Research On Function-Oriented Innovative Conceptual Design

Product innovation is a critical factor of judging whether a product is competitive. In the process of product design, innovation is mainly expressed in the process of product conceptual design. As the key point. Function goes through the whole process of conceptual design. This dissertation presents the concept of innovative conceptual design, and studies some problems of function innovation in the process of conceptual design. It is composed of several aspects as follows:1. Flow and structure of innovative conceptual design.In this part, the two processes of design and conceptual design are summarized and studied. Based on summarizing function definition, the design flow and system structure of function-oriented innovative conceptual design are proposed, and then the critical technology is pointed out.2. Innovation-oriented matter element network representation.In this part, the matter element network representation is proposed by analyzing and summarizing existent function representation methods, and by combining characters of demanding lots of associated information in innovational design. It not only makes the structured information be represented better in the process of design, but also exerts the characters of matter element in extenics, in order to make designer extend information that associated with function easily. At last, the method of extenics transform, matching and deduction of matter element network representation is given.3. Similarity function and the formula of similarity degree.By analyzing human sensuous association and comparing it with similitude functions, the similitude functions can be classified and enriched. The sensuous association methods are classified based on association characteristics. A new formula of similarity degree which is apparently applicable to avoid the shortcomings of the original one is proposed.4. An innovative function-tree's rebuilding method.In this part, the mathematics expression of function-tree is given, and the similarity degree of different functions could be calculated by using the improved formula and matter element network method. Accordingly, the similitude functions of function element in function-tree could be found from database. Then the function-tree could be extended by adding these similitude functions into it. So the designer can get more useful information associated with the design problem.5. Simplifying and solving extended function-tree.Actually function-tree is an application of Boolean theory. Function-tree can be optimized by using absorptive law and idempotent law in Boolean algebra to remove redundant information. Then the rules of function-tree simplification and the method of module management to reduce the complexity of function-tree's solution scale and design problem are given. We point that the process of function-tree solving is the process of Function-Sets solving, and a function solving method based on extend functional matrix is proposed. Furthermore, aiming at the characters of innovational design, the lossless optimization method is given.