Decisions made in the concept generation phase have a significant effect on the product. While product- related risks typically can be considered in the early stages of design, risks such as supply chain and manufacturing methods are rarely easy to account for in early phases. This is because the currently available methods require mature data, which may not be available during concept generation. In this paper, we propose an approach to address this. First, the product and the non-product (manufacturing and/or supply chain) attributes are modelled using the enhanced function means (EF-M) modelling method. The EF-M method provides the opportunity to model alternative solutions-set for functions. Dependencies are then mapped within the product and the manufacturing models, and also in between them. An automatic combinatorial method of concept generation is employed where each generated instance is a design concept-manufacturing method pair. A risk propagation algorithm is then used to assess the risks of all the generated alternatives.@en

An approach to support the computational aerodynamic design process is presented and demonstrated through the application of a novel multi-objective variant of the Tabu Search optimization algorithm for continuous problems to the aerodynamic design optimization of turbomachinery blades. The aim is to improve the performance of a specific stage and ultimately of the whole engine. The integrated system developed for this purpose is described. This combines the optimizer with an existing geometry parameterization scheme and a well-established CFD package. The system's performance is illustrated through case studies - one two-dimensional, one three-dimensional - in which flow characteristics important to the overall performance of turbomachinery blades are optimized. By showing the designer the trade-off surfaces between the competing objectives, this approach provides considerable insight into the design space under consideration and presents the designer with a range of different Pareto-optimal designs for further consideration. Special emphasis is given to the dimensionality in objective function space of the optimization problem, which seeks designs that perform well for a range of flow performance metrics. The resulting compressor blades achieve their high performance by exploiting complicated physical mechanisms successfully identified through the design process. The system can readily be run on parallel computers, substantially reducing wall-clock run times - a significant benefit when tackling computationally demanding design problems. Overall optimal performance is offered by compromise designs on the Pareto trade- off surface revealed through a true multi-objective design optimization test case. Bearing in mind the continuing rapid advances in computing power and the benefits discussed, this approach brings the adoption of such techniques in real-world engineering design practice a step closer.@en

While there have been many adaptations of some of the more popular meta-heuristics for continuous multi-objective optimisation problems, Tabu Search has received relatively little attention, despite its suitability and effectiveness on a number of real-world design optimisation problems. In this paper we present an adaptation of a single-objective Tabu Search algorithm for multiple objectives. Further, inspired by path relinking strategies common in discrete optimisation problems, we enhance our algorithm to allow it to handle problems with large numbers of design variables. This is achieved by a novel parameter selection strategy that, unlike a full parametric analysis, avoids the use of objective function evaluations, thus keeping the overall computational cost of the procedure to a minimum. We assess the performance of our two Tabu Search variants on a range of standard test functions and compare it to a leading multi-objective Genetic Algorithm, NSGA-II. The path relinking-inspired parameter selection scheme gives a clear performance improvement over the basic multi-objective Tabu Search adaptation and both variants perform comparably with the NSGA-II.@en

Novel propulsion systems have been studied in literature to reduce aircraft emissions with hydrogen or other electrical energy sources. Hybrid Electric Propulsion (HEP) system consists of electric machines as an alternative way to provide power for propulsion resulting in the reduction of aircraft fuel consumption. While reduction of emission is the main driver of new HEP designs, aircraft noise reduction and performance improvement will also need to be investigated. Much quieter electrified aircraft than conventional aircraft is explored with considering the benefits of coupled design between the propeller and electric machines. In this study, several electric machine designs have been explored and coupled with the propeller design to study the trade-off between the aerodynamic and acoustic performance of the propeller. Aerodynamic optimization is used as a baseline to minimize the energy consumption to find the aerodynamics optimum subject to constraints on the thrust levels during the mission. The propeller aerodynamic optimizer considers the electric machine efficiency map, which is a function of propeller torque and rotational speed, to find the optimum combination of propeller and electric machine designs. The objective function of the acoustic optimizations is to reduce the cumulative noise level over the entire mission. It is shown that a wider envelope of peak motor efficiency in the efficiency map provides acoustics and aerodynamic performance benefits. The trade-offs between reducing noise or increasing aerodynamic efficiency to reduce energy consumption are demonstrated.@en

Aeroengine manufacturers need to better include assessment of risk and cost for realising the novel products needed to meet the ambitions sustainability driven targets for air transport. Radical technologies are needed that simultaneously require critical manufacturing processes to be assessed already in conceptual design. In this paper, a multi-domain framework for conceptual design and evaluation is proposed that provide the ability to interactively explore the concepts that simultaneously allow a wider range of architectures can be assessed and still include weldability of the concepts. It has been demonstrated how high level, and function driven conceptual design alternatives can be modelled and evaluated to analyse risk and resilience of architectures. Geometrical concepts generated for the most interesting regimes using design of experiments covering a desired design space. For each CAD-model the welding process can be simulated to assess feasibility and lead time for welding, and return quantified results to be included in an integrated results data set for interactive decision making. The paper is the first report from a research project that improve concurrent design of product and production concepts.@en

Characterising a socio-technical system by its underlying structure is often achieved by cluster analyses and bears potentials for engineering design management. Yet, highly connected systems lack clarity when systematically searching for structures. At two stages in a clustering procedure (pre-processing and post-processing) modelled and external information were used to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty of clustering results. A holistic decision making on 1) which information, 2) when, and 3) how to use is discussed and considered inevitable to reliably cluster highly connected systems.@en

At present, optimization is an enabling technology in innovation. Multi-objective and multidisciplinary optimization tools are essential in the design process for real-world applications. In turbomaehinery design, these approaches give insight into the design space and identify the tradeoffs between the competing performance measures. This paper describes the application of a novel multi-objective variant of the tabu search algorithm to the aerodynamic design optimization of turbomachinery blades. The aim is to improve the performance of a specific stage and eventually of the whole engine. The integrated system developed for this purpose is described. It combines the optimizer with an existing geometry parameterization scheme and a well-established computational fluid dynamics package. Its performance is illustrated through a case study in which the flow characteristics most important to the overall performance of turbomachinery blades are optimized.@en

Real-world engineering optimisation problems are typically multi-objective and highly constrained, and constraints may be both costly to evaluate and binary in nature. In addition, objective functions may be computationally expensive and, in the commercial design cycle, there is a premium placed on rapid initial progress in the optimisation run. In these circumstances, evolutionary algorithms may not be the best choice; we have developed a multi-objective Tabu Search algorithm, designed to perform well under these conditions. Here we present the algorithm along with the constraint handling approach, and test it on a number of benchmark constrained test problems. In addition, we perform a parametric study on a variety of unconstrained test problems in order to determine the optimal parameter settings. Our algorithm performs well compared to a leading multi-objective Genetic Algorithm, and we find that its performance is robust to parameter settings.@en

The design process of an engineering system requires thorough consideration of varied specifications, each with potentially large number of dimensions. The sheer volume of data, as well as its complexity, can overwhelm the designer and obscure vital information. Visualisation of big data can mitigate the issue of information overload but static display can suffer from overplotting. To tackle the issue of overplotting and cluttered data, we present an interactive and touch-screen capable visualisation toolkit that combines Parallel Coordinates and Scatter Plot approaches for managing multidimensional engineering design data. As engineering projects require a multitude of varied software to handle the various aspects of the design process, the combined datasets often do not have an underlying mathematical model. We address this issue by enhancing our visualisation software with Machine Learning methods which also facilitate further insights into the data. Furthermore, various software within the engineering design cycle produce information of different level of fidelity (accuracy and trustworthiness), as well as with different speed. The induced uncertainty is also considered and modelled in the synthetic dataset and is also presented in an interactive way. This paper describes a new visualisation software package and demonstrates its functionality on a complex aircraft systems design dataset.@en

Supporting designers is one of the main motivations for design research. However, there is an ongoing debate about the ability of design research to transfer its results, which are often provided in form of design methods, into practice. This article takes the position that the transfer of design methods alone is not an appropriate indicator for assessing the impact of design research by discussing alternative pathways for impacting design practice. Impact is created by different means – first of all through the students that are trained based on the research results including design methods and tools and by the systematic way of thinking they acquired that comes along with being involved with research in this area. Despite having a considerable impact on practice, this article takes the position that the transfer of methods can be improved by moving from cultivating method menageries to facilitating the evolution of method ecosystems. It explains what is understood by a method ecosystem and discusses implications for developing future design methods and for improving existing methods. This paper takes the position that efforts on improving and maturing existing design methods should be raised to satisfy the needs of designers and to truly support them.@en

This paper describes the implementation of a parallel Tabu Search algorithm for multi-objective continuous optimisation problems. We compare our new algorithm with a leading multi-objective Genetic Algorithm and find it exhibits comparable performance on standard benchmark problems. In addition, for certain problem types, we expect Tabu Search to outperform other algorithms and present preliminary results from an aerodynamic shape optimisation problem. This is a real-world, highly constrained, computationally demanding design problem which requires efficient optimisation algorithms that can be run on parallel computers: with this approach optimisation algorithms are able to play a part in the design cycle.@en