Matthew I. Campbell

A Computational Technique for Concept Generation

Few computational tools exist to assist designers during the conceptual phase of design, and design success is often heavily weighted on personal experience and innate ability. Many well-known methods (e.g. brainstorming, intrinsic and extrinsic searches, and morphological analysis) are designed to stimulate a designer’s creativity, but ultimately still rely heavily on individual bias and experience. Under the premise that quality designs comes from experienced designers, experience in the form of design knowledge is extracted from existing products and stored for reuse in a web-based repository. This paper presents an automated concept generation tool that utilizes the repository of existing design knowledge to generate and evaluate conceptual design variants. This tool is intended to augment traditional conceptual design phase activities and produce numerous feasible concepts early in the design process.Copyright

Agent-Based Synthesis of Electromechanical Design Configurations

A new automated approach to engineering design known as A-design is presented that creates design configurations through the interaction of software agents. By combining unique problem solving strategies, these agents are able to generate solutions to openended design problems. The A-design methodology makes several theoretical claims through its combination of multiagent systems, multiobjective design selection, and stochastic optimization, and is currently implemented to solve general electromechanical design problems. While this paper presents an overview of the theoretical basis for A-design, it primarily focuses on the method for representing electromechanical design configurations and the reasoning of the agents that construct these configurations. Results from an electromechanical test problem show the generality of the functional representation.

Computer-Based Design Synthesis Research: An Overview

One of the hallmarks of engineering design is the design synthesis phase where the creativity of the designer most prominently comes into play as solutions are generated to meet underlying needs. Over the past decades, methodologies for generating concepts and design solutions have matured to the point that computation-based synthesis provides a means to explore a wider variety of solutions and take over more tedious design tasks. This paper reviews advances in function-based, grammar-based, and analogy-based synthesis approaches and their contributions to computational design synthesis research in the last decade.

Automated synthesis of electromechanical design configurations from empirical analysis of function to form mapping

For an ideal design process, designers envision a configuration of components prior to determining dimensions or sizes of these components. Given the breadth of the component space, the design of any future artefact must be carefully planned to take advantage of the diverse set of possibilities. We conjecture that computational design tools could be developed to help designers navigate the design space in creating configurations from detailed specifications of function. In this research, a methodology is developed that extracts design knowledge from an expanding online library of engineering artefacts in the form of grammar rules. From an initial implementation of 189 rules extracted from 23 products, we demonstrate a computational process that builds new design configurations by borrowing concepts from how common functions are solved in related designs.

A Framework for Computational Design Synthesis: Model and Applications

The field of computational design synthesis has been an active area of research for almost half a century. Research advances in this field have increased the sophistication and complexity of the designs that can be synthesized, and advances in the speed and power of computers have increased the efficiency with which those designs can be generated. Some of the results of this research have begun to be used in industrial practice, yet many open issues and research challenges remain. This paper provides a model of the automated synthesis process as a context to discuss research in the area. The varied works of the authors are discussed as representative of the breadth of methods and results that exist under the field of computational design synthesis. Furthermore, some guidelines are presented to help researchers and designers find approaches to solving their particular design problems using computational design synthesis. DOI: 10.1115/1.2013289

RAPID MANUFACTURING OF SILICON CARBIDE COMPOSITES

Purpose – To review the initial phase of research for realizing an SLS‐based rapid manufacturing method for silicon carbide composites. The research was oriented toward actual commercial fabrication of fully functional parts.Design/methodology/approach – A screening method for materials in SLS was established using the operating parameters of the SLS machine, polymer analysis, heat transfer analysis and powder mechanics. The quality and potential application of the parts made during the research were assessed by rapid prototyping industry experts.Findings – Thermosetting materials can be used as binders in SLS. Free‐standing metal infiltration is possible and yields near‐net shape parts. Polymer matrix composites can also be produced readily. The part quality in terms of dimensional stability, detail and surface finish were commensurate with current commercially available rapid prototyping materials.Research limitations/implications – Although several binders were initially screened, only phenolic was exp...

Automating the conceptual design process: “from black box to component selection”

Abstract Conceptual design is a vital part of the design process during which designers first envision new ideas and then synthesize them into physical configurations that meet certain design specifications. In this research, a suite of computational tools is developed that assists the designers in performing this nontrivial task of navigating the design space for creating conceptual design solutions. The methodology is based on automating the function-based synthesis paradigm by combining various computational methods. Accordingly, three nested search algorithms are developed and integrated to capture different design decisions at various stages of conceptual design. The implemented system provides a method for automatically generating novel alternative solutions to real design problems. The application of the approach to the design of an electromechanical device shows the methods range of capabilities and how it serves as a comparison to human conceptual design generation and as a tool suite to complement the skills of a designer.

A Validation Study of an Automated Concept Generator Design Tool

The current version of the Concept Generator, an automated mathematically-based design tool, is studied in an effort to validate its general approach and establish research goals for further development. As part of the study, four undergraduate engineering researchers from the University of Missouri-Rolla and University of Texas at Austin execute a qualitative study of the software’s effectiveness at producing useful design solutions. The students engage in several activities designed to test the capabilities of this early version of the software. A report of their results and analyses identifies the benefits and disadvantages of the software (and underlying method) as viewed at this stage of development. Furthermore, the design solution data collected by the undergraduate researchers is analyzed more quantitatively during a post-study investigation. Both the qualitative and quantitative studies indicate that the Concept Generator is a promising first step toward the creation of an effective design tool for the conceptual phase of design. Furthermore, the student reports on their hands-on experiences with the software identify strengths and weaknesses of this early version of the Concept Generator and help establish many avenues for further development of the design tool.Copyright

A study on the grammatical construction of function structures

Function structures are used during conceptual engineering design to transform the customer requirements into specific functional tasks. Although they are usually constructed from a well-understood black-box description of an artifact, there is no clear approach or formal set of rules that guide the creation of function structures. To remedy the unclear formation of such structures and to provide the potential for automated reasoning of such structures, a graph grammar is developed and implemented. The grammar can be used by a designer to explore various solutions to a conceptual design problem. Furthermore, the grammar aids in disseminating engineering functional information and in teaching the function structure concept to untrained engineers. Thirty products are examined as a basis for developing the grammar rules, and the rules are implemented in an interactive user environment. Experiments with student engineers and with the automated creation of function structures validate the effectiveness of the grammar rules.

A Component Taxonomy as a Framework for Computational Design Synthesis

In this paper, we present our findings on the development of a taxonomy for electromechanical components. In building this taxonomy, we have two main objectives: First, we strive to establish a framework for future computational tools that archive, search, or reuse component knowledge during the conceptual phase of design. Second, we aim to define a standard vocabulary that derives uniformity and consistency in the representation of electromechanical component space. Through both empirically dissecting existing products and defining categories based on functional analysis, we defined 135 generic component types. The use and necessity of the resulting taxonomy by a suite of computational design tools are illustrated in two applications of conceptual design.