Multi-attribute decision making analysis with evolutionary programming applied to Large Scale Vehicle II

Ship and submarine design is a very complicated process that requires many trade-offs in design parameters in order to obtain the optimal vehicle effectiveness at the best cost. The number of potential designs is infinite, and the ship designer needs a tool to assist in searching this design space. This thesis uses an evolutionary program to determine the optimal designs of Large Scale Vehicle II, a one-quarter scale submarine model used for propulsor development. A set of designs is randomly generated and represented by binary strings. Each design is treated as an individual in a biological population and evaluated for total ownership cost and two measures of effectiveness. Measures of effectiveness obtained through expert opinion and computer modeling are explored. The designs with high effectiveness and low cost are chosen to produce offspring while the designs with poor effectiveness and high cost are removed from the population. Over many generations, the designs that yield high effectiveness dominate the population. No single design is identified as the optimum. Instead, the information is presented to the decision-maker on a two-dimensional plot that represents the frontier of all non-dominated designs. Each axis represents one of the measures of effectiveness and each level of cost is plotted on a separate curve. This process allows the decision-maker to choose one or several of the non-dominated designs to continue through feasibility and detailed design.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Ocean Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1998

Author dc:creator

• Andrew, Allan D. (Allan David), 1966-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alan J. Brown and Harry A. Jackson.

• Ocean Engineering

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/47723

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/47723