Multiagent design architecture for intelligent synthesis environment

The intelligent synthesis environment (ISE) represents the integration of a broad range of high-fidelity knowledge at the design stage to facilitate t he product realization process. ISE has the potential of reducing the produ ct realization time by several orders of magnitude. The key characteristics of ISE are integrated evaluation of product life-cycle stages in a virtual environment, coordination of asynchronous design activities, design config uration selection based on multiple design criteria, and interoperability a mong heterogeneous software and hardware environments to accomplish an effe ctive collaborative computational system. Multiagent design architecture (M ADA) is designed to provide a flexible integration framework for ISE. This architecture provides seamless integration of product realization activitie s across heterogeneous machines, computing platforms, programming languages , data, and process representations using distributed intelligent agents. A n agent in the context of MADA is an autonomous computational entity that i s capable of migrating across computing environments asynchronously. These agents have intelligence in the form of individual goals, beliefs, learning mechanisms and interact cooperatively to accomplish overall product design objectives. An application of the MADA information framework for the desig n of aerospace components is presented. Specifically, the use of integrated design and analysis tools for creating a high-speed civil transport exhaus t nozzle is demonstrated.