Abstract: Considering the coupling connections among the functional cells and their complicated relationships, such as connection in series, in parallel and in both of them and so on, as well as among the sub-structures, a computerized conceptual design method is given out for mechanical systems based on the function decomposition and recomposition method. At first, the mathematic expressions of complicated functional relationships generated during the decomposition of functions are introduced. Then the expressions are applied in selection of candidates of conceptual designs. The results show that the method is efficient in finding out intended schemes of conceptual design and results explosion with morphological matrix method can be avoided. And also, since the scheme of conceptual design is expressed in symbolical form and the relationships among substructures are given out in the scheme, the further application of the scheme will be found in automatic 3 dimensional virtual system designs.

Key words: Automatic method, Conceptual design, Coupling connection, Function unit