ABSTRACT

In the preceding chapters, we focused our attention on obtaining a workable, feasible, or acceptable design of a system. Such a design satisfies the requirements for the given application, without violating any imposed constraints. A system fabricated or assembled because of this design is expected to perform the appropriate tasks for which the effort was undertaken. However, the design would generally not be the best design, where the definition of best is based on cost, performance, efficiency, or some other such measure. In actual practice, we are usually interested in obtaining the best quality or performance per unit cost, with acceptable environmental effects. This brings in the concept of optimization, which minimizes or maximizes quantities and characteristics of particular interest to a given application.