Concurrent Design of Mechanical Systems Using Operator-Acting Modules

Abstract

Concurrent Engineering is a methodology allowing designers and manufacturing engineers to work in parallel, or concurrently, during various stages of product design and manufacturing. Given the variety of concurrent engineering design methods, this paper proposes a concurrent design method for mechanical systems using operator-acting modules. In this method, in order to simplify the system being considered, it is divided into modules. Then, the modules’ specifications and the system are changed by using operators which act to expand the design space. By using modules to express the mechanical system, several stages of design and manufacturing variables can be treated within the modules concurrently, in parallel, so that high performance and high quality machine products can be realized in a short time. The proposed method is applied to the design of a material handling manipulator consisting of several links, and the validity of this design method is discussed. © 1999, The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.