Measurement Theory and Dimensional Analysis: Methodological Impact on the Comparison and Evaluation Process

Comparison and ranking of solutions are central tasks of the design process. Designers have to deal with decisions simultaneously involving multiple criteria. Those criteria are often inconsistent in the sense that they are expressed according to different types of metrics. This means that usual engineering performance indicators are expressed according to physical quantities (i.e. SI system) and indicators such as preference functions can be “measured” by using other type of qualitative metrics. This aspect limits the scientific consistency of design because a coherent scientific framework will at first require the creation of a unified list of fundamental properties. A combined analysis of the measurement theory, the General Design Theory (GDT) and the dimensional analysis theory give an interesting insight in order to create guidelines for establishing a coherent measurement system. This article establishes a list of fundamental requirements. We expect that these guidelines can help engineers and designers to be more aware of the drawbacks linked with the use of wrong comparison procedures and limitations associated with the use of weak measurement scales. This article makes an analysis of the fundamental aspects available in major scientific publications related to comparison, provides a synthesis of these basic concepts and unifies those concepts together from a designing perspective. A practical design methodology using the fundamental results of this article as prerequisites has been implemented by the authors.