Pugh’s Total Design: The design of an electromagnetic servo brake with ABS function – a case study

Traditionally, design activities cover a wide range of interrelated activities: mechanical design, industrial design, electronic design and civil design, to name a few. Pugh’s Total Design method consists of several core activities that complement and influence each another. Core activities are the basis of the development of the product design specification, the conceptual design, the detailed design, the product’s manufacture and final product sales. A systematic approach is proposed in this article to convert design requirements into an optimal design concept choice. The approach is based on Pugh’s method to design a new electromagnetic servo brake with antilock braking system function. The product design specifications were obtained by the functional analysis method that Tassinari proposed. Also, the Pugh controlled convergence method was used to select the best conceptual design. A combination of the finite element method and multi-objective optimization based on genetic algorithms was used in the detail phase to obtain the optimal geometry of the servo that was designed, while maximizing the braking force and minimizing the current supplied by the battery and the weight of the assembly. The close agreement between the experimental results obtained suggests that Pugh’s Total Design method, combined with the functional analysis method, the Pugh controlled convergence method, the finite element method and genetic algorithms, may be used successfully to design and optimize any electromechanical device.