Towards Digitalization of Physical Effect Libraries

In the course of an ever-increasing complexity of today's cyber-physical products, a shift of traditional systems engineering (SE) towards model-based system engineering (MBSE) is taking place. Many MBSE approaches use central system models to seamlessly link relevant development artifacts. The underlying methodologies are based on function-oriented procedure models of traditional SE. To support function-oriented development, various tools have been developed. These tools include so-called design catalogs, which collect known technical solutions to make domain specific knowledge broadly available. For conceptual development phases, especially the catalogs of Koller and Roth are commonly used. These catalogs provide a collection of fundamental physical effects for the fulfillment of elementary functions. A transfer of the analog, document-based effect catalogs to digital, model-based effect libraries has the potential to make product development more efficient. On one hand, finding the most suitable solution for a given system function could be efficiently supported via algorithms. On the other hand, an easy integration as well of reusable modeled effects as well as an early fundamental validation of possible solution concepts could be achieved. The digitalization of individual physical effects and their integration into model-based solution concepts has already been demonstrated. However, it has not yet been possible to create digital effect libraries that enable the seamless reuse of digital physical effect models. This paper therefore aims to identify existing deficits within the formalization of physical effects. To achieve this, requirements for digital physical effect libraries are determined. Based on these requirements, existing deficits are derived by comparing the requirements with the analog effect catalogs and existing MBSE modeling methodologies. Finally, recommendations for action and possible approaches to overcome the identified deficits are presented.