Collaborative Mechatronic Design and Systems Engineering: an Educational Experiment with KARREN

Designing mechatronic systems implies collaborative work with shared parameters between contributors from different domains. Moreover, each domain needs to capitalize knowledge (e.g. design rules) in order not to reinvent specific calculation or simulation processes. In this paper, it is explained how students have been implied in a collaborative design project dealing with an aeronautic actuator, namely an EMA (ElectroMechanical Actuator) for aileron actuation. Comparing three candidate kinematic architectures regarding the initial set of requirements, the project articulates modeling and simulation with Modelica language, the selection of relevant COTS components and their integration into a 3D mock-up within a wing and aileron assembly. In order to share relevant system and components parameters between design activities, KARREN tool is evaluated and configured for this project thanks to a preliminary systems engineering study to minimize the number of needed iterations to eventually converge on appropriate architectural solutions and their evaluation and comparison.