Early stage model based system design under uncertainties

Abstract

System design at the early stage of design plays an important role in design process. Model based systems engineering is seen as a prominent approach for this challenge. System design can be explored by means of system simulation. However, as the system is a complex system, system model tends to have high level of abstraction. Therefore, the models cannot depict every details of the system, which makes optimization unreasonable. Furthermore, at the early stage of design, there are many uncertainties such as success of technological developments. By properly incorporating uncertain factors in system design, the system can be tolerant. Currently system design is conducted by experienced experts. However, for more complex system, it would be difficult to continue the current practice. Therefore, a method to support design team to make decision in system design is needed. This paper proposes a computational support for the system design. Design constraints, which seems the core information that design team wants at system design, are modeled. By visualizing constraints quantitatively and intuitively, the proposed method can support design team to conduct system design and design study.