Designing flexible engineering system using a sensitivity-based method

Abstract

Engineering systems are continuously changing in order to adapt to dynamic environment. Adding flexibility in engineering system design can reduce risks arising from uncertainties. This paper presents a method to identify flexible system design opportunities under uncertainties. The method focuses on the flexible design opportunities at the initial design phase of engineering system. It analyzes both direct and indirect relationships from exogenous factors to system design variables. An exogenous factor searching algorithm is proposed to quantitatively and efficiently measure the sensitivity of each design variable, given a complex inter-relationship of a system. The design variables, which are the most sensitive to the exogenous factors, are introduced with the flexible design opportunities. The proposed method is applied in a case study on transportation system design. It shows that adding flexibilities into the selected opportunities results in significant reduction in the total cost of the project over long term period.