Sensitivity analysis as a tool in diverse engineering fields.

Abstract

The tools of sensitivity analyses are old, well known, and used in diverse engineering and non-engineering fields, yet few papers include them. Perhaps this is because of the subtle tricks and customizations that have to be done to make them work. The first section of this dissertation, chapters 2 through 4, is a review of sensitivity analysis history, techniques, uses and terminology from different fields. These chapters show how to overcome some of the difficulties of performing sensitivity analyses. They draw examples from a broad range of fields: physics, systems theory, physiology, artificial intelligence, bioengineering, control theory, simulation, queuing theory and system design. This section summarizes and generalizes many of the important points that can be extracted from literature covering diverse fields and long time spans. The second section of this dissertation, chapters 5 through 8, consists of four examples of sensitivity analysis as applied to projects that I have worked on in the Systems and Industrial Engineering Department. These examples will attempt to show the working tricks as well as the benefits of sensitivity analysis in the development, refinement, validation and use of system models.