A robust design approach for achieving flexibility in multidisciplinary design

The interdisciplinary nature of complex systems design presents challenges associated with computational burdens and organizational barriers as these issues cannot be resolved with faster computers and more efficient optimization algorithms. There is a need to develop design methods that could model different degrees of collaboration and help to resolve the conflicts between different disciplines. In this paper, an approach to providing flexibility in resolving the conflicts between the interests of multiple disciplines is proposed. We propose to integrate the robust design concept into the existing game protocol, in particular the Stackelberg leader/follower protocol. Specifically, the solution for the design parameters which involve the coupled information between multiple players (disciplines) are developed as a range of solutions rather than a single point solution. This additional flexibility provides more freedom to the discipline that takes the role of follower while the performance of the discipline that takes leader's role is stable within a tolerable range. The method is demonstrated by a passenger aircraft design problem.