A procedure for the design of complex mechanical systems by decomposition

The design of many practical mechanical systems usually requires dealing wi th large-scale problems incorporating different physical phenomena with div erse behavioral constraints which are generally nonlinear. This paper prese nts a generalized procedure to aid the designer in making such problems tra ctable through appropriate segmentation. Accordingly, the interactions betw een the different components and parameters become clearer, allowing intera ctive modeling improvement and design decisions to be made serially with im mediate feed back on how they influence the design objective. The procedure also aids the designer in identifying and easily correcting any constraint inconsistency or programming errors. Although the methodology is developed for large-scale systems, simple examples are considered for illustration a nd good feasible solutions can be obtained without extensive computing effo rt. There is no guarantee, however, that a global optimum design can be ach ieved by this approach although in all the tried cases the solution was opt imum.