Robust Design from Systems Physics

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel approach to robust system design by characterizing subsystem responses using material-like stress-strain dichotomies and a new two-factor robustness metric, applicable across various engineering domains.

Contribution

It presents a mesoscale stress-strain framework for early-stage design analysis and a computable robustness metric that outperforms existing techniques.

Findings

Dichotomies emerge from mesoscale analysis of design responses.

The proposed robustness metric is computationally efficient.

Illustrated with naval engineering examples.

Abstract

A crucial challenge in engineering modern, integrated systems is to produce robust designs. Ensuring robust design is difficult because subsystem couplings produce unpredictable response to changes in whole system specifications. Here, we show that the response of design elements to whole-system specification changes can be characterized, as materials are, using strong/weak and brittle/ductile dichotomies. We find these dichotomies emerge from a mesoscale treatment of early stage design problems that we cast in terms of stress-strain relationships. Compared with other state-of-the-art techniques, we propose a two-factor robustness metric that is computable for sets of design solutions. We illustrate the use of this approach with examples of arrangement problems drawn from naval engineering, however our approach is immediately applicable to a broad range of problems in integrated systems design.