxi and takeoff. The Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) International Airport uses deicing pads for deicing activities that collect and contain the spent deicing fluids for proper treatment or disposal. Local waterways receive ADF as “drip and shear” during the aircraft taxi on the runway and then takeoff. The glycol-based ADF serves as a nutrient for bacteria that grow exponentially, deplete dissolved oxygen (DO) from receiving waterways, and subsequently kill aquatic life. In this paper, we present a data-driven discrete-event simulation modeling process developed in collaboration with DFW Airport to assess aircraft assignment strategies to deicing pad locations by monitoring impact on DO. Our process consists of the following phases: (1) Data Collection, (2) Probability Distribution Modeling, and (3) State Transition Modeling. Both Phases (2) and (3) utilized data mining approaches, including treed regression and variable selection via false discovery rate. Detailed implementation of these phases is described for the DFW Airport case study, and the DFW Airport deicing activities simulation tool framework is presented. The actual data and simulation results were compared in terms of the DO levels in airport receiving waterways to verify the model validity after implementing the proposed model for DFW. Thus, the proposed model can be implemented by airports to control and minimize the adverse environmental effects resulting from deicing activities by optimizing the aircraft assignment to the pad locations.

Favaretti, Piero; Parussini, Lucia

doi: 10.1177/00375497221107014pmid: N/A

Laser welding can be characterized by very small radii of beam, in the order of tenths of a millimeter, and very short high power inputs (more kW in few ms), and thus, it can be certainly classified as a microscale process with a high level of physical complexity. This is clearly incompatible, due to the high computational costs, with the analysis of macroscale processes related to large geometries and non-uniform welding patterns. In order to overcome this issue, a simplified finite element method (FEM)–based thermo-elastoplastic model is presented to simulate heat transfer and residual deformations due to thermal expansion and material plasticity. The idea is to substitute the microscale analysis with a mesoscale approach that renounces to describe in detail all the physical phenomena occurring in the heated zone and focuses attention on the correct prediction of the keyhole depth and weld pool size, that are the most important parameters to describe the mechanical characteristics of the welded joint. The concept of passive element, based on the numerical adjustment of the material properties in order to take into account the orthotropic behavior during the keyhole formation, is introduced. In particular, the new approach has been tested on the pulsed laser welding process of two overlapping DC04 steel plates with thickness of 0.5 mm (so-called sandwich) and validated through experimental tests involving different input parameters, such as power, pulse duration and frequency, speed, and geometrical pattern.

Si, Lei; Xing, Feng; Wang, Zhongbin; Tan, Chao

doi: 10.1177/00375497221105290pmid: N/A

The automatic control of top coal caving is of great significance to realize intelligent coal mining. In the process of top coal caving, a coal-gangue mixed area containing coal, gangue, and air is formed at the tail beam of the hydraulic support, which has different electromagnetic parameters, different volumes, and different shapes. To explore the transmission characteristics of electromagnetic wave in coal-gangue mixed model and the influence of different gangue ratios on electromagnetic wave propagation, the coal-gangue mixed model is established based on the random medium theory. Some electromagnetic forward modeling is carried out with different coal-gangue granularities, electromagnetic parameters, and gangue ratios based on finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) and finite-integration time-domain (FITD) methods. The results show that different granularities of coal and gangue will affect the amplitude of electromagnetic wave time-domain waveform. Under the same particle size, the equivalent electromagnetic parameters in the coal-gangue mixed medium will be larger with higher gangue ratio. Furthermore, the difference of transmitted wave signals between different gangue ratios will be larger with higher electromagnetic parameters difference of the coal and gangue. For higher refractive index, the propagation velocity of electromagnetic wave in the medium and the transmitted wave amplitude will be smaller. In addition, the comparison results illustrate that the rules of electromagnetic wave propagation obtained by FDTD and FITD methods are basically the same, which verifies the correctness of the simulations in this paper. The simulation results can lay a theoretical foundation for identifying the coal-gangue mixed degree in the process of top coal caving.

Mello, Braulio A; Wainer, Gabriel A

doi: 10.1177/00375497221099548pmid: N/A

The design of embedded real-time systems (RTS) is challenging due to the criticality of the timing constraints of these systems. Various informal and formal methods for RTS design have been proposed, both in the design space and the real-time execution at the hardware level, but many of these methods are not effective when the complexity of the system scales up. Here, we discuss a new method to integrate a modeling (and simulation) formalism that allows designing complex systems specifications for real-time constraints called Imprecise-DEVS (I-DEVS), and the mapping of such high-level models into a real-time task model. This method allows analyzing real-time constraints both at the high level of modeling as well as the low level of the tasks executed by the processing units and the Operating System. A new method to study the schedulability of the task models is proposed. The method provides a design analysis space from the model level, up to the individual tasks, with a focus on the schedulability of real-time constraints under transient overloading conditions.

Eid, Heba F; Mansour, Romany F; Cuevas, Erik

doi: 10.1177/00375497221101058pmid: N/A

A vital subject of engineering structures is mechanical oscillations. If the mechanical oscillation is uncontrolled, it can lead to structural failure due to large dynamic stresses developed, as the collapse occurred on the Broughton Suspension bridge due to soldiers walking in step. This paper addresses mechanical oscillation problems employing a proposed modified variant of coyote optimizer. Coyote optimization algorithm (COA) is a new meta-heuristic which mimics the social behavior of coyotes. COA suffers with stagnation problems and immature convergence while solving optimization problems. In this paper, the COA is hybridized with Laplace Crossover operator and new culture tendency strategies are adapted, modified variants of coyote optimization algorithm (MvCOA). The proposed MvCOA is presented to approximately solve mechanical oscillation problems independently of their order, form, and stated conditions. With the fundamental concepts of ordinary differential equations and Fourier series expansion, mechanical oscillation problems can be modeled as a problem of optimization whereby the optimization task is achieved using the proposed MvCOA. Five different ordinary differential equations and four mechanical oscillation problems are solved approximately and then compared with their corresponding exact solutions. The statistical analysis validates that the presented MvCOA is an effective algorithm for different optimization problems. However, from the empirical results, it is visible that the suggested MvCOA approximate approach was able to reach a successful performance solving different mechanical oscillation problems.

Li, Manman; Lu, Jian; Sun, Jiahui

doi: 10.1177/00375497221105527pmid: N/A

This study models and analyzes the dynamic interaction between route choice and prescriptive information on a degradable network. The predictively prescriptive information is first explicitly modeled based on travelers’ behavior and historical data. Its accuracy is then dynamically measured to adjust the information compliance rate based on travelers’ expectations and experiences. Finally, a logit function is adopted to describe travelers’ route choice. Based on the proposed model, the dynamic interaction between route choice and prescriptive information on a degradable network is investigated by theoretical analyses and numerical experiments, which provides insights for the design and operation of advanced traveler information systems and traffic management.