A critical look at design automation solutions for collaborative MDO in the AGILE paradigm

This paper presents a critical discussion on the automated problem formulation and workflow creation approach developed within the European project AGILE to support and accelerate the setup of aircraft MDO workflows in a large, heterogeneous team of experts. The developed framework is based on a methodological approach, called the AGILE paradigm, where a complete MDO system is formulated and executed in five main steps. In Step I the requirements are collected, in Step II a repository of disciplinary tools is established, in Step III the design optimization problem is formulated and structured according to a selected MDO architecture, in Step IV an executable workflow is assembled and finally operated in Step V. All steps have been streamlined and highly automated through the development of a novel set of MDO support applications and data standards, addressed as the AGILE MDO framework. This framework was tested through a series of design campaigns culminating with four design tasks, where a variety of unconventional aircraft configurations is collaboratively designed using MDO. After a brief introduction on the AGILE paradigm and the four design tasks, this paper will focus on a set of AGILE framework core components enabling the automated process to formulate and execute collaborative MDO systems. The strengths and current limitations of these components are discussed, based on the extensive feedback from the heterogeneous set of specialists involved in the four design tasks. Although drastic reductions in the setup time of an MDO system (up to 40 percent) appear to be already achievable, recommendations are provided to improve the flexibility, usability and scalability of the framework.