A Software Tool for Uncertainty Management in Multidisciplinary System Design and Optimization

The goal of this work is to create a software tool for uncertainty management in multidisciplinary design and optimization. Advanced optimization, metamodeling, and uncertainty estimation algorithms will be developed and integrated into this tool. Extensive and innovative visualization capabilities will be an integral part of the software. The key aspect of the proposal is a systematic creation of the methodology and the design tool from the ground up: - Relying on the best existing design practices so that the tool is readily accepted by designers in industry; - Investigating established methods in optimization, metamodeling, and uncertainty estimation, developing new ones to achieve the best accuracy, robustness, and efficiency for the whole design process; - Tight coupling of all the methods, which inevitably involves modification and customization of the methods to improve efficiency; - Integrating and developing visualization tools to assist designers in understanding complex MDO problems with uncertainty; - Assembling the methods into a final methodology and a software tool that are not limited by the dimensionality of the problem, particular field, industry, or discipline. This tool will be rigorously tested on various problems. The resulting software will be able to accommodate multiple analysis codes (structures, CFD, etc.) simultaneously.