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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 33
DEVELOPMENTS IN COMPUTATIONAL TECHNIQUES FOR STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping
Paper XI.3

Search Mechanisms for Discrete Structural Optimization Problems

S. Shanmuganathan* and S. Manoharan#

*Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK
#Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
S. Shanmuganathan, S. Manoharan, "Search Mechanisms for Discrete Structural Optimization Problems", in B.H.V. Topping, (Editor), "Developments in Computational Techniques for Structural Engineering", Civil-Comp Press, Edinburgh, UK, pp 305-312, 1995. doi:10.4203/ccp.33.11.3
Abstract
In the majority of structural engineering optimization problems, the objective is to minimize the cost of the structure. These problems use a variety of objective functions formulating cost as a function of the variables involved in the design of the structure. They also use a number of search mechanisms ranging from an exhaustive search to several heuristic searches. Typical search mechanisms include simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and branch-and-bound.

The goal of this paper is to compare some of the search mechanisms in the light of their applicability to structural engineering optimization. Since practical structural engineering designs have discrete variables, only those search mechanisms capable of solving discrete structural optimization problems are considered. The paper outlines cases where each of the search mechanisms is best applicable and compares the computational complexity and convergence of the mechanisms.

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