Towards the theoretical limit of optimal requirement decomposition using solution spaces for complex systems design

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Markus Zimmermann
• Subject Area: Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development ; Mechanics
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 454149634

Dividing a large system into several smaller and more manageable parts such as sub-systems or components may reduce design complexity and enable concurrent engineering. Appropriate component requirements help to align separated and independent design work towards an overall system design goal. Good component requirements guarantee – when satisfied – that the system of interacting components reaches the overall design goal. In addition, they are just as restrictive as absolutely necessary and, thus, provide maximum design freedom. This is difficult to accomplish for complex systems, where non-linear component interaction with a vast number of combinations of possible component properties is to be taken into account.Existing approaches compute so-called solution spaces that are the Cartesian product of permissible regions for component properties. They rely on special adaptions of numerical optimization algorithms. Approaches that can treat arbitrary non-linear systems are unfortunatey limited to one-dimensional permissible regions, i.e., interval-type requirements for only one component property each. However, even when maximized, interval-type requirements may be unnecessarily restrictive. When a component possesses several relevant properties, requirements for each of them will be in total more restrictive than (or at least as restrictive as) one requirement for all of them. The key idea of this proposal is to compute and maximize generalized component solution spaces: they are the largest high-dimensional (or possibly infinite-dimensional) permissible regions for all relevant properties of one component. If properties of all components are realized within their respective component solution spaces, the overall design goal will be reached with maximum design freedom.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr.-Ing. Fabian Duddeck; Professor Dr. Helmut Harbrecht