Multi-criteria decision analysis techniques in aircraft conceptual design process

In aerospace systems design, conflicting disciplines and technologies are always involved in the design process. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques can be helpful to effectively deal with such situations and make wise design decisions. In this paper, the feasibility and added values of applying the MCDA techniques in aircraft design are explored. A new optimization framework incorporating MCDA techniques in aircraft conceptual design process is established. An improved MCDA method is utilized to aggregate the multiple design criteria into one composite figure of merit, which serves as an objective function in the optimization process. It is demonstrated that the suitable MCDA method with improvement provides a better objective function for the optimization than the traditional weighted sum method. Considering that the inherent uncertainties and subjectivities of the weighting factors have crucial impacts on the design solution, surrogate models for the multiple design criteria in terms of the weighting factors are constructed. The constructed surrogate model can provide efficient analysis tools for uncertainty assessment.