Function Oriented Design

By definition, the final purpose of function oriented design is the creation of a molecule with useful properties. This usefulness may refer to a very diverse area of application and therefore it was virtually impossible to suggest a reasonable set of classification guidelines to present the material in this section. Any attempt to give a more or less complete coverage of even the main trends of studies in this area was actually precluded by the enormous amount of relevant material. Thus we were forced to restrict ourselves to the analysis of a rather limited number of examples, chosen mainly to illustrate some of the trends of function oriented design with the criteria of instructiveness and simplicity (and our own personal preferences, for sure ). 

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In function-oriented design, the required functionality is analyzed and decomposed into smaller units. This decomposition is repeated until the units are small enough that can be implemented as a single component in the overall system design. The interfaces for the components are documented so that implementers know exactly what to implement. The job of implementing a component involves designing appropriate algorithms and data structures to accomplish the task of the component. 

Liang Y, Zhang P, Chen J (2013) Function-oriented design of conjugated carbonyl compound electrodes for high energy lithiirm batteries. Chem Sci 4(3) 1330-1337... 

The potential energy is often described in terms of an oscillating function like the one shown in Figure 10.9(a) where the minima correspond to the relative orientations in which the interactions are most favorable, and the maxima correspond to unfavorable orientations. In ethane, the minima would occur at the staggered conformation and the maxima at the eclipsed conformation. In symmetrical molecules like ethane, the potential function reflects the symmetry and has a number of equivalent maxima and minima. In less symmetric molecules, the function may be more complex and show a number of minima of various depths and maxima of various heights. For our purposes, we will consider only molecules with symmetric potential functions and designate the number of minima in a complete rotation as r. For molecules like ethane and H3C-CCI3, r = 3. 

Object-oriented design is about decoupling the major aspects of the way a component functions and connects to its neighbors can be separated into different subcomponents. 

Mechatronic design procedures must therefore utilize the potential of interdiscipUnarily cooperating development teams in the sense of concurrent engineering (van Brussel 1996) in order to obtain a holistically optimized product. A challenge that has to be mastered in this context is the creation of a universal nomenclature in order to facilitate the communication between the technical disciplines involved. Moreover, a uniform concept for the description of the interactions between the different subsystems is required. Function-oriented description languages like UML or SysML fulfill this requirement on an abstract level and can thus be used for the design of the superordinate function structure. Furthermore, the appropriate involvement of optional external development partners is an absolute condition for a successful mechatronic development project. 

In object-oriented design, the system is viewed as consisting of a set of objects that cooperate to accomplish the required functionality. Each object has a set of attributes and a set of functions that it can perform. The attributes hold values that represent the state of the object. For example, attributes for an employee object may include name, address, skill, and salary. The objects interact and cooperate by sending each other messages that request functions to be performed. The task of object-oriented design consists of identifying what objects are needed, and the objects attributes and functions. Object behavior refers to the functions that an object supports. 

The main benefit of this functional, task-oriented perspective involves the process design unconstrained by equipment geometry. Thus, task-oriented design prevails against equipment-oriented design. 

The orientation of fibres is an important factor in the design of a composite material strncture. Strong anisotropic effects may be created by fibres and there have been several attempts both to determine the influence of fibre orientation on mechanical properties and to optimize it. Much of the research was concentrated on advanced composites with ductile matrices and the objective function for design or optimization was the composite strength. These composites were extensively applied not just in aircraft and rockets, but also in the construction of cars the review of these investigations is published by Ashby and Jones (2005). 

To mitigate the risk of applying a device to the human body, a series of tests such as those guided by the International Organization of Standards (ISO), are required to be performed on the device prior to human use. Biocompatibility evaluation of medical devices, based on the ISO 10993, is performed to determine the potential harmful effects from contact of the component materials with the body. BiocompatibiUty tests also evaluate the fitness and function of the devices under an implant environment. It should be noted that requirements of biocompatibility vary considerably based on the device function and design, so most regulatory evaluations are device-orientated rather than material-orientated. Usually, materials that have been proven to be biocompatible in one device have to be reevaluated for a different application. 

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