System Modeling combined with Dimensional Analysis for Conceptual design

Early design is widely accepted inside the engineering design community as a crucial design phase. This is due to the fact that decisions taken at this stage constrained heavily the final performances of products. This article presents a design framework dedicated to the early design phases of mechatronic products. This framework provides a scientifically coherent methodology for refinement, analysis, modeling, comparison and evaluation of design solutions at early stage of the design process. SysML is proposed by the authors as a powerful modeling language properly adapted to mechatronic requirements. In addition, the article proposes to combine SysML with dimensional analysis and qualitative physics in order to provide a design tool able to proceed also with early simulations, comparisons and evaluations. The framework proposed in this article is based on strong theoretical bases and is the combination of two doctoral works. A third doctoral work is planned on the same research issue.