A relative adequacy framework for multimodel management in multidisciplinary design optimization

In previous work, we presented a novel relative adequacy framework to manage the employment of a set of available computational models in (single-disciplinary) design optimization problems. In this paper, we extend our method to solve multidisciplinary design optimization problems with particular emphasis on strongly coupled fluid-structure interactions. We illustrate that these interactions can have a significant impact on multimodel management: models that may be selected in a single-disciplinary analysis context can be inadequate in a multidisciplinary analysis one. We implement our method for two multidisciplinary design optimization architectures: the monolithic multidisciplinary feasible formulation and a penalty-based distributed interdisciplinary feasible formulation. We illustrate the proposed multimodel management methodology by means of two example problems: a flexible beam fluid-structure interaction problem and a transonic fan flow problem. The obtained results demonstrate that our framework is accurate and efficient while exhibiting significant computational cost benefits, especially when disciplinary coupling is tight.