Integrated control/structure optimization by multilevel decomposition

A method for integrated control/structure optimization by multilevel decomposition is presented. It is shown that several previously reported methods were actually partial decompositions wherein only the control was decomposed into a subsystem design. One of these partially decomposed problems was selected as a benchmark example for comparison. The presented paper fully decomposes the system into structural and control subsystem designs and produces an improved design. Theory, implementation, and results for the method are presented and compared with the benchmark example.