Economic-based distributed optimal design

Abstract

Spacecraft * and launch systems are examples of complex products which require a careful balance between competing concerns, such as performance, weight, and reliability, to serve their mission. Complexity requires design by large engineering organizations, so this balance must be achieved across many teams of people working on various components. This paper uses optimization theory to derive a method for distributed optimal design. Each component design team is provided with a separate optimization problem such that, as each team finds the best design solution to their problem, the teams together design the best system. To date, distributed optimal design has been difficult because complex system design spaces have extremely high dimensions over which design objectives are poorly correlated. Instead, this paper proposes that design objectives be expressed as functions in attribute spaces, which have few dimensions and are much smoother than design spaces. Attribute spaces are generated from design spaces by traditional engineering analysis processes. Economic analysis of all parties to spacecraft launch and operation is used to construct a top-level value function on the system attribute space. This function is linearly decomposed into value functions for component attribute spaces. This provides the needed objective functions for distributed optimal design.

Robust Gas Turbine and Airframe System Design in Light of Uncertain Fuel and CO2 Prices

“…In theory, engineering design simply involves nding and analyzing all conceivable designs and then selecting the best one [49]. In order to nd the best solution objectively, however, all signicant design consequences have to be compared on an equal basis [50,51].…”

Biased Information Passing Between Subsystems Over Time in Complex System Design

“…Information passing has been studied from both a robustness perspective [22] and the effect of the amount of information on system performance [23]. Collopy outlines a strategy for reaching an optimal design based on passing of gradient information [24]. Lewis and Mistree presented a Game Theoretic approach where each agent is involved in the decision-making part of the optimizing task.…”

Value-Based Decision Environment: Vision and Application

“…Value-driven design is a movement that is using economic theory to transform systems engineering to better use optimization to improve the design of large systems, particularly in aerospace and defense [3,31]. One example is the work in [32] where a value-centric design methodology is used to compare monolithic and fractionated spacecraft.…”