Object Oriented Design Approach to Systems Engineering of a Mechanical Steering System 2003-01-3399

The successful development of new products is contingent on clearly understanding product requirements and defining appropriate design activities to deliver the right product. Even if one can clearly understand the abstract requirements implied by the voice-of-customer (VOC), engineers still work best to a set of specifications that define the product in objective measures. The task of extracting the systems specifications from text versions of product requirements is not trivial. Full order dynamic models of mass, springs and dampers provide understanding of vehicle performance; however, the engineer has to define the dynamic characteristics based on his understanding of requirements and translate them into technical specifications. The result can be too dependent on human assumptions and judgments at this point.

This work was done to understand how to apply Object Oriented Design (OOD) methodology to trace requirements of a mechanical system to design parameters. The goal was to clearly define a truck steering system that manages vehicle wander effectively. This work also demonstrates the use of Unified Modeling Language (UML) to construct useful views of a mechanical system.