Ian Yellowley

Professor Emeritus

B.Sc. (Nottingham), M.Sc., Ph.D. (Manc.)

ph:
(604) 822-3528
fx: (604) 822-2403
email: yellowley@mech.ubc.ca
website 1: www.sites.mech.ubc.ca/~yellowle
website 2 :
www.sites.mech.ubc.ca/~mel

Research Interests

  • Manufacturing Engineering and Product Design with specific emphasis on the following areas:
    • Process modeling, design, and optimization
    • Sensor development
    • Embedded system design problems

Current Research Work

  • Interests are focused upon the modeling of manufacturing processes and the design of control systems, sensors and machines for production environments.
  • The major project undertaken over the last 12 years deals with the overall design of open architecture control systems for manufacturing equipment. The work has resulted in the design of a high performance, but relatively low cost, architecture for general usage. The system derives most of its advantage from a rather unusual, highly parallel, architecture for which several patents have been obtained.
  • Current activity within the laboratory is focused upon the use of the architecture in real time process control of complex metal cutting operations and the development of automated approaches to system configuration, (particularly dynamic reconfiguration). The actual CNC system resulting from the research is however a complete commercial product and is being jointly developed with Cameleon Controls Inc.
  • The basic theme underlying the work in process modelling is the derivation of sound physical and economic models that may be used for process planning, optimization and new process design and development. The major impediment to the real time application of such models in production environments is the lack of suitable sensors. Recent efforts within our laboratory have been aimed towards the development of robust, high bandwidth, sensors for force, torque, wear and motion.
  • The main interest in the planning area is the complete integration of generative Computer Aided Process Planning systems with the output from standard CAD systems on one side, and with the real time process control activities on the other. The CNC system developed within the laboratory is being used as a vehicle to achieve this end.

Selected Publications

  • Bouvier M, Yellowley I., 2006, “A distributed reconfigurable architecture for fault-tolerant systems” Int Journal Manufacturing Technology and Management, Vol 8, (1/2/3) , Issue on Intelligent Industrial Automation), pp141 – 158,
  • Oldknow KD, Yellowley I., 2005, “FPGA-based servo control and three-dimensional dynamic interpolation”, IEEE-ASME Trans Mechatronics, Vol10, (1), pp98-110
  • Oldknow KD, Yellowley I., 2003, “Implementation and validation of 3-dimensional dynamic interpolation using an FPGA based controller “, Int. J. Mach Tools & Manufacture, Vol 43 (9), pp937-945
  • Oldknow KD, Yellowley I, 2001, “Design, implementation and validation of a system for the dynamic reconfiguration of open architecture machine tool controls”, Int. J. Mach Tools & Manufacture Vol 41 (6), pp795-808
  • Yang, L. and Yellowley, I., 2001, “High Speed Contouring using a Novel Dynamic Interpolation Mechanism”, Int. J. Mach. Tools and Manufacture, Vol. 41, pp. 773-794.
  • Yellowley, I., Venter, R.D. and Salustri, F., 2001, “The Canadian Design Engineering Network”, NSF Conference on Design and Manufacturing”, Clearwater, Florida, January.
  • Seethaler RJ, Yellowley I, 2000, “Process control and dynamic process planning “, Int. J. Mach Tools & Manufacture Vol 40, 2, pp239-257