A Fractal Representation for Systems

Abstract

To facilitate the design of evolving systems, tools are needed to capture all performance issues and evaluate design ideas and proposals quickly during the conceptual stage, so that better designs can be generated. By using such tools, engineers can quickly identify and understand how their design decisions impact and are impacted by choices made concerning other components in the system. Thus, rational design decisions will be made during conceptual design, minimizing if not eliminating the need to address design problems during implementation.

This paper presents a methodology, based on axiomatic design theory, for constructing a system architecture for complex systems that standardizes the classification of functions and modules used to represent a system. This is important for several reasons, including capturing the performance requirements and components of the system in a logical, coherent, and comprehensive manner, facilitating communication between engineers and managers on a large design project, and providing good technical documentation of the design decisions made and the reasoning behind them. A system architecture is applicable to systems of any size, including systems that are subsystems of a larger system. Thus, the decomposition of a system follows the same general pattern and layout at each level of the design hierarchy where the parent design parameter is a “system” in its own right. Hence, the overall system is represented in a recursive manner throughout the design hierarchy. This representation has several advantages, the most significant of which is that the design of individual subsystems can be generated by different teams of engineers on a large design project, while the functionality of the overall system as well as the interrelationships between the different subsystems are thoroughly and consistently represented.