Research On The Theory And Technologies Of Mechanical Product Genetic Engineering Based On Function Surface

Conceptual design of mechanical product is the most important stage of product design process. The product conceptual scheme is the most crucial to the product ultimate quality, the market competitiveness and the profitability of enterprises. The structure of real products and components is complicated and ever-changing. The industrial product designer pose a serious challenge on structure expression, structure ideas and design process description. The product design theory and design methodology which aimed at resolving difficulties have not found a satisfactory solution yet. Based on the latest design automation theory, the concept and engineering "gene" of artificial product is discussed, which has important and far-reaching theoretical value of the economic value on enhancing the understanding and grasp ability of mankind for artificial product and ability of processing product knowledge and datum.In this paper, by the similar analogy between the Conceptual Design process and biological growth, using the idea of Genetic Engineering, the Conceptual Design theory based on the Product Lifecycle Genetic Engineering is proposed. The transmissibility and variability of product gene is been used to achieve the knowledge reuse and the product innovation in the process of mechanical conceptual design. The growth mechanism of organism is used in product conceptual design automation technology. Concurrent design is achieved through the operation of the product lifecycle gene. The theory, the technology and the application of Product Genetic Engineering is studied in this paper.Product Genetic engineering theory is researched firstly. The basic theory of Product Gene theory, including Generalized Positioning principle, Decomposition and Reconstitution principle, Function Surface theory and Growth design theory are introduced. Generalized Positioning principle explains the rule which should be followed by each part in mechanical products. Decomposition and Reconstitution principle reveals the nature of the invention. Function Surface is the visual expression media of abstract concept, and the Growth Design theory is the reference of biological growth mechanism. Based on the above theory, Product Lifecycle Gene theory and Product Genetic Engineering is proposed.Through the comprehensive analysis about the research status and the problems that exist at this stage of Product Gene theory, the concept of Product Lifecycle Gene is proposed and the nature and the meaning of Product Gene are revealed. Product Gene is an organic gather of product lifecycle information, describes the basic function, the structural characteristics and automatically growth mechanism. Product Gene expresses various forms and has different roles in different stages of product lifecycle. The features of Product Gene such as hereditary, variability, self-organization and adaptability are analyzed. It is possible to achieve product design automation and innovation by using Product Gene based on the above features. In view of the need of Concept Design, Product Gene is divided into Function Gene (including Conceptual structural gene), Structural Gene, Technology Gene and Management Gene, and the data structure of Product Gene is analyzed.Function Surface with the feature of function-structure duality can be used as the carrier of product lifecycle information to transfer information effectively from function to structure in product design process. Function Surface is used as Product Gene Base in this paper. Referring genome Chargaff Rules, based on the Generalized Positioning principle, the Product Base Composition Rule is proposed. And based on the rule, modeling the structure of biologic gene, Product DNA is build based on Function Surface. Then, Product Lifecycle Genetic Model is build using the product DNA as the carrier of product gene.Based on the Product Lifecycle Genetic Modeling, the Concept Design Model based on Product Gene is proposed, and the mapping model of function to structure is changed into the new model function-product gene-structure. Due to Function Surface is used as the carrier of Product Gene and there is product lifecycle information in Product Gene, the model is strong in product conceptual design process. The more information and more factors in product lifecycle can be into account in the conceptual design phase. So, the problem of the sick mapping from function to structure is solved and product design scheme is optimized at the same time. Then, the theoretical framework of Product Lifecycle Genetic Engineering is introduced. Product Genetic Engineering is to obtain the Product Gene from available products, to reconstruct, revise and evaluate Product Gene according design requirements under the certain rules, and new product will be created based on the reconstructed Product Gene in particular environment under the control of Product Gene expression mechanism. The nature of Product Genetic Engineering is reactivation based on the resource reuse strategy, and it determines the features of Product Genetic Engineering including product lifecycle-oriented and product family-oriented.On this basis, the key component technology of Product Lifecycle Genetic Engineering, such as Product Gene reverse transcription, Product Aim Gene retrieval and recombinant and Product Gene expression are introduced.Corresponding to the biological concept of gene Reverse Transcription, Product Gene obtaining is the key and the basis of Product Genetic Engineering. The method of Product Gene reverse transcription based on product Reverse Engineering is proposed. The new meaning and feature of product Reverse Engineering are discussed. Product Reverse Engineering is defined as a creative project under the guidance of product genetic theory, and the aim of product Reverse Engineering is to re-constructer Product Gene according to existing products and related information. So, product Reverse Engineering is extended from the entity product to the thinking of human. Under the guidance of the product Reverse Engineering theory, the method based on the Function Pattern is proposed to obtain the part gene.Based on the Growth Design theory, the product design process reconstruction is achieved through the coupling of Function Surfaces which have specific function relationship. Product design process reconstruction does not require the original design thinking completely, but according to the successfully design to reconstruct the direct and efficient design process to guide and inspire the improvement of product design and product design innovation. According to the product design process which is reconstructed, Product Gene can be build based on Part Gene. On the design process reconstruction basis, the method to reconstruct the product tolerance information based on the theory of synchronous tolerance design with conceptual structure design. Using the automatic generation technology of tolerance chain, by building the closed ring, the composing ring, the local chain size and the whole chain size, the collocation and the global optimization can be obtained. Then, the reconstruction of product tolerance information is achieved.The method based on the matching degree of Demand Product Gene and Aim Product Gene is used for the search of Aim Product Gene. Analytic Hierarchy Process is used to determine the coefficient of the matching degree, and the matching degree function is build. The Genetic Algorithms is used for Product Gene recombinant, and the Fuzzy Evaluation Theory is used to construct the Fitness Function of Product Gene in Genetic Algorithms. Thus, the evaluation index of Product Gene is quantitative. The recombinant and the evaluation of Product Gene get organic combination. The selection of Product Gene is achieved in the process of Product Gene recombinant, and the relevant algorithms are studied at same time.Referring the genome center rule, the control mechanism of Product Gene is proposed for Product Gene Expression. The expression process of Product Gene is divided into two steps including Product Gene transcription and Product Gene translation. Product Gene transcription is a decoding process from Product Gene code to product conceptual structure, and Product Gene translation is the process from product conceptual structure to product entity structure. In which, the method based on zero-thickness entity evolution is used for the expression from product conceptual structure to product entity structure.In additional, the related technology such as Product Library technology and Product Gene coding technology are studied. Product Gene is stored in Product Library in three layers including product gene-level, module gene-level and part gene-level, and each layer is divided into Function Gene, Structure Gene, Techniques Gene and Management Gene. Product Gene stored in such a manner is not only to facilitate gene management and gene maintainability but also to improve the retrieval speed and accuracy of Aim Product Gene. The object-oriented technology is used for the encapsulation of Product Gene. The Product Base class, part gene class and product gene are build. Hybrid coding structure is used to code Product Gene. In the view of the characteristics of product conceptual design, the Function Gene code and Conceptual Structure Gene code are divided with other gene code.As the application of Product Genetic Engineering, Product Genetic Engineering and Mass Customization-oriented design get organic integration in this paper. The Product Platform based on Product Genetic Engineering is proposed. The Product Gene-based Product Platform is defined as a generalized concept, which includes not only product design reusable modules, but also includes the universal design scheme and resource, the same processes, manufacturing resources and other information can reused in the product lifecycle process. The content of the Product Platform is extend due to the nature of product information management is fully considered. The Product Platform is placed in a dynamic process of development and evolution by Product Genetic Engineering. Once new product is developed and the corresponding new Product Gene will be integrated into the Product Platform. In addition, production resources optimization and Product Gene evolution are achieved through the management and evaluation of Product Gene. Then the Product Platform is strengthened and improved to meet the constantly changing requirements of customers and market. Product Platform based on Product Gene has the merits of the Product Platform based on function analysis and parameters sharing. It means that it is not only gears to the concept design level, but also concerns about the rapid response of the technical program. It has the practicality of the Product Platform based on CBR and overcomes the shortcoming to computerize of Product Platform based on function analysis.The modeling method of the Product Platform based on Product gene is studied. The possibility to provide personalized product and the possibility to form large-scale production of Product Platform get better balance in the point of the manufacture customization, and the conflict between product personalized requirements and large-scale production is solved. So, the manufacture customization is used as the aim to design Product Platform. The basic equation is presented for Product Platform, which is used to plan the core Product Gene of Product Platform. Then, the modeling method based on Product Gene evolution is proposed. It means that the core Product Gene evolution is achieved through evolution of the Product Platform. The Common index and Differentiation index are introduced, and the Flexibility Curve is used for the evaluation of Product Platform.Based on the Product Platform, the customization design theory based on Product Gene driven by customer requirements is proposed. According to the importance of the customized requirements in product design process, the requirements acquirement method based on Customization Template is proposed. Customization Template can regulate the requirements of the customers, constraint the requirements of customers and guide the requirements of customers. The modeling method of Customization Template is implemented from two aspects, including demand analysis based on customer demand set and the reverse demand analysis of existing product. The concept of Demand Product and Demand Product Gene are proposed, which are used to research the Aim Product Gene. Thus, the customer demand-driven product customization design is achieved.As the application of the above theory and technology, the customization design system DFMC-PGE based on Product Gene is developed, and the system includes the Product Gene reverse transcription module PRE-DARFAD, the product customization module CSBPG and the product customization design module PGE-DARFAD. The main functions and development technology of the above modules are introduced. The system operation process is described in detail and the effectiveness of the system is verified by using the customization design of washing machine as an example at last.