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Horsetail matching: a flexible approach to optimization under uncertainty

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Cook, LW 
Jarrett, JP 

Abstract

It is important to design engineering systems to be robust with respect to uncertainties in the design process. Often, this is done by considering statistical moments, but over-reliance on statistical moments when formulating a robust optimization can produce designs that are stochastically dominated by other feasible designs. This article instead proposes a formulation for optimization under uncertainty that minimizes the difference between a design’s cumulative distribution function and a target. A standard target is proposed that produces stochastically non-dominated designs, but the formulation also offers enough flexibility to recover existing approaches for robust optimization. A numerical implementation is developed that employs kernels to give a differentiable objective function. The method is applied to algebraic test problems and a robust transonic airfoil design problem where it is compared to multi-objective, weighted-sum and density matching approaches to robust optimization; several advantages over these existing methods are demonstrated.

Description

Keywords

optimization under uncertainty, horsetail matching, robust optimization, density matching, probabilistic methods

Journal Title

Engineering Optimization

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0305-215X
1029-0273

Volume Title

Publisher

Taylor & Francis
Sponsorship
EPSRC (1476418)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L504920/1)
This work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant number EP/L504920/1.
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