Requirements on MDO imposed by the undersea vehicle conceptual design problem

This paper describes the conceptual design problem for undersea vehicles. The design problem is cast in a multidisciplinary design optimization framework. We define a contributing synthesis, analogous to a contributing analysis, which performs design synthesis rather than design analysis. The contributing syntheses can be combined into a hierarchical structure that relates high level design requirements to low level technology design rules. We emphasize the form of the contributing syntheses and how they modify the traditional multidisciplinary design optimization problem. In particular, our problem domain is characterized by arbitrary levels of optimization, the prevalence of discrete variables and enumeration as input and output to contributing syntheses, the flexible specification of input and output variables for a contributing synthesis, and the use of inequalities in the coupling constraints between contributing syntheses.