L. H. Shu

Biomimetic Concept Generation Applied to Design for Remanufacture

This paper applies a biomimetic design method to generate concepts for design that facilitates remanufacture. Biomimetic design fully or partially imitates or evokes some biological phenomenon. A method for identifying and using biological analogies for engineering problems was introduced in an earlier paper. This initial method was tested on an example in design for remanufacture. Here, the method is further developed and used to find more biomimetic solutions for the same problem in design for remanufacture. While the example problem is in remanufacture, the method can be used to develop biomimetic concepts for engineering design in general. The paper first summarizes previous efforts in developing and testing the biomimetic concept generation technique. Next described are the differences in the method that are used for this paper, including the increased importance of strategies to help identify promising analogies. Results of applying the modified method to design for remanufacture are documented.Copyright

Application of a design-for-remanufacture framework to the selection of product life-cycle fastening and joining methods

This paper describes efforts towards product design that facilitates remanufacture. Insights on how to design products for ease of remanufacture were obtained from literature and collaboration with remanufacturers. The most essential aspect of design for remanufacture was found to conflict with other design-for-x methodologies, such as design for assembly and design for recycling. Design for remanufacture was therefore viewed in the context of other life-cycle domains, specifically manufacture and assembly, maintenance, and scrap-material recycling. Since fastening and joining issues are common to all these domains, a framework that evaluates the effect of joint design on each of these life-cycle stages was developed. This framework estimates the cost of remanufacture relative to other life-cycle costs determined by the joint design, and was applied to case studies of joints that did not facilitate remanufacture.

Abstraction of Biological Analogies for Design

Abstract Biomimetic design uses biological analogies to inspire design concepts. This paper describes a study on selecting and using relevant biological phenomena for design. A hierarchy of forms, behaviors and principles classifies how biological phenomena are presented as potential analogies. The type of similarity achieved between biological phenomena and resulting concepts is affected by the types of information presented in the descriptions of the phenomena. Results suggest that concepts based on strategically similar analogies occur more frequently in the presence of principles that explain the biological phenomena, rather than descriptions of phenomena that focus on forms and behaviors.

Using language as related stimuli for concept generation

This paper examines the use of language, specifically verbs, as stimuli for concept generation. Because language has been shown to be important to the reasoning process in general as well as to specific reasoning processes that are central to the design process, we are investigating the relationship between language and conceptual design. The use of language to facilitate different stages of the design process has been investigated in the past. Our previous work, and the work of others, showed that ideas produced can be expressed through related hierarchical lexical relationships, so we investigated the use of verbs within these hierarchical relationships as stimuli for ideas. Participants were provided with four problems and related verb stimuli, and asked to develop concepts using the stimuli provided. The stimuli sets were generated by exploring verb hierarchies based on functional words from the problem statements. We found that participants were most successful when using lower level (more specific) verbs as stimuli, and often higher level general verbs were only used successfully in conjunction with lower level verbs. We also observed that intransitive verbs (verbs that cannot take a direct object) were less likely to be used successfully in the development of concepts. Overall, we found that the verb chosen as stimulus by the participant directly affects the success and the type of concept developed.

A natural-language approach to biomimetic design

Abstract This paper summarizes various aspects of identifying and applying biological analogies in engineering design using a natural-language approach. To avoid the immense as well as potentially biased task of creating a biological database specifically for engineering design, the chosen approach searches biological knowledge in natural-language format, such as books and papers, for instances of keywords describing the engineering problem. Strategies developed to facilitate this search are identified, and how text descriptions of biological phenomena are used in problem solving is summarized. Several application case studies are reported to illustrate the approach. The value of the natural-language approach is demonstrated by its ability to identify relevant biological analogies that are not limited to those entered into a database specifically for engineering design.

Exploring the Use of Functional Models in Biomimetic Conceptual Design

The biological world provides numerous cases for analogy and inspiration. From simple cases such as hook and latch attachments to articulated-wing flying vehicles, nature provides many sources for ideas. Though biological systems provide a wealth of elegant and ingenious approaches to problem solving, there are challenges that prevent designers from leveraging the full insight of the biological world into the designed world. This paper describes how those challenges can be overcome through functional analogy. Through the creation of a function-based repository, designers can find biomimetic solutions by searching the function for which a solution is needed. A biomimetic functionbased repository enables learning, practicing, and researching designers to fully leverage the elegance and insight of the biological world. In this paper, we present the initial efforts of functional modeling biological systems and then transferring the principles of the biological system to an engineered system. Four case studies are presented in this paper. These case studies include a biological solution to a problem found in nature and engineered solutions corresponding to the high-level functionality of the biological solution, i.e., a housefly’s winged flight and a flapping wing aircraft. The case studies show that unique creative engineered solutions can be generated through functional analogy with nature. DOI: 10.1115/1.2992062 The designs of the biological world allow organisms to survive in nearly all of earth’s challenging environments filling niches from under-sea volcanic vents, tundras both frozen and desolate, poisonous salt flats, and deserts rarely seeing rain. Nature’s designs are the most elegant, innovative, and robust solution principles and strategies allowing for life to survive many of the earth’s challenges. Biomimetic design aims to leverage the insight of the biological world into the engineered world, but because of numerous challenges, biomimetic design is still undeveloped as a method for formal concept generation. Allowing design engineers’ formal and full access to the solution principles and strategies of the biological world remains beyond current methods and knowledge. Many challenges prevent immediate adoption of designing via biological inspiration including 1 a lack of equivalent engineering technologies, 2 a knowledge gap between designers and biologists, and 3 unawareness of analogous biological systems. Significant effort and time are required to become a competent engineering designer, which creates an equally significant obstacle to becoming sufficiently knowledgeable about biological systems to effectively execute biomimetic design. Formal design based on functional modeling and concept generation methods 1–9 provides a unique opportunity to extend biomimetic design to meet the challenges thwarting the adoption into formal engineering design practices. The generation of functional models based on what a product must do instead of how it will be accomplished provides designers with many benefits such as explicit correlation with customer needs, comprehensive understanding of the design problem, enhanced creativity through abstraction, and innovative concept generation focused on answering what must be done 7,8. Design based on functional modeling provides designers with the freedom to consider the functionality of analogous biological systems without the burden of technological feasibility, and when applied with automated concept generation techniques based on predefined and expandable knowledge bases such as a design repository, biological systems may be explored without the need for advanced training in biological sciences. The representation of products by function has enabled the creation of design repositories allowing designers to access solution principles that are outside their personal knowledge or expertise 10–13. The ability of functional representation to allow designers to access such design information is a key impetus toward the extension of biomimetic design through the method of functional modeling. If biological inspiration requires designers to have extensive knowledge of biological systems, then the insight of the biological world will never be fully accessible to engineering design. The objectives of the research presented in this paper are to functionally explore biological systems to discover the knowledge needed to enable a function-based biomimetic design repository. First, a brief summary of previous work in biomimetic design is provided. Next, the research methodology that was followed to generate the case studies found in Sec. 4 of this paper is discussed. Finally, conclusions reached thus far in this research are discussed as well as a summary of the direction for future work to be completed.

Biologically Meaningful Keywords for Functional Terms of the Functional Basis

Biology is recognized as an excellent source of analogies and stimuli for engineering design. Previous work focused on the systematic identification of relevant biological analogies by searching for instances of functional keywords in biological information in natural-language format. This past work revealed that engineering keywords could not always be used to identify the most relevant biological analogies as the vocabularies between biology and engineering are sufficiently distinct. Therefore, a retrieval algorithm was developed to identify potential biologically meaningful keywords that are more effective in searching biological text than corresponding engineering keywords. In our current work, we applied and refined the retrieval algorithm to translate functional terms of the functional basis into biologically meaningful keywords. The functional basis is widely accepted as a standardized representation of engineering product functionality. Therefore, our keywords could serve as a thesaurus for engineers to find biological analogies relevant to their design problems. We also describe specific semantic relationships that can be used to identify biologically meaningful keywords in excerpts describing biological phenomena. These semantic relations were applied as criteria to identify the most useful biologically meaningful keywords. Through a preliminary validation experiment, we observed that different translators were able to apply the criteria to identify biologically meaningful keywords with a high degree of agreement to those identified by the authors. In addition, we describe how fourth-year undergraduate mechanical engineering students used the biologically meaningful keywords to develop concepts for their design projects. DOI: 10.1115/1.4003249

Considering remanufacture and other end-of-life options in selection of fastening and joining methods

This paper emphasizes remanufacturing as an end-of-life option and the effects of fastening and joining methods on remanufacture. Three case studies describe examples of fastening and joining that facilitate assembly and recycling but impede remanufacturing. To illustrate the impact of fastening choices on remanufacture relative to other life-cycle concerns, the development of a computer tool that estimates the effects of fastening and joining choices on manufacture, assembly, maintenance, remanufacture and recycling is in progress. The current implementation of the tool is described and used to compare the fastening methods that are used in the case studies with alternative fastening methods. These comparisons suggest that elements of fastening methods that are prone to failure be made separable from the remainder of the part.

TRANSLATING TERMS OF THE FUNCTIONAL BASIS INTO BIOLOGICALLY MEANINGFUL KEYWORDS

Biology has long been recognized as an excellent source of analogies and stimuli for engineering design. Previous work focused on the systematic identification of relevant biological analogies by searching for instances of functional keywords in biological information in natural language format. This past work revealed that engineering keywords couldn’t always be used to identify the most relevant biological analogies, as the vocabularies between biology and engineering are sufficiently distinct. Therefore, a method of identifying biologically meaningful keywords that correspond to engineering keywords was developed. Here, we apply and refine this method by generating biologically meaningful keywords for the terms of the Functional Basis, which is widely accepted as a standardized representation of the functionality of engineering products. We present insights gained on the selection of biologically meaningful keywords for the function sets based on semantic relations. We then observe the use of our keywords by providing 4th year undergraduate design students with the biologically meaningful keywords that are related to the desired functions of their design projects.Copyright

Bridging Cross-Domain Terminology for Biomimetic Design

This work aims to improve creativity and innovation in design by facilitating the use of cross-domain analogies, particularly from biological phenomena, as stimulus for concept generation. Rather than create an enormous database of biological knowledge to specifically support engineering design, we have chosen to take advantage of the large amount of biological knowledge already in natural-language format, e.g., books, journals, etc. Relevant biological analogies for any given design problem are found by searching for instances of functional keywords that describe the intended effect of the design solution in a natural-language corpus. However, the optimal choice of keywords, or search terms, is complicated by the fact that engineers and biologists may use differing domain-specific lexicons to describe related concepts. Therefore, an engineer without sufficient background in biology may not be able to identify keywords with biological connotation that are not obviously related to the engineering keywords. This paper describes efforts to bridge the gap in lexicons by examining words that frequently collocate with searched words. The biological meaningfulness of these bridge words is characterized by how frequently they occur within definitions of biological terms in a biology dictionary. Search words identified this way may not be obvious to domain novices, and may parallel those suggested by domain experts, thus facilitating the use of cross-domain ideas to support design. Our approach of generating bridge words with biological meaningfulness is generic and can be used to bridge any disparate domains (e.g., engineering and economics). Thus designers are enabled to quickly access relevant concepts from different domains to produce more innovative solutions.Copyright