Multidisciplinary approach for optimizing mechatronic systems: Application to the optimal design of an electric vehicle

Optimization of integrated mechatronic design is a complex process characterized by an important number of requirements, design variables, constraints and objectives. Therefore, it is very important to efficiently decompose the system design problem into a set of quasi-separable sub-problems to reduce the design complexity and minimize the computational cost of a mechatronic design. In this study, a constraint-based method is proposed for the partitioning of the mechatronic design optimization problem. This approach allows designers to optimize the mechatronic system taking into account the interaction between the different use cases of the system. By applying the approach to the case of a preliminary design of an electric vehicle, the electric motor and the transmission gearbox have been optimized. It is shown that the presented approach allows designers to easily decompose the problem and integrate performance analysis with multidisciplinary optimization for efficient design verification and validation of mechatronic systems.