Empirical studies on conceptual design synthesis of multiple-state mechanical devices

Conceptual design synthesis, which focuses on generating solution alternatives, has a significant impact on the cost and quality of the final product. The development of radically new and significantly better solutions requires generation and exploration of a large solution space. Most of the existing literature on conceptual design synthesis of mechanical devices: (1) is on synthesising device concepts for a single relation of 'converting one input set to another output set'-this is called single-state design synthesis (SSDS); and (2) primarily employs 'composition of building blocks' as the approach for the synthesis of concepts. Multiple-state design synthesis (MSDS), on the other hand, refers to synthesising device concepts for more than one relation between an input set and an output set. Since not much literature is available on studies of MSDS, it is essential to understand how and how well designers currently carry out MSDS. This knowledge can be used as a benchmark and a source of knowledge for developing a prescriptive support to improve MSDS. Therefore, the objective of the work presented in this paper is to obtain a better understanding of this process by carrying out empirical studies on multiple-state synthesis.