Design Optimization and Analysis of a Prescribed Vibration System

Advances in technology that come with increased system complexity have accentuated the intricacy of decision making in engineering design. This has stimulated a great deal of research in ways to incorporate decision analysis and multi-attribute decision-making theory in engineering problems. In this research, Conjoint Value Analysis is incorporated into a scheme that optimizes the design of a multi-attribute Prescribed Vibration System. The influence of designer preferences is investigated by comparing design alternatives that result from different preference rankings. Monte Carlo-based uncertainty and sensitivity studies are performed to support the design process by providing additional information on the candidate designs. By understanding how small changes in the values of optimized parameters influence the system attributes, sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analyses can be used as a design robustness measure. The overall choice of the design is therefore based not only on the performance objectives but also on the resulting system robustness, which is very valuable considering manufacturing variations and tolerance stacks.