THERMAL OPTIMIZATION IN TRANSIENT THERMOELASTICITY USING RESPONSE-SURFACE APPROXIMATIONS

Response surface methodology is used to construct approximations to te mperature and stress in transient thermoelastic analysis of non-linear systems. The analysis forms the core component of a heating/cooling r ate maximization problem in which, the ordinates of the ambient temper ature at equally spaced time intervals are chosen as the design variab les. Polynomials or cubic splines are fitted through the ordinates to describe the ambient temperature profile required for the convective h eat transfer analysis. An experimental design method based on D-optima lity and a genetic algorithm was used to select the design points used to create the approximations. Linear response surfaces were found to be sufficiently accurate, thereby minimizing the number of finite elem ent analyses. Two examples of which one is a thick-walled pressure ves sel are used to illustrate the methodology. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons , Ltd.