An Enhanced Collaborative Optimization Approach with Design Structure Matrix Algorithms to Group and Decouple Multidisciplines

Abstract

To improve the solution efficiency and reliability of multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO), an enhanced MDO approach, called sequenced collaborative optimization (SCO), is proposed. The proposed approach introduces the design structure matrix (DSM) to describe the coupling effects among disciplines and aggregates those mutually coupling disciplines into the strong tie groups among similar ones and the weak tie among heterogeneous ones through clustering algorithms. Further, those in the same group are sequenced by the DSM division algorithm. Moreover, by adding constraints, the groups are made independent, resulting in a tree structure without loops, thus decoupling the original multidisciplinary problem into several independent collaborative optimization modules. In the end, an example is employed to verify the efficiency and reliability of the approach.