The necessity of functional analysis for space exploration programs

Morris, A. Terry; Breidenthal, Julian C.

doi:10.1109/dasc.2011.6096136

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Functional analysis and modelling is an engineering design tool to provide a systematic approach to technical problem solving (Pahl and Beitz 2006). It enables designers to study and develop products through analysing functional relationships between components, and also decompose, describe and relate functions a system is to perform in order to achieve end product success (Morris and Breidenthal 2011). Functional analysis and modelling exists in various formats and one way of classifying them is into form-independent and form-dependent models (Aurisicchio, Bracewell, and Armstrong 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design for invention: a framework for identifying emerging design–prior art conflict

Jiang

Atherton

Sorce

et al. 2018

Journal of Engineering Design

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The increasing complexity of patented mechanical designs means that their novelty and inventive steps increasingly rely on interacting geometric features and how they contribute to device functions. These features and interactions are normally incorporated in patents through clear patent claims. However, patents can be difficult to interpret and understand for designers due to their legal terminologies. This suggests there is a need for greater awareness of relevant prior art amongst designers in terms of avoiding potential conflict. This paper presents a framework that helps designers obtain insight on relevant prior art and enables emerging design-prior art comparison. The framework mainly contains development of a patent graphical functional representation, a domain-specific ontology and a semantic database. The graphical representation presenting the functional reasoning of patents in terms of interacting geometric features. A domain-specific ontology enables knowledge sharing and conceptualisation, providing a standardised vocabulary for describing patented designs. By formulating patent data into a semantic database, commonality of working principles between an emerging design and prior art can be identified. This enables early identification of potential conflict and thereby could help designers steer their emerging designs away from protected solutions. A computer tool being developed based on this approach is also described.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%