The world consequently gets faster, so does product development. Therefore, the stock of development and simulation data increases continuously. Unfortunately, inexperienced users cannot cope with the rising number of simulation requests in the time needed. Digital Engineering opens potentials to support the users with newly developed methods and tools. In this contribution, we present a method to assist designers, inexperienced in finite-element simulations to perform an initial check of changed parametric designs independently, quickly and with support in interpreting the results.

The act of prototyping is a key element of the design process. However, capturing information on how prototypes evolve and influence one another is a complex problem. This paper presents an iterative evolution to a prototyping capture platform, termed Pro2Booth, designed to address the shortcomings encountered in previous systems. The Pro2Booth hardware and online software described in this paper provide a new baseline for future innovation and exploration of the prototype capture process.

Prototypes are a critical aid in the product development process, allowing designers translate concepts to reality. However, the execution of prototypes depends heavily on the designer experience, evidenced in research in the need of creating design support tools to establish a standard for a prototyping effort. To improve on these findings, the Proto-Arch is introduced as a partial result of creating a standard for executing prototypes in each product development phase based on the prototyping roles and purposes. Proto-Arch defines the prototyping activities in the embodiment design phase.

Aircraft cabin monuments must be optimized in terms of lightweight design, cost structure and variance. Model-based approaches support the aircraft data and help to modify them consistently during further development. In this paper, a holistic methodological approach for product families of aircraft cabin development is shown, which integrates lightweight and cost-efficient aspects, in addition to the variance focus. For this purpose, the development of cost-efficient and ligthweight optimized cabin modules is supported in a model-based way.

New sensor solutions are under development in the context of digitalization in order to integrate sensory functions into systems. When integrating sensors, the three domains of mechanical, electrical and information engineering must be considered. This results in complex development processes that require suitable procedure models. However, specific procedure models for sensor selection and integration are missing. This contribution proposes a procedure model for sensor selection and integration on the basis of the Munich Procedure Model (MPM) and gives an outlook on open research questions.

Aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) is an innovative material for lightweight structures due to its various advantages (e.g. low specific mass). Today, many material properties (e.g. strength) are still not well researched, which is why AFS is not yet considered in current material selection processes. Therefore, AFS has rarely been used in the past and its application potential remains unused. This paper presents an approach toward an appropriate method for considering AFS in material selection processes to assist designers in evaluating whether the use of AFS in an application is profitable.

As an outcome of the multi-criteria evaluation of different alternatives, product developers receive information on whether the evaluation alternatives meet the demanded property profile. If not, product characteristic and property changes are required, which can have desired and undesired effects. This contribution presents an MBSE-based approach, which extends the relational requirement model by value functions and product properties. Its novelty can be found in the integration of multi-criteria decision models, which are used to improve alternatives based on property change impact analyses.

Components of modern systems are characterised by differing lifetimes. The resulting lifetime heterogeneity (LTH) is a core criteria to determine life cycle options (LCO) for more sustainable products, e.g. by upgrading or reuse. Estimating the lifetimes is challenged by a lack of suitable degradation models (DM) describing the detrimental change performance of components during the use phase. This paper expands the state of the art in LCO selection by a method to evaluate fitness and sensitivity of DM based on the similarity of use cases, environments and operation profiles of the system.

This paper presents an exploratory case study where video-based pose estimation is used to analyse human motion to support data-driven design. It provides two example use cases related to design. Results are compared to ground truth measurements showing high correlation for the estimated pose, with an RMSE of 65.5 mm. The paper exemplifies how design projects can benefit from a simple, flexible, and cost-effective approach to capture human-object interactions. This also entails the possibility of implementing interaction and body capturing in the earliest stages of design, at minimal effort.

The new development of cyber-physical product families currently lacks a methodically supported modularisation approach. This paper provides an approach for module-based mechatronic development, which provides design for future product variety. The state of the art in terms of mechatronic system design and modular product architecture design is presented. A modified V-model is then shown that integrates initial product architecture design and life phase modularisation. The method is applied and evaluated for the development of product family generations of robot units in a teaching course.

The implementation of additive manufacturing enables the the re-thinking of a product towards function-oriented design. This study proposes a method, which uses a set of rules and indicators to implement functional integration, part consolidation, part separation and on-demand manufacturing onto a conventional prodcut architecture to restructure it into an AM-oriented product architecture. The feasibility of the method is demonstrated on an assembly from the field of high temperature applications.

This paper presents an approach for evaluating exoskeleton support concepts through biomechanical analyses on a musculoskeletal human model. By simplifying the support forces of an exoskeleton as external forces, different support concepts can be biomechanically evaluated for the respective use case without concrete design specifications of the exoskeleton. This enables an estimation of the resulting relief and strain on the human body in the early stages of exoskeleton development. To present the approach, the use case of working at and above head height with a power tool is chosen.

The comprehensive implementation of digital technologies in product manufacturing leads to changes in engineering processes and requires new approaches to data management. An important role belongs to the processes of organizing the collection, storage and reuse of research data obtained and used in the process of product, system or technology development, taking into account the FAIR data principles. This article describes a Research Data Management System for the organization of documentation and measurement requests in the research and development of new oxygen-free production technologies.

Endoprosthesis are exposed to the risk of aseptic loosening. The design of the prosthesis shaft to achieve physiological force application is therefore of great importance. Additive manufacturing offers the potential to fabricate highly variable topologies, but challenges the designer with a large number of design variables. In this work, a method is developed to determine an optimized density topology that approximates a given mechanical stress state in the bone after implantation. For this purpose, a topology optimization of the density distribution of the implant is performed.

This paper presents a framework to develop the automated design of fixtures using the combination of design automation (DA), multidisciplinary optimization and robotic simulation. MDO necessitates the use of concurrent and parametric designs which are created by DA and knowledge-based engineering tools. This approach is designed to decrease the time and cost of the fixture design process by increasing the degree of automation. AutoFix provides methods and tools for automatically optimizing resource-intensive fixture design utilizing digital tools from different disciplines.

Manually exploring the solution space for different variants of a product for a given set of requirements is ineffective regarding product development time and adaptation to dynamic customer requirements. Variant generation coupled to optimization algorithms offers possibilities to search the solution space in an automated way. This paper provides a framework to build a generative parametric design environment for functional assemblies by implementing analysis as well as synthesis methods in computer-aided tools. The procedure is presented using the example of a coffee machine.

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) can provide new air mobility faster and avoid city traffic with the growth of new technologies. But they need to be co-developed with the city infrastructure. Thus, understanding the working scenarios of UAM and how they will interact with the city and the other modes of transport systems is vital. Storyboarding helps policymakers, city planners, designers, and investors better understand the product's contextual interaction over time. This process allows the design team to be implicit or express a design that is easy to understand, reflect upon, or modify.

Whilst remanufacture is identified as a key enabler for sustainable manufacture in future industry, its role within the context of new product development remains unclear. Where prototypes often go through multiple iterations with varying degrees of change, could remanufacture be adopted to reduce the time and cost components of design iteration? This paper presents a computational study to explore the potential savings afforded by remanufacture across stages of a rapid prototyping process. Results suggest significant reductions to development time and cost can be achieved.

Companies offer products in different variants to reach more customers. This increases internal variety and cost. However, reducing those cost is difficult due to complexity. Complexity arises from: combinatorics; many design variables interacting with each other; coupling of technical and economical perspectives. This paper presents an approach based on (1) building a complex system model of modular models; (2) identifying the potential for standardization from a technical perspective; (3) cost-optimizing the degree of standardization. A product family of electric vehicles was optimized.

Given the Industry 4.0 trend towards smaller lot sizes and large product families, there is a need to increase the design efficiency in terms of cost and lead time. Design decisions taken in the early or conceptual design phases are shown to have the greatest impact on the final product cost, however the choices and trade-offs are often made in an ad-hoc way. This paper presents a structured methodology for formalizing early stage product design knowledge, which is key for designing and evaluating new variants in a product family in the early stages of the design process.