Swarm-based evaluation of nonparametric SysML mechatronics system design

The design of a mechatronics system is considered one of the hardest challenges in industry. This is mainly due to the multidisciplinary nature of the design process that requires the knowledge integration of the participating disciplines. Previously, we have proposed SysDICE a framework that is capable of: (1) modeling the multidisciplinary information of mechatronics systems using SysML and (2) adopting a nonparametric technique for evaluating such a SysML model. In SysDICE the optimization that led to the determination of the best alternative combinations for satisfying the requirements was time-costly and discarded prohibited combinations. This paper contributes by: (1) proposing an effective method for restricting the set of possible alternative combinations and (2) employing a swarm intelligence based optimization scheme which significantly reduces the computational cost of SysDICE.