Function-to-form mapping: model, representation and applications in design synthesis

Design of a new artifact begins with incomplete knowledge about the final product and the design evolves as it progresses from the conceptual design stage to a more detailed design. In this paper, an effort has been made to give a structural framework, through a set of generic definitions, to product specification, functional representation, artifact representation, artifact behavior and tolerance representation. A design synthesis process has been proposed for evolution of a product from the product specification. The proposed design synthesis method is a mapping from the functional requirements to artifacts, with multi-stage constrained optimization during stages of design evolution. Provisions have been kept to augment and/or modify the product specification and domain knowledge during stages of development to guide the design process. The effectiveness of the proposed design process has been illustrated with a simple design example based on a sample artifact library. An overall design scheme has been presented. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.