Multi-disciplinary system decomposition of complex mechatronics systems

Abstract Modern mechatronics systems are increasingly becoming complex in terms of the size and multi-disciplinarity. System architecting of such multi-disciplinary systems defines subsystems and their interfaces through hierarchical system decomposition. As opposed to traditional system decomposition methods using building blocks associated with functions, this paper proposes a method to decompose a system by defining physical phenomena that constrain clustering patterns of system parameters. A case study of a printer demonstrates the method implemented on a computational tool, which supports systematic generation of decomposition candidates and configuration of sensor–actuator combinations based on the method.