SET APPROXIMATION BASED COMBINATORIAL SEARCH FOR INTERACTION NETWORK-BASED CONCEPTUAL DESIGN

Cross-disciplinary technologies are noticeable phenomena in modern products, as found in renewable energy and electric vehicle industries. However, current conceptual design tools have been limited to respond these cross-disciplinary technology products. One of remarkable characteristics in this technology change is transforming an existing product with multiple cross-disciplinary technologies. Interaction Networks have been designed to respond this phenomenon. The networks aim to support a design process i.e. transformation process to produce a new product from a base product by adding and/or converting functions/features with reference products or technologies. In this paper, we propose a set approximation technique that can search functions and structures that are beyond the existing design repository, while considering a design process context to combine multi-disciplinary functions/features. Also, to facilitate the transformation process, this paper proposes the Function-Behavior Interaction and Structure-Behavior networks, and compares a base product with multiple products via the two types of networks.