The emergence of modern solid modeling systems and geometry-based applications such as automatic mesh generation techniques has led the design community to focus their efforts on exploiting these relatively new technologies for the optimal design of structures.

In addition, the use of formal optimization methods in multidisciplinary systems has emerged as a major area of research interest, primarily due to an increased awareness of the potential gains from the use of these methods in realistic design problems. Much of the literature on the key technologies of geometry modeling, optimization and CAD applications is narrowed on a particular technology and does not take a broader perspective of the entire design process.

This book represents the first attempt to expose the CAD community to the various islands of technology that constitute the design process.

The purpose of this book is to provide the design community with a comprehensive approach to structural design which includes geometry representation for structural domains, automated techniques for finite element modeling, coupling self-adaptive techniques with finite element models, optimization, design sensitivity analysis, and integration of optimization techniques with geometry models for a fully automated structural design system.

This book also addresses other real world design situations related to approximation concepts for computational efficiency and multicriterion and multidisciplinary structural design optimization.

In selecting the chapters in this book, the aim has been to present the state-of-the-art in various key technologies required for the automation of multidisciplinary design. The organization of the chapters is in-line with the actual design methodology which extends from computer representation of the domain to the multicriterion, multidisciplinary design through automatic mesh generation, coupled self-adaptive analysis, and shape optimization.

This book is intended to be used as a reference book by researchers, graduate students, faculty, and CAD/CAM system designer developers with primary interests in the area of geometry- and optimization-based applications, and an integration of the two technologies for the automated design process. Researchers concentrating their efforts on the overall design methodology for structural domains will benefit immensely by the information presented in this book.