Role of Artificial Neural Networks in Multidisciplinary Optimization and Axiomatic Design

Artificial neural network (ANN) has been extensively used in areas of nonlinear system modeling, analysis and design applications. Basically, ANN has its distinct capabilities of implementing system identification and/or function approximation using a number of input/output patterns that can be obtained via numerical and/or experimental manners. The paper describes a role of ANN, especially a back-propagation neural network (BPN) in the context of engineering analysis, design and optimization. Fundamental mechanism of BPN is briefly summarized in terms of training procedure and function approximation. The BPN based causality analysis (CA) is further discussed to realize the problem decomposition in the context of multidisciplinary design optimization. Such CA is also applied to quantitatively evaluate the uncoupled or decoupled design matrix in the context of axiomatic design with the independence axiom.