Presidential Faculty Fellows Award: Development of Methods for Multidisciplinary Design

9553210 Bloebaum这笔赠款为总统学院院士奖提供资金。获奖期间的研究将集中于为复杂的、多学科的工程应用开发计算设计战略，旨在解决行业问题。多学科设计(MD)问题的典型特征是学科之间的复杂耦合，这就需要考虑到这些耦合的新的设计策略。该奖项任期内的主要研究领域包括：“系统缩减策略”，以在不牺牲系统精度的情况下缩小分析模型的规模；“最佳排序”，以确定参与的学科子系统的最佳排序，以降低总体计算成本；“混合系统的分解”，以开发分解策略，以便在变量为连续和离散类型的情况下应用；以及“去耦合子系统的协调”，其中子系统之间的协调系数必须被量化以用于分解策略。教学目标将集中在本科课程中增加实验部分，更新现有的研究生课程以包括团队和计算组件，开发一门新的研究生课程，开发多学科设计的工程硕士研究生课程，以及专注于研究生培训和指导。拟议方法的成功开发可能会大大改进复杂系统的设计流程，例如飞机、汽车、海军舰艇、高速列车，甚至发电厂。在传统的系列化设计环境中，对于设计周期的每个阶段，进行更改的成本增加了一个数量级。由于最近的市场竞争压力，很明显，对于复杂系统的设计，所有需求、制造和生命周期问题都必须在设计过程的所有阶段解决。这导致了知识曲线的移动，从而在设计自由度仍然很高的情况下产生了更多关于设计的知识。产品日益复杂，需要新的方法和流程来支持这种下一级别的集成。多学科设计(MD)被国家公认为一项关键技术。只是在最近几年，航空航天以外的行业才承认MD是一门能够满足他们许多需求的学科。MD有可能大幅减少开发时间和成本，并提高性能。

9553210 Bloebaum This grant provides funding for a Presidential Faculty Fellow Award. Research during the period of the award will focus on developing computational design strategies for complex, multidisciplinary engineering applications, aimed at addressing industry problems. Multidisciplinary Design (MD) problems are typified by complex couplings between disciplines which necessitate new design strategies that take these couplings into account. The major areas of research during the term of this award include: 'System Reduction Strategies' to reduce the size of the analytical models without sacrificing system accuracy; 'Optimal Sequencing' to determine the best ordering of the participating disciplinary subsystems to reduce overall computational cost; 'Decomposition for Mixed Systems' to develop decomposition strategies for application in situations where variables are of continuous as well as discrete type; and 'Coordination of Decoupled Subsystems' wherein coordination coefficients amongst subsystems must be quantified for use in decomposition strategies. Teaching objectives will focus on adding lab components to undergraduate courses, renovating existing graduate courses to include teaming and computational components, developing a new graduate course, developing a graduate Master of Engineering program in Multidisciplinary Design, and focusing on graduate training and mentoring. The successful development of the proposed methodologies could result in substantially improved processes for the design of complex systems, such as are found in aircraft, automobiles, naval vessels, high speed trains, and even power plants. In the traditional serial design environment, the cost of making a change increases by an order of magnitude for each phase of the design cycle. Due to recent competitive market pressures, it has become evident that for the design of complex systems, all requirements, manufacturing, and life-cycle issues must be addressed throughout all phases of the design process . This results in a shift of the knowledge curve, thereby yielding more knowledge about the design while the design freedom is still high. The increasing complexity of products requires new methods and processes to provide for this next level of integration. Multidisciplinary Design (MD) is recognized nationally as a critical technology. Only within the last couple of years have industries other than aerospace recognized MD as a discipline that can address many of their needs. MD has the potential to obtain substantial reductions in both development time and costs, as well as improved performance.