Structural design in the framework of cascade evolutionary optimization

1. Abstract In structural sizing optimization problems the aim is to minimize an objective function under certain constraints. The design variables of the optimization problem are generally discrete and belong to certain discrete sets. In the context of the present work the design set is implemented and efficiently treated as a database that contains the required geometric properties for all design variables considered in the optimization process. The proposed computational procedure, which is termed as multi-database cascade optimization, is implemented using an evolutionary optimization algorithm and the results prove that it can be an effective tool for handling large design spaces in the context of sizing optimization problems. 2.