Many modern and innovative design problems require multi-modal, reconfigurable solutions. Function modeling is a common tool used to explore solutions in early stages of mechanical engineering design. Currently, function structure representations do not support the modeling of formally-defined reconfigurable function models. There is a well-established need in function modeling to dynamically capture the effects of state change of a flow property on the operating mode of the system. This paper presents a formal representation to capture the duality of specific functions, and illustrates it through  three verbs that shift from one mode of operation to its logical and topological opposite, based on the existence of, or the value of a signal from, an input flow. Additionally, an approach to extend these functions to function features, in order to support physics-based reasoning on the interactions between flows is also presented. Through the example of a system-level model of a geothermal heat pump operating in its heating mode, the representation demonstrates the ability to support causal reasoning on functional modes of systems, provides quantitative reasoning on the efficiency of those modes, and illustrates the modeling efficacy of the extended representation.


A Formal Representation of Conjugate Verbs in Function Modeling

Division / Sponsors: 
Design Engineering Division and Computers & Information In Engineering Division


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2020/volume/83907

IDETC2020 - Virtual Conference

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.