GOALI: Exploring Product and Process Tradeoff in Engine Design

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This grant provides funding for the development and implementation of formal mathematical constructs to model tradeoff issues in the design of turbine engines in a collaborative effort with Allison Engine Company. These developments will focus on measuring and investigating the relationship between the effectiveness of an engine and the efficiency of the processes required to design an engine. The developments will be based on game theoretical principles where the various design and production teams are players in the game. By modeling the relationships among these teams, their decisions, and their functional subsystems, various engine configurations can be found and tradeoff scenarios can be investigated in order to meet the strategic objectives of the individual design groups and the company as a whole. Notions from game theory, nonlinear optimization, robust design, and decision-based design will be integrated to model and describe existing products and processes at the company and then to prescribe potential improvements in product design and/or process communication and collaboration. If successful, the research will lead to more effective turbine engines and more efficient design and production processes by providing the capability to strategically determine the communication and interface protocols among various groups. The research will provide the foundation for computer-based decision support tools to rapidly explore tradeoff scenarios in the design of new turbine engines. Companies must communicate and collaborate with many different organizations located throughout the world. Providing the foundations for making and coordinating a number of decisions would allow a company to perform their design/make activities more efficiently. Providing the mathematical foundations for organizational cooperation could increase the efficacy of engine designs.