Supplementary material (results): "Choice-based engineering design optimization: a comparative analysis with conventional cost minimization applied to the design of a fuel cell micro cogeneration system"

This repository contains supplementary material for the study:

Choice-based engineering design optimization: a comparative analysis with conventional cost minimization applied to the design of a fuel cell micro-cogeneration system Marvin Meck, PhD thesis (under review), TU Darmstadt, 2026

It includes intermediate and final results, as well as supporting data used to generate the findings reported in the study.

The repository provides:

• Intermediate data used during modelling and analysis
• Final results underlying figures and tables
• Data used to create supplementary figures and tables

All data are stored in text-based formats to ensure long-term accessibility: .csv for tabular data .json / .yaml for structured data AMPL / Pyomo data formats for optimization model data

Data identification and organization

Inspired by Müller (2022) and Hock et al. (2023), the data generated during this research project are systematically organized using a structured identification scheme. Each dataset consists of one or multiple files and is assigned a unique 3-tuple of integers of the form:

(DataType, Chapter, Counter)

To produce a compact and readable identifier for use in file names and references, each (DataType, Chapter, Counter) tuple is encoded using the sqids algorithm. Sqids converts the three-integer tuple into a short, unique, non-sequential string identifier. For example:

• The tuple (0, 3, 1) might become gVHrJE, and
• the tuple (1, 3, 1) might become fG9gW1.

The components of the tuple identifying the datasets are defined as follows. DataType indicates the type of the data, and is defined to take the following values:

• 0 - Support: Intermediate or supporting data used in modelling or analysis, but not directly associated with any particular figure or table.
• 1 - Figure: Data used to produce figures.
• 2 — Table: Data used to generate tables.

Chapter indicates the chapter in which the data is used or discussed, numbered as:

• 1 — Introduction
• 2 — Literature Review
• 3 — Methods
• 4 — Results
• 5 — Discussion
• 6 — Conclusion
• 7 — Appendix

Lastly, Counter is an integer value incremented for datasets of the same type within the same chapter.

Metadata

Where necessary, files include metadata to support interpretation and reproducibility. This may include:

• parameter values
• references to other datasets
• software version information
• modelling assumptions
• data provenance (e.g. external sources)

Metadata are stored either:

• directly within files (e.g. comments in .csv, fields in .json/.yaml)
• or in accompanying text files

Reproducibility

All results in this repository are designed to be reproducible using the provided data and associated research code. Some datasets rely on third-party data sources. These are archived within TU Darmstadt's institutional research data repository TUdatalib but not publicly redistributed due to licensing restrictions. Access must be obtained from the respective rights holders; see (here).

Usage

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

If you use this material, please cite:

Meck, Marvin (2026), "Choice-based engineering design optimization: a comparative analysis with conventional cost minimization applied to the design of a fuel cell micro cogeneration system", PhD thesis (in preparation), TU Darmstadt.

References

Müller, T.M. (2022) Algorithmisch gestützte Planung dezentraler Fluidsysteme. UNSPECIFIED. Available at: https://doi.org/10.26083/TUPRINTS-00021608.

Hock, M. et al. (2023) “plotID - a toolkit for connecting research data and visualization,” ing.grid, 1(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.48694/INGGRID.3632.

Contact

For questions or data access inquiries, please open an issue or contact the author.