Introduction of a tradeoff index for efficient trade space exploration

Mehmet Unal, Gordon Warn, Timothy W. Simpson

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

123The development of many-objective evolutionary algorithms has facilitated solving complex design optimization problems, that is, optimization problems with four or more competing objectives. The outcome of many-objective optimization is often a rich set of solutions, including the nondominated solutions, with varying degrees of tradeoff amongst the objectives, herein referred to as the trade space. As the number of objectives increases, exploring the trade space and identifying acceptable solutions becomes less straightforward. Visual analytic techniques that transform a high-dimensional trade space into two-dimensional (2D) presentations have been developed to overcome the cognitive challenges associated with exploring high-dimensional trade spaces. Existing visual analytic techniques either identify acceptable solutions using algorithms that do not allow preferences to be formed and applied iteratively, or they rely on exhaustive sets of 2D representations to identify tradeoffs from which acceptable solutions are selected. In this paper, an index is introduced to quantify tradeoffs between any two objectives and integrated into a visual analytic technique. The tradeoff index enables efficient trade space exploration by quickly pinpointing those objectives that have tradeoffs for further exploration, thus reducing the number of 2D representations that must be generated and interpreted while allowing preferences to be formed and applied when selecting a solution. Furthermore, the proposed index is scalable to any number of objectives. Finally, to illustrate the utility of the proposed tradeoff index, a visual analytic technique that is based on this index is applied to a Pareto approximate solution set from a design optimization problem with ten objectives.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication41st Design Automation Conference
PublisherAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
ISBN (Electronic)9780791857083
DOIs
StatePublished - 2015
EventASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2015 - Boston, United States
Duration: Aug 2 2015Aug 5 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference
Volume2B-2015

Other

OtherASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC/CIE 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBoston
Period8/2/158/5/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

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