Rapid advances in technology and design tools are enabling engineers to design systems containing multiple and interacting components (software and hardware). Growing complexity and tightening time-to-market constraints result in an increasing design productivity gap. Mastering the complexity and risk associated with the design process is then of increasing importance.
The past few years’ effort has been mainly directed towards the development of computer-aided tools dedicated to the embodiment and detail part of the design process. Methods and tools developed for the early design stage are highly empirical and characterised by a poor degree of measurability, repeatability and analysis of the potential variations affecting the early solutions. Therefore, developing new forms of computer-aided methodologies and tools dedicated to the early design stage are required because the initial phase of the design process is to a large extent still managed by rules of thumb and manual, poorly formalised design approaches.
Furthermore, because of time-to-market constraints, there is today a crucial need for system design tools and methodologies to assist designers in designing and developing such systems. These issues need to be addressed under joint efforts from different areas, such as system engineering, software engineering, and mechatronic and mechanical engineering.
This special issue aims to focus on the above issues and solicits papers that address theoretical and experimental work related to computer-aided tools and methodologies in early design stages of the development process.
Suitable topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Modelling, simulation and synthesis
- Design space exploration tools
- Optimisation techniques
- Metrics and benchmarks
- Design knowledge and collaboration
- Evaluation and decision
- Applications and case studies
Deadline for submission of papers: 31 May 2012 (revised date)
Notification of first decisions: 31 August 2012
Revisions due: 15 October 2012
Notification of final acceptance: 15 November 2012
Final publication materials due from authors: 30 November 2012
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