What is Robust Design Methodology?

Traditional Robust Design (RD) provides a well-established toolbox for the parametric exploration of a design space (e.g. Taguchi experiments) and some well-known design heuristics (e.g. exact constraint guidelines for interfaces) that allow to reduce sensitivity towards noise factors.

From a design perspective, however, this narrow focus on optimizing fairly complete solutions drastically limits the potential of the available tools. Traditional RD largely disregards the importance of other design decisions (e.g. concept exploration, choice of suitable mechanical layouts, multidisciplinary design), which is particularly critical in light of (newly emerging) engineering design challenges such as connectivity, Industry 4.0, or the ever-increasing complexity and product integration.

Against this background, DTU’s RD research group seeks to provide a coherent RD Methodology and expertise across all different phased of the design process. Fundamental to this work is the developed theory of design trade-offs, i.e. contradicting requirements or constraints that drastically limit the available design space and often result in a reduced window for allowable variation. These can be addressed early in development through (1) simple guidelines, indicators, and design expertise, but also allow for the systematic analysis and improvement of multi-disciplinary solutions based on (2) quantitative approaches such as design space exploration techniques, multi-objective optimization and detailed FEA simulations.

Updated by Tobias Eifler on 1 October 2021