An initial study of function switching for design of adaptable-function mechanical products

Abstract

An adaptable-function mechanical product belongs to a specific category of products that are feasible in delivering multiple functions by replacing/changing some of its components. The functions are referred to as being adaptable because they suit to different applications. To design such a product, it is necessary to study the process of function switching, during which there shall be detaching and/or disassembling of some existing components, as well as attaching and/or assembling some new components. Existing work on modular design and structure-sharing design provides certain research basis but has not directly addressed such a function switching process. In this paper, we make an initial attempt to study the mechanism and characteristics of the process. The mapping relation between the prior function and the prior structure, as well as the mapping relation between the posterior function and the posterior structure are investigated and represented. Specifically, in order to get a proper disassembly-assembly sequence in the process of function switching, we propose a sequence optimization method consisting of both disassemble (of existing non-sharing parts) and assemble (of new non-sharing parts). To simplify the conventional interference matrix used for the disassembly-assembly sequence planning, an aggregated interference matrix, which was used to express the interference of parts in the individual direction, was proposed. The disassembly-assembly sequence was optimized by using MATLAB. A case study was also presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology.