| Driven by advances in science and technology, consumer, industrial, and defense products have grown significantly more complex over the past three decades. To face the challenges of this complexity, systems engineering provides an interdisciplinary approach to developing products, systems and services. At the onset of systems engineering efforts, concept engineering is undertaken to understand and define the needs of a system's future users and to describe how they will interact with the system when in operation. Concept engineering provides an opportunity for stakeholders and developers to reach a shared mental model of the required capabilities of a future system.;However, it has been shown that the current concept engineering process does not meet the needs of today's increasingly complex systems. Many systems engineers propose that improving this area will reduce the time, cost and risk of development. The purpose of this research is to introduce and study a Virtual Concept Engineering Process (VCEP), which leverages advances in 3D gaming, simulation, immersive environments, visualization, and model-based systems engineering to improve the effectiveness of concept engineering.;This work presents an overview of the current state of concept engineering practice and tools, introduces a new concept engineering process - the "Virtual Concept Engineering Process" - and studies this methodology using a specially designed software tool. Results of experimentation using this innovative process and tool measure their effectiveness and perceived applicability to the systems engineering lifecycle. The conclusions of this thesis present a novel approach to the systems engineering community for both conducting and investigating concept engineering. |
