Metrics for assessing design freedom and information certainty in the early stages of design

Our primary focus in this paper is on open engineering systems. Developing ranged sets (as opposed to point sets) of top-level design specifications i s a means to enhance openness and system flexibility by increasing design k nowledge while maintaining design freedom. Consequently, our secondary focu s in this paper is on metrics for assessing the design freedom and informat ion certainty associated with a lunged set of top-level design specificatio ns. As a demonstration, these metrics are applied to an example problem, na mely, the conceptual design of a family of aircraft. Our emphasis in this p aper is on introducing open engineering systems and metrics for design free dom and information certainty, and not on the example, per se.