Design Verification through virtual prototyping techniques based on Systems Engineering

The increasing offer of software tools for product development introduces methodological questions to design engineers in terms of the easiness of tool integration and design activities' sequencing. Nowadays, Design Verification and Validation through prototyping techniques have been enriched with software solutions enabling virtual prototyping to take more product's behaviors into consideration during analysis and simulation. It is the case of the Systems Engineering module in CATIA (TM) V6 that proposes a sequential "Requirements-Functional-Logical-Physical Design" (RFLP) approach to link conceptual design activities with 3D-models and simulation. Since some practitioners traditionally use these concepts, this article presents an analysis, based on action research, to evaluate the Design Verification activities as well as the tools integration offered by the new Product Lifecycle Management vision of CATIA (TM) V6. The analysis enabled authors to refine and propose a model's nature-dependent design method, enriched from the basic RFLP concept. Additionally, the presented results also showed the benefits of using integrated approaches when designing complex products, represented in a case study on virtual Design Verification of an automotive sub-system.