Research on general version management oriented to design process of aero-engine parts

There are many modifications and iterative design sub-processes in the design process of aero-engine parts and components, which will produce large numbers of interim versions and correlative data of the parts and components. Only important versions and data were managed by Product Data Management (PDM)system, and most of them were discarded. To deal with the shortcomings of PDM systems, a concept of general version management was proposed and the corresponding general version management model was set up. With this method, the design state worked as the basic unit used to organize various related design data and analysis data so as to form a general version. Version operation in components design process was analyzed and interrelationships among versions were also represented by graphs. Mathematical expression of version graph was studied and general versions management model was also constructed. All of these efforts have effectively implemented version management oriented to the design process of aero-engine.