Multidisciplinary Design Optimization - History

History

Traditionally engineering has normally been performed by teams, each with expertise in a specific discipline, such as aerodynamics or structures. Each team would use its members' experience and judgement to develop a workable design, usually sequentially. For example, the aerodynamics experts would outline the shape of the body, and the structural experts would be expected to fit their design within the shape specified. The goals of the teams were generally performance-related, such as maximum speed, minimum drag, or minimum structural weight.

Between 1970 and 1990, two major developments in the aircraft industry changed the approach of aircraft design engineers to their design problems. The first was computer-aided design, which allowed designers to quickly modify and analyse their designs. The second was changes in the procurement policy of most airlines and military organizations, particularly the military of the United States, from a performance-centred approach to one that emphasized lifecycle cost issues. This led to an increased concentration on economic factors and the attributes known as the "ilities" including manufacturability, reliability, maintainability, etc.

Since 1990, the techniques have expanded to other industries. Globalization has resulted in more distributed, decentralized design teams. The high-performance personal computer has largely replaced the centralized supercomputer and the Internet and local area networks have facilitated sharing of design information. Disciplinary design software in many disciplines (such as NASTRAN, a finite element analysis program for structural design) have become very mature. In addition, many optimization algorithms, in particular the population-based algorithms, have advanced significantly.