Exaggeration

摘要

Exaggeration is a technique for solving comparative analysis problems by considering extreme perturbations to a system. For example, exaggeration answers the question “What happens to the output temperature of a heat exchanger if fluid flow rate increases?” by simulating the behavior of an exchanger with infinite flow rate. Exaggeration is implemented as a sequence of three phases: transform, simulate, and scale. The transform phase takes a comparative analysis problem and generates the description of an exaggerated system. The simulate phase predicts the behavior of the transformed system. Finally, the scale phase compares the original and exaggerated behaviors to answer the original comparative analysis question. This paper explains the theoretical basis of exaggeration, describes an implementation that has solved over fifty problems, and compares exaggeration with the differential qualitative (DQ) analysis approach to comparative analysis.