Mr. James T. Allison

Primary research involved development and application of methods for optimal design of complex engineering systems, such as:

- Augmented Lagrangian Decomposition
- Analytical Target Cascading
- Collaborative Optimization
- Individual Disciplinary Feasible

Application of a decomposition-based method such as those listed above requires both the partitioning of a system design problem into smaller subproblems, and the coordination of these subproblems toward a consistent and optimal system design solution. Much work has been done regarding system partitioning and coordination as separate and independent tasks. Mr. Allison has shown recently that partitioning and coordination decisions are coupled, and a decision approach that accounts for this coupling is required to develop improved decomposition strategies. An evolutionary algorithm has been used to solve the optimal partitioning and coordination decision problem for problems of moderate size.

Applications of interest include:

- Hybrid electric vehicle design
- Structural and mechanism design
- Aircraft design
- Electromechanical design
- Optical system (telescope) design
- Product family design
- Renewable energy systems
- System identification
- Bicycle design
- Engineering aspects of mountaineering

- Linear, nonlinear, and integer programming
- Graph theory
- Evolutionary and genetic algorithms
- Vehicle dynamics analysis

- Application of optimization techniques to exercise and sports training.
- Development of a dynamic updating strategy for partitioning and coordination in parallel computing.
- Investigation of novel coordination strategies for decomposition-based design optimization.

This research is useful to any firm involved with the design of complex products that must be decomposed into smaller design problems.