Simulation-Based Feasible Robust Design Approach for Multi-Stage Space Launch Vehicle
Saqlain Akhtar, He Linshu, Vaqar Akhtar · 46th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit · 2008
*† ¶ In real-world applications, uncertainty exists in every stage of the design process which has significant impact on the design solution. In recent years, a number of approaches have been proposed in the literature to attain robust design but either these approaches are computationally too expensive or need gradient information. In this paper, we present an efficient robust design strategy that handles the presence of uncertainty with respect to the desired level of robustness, which we call feasible robust design. We use worst-case fitness approach to estimate the propagated uncertainty in the performance prediction. In order to get worst-case estimation, we use First Order Orthogonal Design Matrix integrated with Genetic Algorithm(GA) optimizer. Unlike previous methods in the literature, our proposed method does not use gradient information, and hence is applicable to multidisciplinary optimization problems that have non-differentiable and/or discontinuous objective and/or constraint functions. To explore the capability of the proposed method, it is implemented on a complex Space Launch Vehicle ( SLV) conceptual design problem . Monte Carlo simulation studies have been conducted for sensitivity analysis to verify the robustness of proposed method.