Design improvement by sensitivity analysis under interval uncertainty using multi-objective optimization

Abstract

Uncertainty in the input parameters to an engineering system may not only degrade the system's performance but may also cause failure or infeasibility. This paper presents a new sensitivity analysis based approach called design improvement by sensitivity analysis (DISA). DISA analyzes the interval uncertainty of input parameters and using multi-objective optimization, determines an optimal combination of design improvements that will ensure a minimal variation in the objective functions of the system, while also ensuring the feasibility. The approach provides a designer with options for both uncertainty reduction and, more importantly, slight design adjustments. A two-stage sequential framework is used that can employ either the original analysis functions or their metamodels to greatly increase the computational efficiency of the approach. This new approach has been applied to two engineering examples of varying difficulty to demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness. The results produced by these examples show the ability of the approach to ensure the feasibility of a preexisting design under interval uncertainty by effectively adjusting available degrees of freedom in the system without the need to completely redesign the system. Copyright © 2010 by ASME.