Enhancement of information management capabilities in MDO framework

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) frameworks have been developed to facilitate the integration of disciplinary analysis codes and optimization techniques. Recent advances in MDO frameworks have addressed issues related to data exchange, distributed computing, process integration and trade study. However, managing, storing and sharing MDO problem information have not yet been fully addressed. In this research a software configuration is proposed. The configuration is built upon a structured repository, common file system and software applications. The configuration is integrated into a commercially available MDO framework to manage, store and share MDO problem information. A common file system proposed in this research provides a structure to store MDO components and enable sharing of components over the network. The ModelCenter framework is selected for the integration of the repository based on the evaluation of the MDO frameworks against a set of extended information management requirements. The repository is a relational database which provides an information model to store information related to MDO problems. A Java interface is utilized to provide access to the structured repository and the common file system in the ModelCenter framework. Java applications are developed to demonstrate the benefits offered by the proposed repository and the common file system. The proposed features and the Java applications are tested for the functionality and performance utilizing IEEE software testing standards.