A mechanism-based approach to experiment design and model building

This research introduces a new approach to the development of models which describe the underlying mechanistic behavior of a system. The approach utilizes an innovative modeling representation that combines digraph modeling and multi-level logic to define the phenomenological causal relationships of a system. Unlike most model representations which have been developed, this representation allows explicit declaration of the mechanisms of a system. The mechanism-based models of all processes which may be of importance in a system can be combined to create a generalized mechanism-based model which describes the behavior of a whole class of systems.;Experiment design strategies to determine which mechanisms are of importance in a system have been developed. These methods can be applied to the generalized model of a system to synthesize experiments which isolate individual mechanisms. The experiment design strategies can be used in conjunction with the costs of experiments to determine the optimal experiment for verifying a mechanism. A methodology for estimating experiment costs from the relative accuracies and controllabilities of the variables is introduced.;The modeling representation and the experiment design and optimization strategies are implemented in the computer program Edison. The effectiveness of the mechanism-based modeling strategy is illustrated with four example problems: the analysis of packed bed reactor systems, the "discovery" of electrokinetic lift, the verification of freezing induced motion of rocks below the earth, and the modeling of a glycol cooling system.