THE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN  

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY  

Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree  

MASTER OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN  

on Friday, April 15, 2022 

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Via  https://bluejeans.com/984473469/6435 (online) 

155 Architecture West (in-person)

will be held the  

THESIS DEFENSE  

for  

Darrin Winecoff

A Systems Approach to Biomimetic Product Design

Advisor:  

Dr. Hyun Joo Oh, Assistant Professor, School of Industrial Design   

Committee:  

Dr. Stephen Sprigle, Professor, School of Industrial Design

Dr. Olivia Pinon-Fischer, Senior Research Engineer, School of Aerospace Engineering 

Faculty and students are invited to attend this presentation.  ​

Abstract: 274 words

This thesis looks into utilizing a model based systems engineering tool for knowledge reuse and traceability in the field of biomimetics. Biomimetics integrates up and coming technological advances to mimic nature’s functions. While product designers are familiar with abstracting functions and aesthetics from organisms, there is a lack of familiarity with design inspiration from living systems and new technologies. The increased complexity of products and their systems requires designers to have the ability to trace their decisions and verify that it is in line with the engineering design requirements to successfully integrate the new technologies.

Research shows that traditional methods do not enable the designer to trace back to the requirements, review the work of similar projects, and utilize the knowledge previously developed in the community. To better develop a support tool for bio-inspired designers who work with new technologies, insights regarding how to design for knowledge reuse and tracible design decisions are needed. A modeling package was designed towards current practice for storing and accessing project data in the MBSE language SysML. The package concept creates a format for storing and accessing biological and technological information. This allows for designers to easily locate information, provides information on how to reuse a previous system or model element, creates graphics for clear identification of patterns across both the biological and technological domains, and sets users up for success through multiple traceability options throughout a product’s lifecycle. The study concludes that the package has the potential to create a biological and technical repository for knowledge reuse, support forwards and backward traceability, and create an extendable mapping profile to facilitate design across the biological and technological domains.