Variable fidelity metamodel based analytical target cascading method for green design
Along with the increasing attention on the environment and resources, green design and green manufacturing has become a tendency nowadays. In order to mitigate the computational burden when solving green design problem of the complex engineering system, a variable fidelity metamodel based analytical target cascading framework (VFATC) is developed to explore the application of variable fidelity (VF) metamodels in analytical target cascading (ATC) In this VFATC framework, a VF approximation modeling method is developed, which employs both computationally efficient simplified (low fidelity, LF) and expensively detailed (high fidelity, HF) information. To efficiently integrate the LF and HF information, kriging is enhanced to scale LF model (LFM) to HF model (HFM) Then, the scaled LFM is used as an approximation model to replace the analysis models in VFATC. The effectiveness of VFATC framework is applied into a lightweight design problem of cantilever beams and a ship design problem with the objective of oil consumption reduction. Overall results show the VFATC methods introduced in this paper provide an effective way of improving computational efficiency of multidisciplinary green design optimization problems based on complex HF simulation models.