Complex product modeling based on a Multi-solution eXtended Conceptual Design Semantic Matrix for behavioral performance assessment

Abstract

The modeling of complex products is a practice increasingly used at the early design stage. Geometric 3D modeling is widely used in CAD software for complex products. However, data extracted from such models do not contain all relevant and necessary information to assess the behavioral performance of complex products. Several studies have focused on the use of design structure matrices (DSM) for the representation of this information. The component-based DSM allows a visual and compact representation of mechanical products. It gives the list of components and shows the links between them. The designer can also enrich a product model using such a DSM representation. However, we note that, until now, a component-based DSM represents only one instance of a specific product. In this paper we propose an extended DSM approach which includes additional information to model several product families. Thus, from the design specification we build the space of solutions then we determine the domain of eligible solutions. We represent these different eligible solutions in a Multi-solution eXtended Conceptual Design Semantic Matrix (MSX-CDSM). The implementation of such a matrix is introduced to assess behavioral performance of complex products at the early design stage.