Functional analysis for micro mechanical systems

Functional analysis is a powerful tool to describe and represent both macro and micro devices. Functional analysis is used in the paper as a tool for investigating the miniaturisation issues and for highlighting the critical parts or features that mainly are affected by downscaling. A systematic method, based mainly on functional analysis, and a series of additional tools are illustrated by analysing the design of a new micro fluidic system starting from the corresponding macro product. The functional analysis seems to be a good tool as well for novice designers as for expert designers facing up with design issues at different scales. The micro world introduces micro-specificities that have to be considered as additional constraints to design.