Designing the design of experiments (DOE) – An investigation on the influence of different factorial designs on the characterization of complex systems

Abstract

Although a general set of guidelines and procedures for performing the design of experiments (DOE) exists, the literature lacks a recommended course of action for finding and selecting the optimal design of experiments among a large range of possible designs. This research tries to fill this gap by comprehensively testing more than thirty different DOEs through nearly half a million simulated experimental runs. The performance of various DOEs in the characterization of the thermal behaviour of a double skin façade (DSF) is assessed by comparing the outcomes of the different designs and using the full factorial design (FFD) as the ground truth. Besides the finding for the specific case study used in this investigation, this research allowed us to obtain some broad conclusions on the behaviour of different DOEs, which are summarized and translated into recommendations and a general decision tree chart for selecting the suitable DOE(s). The outcomes of this study help researchers and designers to apply DOEs that consider the extent of nonlinearity and interaction of factors in the investigated process in order to select the most successful and the most efficient designs for the specific process characterization.