A new integration technique for hierarchically decomposed multi-objective optimization

Multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) is a methodology for the design of complex engineering systems and subsystems that coherently exploits the synergism of mutually interacting phenomena. Because of the complex design space of the large-scale system MDO design problem and the serious conflicts between the different design objectives, there is the necessary to seek an objective, flexible, effective way to make multi-objective decision on MDO problem. In this paper, we describe the integration of Advanced Physical Programming within Analytical Target Cascading framework to enable designers to formulate multiple system-level objectives in terms of physically meaningful parameters. The proposed formulation with the general integration of Advanced Physical Programming and Analytical Target Cascading is used to handle with the multi-objective tradeoff problem in different levels. A mathematical example using MDO method demonstrates the proposed framework.