A System for Human-Machine Multi-Disciplinary Design Optimization

Web Published:

5/12/2014

Description:

A System for Human-Machine Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

Princeton Docket #14-3019

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) is a powerful engineering tool that allows designers to incorporate information from all relevant design disciplines simultaneously. In aerospace applications, for example, MDO has been used to produce designs that incorporate both the structural and aerodynamic disciplines. It is not generally possible to optimize the objectives of all disciplines simultaneously, so producing an optimal design requires a human designer to balance the tradeoffs between the various objectives. Historically, while much work has been done to develop algorithms to optimize MDO software, comparatively little work has considered the human designer.

Researchers in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University have proposed and implemented a novel system that helps the designer explore the various possible tradeoffs and systematically find their most preferred design. The researchers have shown that the system converges to the most preferred design in a simulated task and are studying how to apply it to industrially-relevant MDO problems.

Applications:

· Computational design optimization

· Add-on module to existing commercial MDO/CAD software

· Custom software to integrate with proprietary computational analysis and design tools

Advantages:

· Integrates human designer into design process

· Captures preferences about tradeoffs in design process

· Can capture intuition based on experience

· Improves existing designs

· May lead to useful automation

Inventor

Paul Reverdy is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. In 2011 he was awarded the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Before coming to Princeton, Mr. Reverdy spent two years working at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Washington, DC. He received the B.S. degree in Engineering Physics and the B.A. degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007.

Intellectual Property Status

Patent protection is pending.

Princeton is seeking to identify appropriate partners for the further development and commercialization of this technology.

Contact

Laurie Tzodikov
Princeton University Office of Technology Licensing • (609) 258-7256• tzodikov@princeton.edu

Laurie Bagley
Princeton University Office of Technology Licensing • (609) 258-5579• lbagley@princeton.edu