Development of a Flexible Design Optimization Capability

The objective here is twofold; the first is to create a general graphical interface to couple optimization with sophisticated analysis software to provide a convenient design tool. The initial effort will be to interface nonlinear structural analysis software such as ABAQUS or SYNA-3D. However, the general capability proposed here is not limited to these, and may be applied to virtually any analysis, including CFD, controls, cost models, etc. Furthermore, such a capability will provide the basic building block for general multidiscipline design optimization (MDO), making best use of available capabilities in each discipline of interest. The second objective is to create a general design study program which effectively utilizes the information available from the optimization process. This includes the interactive trade-off studies, post-processing to display design sensitivities, robustness analysis of the optimum, creation of response surface information for simplified trade-off studies, and similar uses of the design space information available from the optimization process. The key motivation of this second objective is to provide visual information to help the engineer or manager better understand and present the reasons the optimizer did what it did and to efficiently ask "What if" questions. The goal is to create and market premier commercial software which allows the engineer to easily use optimization for a wide variety of individual and multidiscipline design tasks, and to clearly and concisely display optimization information.