A reliability-based design framework for

early stages of design process

Authors
Authors and affiliations
Murat MaydaEmail author
Seung-Kyum Choi

o
1. 1.
2. 2.

Technical Paper
First Online:
15 February 2017
DOI: 10.1007/s40430-017-0731-y

Cite this article as:

Mayda, M. & Choi, SK. J Braz. Soc. Mech. Sci. Eng. (2017)
39: 2105. doi:10.1007/s40430-017-0731-y

Abstract
The traditional decision-making process during early design stages deals with
deterministically evaluating the design candidates in accordance with concrete objectives
by assuming optimal or nominal design performance values for the candidates. However,
this may increase subjectivity in the decision process since the design knowledge during
early design is usually imprecise and incomplete, and mostly needs to be iteratively updated
throughout product design development. To diminish the subjectivity, the knowledge of the
design requirements can be precisely and accurately represented by means of probabilistic
constraints that describe the uncertainties in the design requirements; therefore, in this
work, a systematic design framework supported by reliability analysis is developed in such
a way that it is able to provide an effective connection among the early design steps
especially both at system level and component level. Thus, the probability of failures of the
design candidates and their sub-solutions are investigated, based on design constraints with
Gaussian distributions, or lower and upper bounds, by utilizing Monte Carlo method. To
illustrate the potential applicability and efficacy of the proposed framework, a two-finger
gripper design problem is considered. The results clearly demonstrate that the proposed
framework is effective to achieve reliable design solutions that have uncertain quantitative
characteristics to be used further in probabilistic structural analysis during the next design
stages such as embodiment and detail design stages.

Keywords
Early design Uncertainty Reliability estimation Monte Carlo simulation

List of symbols
C()
Capacity function
D()
Demand function
DP
Design parameter
FCC()
Uncertain function-level capacity constraint
FDC
Deterministic function-level demand constraint
FDC()
Uncertain function-level demand constraint
g()
Limit-state function
OWV
Overall weighted value
P()
Probability
Pf
Probability of failure
R
Reliability
RP
Reliability of a parallel system
RS
Reliability of a series system
SF
Sub-function
SRQ
System-level requirements
SS
Sub-solution
SV
Solution variant
TCC
 Deterministic top-level capacity constraints
TCC()
Uncertain top-level capacity constraint
TDC
Deterministic top-level demand constraint
WDP
Relative importance weight of a design parameter
WRss
Weighted reliability of a sub-solution
WRsv
Weighted reliability of a solution variant
Ximin
Minimum requirement value for ith sub-function
Ximax
Maximum requirement value for ith sub-function
Xsmin
Minimum system requirement value
Xsmax
Maximum system requirement value
i
Mean value of a system requirement for ith sub-function
i
Standard deviation value of a system requirement for ith sub-function
s
Mean value of a system requirement
s
Standard deviation value of a system requirement

Technical Editor: Fernando Antonio Forcellini.

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The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering 2017