AN INTELLIGENT REAL-TIME DESIGN METHODOLOGY FOR COMPONENT SELECTION -AN APPROACH TO MANAGING UNCERTAINTY

An intelligent Real Time Design (IRTD) methodology is presented for co mponent selection applications under the reality of uncertain and inco mplete information. A decision analytic approach is developed with the goal of assisting designers in making decisions that balance the cost of the limited resources consumed during the design process, such as the designer's time, against The benefit to be derived from the utiliz ation of those resources in terms of expectations of an improved desig n. This approach is shown to complement other formal methods for desig n based on interval arithmetic and qualitative optimization, and a gen eral methodology is proposed for performing component selection utiliz ing a combination of these methods. An example application to the sele ction of rolling element bearings is presented to clarify the methodol ogy and demonstrate its effectiveness in providing guidance to designe rs when selecting elements from a component database.