Influence of Multi-component Failure on Mechanical Product Design Change

Design change is one of the most common activities in design and development of mechanical products, and the change will affected by the design and maintenance of the products. It is not uncommon that multiple components might run out of order simultaneously during the use of a product, which would have significant influences on the product performance. Such kind of multi-component failure must be considered early in the product design stage, therefore it is necessary to study multiple design changes incurred by multi-component failure. Existing studies on the design change only focus on single change and ignore multiple simultaneous changes. To address this problem, a change influence network model is establishes, and the propagation path of multiple changes on the change influence network is described according to the change propagation characteristics of mechanical products. By analyzing the degree of dependence between the nodes and the absorption situations of nodes to change propagation, the possible paths of change propagation on the change influence network are determined, and based on which, calculation of the change influence is carried out, which provides decision-making support for product designers. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by taking a household juicer for case study.