Sports building envelope optimization using Multi-objective Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (M-MDO) techniques

Abstract

Sports building envelopes are complex systems involving multiple architectural and engineering performance requirements that are sometimes in conflict with each other. Typically daylight usage and energy efficiency as two primary concerns in building envelope design are of those conflicting aspects. To improve overall performance (including daylight and energy performance) by changing the geometries of the envelope windows and shading elements as well as the selection of construction materials Multi-objective Optimization (MOO) is a natural choice. Based on the generated Pareto front trade-off decisions between competing performance objectives can be made. However as the number of design variables from different disciplines increases the huge design space and the specialization of disciplines make the optimization process less efficient. Therefore two possible Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) frameworks namely Individual Disciplinary Feasible (i.e. IDF a single-level MDO framework) and Collaborative Optimization (i.e. CO a bi-level MDO framework) are investigated to combine with MOO. Resorting to the capability of MDO in decomposition and coordination between different disciplines parallel disciplinary simulations and/or bi-level optimizations can be realized which compresses design cycle time and achieves better overall performance. Through the combination of MOO and MDO Multi-objective Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (M-MDO or multi-objective MDO) problems are expected to be solved more effectively and efficiently. The whole process of the proposed method consists of three phases (i.e. preprocessing solution and post-processing phases) in which variable screening multi-objective MDO solving and Pareto front comparison are performed respectively. An ongoing real project located in China is used as a case study to test the proposed method. For now the research work is in the preprocessing phase. Preliminary observations and results are obtained and future research is discussed. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.