Multidisciplinary design optimization based on independent subspaces

Abstract

Optimization has been successfully applied to systems with a single discipline. Since many disciplines are involved in a coupled fashion in modern engineering, multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) technology has been developed. MDO algorithms are designed to solve the coupled aspects generated from the interdisciplinary relationship. In a general MDO algorithm, a large design problem is decomposed into smaller ones which can be easily solved. Although various methods have been proposed for MDO, research is still in the early stage. This study proposes a new MDO method which is named MDO based on independent subspaces (MDOIS). Many real engineering problems consist of physically separate components and they can be independently designed. The inter-relationship occurs through coupled physics. MDOIS is developed for such problems. In MDOIS, a large system is decomposed into small subsystems. The coupled aspects are solved via system analysis which solves the coupled physics. The algorithm is mathematically validated by showing that the solution satisfies the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker condition. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.