Variable-fidelity multidisciplinary design optimization based on analytical target cascading framework

ATC provides a systematic approach in solving decomposed large scale systems that has solvable subsystems. However, complex engineering system usually has a high computational cost, which result in limiting real-life applications of ATC based on high-fidelity simulation models. To address these problems, this paper aims to develop an efficient approximation model building techniques under the analytical target cascading (ATC) framework, to reduce computational cost associated with multidisciplinary design optimization problems based on high-fidelity simulations. An approximation model building techniques is proposed: approximations in the subsystem level are based on variable-fidelity modeling (interaction of low- and high-fidelity models). The variable-fidelity modeling consists of computationally efficient simplified models (low-fidelity) and expensive detailed (high-fidelity) models. The effectiveness of the method for modeling under the ATC framework using variable-fidelity models is studied. Overall results show the methods introduced in this paper provide an effective way of improving computational efficiency of the ATC method based on variable-fidelity simulation models.