A surrogate based multistage‐multilevel optimization procedure for multidisciplinary design optimization

Optimization procedure is one of the key techniques to address the computational and organizational complexities of multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). Motivated by the idea of synthetically exploiting the advantage of multiple existing optimization procedures and meanwhile complying with the general process of satellite system design optimization in conceptual design phase, a multistage‐multilevel MDO procedure is proposed in this paper by integrating multiple‐discipline‐feasible (MDF) and concurrent subspace optimization (CSSO), termed as MDF‐CSSO. In the first stage, the approximation surrogates of high‐fidelity disciplinary models are built by disciplinary specialists independently, based on which the single level optimization procedure MDF is used to quickly identify the promising region and roughly locate the optimum of the MDO problem. In the second stage, the disciplinary specialists are employed to further investigate and improve the baseline design obtained in the first stage with high‐fidelity disciplinary models. CSSO is used to organize the concurrent disciplinary optimization and system coordination so as to allow disciplinary autonomy. To enhance the reliability and robustness of the design under uncertainties, the probabilistic version of MDF‐CSSO (PMDF‐CSSO) is developed to solve uncertainty‐based optimization problems. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is verified with one MDO benchmark test and one practical satellite conceptual design optimization problem, followed by conclusion remarks and future research prospects.