Determining New System Design Requirements to Optimize Fleet Level Metrics under Uncertainty
Abstract
This proposal builds upon previous research to further develop a quantitative approach that objectively determines the design requirements of new systems that, when serving alongside other systems, will maximize fleet-level objectives under various uncertainties. Our approach has applications to air taxi, fractional ownership, commercial airlines, and military air cargo. We propose extending the approach by explicitly addressing uncertainties in fleet operations and in parameters of a yet-to-be-designed system. Our approach relegates quantitative chores of decision-making to the method and designates trade-space decision-making to the practitioner; optimization and operations research techniques guide this. We demonstrate the approach by exploring tradeoffs between fleet-level fuel usage and fleet-wide performance, treating fuel as an independent variable. Providing this quantitative information better informs new system acquisition decisions, supporting the public benefit of providing a specified capability (here, air transportation of goods and / or passengers) while making efficient use of resources (here, fuel and / or operating costs) for desired performance (here, fleet productivity) when using the new system along with other systems. The approach is domain agnostic and applies to situations requiring effective decision-making in setting requirements for new systems and platforms (e.g., determining requirements of a new cargo truck for ground-based operations). We apply our method to two concept problems.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 09, 2016
- Source ID
- N002441510063
Entities
People
- William Crossley
Organizations
- Office of the Secretary of Defense
- University of Virginia