Computer-aided definition of sizing procedures and optimization problems of mechatronic systems

This article is dedicated to the generation of sizing procedures used during the preliminary optimal design of physical parts of mechatronic systems. The knowledge necessary to such design is composed of two layers: mechatronic system layer and component layer. Such knowledge can be represented by algebraic equations directly or by the use of meta-modeling techniques. Constraint networks and graphs theory are used here to represent and order the constraints and the links between those algebraic models in order to obtain a well-posed optimization problem. The selected or developed algorithms are finally illustrated with typical problems of component selection.