Multicriteria Optimization of a Hydraulic Lifting Manipulator by the Methods of Criteria Importance Theory

The article describes the procedure for multicriteria optimization and choosing the best parameter values of a manipulator designed to lift a heavy, bulky load using two parallel and synchronously operating hydraulic drives. Information about the dynamics of the system was obtained by computer simulation of a sufficiently complete dimensionless model. Three characteristics of the system are considered as optimality criteria: imbalance of mass loads on drives, power (size) of drives and synchronization of their operation. To search for feasible solutions to the optimization problem in the parameter space, a sequence of uniformly distributed points was generated. The sets of feasible and Pareto optimal solutions are analyzed using visualization tools in the MOVI program. Within the framework of the mathematical criteria importance theory, expert information on preferences regarding criteria was formalized and refined. In the course of this iterative procedure, the set of feasible solutions was narrowed down to 67, then to 4 alternatives, and in the end one best solution was chosen.