Multi-objective optimization of aircraft networks for weight, performance and survivability

Abstract

With a current utilization of around 25% of its total weight, optimization of cabling and harness plays an important role in the design of an aircraft. This is a multi-objective optimization problem as the physical properties of the harness (e.g., length and weight) as well as the logical properties of the underlying network (survivability and performance) have to be taken into account. We propose in this paper to investigate this multi-objective optimization problem and provide different algorithms to solve it. We first focus on expressing it as a mixed integer binary linear program. Due to the complexity of solving this class of linear programs, we propose various heuristics for providing a good solution to this problem.