Transforming behavioral and physical representations of mechanical designs

Abstract: "We are exploring the use of formal grammars to represent two distinct but interconnected attributes of mechanical designs: geometry and behavior. By creating a formal description of a limited set of behaviors for mechanical designs and a corresponding description of physical components, we can generate the description of a physical system that takes advantage of the multiple behaviors of its components. Our approach is based on the following assertions: The behavioral requirements of mechanical systems can be represented using a graph grammar. The behavioral characteristics of components can be represented using a graph grammar.The physical characteristics of designs and components can be represented using formal topological and geometric models. The behavioral andphysical graphs of components can be linked parametrically or algorithmically. The behavioral specifications graph can be formally transformed into a description of a physical system with associated behavioral and geometric representations. The goal of our research is to createa transformational strategy by which the design specifications for a mechanical system can be transformed into a description of a collectionof mechanical components. For any given design specification, many different physical systems could potentially meet that specification.Hence there are potentially many transformations that could be applied to a particular design specification. We are interested in those transformations of the design specifications which preserve the original behavior of the design. In this paper, we explore a set of transformations that enable us to move from specifications to topological configurations and from topological configurations to geometric configurations."