| When multiple enterprises collaborate to design a product, each has to compromise its locally optimal designs not only for an overall feasible design but also for a better overall design. Several techniques like collaborative optimization, game theory, hierarchical optimization and set-based reasoning have been used to solve design optimization problems in a distributed and collaborative environment. Each of these techniques either has computational difficulties or limited flexibility. We introduce a new paradigm in design optimization, called Compromise Based Design that intends to provide an efficient and scalable solution to collaborative optimization problems for design.; Compromise Based Design provides the mathematical framework to transform disparate yet intersecting design spaces to obtain the best compromise-design in both cooperative and non-cooperative environments. First, a price-based mechanism is proposed in which the unit price of each design variable is introduced as a medium for the design negotiation. By relating the price space at system level to the design space at the design discipline level through price-variable curves, a negotiation platform is developed and tested. Second, the collaborative design optimization problem is presented as a single-space problem. A penalty function based approach is proposed as a compromise mechanism that successively transforms the design spaces to achieve global feasibility. We further study how to incorporate design uncertainties into the second framework to achieve a robust design. Some practical design examples are implemented to validate the effectiveness of the methodology in comparison to others. |
