Optimal design of eVTOLs for urban mobility using analytical target cascading (ATC)

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the capability of Analytical Target Cascading (ATC) for optimizing large scale engineering design optimization problems. Multidisciplinary Optimization (MDO) techniques have a subject of immense interest in the past few decades because of their ability to generate optimal designs for complex system of systems. Monolithic MDO methods are one category of MDO methods that pose the optimization problem as a single optimization problem. These methods are effective in generating an optimal design, but it can be challenging to implement these methods at an organizational level in engineering design practice. Meanwhile, distributed MDO methods that decompose the problem into different sub optimization problems offer additional modularity and flexibility required for implementation at an organizational level. Analytical target cascading (ATC) is one such distributed MDO method that most closely emulates a hierarchical organization structure. The problem of designing of an eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle) was chosen to evaluate the performance of ATC because of its relevance to the future urban mobility solution space and because the design of eVTOLs involves optimization of several subsystems that are strongly coupled. The first part of this thesis focuses on the implementation and analysis of the results generated by ATC with respect to eVTOL design optimization. In the later part of this thesis, we set to lay out some of the general advantages of using distributed MDO methods over Monolithic MDO methods, as well as situations where the latter is more beneficial. In the final chapter, aspects involving computational expense and human factors effort are discussed to explore a set of cases where distributed MDO methods can be advantageous in engineering practice.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Systems & Entrepreneurial Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Chinthoju, Prajwal Kumar

Contributors dc:contributor

• Allison, James T

• Evtol
• Atc
• Mdo

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Prajwal Chinthoju

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117850

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F117850