Function-Behavior-State Research Articles

A FBS Approach to Designing Monitoring System in Nuclear Power Plant

The design framework of human-machine interface (HMI) provides guiding principles for the display of digital information on the system interface. In order to solve the problem of human error caused by the unreasonable design of information interaction interface of complex system, this paper takes the feedwater flow control system (ARE) of nuclear power plant as an example to optimize . The design of the human-machine interface of the system is based on the framework of function behavior state (FBS), defines the mapping relationship between various levels of the system interface, defines the information requirements of the monitoring system interface and presents the information according to the cognitive decision-making theory, and improves it on the basis of the original interface. The purpose of this research is to make the monitoring interface more consistent with the mental model of the operator and reduce the cognitive workload and error probability, so as to ensure the safe and reliable operation of the nuclear power plant. This research also provides some reference for the optimal design of the HMI of the monitoring system of the nuclear power plant in the future.

A Comparative Case Study of Functional Models to Support System Architecture Design

Me**thods supporting designers’ cognition in early stages are critical. Function modelling in that can be important because it allows understanding the design perimeter as well as communication between engineers. Moreover, in complex system design, no one designer or design team is able to explore and define the design perimeter alone. In order to understand the advantages as well as the limits of modeling approaches we have chosen three approaches Function-Behavior-State (FBS) [1], Functional representation to support idea generation [3] and Affordances [2] and we look at them also in relation with a process on problem definition of complex systems used in industry [3]. Some of the advantages as well as needs for future developments in the case of complex system design are discussed.

Knowledge-based functional conceptual design: Model, representation, and implementation

Conceptual design is thus crucial to define new creative products. During conceptual design process, knowledge derivate from different domains is required to achieve a creative design. However, most of the design models restrict their representation to a specific domain. Knowledge representation for multidisciplinary is still an incipient issue for engineering design researchers. Moreover, to increase the robustness of design resolutions is another problem obsessing designers. This article proposes an adapted Gero’s Function–Behavior–State model (Requirement–Function–Behavior–Principle solutions) to aid creative design activities during conceptual design stage by introducing an integrated cross-domain knowledge representation methodology, to increase robustness by reusing existing cases knowledge through retrieval algorithm, and to realize effectiveness by putting forward a design synthesis methodology. Finally, a prototype system named knowledge-based innovative conceptual design system is developed to implement our approaches, and effectiveness of the proposed model is illustrated with a detailed example related to the design of eye movement apparatus incorporated with oculomotor machine of vision prosthesis for acquired blindness, with an overall design procedure classified.

An algorithm for transforming design text ROM diagram into FBS model

In this paper, a novel algorithm is proposed to transform a ROM diagram obtained from a design text into a FBS model. Each state of the transformation process is defined by four features: ROM (Recursive Object Model), POS (Part of Speech), PES (Product–Environment System), and FBS (Function–Behavior–State). The transformation algorithm is thus constituted by transition rules which change one transformation state to another, and procedures which apply the transition rules to a given ROM diagram. A software prototype R2FBS is presented as a proof of concept to assist the transformation. Two examples are used to demonstrate how the proposed approach works.

Guiding conceptual design through functional space exploration

Conceptual design is an early stage in the product design process, which has an essential effect on the product innovation. Existing approaches for conceptual design always focus on the mapping processes, such as function–behavior–structure, function–behavior–state, or function–effect–solution, etc. The function, effect, solution, behavior, structure, and state all have influential factors in the above mapping processes. The enlargement of functional space, effect space, solution space, behavior space, structure space, state space, and problem-solving space can bring more opportunities to product innovation. This paper is devoted to functional space exploration in conceptual design. Each function has its own hierarchies and configurations, as well as each effect has its own multivariate influential factors, both of which can provide tremendous and exploitable space of creative concepts. The problem-solving space will be enlarged through the functional space exploration, which can obviously bring more opportunities for product innovation. This paper is devoted to presenting a systematic approach based on the reasoning of functional space exploration to increase opportunities for product innovation in conceptual design. A process of functional space exploration is treated as a three-step process, first transforming original function to derivative functions, then mapping these derivative functions to effects, and finally exploiting these effects to quantitative or qualitative physical quantity space. The functional design of new devices for decreasing resistance of amphibious vehicles is given as an example, which demonstrates that the methodology is obviously helpful to increase opportunities for product innovation in conceptual design.

Module-based Failure Propagation (MFP) model for FMEA

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is one of the most important activities in the quality management of product design. Within the field of product development domain, FMEA is regarded as a key driver for product quality improvement and cost reduction. There have been various FMEA approaches considering several aspects such as knowledge management, criticality analysis, and product structure or function model to conduct more effective and systematic FMEA. But previous approaches are generally based on an ad hoc model so that they have limitations such as insufficient identification on failures, low reusability of previous FMEAs, poor understanding on failure information, high dependency of expert knowledge on failure propagation, and so on. To overcome these limitations, this study proposes a formalized function model for FMEA, which is named module-based failure propagation (MFP) model. The MFP model is proposed based on the function behavior state scheme. The MFP model consists of function decomposition tree model, configuration flow graph model, function rule, and failure rule. This study describes how to build the MFP model and introduces how to carry out FMEA with the proposed MFP model. To show the benefit of the proposed MFP model, a FMEA case study on a car air purifier is performed.

Modular design of mechatronic systems with function modeling

This paper develops a modularization scheme based on the functional model of a system. The modularization approach makes use of the function–behavior–state (FBS) model of the system to derive the entity relations. The design structure matrix (DSM) is automatically constructed based on the FBS model. In this way, the tedious work of filling the DSM entries based on expert knowledge is avoided. The approach makes use of k-means clustering algorithm to allow the user to try different number of clusters in a fast way. The k-means clustering is adopted for DSM based modularization by defining a proper entity representation, relation measure and objective function. Two modularization schemes are performed, one based on the immediate relations and one on the deeper behavioral relations between the components. Considering the application on the shifting system of the Delft University of Technology (DUT) Formula Student car, the latter modularization resulted in more mechatronic behavior based modules, while the former resulted in modules based on mere disciplinary and spatial closeness.

A system architecting tool for mechatronic systems design

System architecting in mechatronic systems design is a crucial task to define physical and logical configurations of subsystems and components that realize desired functions and behaviors. Particularly, it is crucial to consider sensor–actuator configurations that control the quality of desired functions. The paper proposes a computer-based tool based on extended Function-Behavior-State (FBS) modeling method that incorporates visualization of geometric information and introduction of an interval-temporal logic. These extensions allow system architects to communicate with experts in different domains and domain experts to conduct domain specific design tasks without having quantitative design information about physical configuration.

Development of design methodology for upgradable products based on function–behavior–state modeling

Extending product life is one of the hopeful approaches to reduce the environmental issue, which is one of the most critical issues of today. However, many products are thrown away because of obsolescence of functions and their performance. Therefore, we should design products to be functionally upgradable. Moreover, such upgradable products may create business chances at later stages of product life cycles. The objective of this research is to propose a design methodology for upgradability. This methodology employs a functional modeling scheme, FBS modeling, because upgrade design is a distinctive application of functional design that aims at maximizing functional flexibility with minimal structural changes after the product is manufactured. Here, the functional flexibility refers to an ability of a product to adapt its functions to changes of user needs. This paper proposes and models design processes and design operations in the upgrade design. Especially, the methodology supports finding out candidates of modifications of the function structure and configuration of a platform, which is common structure of a product among several generations, and upgrade modules. One of its central issues of upgrade design is treatment of future uncertainty. For this purpose, we propose two design strategies: delayed selection of components, and expanding and shrinking platform. A prototype system and a case study of upgrade design for a vacuum cleaner are also illustrated. The case study indicates that the system succeeded in systematically supporting a designer to execute the design methodology. Regarding the functional design, as an extension of FBS modeling, this paper proposes a method to relate abstract entity concepts in FBS modeling to concrete components through a quantitative behavior model and range calculation, in addition to deployment of FBS modeling for the design methodology.

Physical concept ontology for the knowledge intensive engineering framework

Knowledge intensive engineering aims at flexible applications of a variety of product life cycle knowledge, such as design, manufacturing, operations, maintenance, and recycling. Many engineering domain theories are organized and embedded within CAD and CAE tools and engineering activities can be formalized as modeling operations to them. Since most of domain theories deal with the physical world and can be associated with physical concepts, a physical concept ontology can form a common ontology to integrate engineering models that are formed based on domain theories. This paper reports a physical ontology-based support system for knowledge intensive engineering called Knowledge Intensive Engineering Framework (KIEF) to integrate multiple engineering models and to allow more flexible use of them. First, the paper describes the physical ontology as the core of KIEF and an ontology-based reasoning system, called a pluggable metamodel mechanism, to integrate and maintain relationships among these models. The pluggable metamodel mechanism uses a metamodel that represents the designer's mental model about a design object as a concept network model. The designer builds and decomposes a functional hierarchy from functional specifications with an FBS (Function-Behavior-State) modeler. He/She then maps the functional hierarchy into a metamodel using physical features that are building blocks for conceptual design. Then, the pluggable metamodel mechanism enriches the information contained in the metamodel by using causal dependency knowledge about the physical world and by building and analyzing various engineering models. We demonstrate the power of KIEF by illustrating a design case performed on KIEF.

Towards a novel interface design framework: function–behavior–state paradigm

In designing a human–computer interface (interface for short) for a complex work domain, the first question to be answered is what information should be presented on the interface display. The simplest answer may be: it depends on tasks to be performed by the human operator. In the past two decades, several studies towards a satisfactory answer to this question have been reported in literature, among which a study called ecological interface design framework is most sound. Motivated by a discussion with a nuclear power plant builder (in Canada) five years ago, we have conducted a study on the interface framework and obtained very interesting results. One of the salient findings is that the current implementation of the notion of the abstract function in the ecological interface design framework is worthy of further exploration. More fundamentally, one of its basic methods, called the five-level abstraction hierarchy used for work domain analysis, can be more commented on its architecture. Our findings are based on a critical analysis of published articles on the ecological interface design framework. We further postulated an alternative framework called function–behavior–state (FBS). We have conducted an experiment to compare these two frameworks, which positively supported our findings. The present article reports the critical analysis of the ecological interface design framework and describes the FBS framework. The experimental study has been reported separately in this journal.

A Study of Ergonomic Measurement Indices in Evaluating Human-Machine Interfaces

Measurement and evaluation of a human-machine interface is a difficult yet very important issue. The difficulty lies in that the issue is inherently a very subjective, and the importance is that the evaluation is part of design process for systems development. The purpose of evaluation is to see how an interface affects the operation of a human-machine control system in two aspects: the operator's mental workload and the performance in completing tasks. In this paper primarily the eye behaviors measure is discussed, together with some other measures, for evaluating two interface design frameworks: Ecological Interface Design (EID) and Function Behavior State (FBS). The measures we used cover both the measure for mental workload and the measure for performance. It is observed through the experiment that these measures vary in different degrees of sensitivity to the hypothesis under investigation and are sometimes in conflict. This has given a motivation for a further study on a new issue called ‘measure fusion’. This further study is briefly discussed.

Representation of Design Object Based on the Functional Evolution Process Model

One of the crucial issues for developing computer aided conceptual design system is representation of functions which represent designers’ intention. Representing functions is also crucial not only for representing design objects but also for describing conceptual design processes, in which designers operate mainly functional concepts. Namely, function is a key concept to integrate object modeling and process modeling in design. In this paper, first we extend the FBS (Function-Behavior-State) diagram, which we have already proposed, by introducing three additional concepts for representing a function; namely, function body that represents designers’ intention directly, function modifier that qualifies a function body, and objective entity on which the function body occurs. This extended FBS diagram, called FBS/m (modifier) diagram, enables us to represent designers’ intention more precisely than the original FBS diagram. Then, we propose an FEP (Functional Evolution Process) model to represent design processes. In the FEP model, the FBS model of a design object is evolved through three steps, i.e., functional actualization, functional evaluation and functional operation. Functional actualization depicts a process to obtain physical descriptions from functional description. Functional evaluation is a process to measure realizability of functions of the design object. Functional operation is a process to operate functions to improve the design. Based on the FEP model, we analyze an actual design process, and show that the FEP model is suitable for representing designers’ intention along with design processes.

機能設計支援のためのＦＢＳモデリングの提案

Although functional design is crucial within a design process, difficulties in dealing with functions prevented traditional CAD technology based on geometric modeling from supporting functional design. This paper proposes a new methodology for modeling functions, called FBS (Function-Behavior-State) modeling. The FBS modeling represents a function as an association of the designer's intention and a behavior needed for realizing the function. This paper also describes a computer tool to support functional design based on the FBS modeling. This tool, called the FBS Modeler, supports a designer not only to verify design solutions with qualitative simulation but also to generate design solutions through decomposition of specified functions and embodiment of decomposed functions. Experimental design case studies demonstrate the importance and advantages of the FBS modeling.

Supporting conceptual design based on the function-behavior-state modeler

AbstractThe relative significance of conceptual design to basic design or detail design is widely recognized, due to its influential roles in determining the product's fundamental features and development costs. Although there are some general methodologies dealing with functions in design, virtually no commercial CAD systems can support functional design, in particular so-called synthetic phase of design. Supporting the synthetic phase of conceptual design is one of the crucial issues of CAD systems with function modeling capabilities. In this paper, we propose a computer tool called a Function-Behavior-State (FBS) Modeler to support functional design not only in the analytical phase but also in the synthetic phase. To do so, the functional decomposition knowledge and physical features in the knowledge base of the modeler, and a subsystem Qualitative Process Abduction System (QPAS) play crucial roles. Modeling scheme of function in relation with behavior and structure and design process for conceptual design in the FBS Modeler are described. The advantages of the FBS Modeler are demonstrated by presenting two examples; namely, an experiment in which designers used this tool and the design of functionally redundant machines, which is a new design methodology for highly reliable machines, as its application.

From general design theory to knowledge-intensive engineering

AbstractContributions of general design theory (GDT) proposed by Yoshikawa for the development of advanced CAD (computer-aided design) and for innovative design from the research results of a group at the University of Tokyo are illustrated. First, the GDT that formalizes design knowledge based on axiomatic set theory is reviewed. Second, this theoretical result is tested against experimental work on design processes. Although in principle the theoretical results agree with the experimental findings, some problems can be pointed out. From these problems a new design process model, called the refinement model, is established, which has better agreement with the experimental findings. This model implies three guiding principles in developing a future CAD system. One is that future CAD requires a mechanism for physics-centered modeling and multiple model management. Second, a mechanism for function modeling is also required, and the FBS (function-behavior-state) modeling is proposed. Third, intention modeling is also proposed for recording decision-making processes in design. These advanced modeling techniques enable creative, innovative designs. As an example, the design of self-maintenance machines is illustrated. This design example utilizes design knowledge intensively on a knowledge-intensive CAD. This is a new way of engineering and can be called knowledge-intensive engineering. The design of self-maintenance machines is, therefore, an example of knowledge-intensive design of knowledge-intensive products, which demonstrates the power of the design methodology derived from the GDT.

A CAD for Functional Design

Although functional design (or conceptual design) is crucial to whole design processes, traditional CAD technology based on geometric modeling does not support this process because of difficulty of dealing with function. This paper proposes a new methodology to deal with function. Called FBS (Function-Behavior-State) modeling, and describes a computer tool to support functional design based on the FBS modeling. Importance and advantages of the FBS modeling is clarified by demonstrating two examples. One is the design of functionally redundant machines and the other is the automatic generation of control software for mechatronics products.