Sensitivity analysis for frequency-dependent objective functions

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 703-721
Author(s):  
Golak Bihari Mahanta ◽  
Deepak BBVL ◽  
Bibhuti B. Biswal ◽  
Amruta Rout

Purpose From the past few decades, parallel grippers are used successfully in the automation industries for performing various pick and place jobs due to their simple design, reliable nature and its economic feasibility. So, the purpose of this paperis to design a suitable gripper with appropriate design parameters for better performance in the robotic production systems. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, an enhanced multi-objective ant lion algorithm is introduced to find the optimal geometric and design variables of a parallel gripper. The considered robotic gripper systems are evaluated by considering three objective functions while satisfying eight constraint equations. The beta distribution function is introduced for generating the initial random number at the initialization phase of the proposed algorithm as a replacement of uniform distribution function. A local search algorithm, namely, achievement scalarizing function with multi-criteria decision-making technique and beta distribution are used to enhance the existing optimizer to evaluate the optimal gripper design problem. In this study, the newly proposed enhanced optimizer to obtain the optimum design condition of the design variables is called enhanced multi-objective ant lion optimizer. Findings This study aims to obtain optimal design parameters of the parallel gripper with the help of the developed algorithms. The acquired results are investigated with the past research paper conducted in that field for comparison. It is observed that the suggested method to get the best gripper arrangement and variables of the parallel gripper mechanism outperform its counterparts. The effects of the design variables are needed to be studied for a better design approach concerning the objective functions, which is achieved by sensitivity analysis. Practical implications The developed gripper is feasible to use in the assembly operation, as well as in other pick and place operations in different industries. Originality/value In this study, the problem to find the optimum design parameter (i.e. geometric parameters such as length of the link and parallel gripper joint angles) is addressed as a multi-objective optimization. The obtained results from the execution of the algorithm are evaluated using the performance indicator algorithm and a sensitivity analysis is introduced to validate the effects of the design variables. The obtained optimal parameters are used to develop a gripper prototype, which will be used for the assembly process.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 554
Author(s):  
Huiping Ji ◽  
Gonghuan Fang ◽  
Jing Yang ◽  
Yaning Chen

Understanding glacio-hydrological processes is crucial to water resources management, especially under increasing global warming. However, data scarcity makes it challenging to quantify the contribution of glacial melt to streamflow in highly glacierized catchments such as those in the Tienshan Mountains. This study aims to investigate the glacio-hydrological processes in the SaryDjaz-Kumaric River (SDKR) basin in Central Asia by integrating a degree-day glacier melt algorithm into the macro-scale hydrological Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. To deal with data scarcity in the alpine area, a multi-objective sensitivity analysis and a multi-objective calibration procedure were used to take advantage of all aspects of streamflow. Three objective functions, i.e., the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient of logarithms (LogNS), the water balance index (WBI), and the mean absolute relative difference (MARD), were considered. Results show that glacier and snow melt-related parameters are generally sensitive to all three objective functions. Compared to the original SWAT model, simulations with a glacier module match fairly well to the observed streamflow, with the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NS) and R2 approaching 0.82 and an absolute percentage bias less than 1%. Glacier melt contribution to runoff is 30–48% during the simulation period. The approach of combining multi-objective sensitivity analysis and optimization is an efficient way to identify important hydrological processes and recharge characteristics in highly glacierized catchments.


Author(s):  
J. Hamel ◽  
M. Li ◽  
S. Azarm

Uncertainty in the input parameters to an engineering system may not only degrade the system’s performance, but may also cause failure or infeasibility. This paper presents a new sensitivity analysis based approach called Design Improvement by Sensitivity Analysis (DISA). DISA analyzes the interval parameter uncertainty of a system and, using multi-objective optimization, determines an optimal combination of design improvements required to enhance performance and ensure feasibility. This is accomplished by providing a designer with options for both uncertainty reduction and, more importantly, slight design adjustments. The approach can provide improvements to a design of interest that will ensure a minimal amount of variation in the objective functions of the system while also ensuring the engineering feasibility of the system. A two stage sequential framework is used in order to effectively employ metamodeling techniques to approximate the analysis function of an engineering system and greatly increase the computational efficiency of the approach. This new approach has been applied to two engineering examples of varying difficulty to demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness.


2009 ◽  
Vol 628-629 ◽  
pp. 353-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guang Jun Liu ◽  
Tao Jiang ◽  
An Lin Wang

A robust optimization approach of an accelerometer is presented to minimize the effect of variations from micro fabrication. The sensitivity analysis technology is employed to reduce design space and to find the key parameters that have greatest influence on the accelerometer. And then, the constraint conditions and objective functions for robust optimization and the corresponding mathematical model are presented. The optimization problem is solved by the Multiple-island Genetic Algorithm and the results show that an accelerometer with better performance is obtained.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 3505-3539 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Yang ◽  
F. Castelli ◽  
Y. Chen

Abstract. Calibration of distributed hydrologic models usually involves how to deal with the large number of distributed parameters and optimization problems with multiple but often conflicting objectives which arise in a natural fashion. This study presents a multiobjective sensitivity and optimization approach to handle these problems for a distributed hydrologic model MOBIDIC, which combines two sensitivity analysis techniques (Morris method and State Dependent Parameter method) with a multiobjective optimization (MOO) approach ϵ-NSGAII. This approach was implemented to calibrate MOBIDIC with its application to the Davidson watershed, North Carolina with three objective functions, i.e., standardized root mean square error of logarithmic transformed discharge, water balance index, and mean absolute error of logarithmic transformed flow duration curve, and its results were compared with those with a single objective optimization (SOO) with the traditional Nelder–Mead Simplex algorithm used in MOBIDIC by taking the objective function as the Euclidean norm of these three objectives. Results show: (1) the two sensitivity analysis techniques are effective and efficient to determine the sensitive processes and insensitive parameters: surface runoff and evaporation are very sensitive processes to all three objective functions, while groundwater recession and soil hydraulic conductivity are not sensitive and were excluded in the optimization; (2) both MOO and SOO lead to acceptable simulations, e.g., for MOO, average Nash–Sutcliffe is 0.75 in the calibration period and 0.70 in the validation period; (3) evaporation and surface runoff shows similar importance to watershed water balance while the contribution of baseflow can be ignored; (4) compared to SOO which was dependent of initial starting location, MOO provides more insight on parameter sensitivity and conflicting characteristics of these objective functions. Multiobjective sensitivity analysis and optimization provides an alternative way for future MOBIDIC modelling.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israel Mayo-Molina ◽  
Juliana Y. Leung

Abstract The Steam Alternating Solvent (SAS) process has been proposed and studied in recent years as a new auspicious alternative to the conventional thermal (steam-based) bitumen recovery process. The SAS process incorporates steam and solvent (e.g. propane) cycles injected alternatively using the same configuration as the Steam-Assisted Gravity-Drainage (SAGD) process. The SAS process offers many advantages, including lower capital and operational cost, as well as a reduction in water usage and lower Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions. On the other hand, one of the main challenges of this relatively new process is the influence of uncertain reservoir heterogeneity distribution, such as shale barriers, on production behaviour. Many complex physical mechanisms, including heat transfer, fluid flows, and mass transfer, must be coupled. A proper design and selection of the operational parameters must consider several conflicting objectives. This work aims to develop a hybrid multi-objective optimization (MOO) framework for determining a set of Pareto-optimal SAS operational parameters under a variety of heterogeneity scenarios. First, a 2-D homogeneous reservoir model is constructed based on typical Cold lake reservoir properties in Alberta, Canada. The homogeneous model is used to establish a base scenario. Second, different shale barrier configurations with varying proportions, lengths, and locations are incorporated. Third, a detailed sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the most impactful parameters or decision variables. Based on the results of the sensitivity analysis, several objective functions are formulated (e.g., minimizing energy and solvent usage). Fourth, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is applied to generate a set of proxy models to approximate the non-linear relationship between the decision variables and the objective functions and to reduce the overall computational time. Finally, three Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) are applied to search and compare the optimal sets of decision parameters. The study showed that the SAS process is sensitive to the shale barrier distribution, and that impact is strongly dependent on the location and length of a specific shale barrier. When a shale barrier is located near the injector well, pressure and temperature may build up in the near-well area, preventing additional steam and solvent be injected and, consequently, reducing the oil production. Operational constraints, such as bottom-hole pressure, steam trap criterion, and bottom-hole gas rate in the producer, are among various critical decision variables examined in this study. A key conclusion is that the optimal operating strategy should depend on the underlying heterogeneity. Although this notion has been alluded to in other previous steam- or solvent-based studies, this paper is the first to utilize a MOO framework for systematically determining a specific optimal strategy for each heterogeneity scenario. With the advancement of continuous downhole fibre-optic monitoring, the outcomes can potentially be integrated into other real-time reservoir characterization and optimization work-flows.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Wei

Three observations of the economic production quantity model with imperfect quality items with/without inspection are presented in this report. Salameh and Jaber (2000) and Maddah and Jaber (2008) models do not meet their expected objective functions. The first observation tries to clarify the relationships among their expected objective functions and the actual ones through the derivation, the numerical simulation and statistical comparison. This report concludes s that both models are not very accurate, but capable. Khan et al. (2011) and Khan et al. (2014) ignored the independent condition of properties of the expectation of random variables, which resulted in minor errors in both papers. The second and the third observations are the corrections of the models of two papers, respectively. Numerical comparisons show the differences between the original models and the revisions are minor, but significant. An example of a multi-factor sensitivity analysis is shown in this report.


Author(s):  
M. Bremicker ◽  
H. Eschenauer

Abstract The range of application of structural optimization methods can be considerably enlarged by using decomposition techniques. In this paper a novel procedure is introduced to deal with such problems more efficiently. The mechanical structure resp. system is divided into several subsystems splitting up the design variables, objective functions, and constraints accordingly. The boundary state quantities of the subsystems and the global (i.e. subsystem overlapping) functions are approximated by a sensitivity analysis of the entire system using suitable approximation concepts. It is thus possible to optimize the subsystems independently. Variables, objective functions and constraints can be chosen arbitrarily; all coupling information is obtained from the sensitivity analysis by means of global information. The application of this technique is demonstrated by a two-dimensional shape optimization problem.


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