“Working Surface Pairs &Channel and Support Structures”

Function => Principle of solution => Embodiment design

• There is no useful product without function and we must think all the time about the function of a product.

• Principles of solutions we can find with the help of some methods.

• The step from principles to the real embodiment design is complicate and there are only very few methods.

• Embodiment design is a synthesis we have to bring all the details together to fulfil the function.

• But the same time we have to analyze, what we have just created.

• The only way to do a good engineering design is exactly this way:

• It‘s not so easy, but when you decided to be an design engineer because you thought it‘s an easy and lazy job, you where totally wrong.

• You should look very soon for another job.

• But when you like to create new products and you like to do a great effort for this wonderful feeling, to be a creator you are right.

• When we analyse a system we find characteristics in a bigger connectivity and the result will be more common and will give a wider area.

• Complexity is reduced and we find out, what`s really important. This is what we call abstraction.

• We create in our thoughts a structure which permits to imagine the different forms of appearence easier.

• Abstraction supports our creativity, analytical and systematic thinking. With the help of abstraction it is possible to define a problem independent from random conditions and we can find a universal solution.

• Synthesis means do use all the informations, to build connections, to combine elements in a new way with new results and to establish an order between this elements.

• It means the procedure to search, to find, to construct and to combine.

• The significant characteristic of engineering design is the assembling of cognition, single solutions to a complete and functioning system. To combine details to a unit.

• Franz Reuleaux (1829-1905) started in 1874 to search for the smallest detail, the smallest machine-element. It needed more than 100 years to find it, because the smallest detail in a machine is between the elements. It`s the Working Surface Pair. But it works only with the Channel and Support Structures.

Definitions

• Working surfaces are rigid surfaces of materials or generalized interface layers of liquids, gas or fields, which are continously or temporary in a contact with another working surface. They are involved in the transportation of energy, material and / or information of every technical system.

• Every exchange of energy, material and/or information happens by working surfaces

• The analysis of a working surface must be problem specific. For example, it is possible to divide a working surface in smaller surfaces, when we enlarge the resolution of our view.

• Boundary surfaces are rigid surfaces of materials or generalized interface layers of liquids, gas or fields, which are never working surfaces.

• They never exchange energy, material or information and they don`t have any function.

• An important task of the product developer is to decide which surfaces will be working surfaces and which will be boundary surfaces.

• In case a boundary surface will in use become a working surface, very often this surface is not designed for these forces and the technical system will be damaged.

• Working surface pairs are build exactly from two working surfaces, which are temporary, complete or particulary in contact and between this pair energy, material and/or information is transmitted.

• A working surface pair can exist temporary.

• If the working surfaces which build the working surface pair are disconnected the element doesn`t exist until the working surfaces come in contact again.

• A function contact is the part of a working surface pair, where actually the interchange happens.

• The complete working surface pair can be the function contact.

• If the contact of a working surface pair is lost the function contact is also lost.

• Support structures are volumes of bodies, liquids, gases or spaces with a field-structure, which connect exactly two working surfaces and permit constantly or temporary the transportation of energy, material and/or information between the working surfaces of a body, a liquid or a gas or a field.

• If inside a technical component no transportation of energy, material and/or information happens the support structure doesn`t exist.

• A support structure exist only together with a working surface pair.

• Possible support structures are the complete volume of all the possible parts of the body which can be support structures.

• The possible support structure defines the functionally volume of a body, a liquid, a gas or a field.

• Rest structures are all the volumes of a body, a gas or spaces with a field structure, which never will be supporting structure.

• They are like boundary surfaces without any function.

• Technical components have normally a lot of rest structures, which are not removed, because it´s to expensive. With FEM it`s today easy to find rest structures and for extreme light constructions they are removed.

• The working structure are all the working surfaces and all the support structures of a technical system, a substructure or a component.

• The working structure defines all the elements which have an influence in the function of a system.

• A working structure has surface elements and volume elements.

1. Hypothesis

• Every basic element of a technical system fulfills it’s function by an interaction with another element.

• The real function and the desired effect is possible only in contact between two surfaces.

• This surfaces are working surfaces and they build together a working surface pair.

2. Hypothesis• The function of a technical system or a

substructure is all the time achieved by at least two working surfaces and a connecting support structure.

• The function will be defined only by the character and the interaction of the two working surfaces and the connecting support structure.

• If fields are involved, then the interaction of the connecting support structure with at least two other connecting support structures are engaged.

• The impact of the involved working surface pairs and the connecting support structures are the only resaon of the effect of a technical system in it`s environment.

3. Hypothesis

• Every system, which fulfills functions, consists in two basic elements, working surface pair and channel and supporting structures. They can exist in every quantity, structure and form.

• Every working surface pair has exactly two working surfaces.

• The smallest existing element in a functionally system, for example a machine, a tecnical subsystem or a machine element is the working surface pair and the generally connected channel and support structure.

• The working surface pair is all the time at the interface to a neighbour element in the neighbour- sub- or superiorsystem.

• The question of Reuleaux: Where is the smallest element of a machine is answered by this hypothesis.