Automated conceptual design of mechanisms using enumeration and functional reasoning

This paper presents an automated method for conceptual design of mechanisms using enumeration and functional reasoning. In this method, design requirements and kinematic building blocks are expressed by function codes. Based on principle of combination and categories of functions, an enumeration process is proposed to enumerate all possible and feasible functional connections of each kinematic building block in the knowledge base. Then a combinatorial algorithm is computerised to automatically yield many candidate solutions to the desired function requirements using bidirectional search, and functional reasoning is introduced to filter out infeasible solutions. Experiment results demonstrate the practicability and effectiveness of the approach.