Convergent Iteration in Engineering Design

该研究项目将扩展说明性和 工程设计中迭代的非正式模型， 目前可用。 指导精化的形式化方法 将在每次迭代中开发工程设计， 允许设计师在设计过程中做出更好的决策 过程 的基于集合的表示和操作 以前开发的工程设计中的不确定性将 扩展到联合收割机，将每个设计步骤的不精确结果结合起来， 指导下一步。 由于工程设计非正式地收敛到一个解决方案， (in大多数情况下）现在，我们认为， 指导设计改进也将产生理解 迭代收敛的条件。 这个， 当然，这对设计有着深远的影响， 几个不同的融合的可能性的迹象 候选设计可能能够引导设计师追求（在 最少最初）那些候选人与最好的迹象， 收敛

This research project will extend the illustrative and informal models of iteration in engineering design that are available at present. Formal methods for guiding the refinement of engineering designs at each iteration will be developed that permit the designer to make better decisions during the design process. The set-based representation and manipulation of uncertainties in engineering design developed previously will be extended to combine the imprecise results from each design step to guide the next step. Since engineering design informally converges to a solution (in most cases) now, we believe that developing a formalism for guiding the design refinement will also produce an understanding of the conditions under which the iterations are convergent. This, of course, has profound implications for design, in that very early indications of the possibility of convergence of several different candidate designs may be able to guide the designer to pursue (at least initially) those candidates with the best indications of convergence.