Bounded Target Cascading in Hierarchical Design Optimization

Author(s):  
Xiao-Ling Zhang ◽  
Po Ting Lin ◽  
Hae Chang Gea ◽  
Hong-Zhong Huang

Analytical Target Cascading method has been widely developed to solve hierarchical design optimization problems. In the Analytical Target Cascading method, a weighted-sum formulation has been commonly used to coordinate the inconsistency between design points and assigned targets in each level while minimizing the cost function. However, the choice of the weighting coefficients is very problem dependent and improper selections of the weights will lead to incorrect solutions. To avoid the problems associated with the weights, single objective functions in the hierarchical design optimization are formulated by a new Bounded Target Cascading method. Instead of point targets assigned for design variables in the Analytical Target Cascading method, bounded targets are introduced in the new method. The target bounds are obtained from the optimal solutions in each level while the response bounds are updated back to the system level. If the common variables exist, they are coordinated based on their sensitivities with respect to design variables. Finally, comparisons of the results from the proposed method and the weighted-sum Analytical Target Cascading are presented and discussed.

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 790620
Author(s):  
Xiaoling Zhang ◽  
Debiao Meng ◽  
Ruan-Jian Yang ◽  
Zhonglai Wang ◽  
Hong-Zhong Huang

For large scale systems, as a hierarchical multilevel decomposed design optimization method, analytical target cascading coordinates the inconsistency between the assigned targets and response in each level by a weighted-sum formulation. To avoid the problems associated with the weighting coefficients, single objective functions in the hierarchical design optimization are formulated by a bounded target cascading method in this paper. In the BTC method, a single objective optimization problem is formulated in the system level, and two kinds of coordination constraints are added: one is bound constraint for the design points based on the response from each subsystem level and the other is linear equality constraint for the common variables based on their sensitivities with respect to each subsystem. In each subsystem level, the deviation with target for design point is minimized in the objective function, and the common variables are constrained by target bounds. Therefore, in the BTC method, the targets are coordinated based on the optimization iteration information in the hierarchical design problem and the performance of the subsystems, and BTC method will converge to the global optimum efficiently. Finally, comparisons of the results from BTC method and the weighted-sum analytical target cascading method are presented and discussed.


Author(s):  
Saima Naz ◽  
Christophe Tribes ◽  
J.-Y. Trépanier ◽  
Jason Nichols ◽  
Eddy Petro

Analytical Target Cascading (ATC), a multilayer multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) formulation employed on a transonic fan design problem. This paper demonstrates the ATC solution process including the specific way of initializing the problem and handling system level and discipline level targets. High-fidelity analysis tools for aerodynamics, structure and dynamics disciplines have been used. A multi-level parameterization of the fan blade is considered for reducing the number of design variables. The overall objective is the transonic fan efficiency improvement under structure and dynamics constraints. This design approach is applied to the redesign of the NASA Rotor 67. The overall study explores the key points of implementation of ATC on transonic fan design practical problem.


2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeongwoo Han ◽  
Panos Y. Papalambros

Decomposition-based strategies, such as analytical target cascading (ATC), are often employed in design optimization of complex systems. Achieving convergence and computational efficiency in the coordination strategy that solves the partitioned problem is a key challenge. A new convergent strategy is proposed for ATC that coordinates interactions among subproblems using sequential linearizations. The linearity of subproblems is maintained using infinity norms to measure deviations between targets and responses. A subproblem suspension strategy is used to suspend temporarily inclusion of subproblems that do not need significant redesign, based on trust region and target value step size. An individual subproblem trust region method is introduced for faster convergence. The proposed strategy is intended for use in design optimization problems where sequential linearizations are typically effective, such as problems with extensive monotonicities, a large number of constraints relative to variables, and propagation of probabilities with normal distributions. Experiments with test problems show that, relative to standard ATC coordination, the number of subproblem evaluations is reduced considerably while the solution accuracy depends on the degree of monotonicity and nonlinearity.


2014 ◽  
Vol 984-985 ◽  
pp. 419-424
Author(s):  
P. Sabarinath ◽  
M.R. Thansekhar ◽  
R. Saravanan

Arriving optimal solutions is one of the important tasks in engineering design. Many real-world design optimization problems involve multiple conflicting objectives. The design variables are of continuous or discrete in nature. In general, for solving Multi Objective Optimization methods weight method is preferred. In this method, all the objective functions are converted into a single objective function by assigning suitable weights to each objective functions. The main drawback lies in the selection of proper weights. Recently, evolutionary algorithms are used to find the nondominated optimal solutions called as Pareto optimal front in a single run. In recent years, Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) finds increasing applications in solving multi objective problems comprising of conflicting objectives because of low computational requirements, elitism and parameter-less sharing approach. In this work, we propose a methodology which integrates NSGA-II and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) for solving a two bar truss problem. NSGA-II searches for the Pareto set where two bar truss is evaluated in terms of minimizing the weight of the truss and minimizing the total displacement of the joint under the given load. Subsequently, TOPSIS selects the best compromise solution.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ping Jiang ◽  
Jianzhuang Wang ◽  
Qi Zhou ◽  
Xiaolin Zhang

Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) has been applied widely in the design of complex engineering systems. To ease MDO problems, analytical target cascading (ATC) organizes MDO process into multilevels according to the components of engineering systems, which provides a promising way to deal with MDO problems. ATC adopts a coordination strategy to coordinate the couplings between two adjacent levels in the design optimization process; however, existing coordination strategies in ATC face the obstacles of complicated coordination process and heavy computation cost. In order to conquer this problem, a quadratic exterior penalty function (QEPF) based ATC (QEPF-ATC) approach is proposed, where QEPF is adopted as the coordination strategy. Moreover, approximate models are adopted widely to replace the expensive simulation models in MDO; a QEPF-ATC and Kriging model combined approach is further proposed to deal with MDO problems, owing to the comprehensive performance, high approximation accuracy, and robustness of Kriging model. Finally, the geometric programming and reducer design cases are given to validate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed approach.


Author(s):  
Hashem Ashrafiuon

Abstract Design optimization of aircraft engine-mount systems for vibration isolation is presented. The engine is modeled as a rigid body connected to a flexible base representing the nacelle. The base is modeled with mass and stiffness matrices and structural damping using finite element modeling. The mounts are modeled as three-dimensional springs with hysteresis damping. The objective is to select the stiffness coefficients and orientation angles of the individual mounts to minimize the transmitted forces from the engine to the base. Meanwhile, the mounts have to be stiff enough not allowing engine deflection to exceed its limits under static and low frequency loadings. It is shown that with an optimal system the transmitted forces may be reduced significantly particularly when mount orientation angles are also treated as design variables. The optimization problems are solved using a Constraint Variable Metric approach. The closed form derivatives of the engine vibrational amplitudes with respect to design variables are derived in order to achieve a more effective optimization search technique.


Author(s):  
Bo Yang Yu ◽  
Tomonori Honda ◽  
Syed Zubair ◽  
Mostafa H. Sharqawy ◽  
Maria C. Yang

Large-scale desalination plants are complex systems with many inter-disciplinary interactions and different levels of sub-system hierarchy. Advanced complex systems design tools have been shown to have a positive impact on design in aerospace and automotive, but have generally not been used in the design of water systems. This work presents a multi-disciplinary design optimization approach to desalination system design to minimize the total water production cost of a 30,000m3/day capacity reverse osmosis plant situated in the Middle East, with a focus on comparing monolithic with distributed optimization architectures. A hierarchical multi-disciplinary model is constructed to capture the entire system’s functional components and subsystem interactions. Three different multi-disciplinary design optimization (MDO) architectures are then compared to find the optimal plant design that minimizes total water cost. The architectures include the monolithic architecture multidisciplinary feasible (MDF), individual disciplinary feasible (IDF) and the distributed architecture analytical target cascading (ATC). The results demonstrate that an MDF architecture was the most efficient for finding the optimal design, while a distributed MDO approach such as analytical target cascading is also a suitable approach for optimal design of desalination plants, but optimization performance may depend on initial conditions.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanjing Li ◽  
Zhaosong Lu ◽  
Jeremy J. Michalek

Analytical target cascading (ATC) is an effective decomposition approach used for engineering design optimization problems that have hierarchical structures. With ATC, the overall system is split into subsystems, which are solved separately and coordinated via target/response consistency constraints. As parallel computing becomes more common, it is desirable to have separable subproblems in ATC so that each subproblem can be solved concurrently to increase computational throughput. In this paper, we first examine existing ATC methods, providing an alternative to existing nested coordination schemes by using the block coordinate descent method (BCD). Then we apply diagonal quadratic approximation (DQA) by linearizing the cross term of the augmented Lagrangian function to create separable subproblems. Local and global convergence proofs are described for this method. To further reduce overall computational cost, we introduce the truncated DQA (TDQA) method, which limits the number of inner loop iterations of DQA. These two new methods are empirically compared to existing methods using test problems from the literature. Results show that computational cost of nested loop methods is reduced by using BCD, and generally the computational cost of the truncated methods is superior to the nested loop methods with lower overall computational cost than the best previously reported results.


Author(s):  
Jeremy J. Michalek ◽  
Panos Y. Papalambros

Weighting coefficients are used in Analytical Target Cascading (ATC) at each element of the hierarchy to express the relative importance of matching targets passed from the parent element and maintaining consistency of linking variables and consistency with designs achieved by subsystem child elements. Proper selection of weight values is crucial when the top level targets are unattainable, for example when “stretch” targets are used. In this case, strict design consistency cannot be achieved with finite weights; however, it is possible to achieve arbitrarily small inconsistencies. This article presents an iterative method for finding weighting coefficients that achieve solutions within user-specified inconsistency tolerances and demonstrates its effectiveness with several examples. The method also led to reduced computational time in the demonstration examples.


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