A technique for capturing stakeholder preferences and knowledge in early design studies

With the aim of accelerating early design studies and reducing design iteration cycles, a technique was developed that leverages explicitly captured a priori stakeholder knowledge in the form of preference maps. To put these preference maps to use, they are applied in transforming the model of the physical system into a standard-format objective function that can be used with the power of existing numerical search algorithms. The search results are a set of design points likely to be of interest for exploration in further design cycles, and various tools associated with the technique aid in understanding of the design tradeoffs and the design decision-making to follow. Of the test cases used in developing the approach, the one presented here is an early exploration of a winglet retrofit for a narrow-body airliner. The technique demonstrated successfully producing insights under the uncertainty of early design studies, producing useful results for a relatively low effort compared to investing further into more mature system models and requirements. It is also an approach that enables reaping some of the benefits of numerical search algorithms much earlier in design than would normally be appropriate.