Resumen de Interval approach to robust design

Patrizia Lamberti, Vincenzo Tucci

• Purpose – Aims to present a novel approach for the worst‐case, robust design (RD) of an electromagnetic system able to overcome some discretionary aspects of the available methods.

  Design/methodology/approach – The proposed methodology is based on a suitable application of the interval arithmetic and considers the width of the interval Taylor extension (WITE) of the performance function (PF) as a valuable robustness index (RI). In particular, the most robust stationary point is obtained by looking for the minimum of a continuous, non‐differentiable function thanks to the properties of WITE.

  Findings – The method furnishes a reliable classification of the robust solutions with PFs expressed by either mono or multi‐dimensional polynomial forms and provides the over‐bounding of the PF without additional computational efforts.

  Research limitations/implications – Limitations concern the necessity of an analytic formulation of the system performance. The IA approach may lead to lose some robust solution.

  Practical implications – A RI can be assigned in analytic form and it can be suitably used as a figure of merit in a multi‐objective optimisation problem.

  Originality/value – The use of the interval analysis for the worst‐case, RD of an electromagnetic system is original. The system designer may find the most robust stationary solution by means of a continuous, non‐differentiable function.