| Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) provides optimal solutions to complex, coupled, multidisciplinary problems. MDO seeks to manage the interactions between disciplinary simulations to produce an optimum, and feasible, design with a minimum of computational effort. Many MDO architectures and approaches have been developed, but usually in isolated situations with little chance for comparison. piMDO was developed to provide a unified framework for the solution of coupled optimization problems and refinement of MDO approaches. The initial implementation of piMDO showed the benefits of a modular, object oriented, approach and laid the groundwork for future development of MDO architectures. This research furthered the development of piMDO by expanding the suite of available problems, incorporating additional MDO architectures, and extending the object oriented approach to all of the required components for MDO. The end result is a modular, flexible software framework which is user friendly and intuitive to the practitioner. It allows complex problems to be quickly implemented and optimized with a variety of powerful numerical tools and MDO architectures. Importantly, it allows any of its components to be reorganized and sets the stage for future researchers to continue the development of MDO methods. |
