Fast numerical methods for robust optimal design

Abstract

A fast numerical approach for robust design optimization is presented. The core of the method is based on the state-of-the-art fast numerical methods for stochastic computations with parametric uncertainty. These methods employ generalized polynomial chaos (gPC) as a high-order representation for random quantities and a stochastic Galerkin (SG) or stochastic collocation (SC) approach to transform the original stochastic governing equations to a set of deterministic equations. The gPC-based SG and SC algorithms are able to produce highly accurate stochastic solutions with (much) reduced computational cost. It is demonstrated that they can serve as efficient forward problem solvers in robust design problems. Possible alternative definitions for robustness are also discussed. Traditional robust optimization seeks to minimize the variance (or standard deviation) of the response function while optimizing its mean. It can be shown that although variance can be used as a measure of uncertainty, it is a weak measure and may not fully reflect the output variability. Subsequently a strong measure in terms of the sensitivity derivatives of the response function is proposed as an alternative robust optimization definition. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the gPC-based algorithms, in both the traditional weak measure and the newly proposed strong measure.

Keywords:

• robust design optimization
• generalized polynomial chaos
• stochastic collocation
• random differential equations

Acknowledgements

This work is partly supported by NSF CAREER Award DMS-0645035.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dongbin Xiu

∗Email: [email protected]