Towards Rational Simulation-Based Engineering Optimization

• Applicant: Dr. Ramses Sala
• Subject Area: Mechanics ; Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465355776

Despite the wide-spread use of optimization in engineering and product development, the selection of efficient optimization strategies for simulation-based engineering optimization is still an open challenge. For a fixed amount of computational resources the efficiency of the-Modeling, Simulation and Optimization (MSO)-process, directly influences the performance and quality of the resulting design of technological products. The objective of this project is the development of a methodological framework to analyze simulation-based optimization problems and algorithms in the context of bounded computational resource constraints order to improve the problem-specific efficiency of the overall MSO-process. The framework will be composed of: (i) new and existing methods for problem characterization and fitness-landscape analysis; (ii) systematic optimization algorithm benchmarking approaches, and (iii) new problem feature-based algorithm selection and analysis approaches. Although the framework will be developed and tested using newly generated case-studies of Finite Element Simulation-based engineering optimization problems or technological relevance, the methods will be formulated in a general way, such that they can be applied and extended to other simulation-based problems. The framework will enable to model, analyze and understand strategies for resource bounded MSO-processes in order to improve their computational efficiency by rational method and algorithm selection.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr.-Ing. Ralf Müller