Reconfigurable Formulation and Implementation of MDAO Systems

This presentation was made at the 2019 NAFEMS World Congress in Quebec Canada

Resource Abstract

This paper presents and assesses a methodology to automate the development of multidisciplinary systems for the analysis and optimization of industrial designs. In the proposed approach, two software packages aimed at supporting collaborative multidisciplinary design analysis and optimization (MDAO) are connected: the MDAO system formulation tool KADMOS and the commercial Process Integration and Design Optimization (PIDO) platform Optimus. The link is established through a new data standard for MDAO: Common MDO Workflow Schema (CMDOWS). The capability is developed in the context of the EU project AGILE to create a combined environment that enables design teams to define and formalize an MDAO problem, regardless the number of variables and disciplines, and directly execute it. The automation of the problem formulation and materialization removes the need for the time-intensive and error-prone process of manual construction of the workflow, thereby enabling quick workflow reconfigurations and the assessment of multiple MDAO architectures. The implemented development process is validated with two MDAO benchmark problems and three test cases are performed to compare the proposed methodology to the state-of-the-art approach. This comparison indicates a 50% time reduction to set up the executable workflow and a high level of scalability. The environment has been developed and tested in an aeronautical context, but its implementation is completely application-neutral. Future work will focus on increasing the technology readiness level of the current prototype and extending the proven capabilities of the automated chain to a wider variety of design problems and MDAO architectures.