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The Iterative and Participative Axiomatic Design Process (IPADeP) deals with the early conceptual design stage of complex mechanical assemblies. It provides a systematic approach based on the theory of Axiomatic Product Development Lifecycle and aims to minimize the risks related to the uncertainty and incompleteness of the requirements, considering that the requirements will be refined and completed during the process. IPADeP has an iterative nature and is focused on the experience of the people involved in the design process. The functional requirements and the design parameters are conceived through brainstorming sessions and the concept selection is performed involving several experts through a Multi Criteria Decision Making technique. IPADeP has been adopted as methodology to address the early conceptual design stage of a subsystem of the DEMOnstration fusion power plant: the divertor cassette-to-vacuum vessel locking system. A first iteration was performed, resulting in the selection of a "high level" rough solution. According with IPADeP this paper presents an improvement of this solution, performing a new iteration of the process, since the system is ripe to proceed with the decomposition and zigzagging to the second level and new requirements are coming in from the development of the interfaced systems. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

The present paper proposes a structured Product Development Lifecycle (PDL) model to deal with the concept design stage of complex assemblies. The proposed method provides a systematic approach to design, aimed to improve requirements management, project management and communication among stakeholders as well as to avoid project failures reducing project development time. This research also provides suggestions and recommendations for utilizing different analysis, synthesis and assessment methodologies along with the proposed approach. The process developed, named Iterative and Participative Axiomatic Design Process (IPADeP), is consistent with ISO/IEC 15288: 2008 – “Systems and software engineering”, and INCOSE Systems engineering handbook. It is an iterative and incremental design process, participative and requirements driven, based on the theory of Axiomatic Product Development Lifecycle (APDL). IPADeP provides a systematic methodology in which, starting from a set of experts’ assumptions, a number of conceptual solutions are generated, analysed and evaluated. Based on the results obtained, new iterations can be performed for each level of decomposition while product requirements are refined. In this paper, we applied IPADeP to the initial phase of conceptual design activities for DEMO divertor-to-vacuum vessel locking system in order to propose new innovative solutions.