A New Approach to Conceptual Design Synthesis of Sensors
Year: 2015
Editor: Amaresh Chakrabarti, Toshiharu Taura and Yukari Nagai
Author: Sarkar, B.; Chakrabarti, A.; Ananthasuresh, G. K.
Institution: 1Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and 2Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Section: Creativity Supporting Tools
Page(s): 192-199
ISBN: 978-1-904670-60-5
Abstract
Time to market, demand for variety and cost of exploration of the solution space, drive designers to use computer aided synthesis tools. Such tools, generally, generate a large number of solutions but rarely help evaluate and select the promising ones. Designers have to wait for embodiment of these designs before they can quantitatively evaluate a solution. What is required, is an initial rough estimate of the worth of a design before committing to its embodiment, so that the designer can decide if the solution is worthy of further exploration. The paper introduces a new approach to conceptual design synthesis using conceptual structures and signal-flow graph algebra. It is based on a special form of the SAPPhIRE model of causality called SAPPhIRE-lite. It uses conceptual structures for early embodiment and comes up with quantitative system equations. It generates solution principles with all associated feedbacks. This paper focuses on the synthesis aspects of the research.
Keywords: conceptual design synthesis, flow graph, sapphire, causality