Appropriate Design Guided by Simulation: An Hovercraft Application

A design methodology based on simulation of dynamical behavior is presented in this paper. The particularity of our method is that it exploits the set-membership simulation. Indeed, this method allows one to consider an interval of values for each parameter of the dynamical model. Finding the parameters validating the requirements is then a filter, based on a Branch and Prune algorithm. We prefer an approach of appropriate design that is a design which validates the physical constraints coming from requirements, to an optimal design which does not lead to satisfy imperative requirements. Our method is described and applied on the complex problem of design of an hovercraft under dynamic requirements.