Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 The role and objectives of design

Chapter 3 The design cycle

3.1 What is a design?

3.2 Design phases: how do the concepts and details evolve?

3.3 Design as a process

3.4 How do people design?

3.5 Optimisation within the design cycle

Chapter 4 Optimality criteria

4.1 Optimality or design improvement?

4.2 Definition of best.

4.3 Metrics structure.

4.4 Tradeoff decisions using multiple criteria

Chapter 5 The anatomy of a design optimisation

5.1 Formulating the optimisation problem

5.2 Design evaluation

5.2.1 Design evaluation sequence

5.2.2 Design evaluation sequence definition requirements

5.2.3 Application code validation

5.3 Design definition

5.3.1 Approach A: analysis models

5.3.2 Approach B: CAD models

5.4 Idealisation

5.5 Systems integration.

5.5.1 Industrial high level requirements

5.5.2 I.T. requirements.

5.5.3 Technology options for meeting the requirements.

5.5.4 The role of parallel computing

5.6 Defining the family of designs to be searched: parametrisation

5.6.1 Continuous variable problems

5.6.1.1 Suitability for modelling the physics

5.6.1.2 Suitability for optimisation

5.6.1.3 Suitability for feeding back into the CAD system

5.6.2 Discrete variable problems

5.6.3 Mixed variable problems

5.7 Design search.

5.7.1 Finding a feasible solution

5.7.2 Preliminary exploration

5.7.3 Single objective maximisation

5.7.4 Advanced search methods

5.7.4.1 Response surface methods

5.7.4.2 Rule based methods

5.7.4.3 Multilevel methods

5.7.5 Multiple objective maximisation

5.8 Decision support aids.

5.8.1 Visualising analysis results for verification and computational steering

5.8.2 Visualising tradeoffs.

5.8.2.1 Picking out the Pareto set

5.8.2.2 Solutions which do not satisfy the constraints

5.8.2.3 Picking solutions from the Pareto set

5.8.2.4 Relating results in objective space and design space

5.8.3 Visualisation for results compression and storage

5.9 Steps and issues in practical problem solving

Chapter 6 Industrial process benefits and issues

6.1 Optimisation promotes automation

6.2 Optimisation promotes focus on Metrics

6.3 Optimisation promotes closing gaps in Design Evaluation toolset

6.4 Optimisation promotes Design for Analysis

6.5 Optimisation promotes definition and use of operating scenarios

6.6 Optimisation provides a means of rapid organisational learning

6.7 Optimisation provides a means of outperforming the competition

Chapter 7 Case studies

7.1 Case study 1: Military aircraft wing flap design: Daimler Chrysler Aerospace

7.2 Case study 2: Military aircraft wing design: Defence Evaluation and Research Agency

7.3 Case study 3: Refrigerator design: Electrolux-Zanussi

7.4 Case study 4: Boiler design: Calortecnica

7.5 Case study 5: Plastic Injection Moulding Optimization

7.6 Case study 6: Military aircraft aerodynamics versus observability tradeoffs: British Aerospace

7.7 Case study 7: Casting process design: EnginSoft Trading

Chapter 8 Future prospects for optimisation

Chapter 9 References