Abstract:

Globalization and cooperation in international research and development are changing the way that universities need to educate and train their students. As universities prepare their graduates for the needs of the 21st century and the global market economy, they face significant pressure to overhaul their well-established curriculums. Such an overhaul requires the approval of the faculty and administration. Simulation-Based Engineering Science is an emerging area with the potential to provide graduates with the skills they will need to meet the challenges presented by increasingly complex and sophisticated designs of Cyber-Physical Systems as well as the pressure to shorten the time to market window.

To ensure that university graduates are prepared to meet the challenges of a global market, the methodology for educating engineering students must be broadened. Therefore, technology-enhanced learning can provide engineering students with the skills, tools, and training needed to verify and validate the details of complex Cyber-Physical Systems designs through various design models. The results from these models can be analyzed to ensure the design of a Cyber-Physical System in an area of concentration will be error free and will perform according to the specification and requirements defined.

For example, a simulation study can be performed to test and optimize the design of an engineering system like a Cyber-Physical System before it is built. This will help to avoid development of several costly prototypes which is necessary to correct possible errors and ensure that the design is safe to produce. Such assurance is especially important because of the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of today’s engineered systems like Cyber-Physical Systems and the demand for advanced system solutions and functionalities. Such demands require embedding modeling and simulation in engineering study programs to help students learn to analyze, compare alternatives, make decisions, and implement designs. This is critical to their education because the various models of a system can be manipulated easily by changing various structural parameters or input and/or outputs to accurately predict the correct functionality and performance of the real engineering system. A derived model achieves its purpose when an optimal match is obtained between the simulation results obtained from the model and the data sets gathered by experimentation and measurements of the real system’s parameters. Hence, modeling and simulation is an auspicious field which possesses tremendous potential for facilitating engineering solutions and providing a platform from which to educate students and conduct research on complex matters that would have not been feasible a few years ago. But teaching modeling and simulation in engineering study programs requires the development of suitable models for a variety of engineering systems which necessitates a thorough understanding of the system and its operating constraints. Consequently, a modeling and simulation study program in engineering has to cover the methodology of model building as it applies to the understanding and resolving of a multitude of issues, which requires engineering knowledge to develop mathematical models which fulfill real engineering system constraints. The paper will introduce in the transatlantic student project work as part of the transatlantic learning environment in modeling and simulation.

Keywords:

Transatlantic student project work, modeling and simulation, cyber-physical systems.