Analysis technology is widely accepted and quite popular these days. Incorporation of the analysis result into design process is a key factor for the success of the analysis area. A few design software products have been commercialized. Generally, they are trying to make an interface between various design methods and analysis software. Optimization is a representative design method. The products are investigated and compared for the aspects of user convenience and algorithm performance. A few popular products are selected. Graphic user interface (GU) is compared for the function and efficiency. The performances of the optimization algorithms are tested by mathematical and engineering examples. The results are discussed.
The optimization techniques have been applied to versatile engineering problems for reducing manufacturing cost and for automatic design. The deterministic approaches or op5imization neglect the effects on uncertainties of design variables. The uncertainties include variation or perturbation such as tolerance band. The optimum may be useless when the constraints considering worst cases of design variables can not be satisfied, which results from constraint variation. The variation of design variables can also give rise to drastic change of performances. The two issues are related to constraint feasibility and insensitive performance. Robust design suggested in the present study is developed to gain an optimum insensitive to variation on design variables within feasible region. The multiobjective function is composed to the mean and the standard deviation of original objective function, while the constraints are supplemented by adding penalty term to original constraints. This method has a advantage that the second derivatives of the constraints are not required. A mathematical problem and several standard problems for structural optimization are solved to check out the usefulness of the suggested method.