Interactive design optimization of dynamic systems

This paper describes an interactive environment for dynamic response optimization problems. It is shown that with proper interactive facilities and designer intervention, the optimal design process can be more flexible, efficient and effective in solving practical design problems. The process can be initiated with a rough design model for the problem. As the iterations progress and insight is gained into the problem, the model can be interactively refined, without stopping the process, to obtain the final solution. Two example problems — a system dynamics problem and a control problem — are used to study and show advantages of the designer interaction. It is concluded that interactive optimum design capabilities offer more opportunities to the designer to obtain better designs.