A Hierarchical Object-oriented Functional Modeling Framework for Co-Design of Mechatronic Products

The existing co-design methods of mechatronic products focus on co-design of mechanical and electronic components or co-design of computer hardware and software components. There exist no effective co-design methods for mechanical, electronic, and software components. This article proposes an integrated object-oriented and functional decomposition framework, developed for co-design and co-analysis of product functions, structures, and their mapping relations in a top-down manner. The framework has three operational models: Function Model, Object Model, and Information Flow Model. The function model is implemented as a function tree (FT), which is a hierarchical structure for the functional decomposition and behavioral analysis of the product under functional domain commonly used in classical engineering design. The object model is a high order object model (HOOM) designed for system and component decomposition for analysis and design of the structure of a system and its components under physical domain. The information flow model is a function and object mapping model, which describes and analyzes implementation parameters and mapping relations between FT functions and HOOM objects. These three models are decomposed and constructed level-by-level and side-by-side to form the concurrent and coordinated design paradigm for the product design team. The components of the resulting design are then carefully reviewed and summarized in a design summary and task assignment table by the product design team, and assigned to their respective disciplinary engineers for detail design or implementation according to their attributes. The proposed methodology enables mechanical, electronic, and software engineers to develop mechatronic products concurrently in a seamlessly integrated fashion.