Structure-based Compilation of System Dynamics Models for Assessing Engineering Design Process Behavior

Abstract

The dynamic behavior of complex systems is a well-known challenge within engineering. The paper presents a Multiple-Domain Matrix base model for the structure-based compilation of System Dynamics models for assessing engineering design process behavior. Classically, dependency modelling approaches are used to analyze the structure of a system such as the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), the Domain Mapping Matrix (DMM) or the Multipledomain Matrix (Multiple-Domain Matrix) approaches. The major drawback of these approaches is that they depict a static view on the system and are therefore not suitable to model the dynamic behavior of complex systems. This paper suggests combining the dependency and dynamic modelling approaches. Previous results already show that on principle dynamic behavior can be deduced from structural models. Consequently, we use a dependency modeling approach as a basis for the compilation of a System Dynamics model to analyze the dynamic behavior of engineering design processes. The approach offers the possibility of design, flexibility and robustness analysis based on the underlying structure of engineering design processes.