An Analytical Approach to Functional Design

Abstract

Functional design is a process in engineering design that dominates the key features of the result to be developed. Designing good functions that both satisfies the requirements and leads to better results is a challenge due to uncertainties on the consequences of the selected functions, and the lack of analysis methods for identifying the properties of function structures. Therefore, extensive experiences are usually required for functional design. This research argues that the physical relationships among the resulting components of a design are the consequences of functional dependencies developed during the functional design process. Therefore based on the understanding of functions and functional dependencies, a reasoning procedure can be developed to predict the performance properties of the design so that the effectiveness of the functional design can be evaluated at an early design stage. This paper proposes a dependency-based function modeling and analysis method that can be applied to represent and assess functions and function structures at the functional design stage. Designers can predict the properties of the functions they designed without having to have similar design experiences. An application software is also developed to implement the method and demonstrate its effectiveness.