A dominance-based design metric in multiattribute robust design

This paper outlines the development of an effective and consistent 'designi ng-in-quality' strategy that can be used to deal with concepts of uncertain ty, quality and robustness in engineering design. Specifically, this paper presents a decision analysis-based robust design metric that seamlessly int egrates objective evaluations on the goodness of a design alternative with the designer's intent and preferences. This is achieved through the develop ment of a set of performance-reflecting dominance indices for the attribute s and their utilization in a preference-influenced multiattribute utility f ormulation. Such a knowledge feedback-based decision model development will be particularly useful when dealing with complex iteration-based engineeri ng design process, where little information on the expected outcomes may be known a priori, or where product performance is computationally expensive to evaluate. Application of this robust design metric in a multi-stage expe rimentation and modeling design process is presented. The characteristics o f the proposed design metric and the effectiveness of the overall design pr ocedure in dealing with constrained engineering design problems are examine d with the aid of demonstrative case studies and the results are discussed.