13,654 research outputs found
Simultaneous Optimal Uncertainty Apportionment and Robust Design Optimization of Systems Governed by Ordinary Differential Equations
The inclusion of uncertainty in design is of paramount practical importance because all real-life systems are affected by it. Designs that ignore uncertainty often lead to poor robustness, suboptimal performance, and higher build costs. Treatment of small geometric uncertainty in the context of manufacturing tolerances is a well studied topic. Traditional sequential design methodologies have recently been replaced by concurrent optimal design methodologies where optimal system parameters are simultaneously determined along with optimally allocated tolerances; this allows to reduce manufacturing costs while increasing performance. However, the state of the art approaches remain limited in that they can only treat geometric related uncertainties restricted to be small in magnitude.
This work proposes a novel framework to perform robust design optimization concurrently with optimal uncertainty apportionment for dynamical systems governed by ordinary differential equations. The proposed framework considerably expands the capabilities of contemporary methods by enabling the treatment of both geometric and non-geometric uncertainties in a unified manner. Additionally, uncertainties are allowed to be large in magnitude and the governing constitutive relations may be highly nonlinear.
In the proposed framework, uncertainties are modeled using Generalized Polynomial Chaos and are solved quantitatively using a least-square collocation method. The computational efficiency of this approach allows statistical moments of the uncertain system to be explicitly included in the optimization-based design process. The framework formulates design problems as constrained multi-objective optimization problems, thus enabling the characterization of a Pareto optimal trade-off curve that is off-set from the traditional deterministic optimal trade-off curve. The Pareto off-set is shown to be a result of the additional statistical moment information formulated in the objective and constraint relations that account for the system uncertainties. Therefore, the Pareto trade-off curve from the new framework characterizes the entire family of systems within the probability space; consequently, designers are able to produce robust and optimally performing systems at an optimal manufacturing cost.
A kinematic tolerance analysis case-study is presented first to illustrate how the proposed methodology can be applied to treat geometric tolerances. A nonlinear vehicle suspension design problem, subject to parametric uncertainty, illustrates the capability of the new framework to produce an optimal design at an optimal manufacturing cost, accounting for the entire family of systems within the associated probability space. This case-study highlights the general nature of the new framework which is capable of optimally allocating uncertainties of multiple types and with large magnitudes in a single calculation
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Form Accuracy Analysis of Cylindrical Parts Produced by Rapid Prototyping
Solid Freeform fabrication processes are being considered for creating fit and assembly
nature functional parts. It is extremely important that these parts are within allowable
dimensional and geometric tolerance. The part accuracy produced by rapid prototyping process
is greatly affected by the relative orientation of build and face normal directions. A systematic
method is needed to find the reliability of the created product. This paper discusses the work
done in this area and the effect of build orientation on the part form accuracy analysis of each
specified tolerance like circularity and cylindricity. Feasible build direction that can be used to
satisfy those tolerances is identified. It will help process engineer in selecting a build direction
that can satisfy a mathematical model of form tolerance.Mechanical Engineerin
Robust aerodynamic design of variable speed wind turbine rotors
This study focuses on the robust aerodynamic design of the bladed rotor of small horizontal axis wind turbines. The optimization process also considers the effects of manufacturing and assembly tolerances on the yearly energy production. The aerodynamic performance of the rotors so designed has reduced sensitivity to manufacturing and assembly errors. The geometric uncertainty affecting the rotor shape is represented by normal distributions of the pitch angle of the blades, and the twist angle and chord of their airfoils. The aerodynamic module is a blade element momentum theory code. Both Monte Carlo-based and the Univariate ReducedQuadrature technique, a novel deterministic uncertainty propagationmethod, are used. The performance of the two approaches is assessed both interms of accuracy and computational speed. The adopted optimization method is based on a hybrid multi-objective evolutionary strategy. The presented results highlight that the sensitivity of the yearly production to geometric uncertainties can be reduced by reducing the rotational speed and increasing the aerodynamic blade loads
Optimization of Gaussian Random Fields
Many engineering systems are subject to spatially distributed uncertainty,
i.e. uncertainty that can be modeled as a random field. Altering the mean or
covariance of this uncertainty will in general change the statistical
distribution of the system outputs. We present an approach for computing the
sensitivity of the statistics of system outputs with respect to the parameters
describing the mean and covariance of the distributed uncertainty. This
sensitivity information is then incorporated into a gradient-based optimizer to
optimize the structure of the distributed uncertainty to achieve desired output
statistics. This framework is applied to perform variance optimization for a
model problem and to optimize the manufacturing tolerances of a gas turbine
compressor blade
A constraint manager to support virtual maintainability
Virtual prototyping tools have already captivated the industry's interest as viable design tool. One of the key challenges for the research community is to extend the capabilities of Virtual Reality technology beyond its current scope of ergonomics and design reviews. The research presented in this paper is part of a larger research programme that aims to perform maintainability assessment on virtual prototypes. This paper discusses the design and implementation of a geometric constraint manager that has been designed to support physical realism and interactive assembly and disassembly tasks within virtual environments. The key techniques employed by the constraint manager are direct interaction, automatic constraint recognition, constraint satisfaction and constrained motion. Various optimization techniques have been implemented to achieve real-time interaction with large industrial models
Review of research in feature-based design
Research in feature-based design is reviewed. Feature-based design is regarded as a key factor towards CAD/CAPP integration from a process planning point of view. From a design point of view, feature-based design offers possibilities for supporting the design process better than current CAD systems do. The evolution of feature definitions is briefly discussed. Features and their role in the design process and as representatives of design-objects and design-object knowledge are discussed. The main research issues related to feature-based design are outlined. These are: feature representation, features and tolerances, feature validation, multiple viewpoints towards features, features and standardization, and features and languages. An overview of some academic feature-based design systems is provided. Future research issues in feature-based design are outlined. The conclusion is that feature-based design is still in its infancy, and that more research is needed for a better support of the design process and better integration with manufacturing, although major advances have already been made
OSQP: An Operator Splitting Solver for Quadratic Programs
We present a general-purpose solver for convex quadratic programs based on
the alternating direction method of multipliers, employing a novel operator
splitting technique that requires the solution of a quasi-definite linear
system with the same coefficient matrix at almost every iteration. Our
algorithm is very robust, placing no requirements on the problem data such as
positive definiteness of the objective function or linear independence of the
constraint functions. It can be configured to be division-free once an initial
matrix factorization is carried out, making it suitable for real-time
applications in embedded systems. In addition, our technique is the first
operator splitting method for quadratic programs able to reliably detect primal
and dual infeasible problems from the algorithm iterates. The method also
supports factorization caching and warm starting, making it particularly
efficient when solving parametrized problems arising in finance, control, and
machine learning. Our open-source C implementation OSQP has a small footprint,
is library-free, and has been extensively tested on many problem instances from
a wide variety of application areas. It is typically ten times faster than
competing interior-point methods, and sometimes much more when factorization
caching or warm start is used. OSQP has already shown a large impact with tens
of thousands of users both in academia and in large corporations
Optimization of mesh hierarchies in Multilevel Monte Carlo samplers
We perform a general optimization of the parameters in the Multilevel Monte
Carlo (MLMC) discretization hierarchy based on uniform discretization methods
with general approximation orders and computational costs. We optimize
hierarchies with geometric and non-geometric sequences of mesh sizes and show
that geometric hierarchies, when optimized, are nearly optimal and have the
same asymptotic computational complexity as non-geometric optimal hierarchies.
We discuss how enforcing constraints on parameters of MLMC hierarchies affects
the optimality of these hierarchies. These constraints include an upper and a
lower bound on the mesh size or enforcing that the number of samples and the
number of discretization elements are integers. We also discuss the optimal
tolerance splitting between the bias and the statistical error contributions
and its asymptotic behavior. To provide numerical grounds for our theoretical
results, we apply these optimized hierarchies together with the Continuation
MLMC Algorithm. The first example considers a three-dimensional elliptic
partial differential equation with random inputs. Its space discretization is
based on continuous piecewise trilinear finite elements and the corresponding
linear system is solved by either a direct or an iterative solver. The second
example considers a one-dimensional It\^o stochastic differential equation
discretized by a Milstein scheme
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