Bilevel integrated system synthesis with response surfaces

Two variants of the BLISS method are proposed for multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). These variants utilize experimental design methods and response surfaces to reduce the number of expensive system analysis required for solution of the MDO problem. BLISS is an MDO method for decomposition-based optimization of engineering systems that involves system optimization with a relatively small number of design variables and a number of subsystem optimizations that could each have a large number of local variables. In BLISS, the optimum sensitivity analysis data are used to relate the subsystem optimization solutions with the system optimizations. Instead, with the proposed variants, polynomial response surface approximations using either the system analysis or the subsystem optimization results are used. Additionally, the response surface construction process is well suited for computing in a concurrent processing environment. The proposed variants are implemented and evaluated on a conceptual-level aircraft and ship design problem.