Modeling Design Concepts under Risk and Uncertainty using Parameterized Efficient Sets

Abstract

Decisions made during conceptual design can have a major impact on the success of a design project. However, the inherently imprecise nature of design is a major source of uncertainty and risk in conceptual design decisions. A single concept relates to a large set of specific design implementations, each of which has a different level of desirability based on the tradeoffs designers are willing to make. It therefore is beneficial for designers to have an understanding of the various tradeoffs they can achieve by implementing a concept. In this paper, we describe an approach to modeling design concepts under uncertainty based on a tradeoff space representation. We use the principles of decision making to develop a useful interpretation of a tradeoff space for decisions under uncertainty and to identify criteria useful for eliminating undesirable tradeoffs from consideration. We illustrate our approach to modeling and decision making on an example for the conceptual design of a gearbox.

Making Sense of Elegant Complexity in Design

“…4 that demonstrates a simple example of a TCM in the form of some kind of representation of the Pareto or efficient frontier for a set of design alternatives. This research extends previous work that modeled parameterized Pareto frontiers and studied the composition of frontiers across heterogeneous systems [31][32][33][34].…”

Set‐based design: The state‐of‐practice and research opportunities

“…While this article does not specifically address SBD by name, it discusses the quantification of system robustness and rational decision‐making, both key components of the SBD process. Furthermore, the researchers themselves are familiar with SBD, with several publications on the subject, lending credence to the document's inclusion within the study 13,38,39 . Using this logic, we are able to include a large number of relevant documents within this review that may have otherwise been missed, enabling a more comprehensive assessment of SBD.…”

“…From this set, we identified and collected only refereed journal articles and conference papers, reducing the set to the 64 SBD specific documents considered in the final review. We refer to this set of documents as Group A throughout the remainder of this paper 2–65 . We provide the complete listing for all Group A documents in Table 1.…”