EXPRESSION OF COMPLICATED FUNC- TIONAL AND STUCTURAL RELATION- SHIPS AND THEIR

APPLICATIONS IN CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

Wang Yuxin

(School of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092)

Yang Liyan  Zhu Dianhua

(School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072)

Abstract: Considering the coupling connections among the functional cells and their complicated relationships, such as connection in series, in parallel and in both of them and so on, as well as among the sub-structures, a computerized conceptual design method is given out for mechanical systems based on the function decomposition and recomposition method. At first, the mathematic expressions of complicated functional relationships generated during the decomposition of functions are introduced. Then the expressions are applied in selection of candidates of conceptual designs. The results show that the method is efficient in finding out intended schemes of conceptual design and results explosion with morphological matrix method can be avoided. And also, since the scheme of conceptual design is expressed in symbolical form and the relationships among substructures are given out in the scheme, the further application of the scheme will be found in automatic 3 dimensional virtual system designs.

Key words: Conceptual design  Automatic method  Function unit  Coupling connection

CLC No: TH122

教育部优秀青年教师教学科研奖励基金(1999076)和上海市重点学科建设资助项目. Received 20030610, received in revised form 20031120