Optimization Problem Formulation for Multidisciplinary Design

Summary

In industry today, the design process relies heavily on engineers-in-the-loop, making it is difficult to handle a sufficient number of design variables to optimize a complex product. Additionally, engineering disciplines are usually worked sequentially, so it is tedious and time-consuming to make tradeoffs between disciplines. Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) is the formal coupling of two or more computational engineering disciplines with numerical optimization. The promise of MDO is that, by providing engineers with optimization tools and by allowing them to consider several disciplines simultaneously, the current difficulties can be overcome and many benefits can be obtained. Among these benefits are shortening the design cycle, understanding and formalization of design processes and interdisciplinary relationships, and achieving designs that lead to better products at lower cost.