Research On The Behavior Of Assembly Devices And Their Conceptual Design

The assemble process is one of the most important activities for product creation, and the workload accounts for 30%-40% of the entire product manufacturing process. Therefore, the design of assembly devices is very important. It should not only meet the basic need of assembly functions, but also achieve high productivity and other performance requirements.This thesis attempts to study the characteristics of assembly device behaviors, and try to summarize some of the rules and regulations relating to this kind of behaviors, so as to develop methods to support the conceptual design of assembly devices. It also aims to investigate the design generation method for these devices based on the Causal Behavioral Process (CBP) model and the Function - Behavior - Structure (FBS) design model.First, the thesis presents a literature review on conceptual design researches, and explains the purpose and significance of this study. After that, a number of assembly devices are selected and their behavioral processes are studied. The study reveals that the there is an important characteristic relating to the behaviors of such devices, the so-called phenyl-loop behavior characteristic– the relevant structural components of the assembly devices shall return to their initial positions after finishing their functions and get ready for the next round of actions. Based on this finding, a number of rules and laws of the phenyl-loop behavior characteristic are proposed and their guiding role for conceptual design is elaborated.Next, the thesis investigates the process of design solution generation. It starts from studying the user needs, where they are categorized and synthesized to derive a reasonable objective function. Then, a design solution generation procedure is presented by exploiting the FBS design model. In addition, the mapping between the behavior relations and structures is proposed, and a mapping model is proposed based on the causal behavior relation and phenyl-loop behavior characteristic to refine the design solutions.Based on the above research results, the thesis establishes a multi-level fuzzy comprehensive design evaluation model, where the phenyl-loop characteristic for assembly devices has been made full use. Finally, a software platform is presented for the conceptual design of assembly devices. It provides a useful assistance to the designers in design solution generation and design evaluation for the assembly devices.