Process Integration and Design Optimization for Model-Based Systems Engineering With SysML

Abstract

Modern systems are difficult to design because they often involve the integration of multiple engineering domains, are constrained by competing objectives, include a multitude of stakeholders, and are inundated by large quantities of design information. As the complexity of systems design has grown, designers are using a diverse set of analyses during the design process. In this paper, we present an approach to help designers manage this spectrum of analyses and relate them to their systems design problems by integrating the Object Management Group’s Systems Modeling Language (OMG SysML™) with a process integration and design optimization (PIDO) framework. This allows designers to model their design problems and the related analyses within SysML. These related analyses can then be translated into the PIDO framework where they are executed and managed. The framework used in this paper is Phoenix Integration’s ModelCenter. Previous approaches have integrated SysML with a specific analysis tool, but these approaches are not sufficient because they allow designers to use only a few types of analyses. By integrating SysML with ModelCenter, this approach allows designers to tackle the design problems from several perspectives. ModelCenter provides existing integrations to a large number of analysis tools allowing users to handle multiple heterogeneous analyses in the same environment. The implementation of this approach and its usefulness during a design process is illustrated using the design of a horizontal acting hydraulic log splitter. The log splitter model is chosen as the example because it is a simple hydraulic system with well-defined composition and modular components and has several competing requirements to satisfy.