Approach to facilitate decision tradeoffs in Pareto solution sets

An approach to constructing Pareto sets and negotiating the decision tradeoffs within the Pareto set is presented. Points in the Pareto sets are generated by sampling the design space, and then a polynomial curve is developed to fit the points, approximating the Pareto set in the performance space. A recently developed method, called the Scaling Method, is used to automatically determine the appropriate weights for problem objectives based upon a selected design from the Pareto set. The Pareto set is then mapped to the design space via a new technique called the Contour Method to help designers make effective tradeoffs and decisions concerning the Pareto solution set. A vehicle dynamics design problem which has been developed with an industrial partner is used to demonstrate the usefulness of the approach.