Many methods have been developed for structural size and configuration optimization in which cross-sectional areas are usually assumed to be continuous. In most practical structural engineering design problems, however, the design variables are discrete. This paper proposes two efficient structural optimization methods based on the harmony search (HS) heuristic algorithm that treat both discret...

Harmony search (HS) is a meta-heuristic algorithm mimicking the improvisation process of musicians. This paper arranges the basic structure of the HS algorithm and customizes the algorithm for clustering optimization problems. We propose novel clustering algorithm based on Harmony Search (HS) optimization method that deals with document clustering. By modeling Retrieval as an optimization probl...

Floorplanning plays a vital role in the physical design process of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) chips. It is an essential design step to estimate the chip area prior to the optimized placement of digital blocks and their interconnections. Since VLSI floorplanning is an NP-hard problem, many optimization techniques were adopted in the literature. In this work, a music-inspired Harmony Sear...

Harmony search algorithm is a heuristic optimization method inspired from the improvisation process of musicians. A new version of harmony search algorithm with chaos is proposed. This algorithm initializes and updates the harmony memory with the chaos optimization algorithm based on secondary carrier wave, adjusts the parameters dynamically to improve the convergence rate and optimization accu...

As with other nature-inspired algorithms, the cuckoo optimization algorithm (COA) produces a population of candidate solutions to find the (near-) optimal solutions to a problem. In this paper, several modifications, including a dynamic mutation operator, are proposed for this algorithm. Design of experiments is employed to determine factors controlling the value of parameters and the target le...

In this paper, we aim to analyze the performance of some variants of the harmony search (HS) metaheuristic when solving systems of nonlinear equations through the global optimization of an appropriate merit function. The HS metaheuristic draws its inspiration from an artistic process, the improvisation process of musicians seeking a wonderful harmony. A new differential best HS algorithm, based...

This paper presents a methodology for multiple distributed generator (DG) placement in primary distribution network for loss reduction. Optimal location for distributed generator (DG) is selected by Analytical expressions and the optimal DG size calculated by IA method and Harmony search algorithm. These two methods are tested on two test systems 33-bus and 69-bus radial distribution systems. T...

This paper presents a Harmony Search Algorithm to seek the optimal solution of the unit maintenance scheduling. For the maintenance scheduling, cost reduction is as important as reliability. The objective function of this algorithm considers the effect of economy as well as reliability. Various constraints such as spinning reserve, duration of maintenance crew are being taken into account. We a...

Optimization design of water supply pipe network is important with the development of economy and the increasingly fast urbanization process. Harmony search algorithm for the optimal design of water supply networks provides a better nonlinear optimization method. The improved strategy of the dynamic harmony memory size is proposed, through the optimization computation to water supply pipe netwo...

Dynamic optimization problems present great challenges to the research community because their parameters are either revealed or changed during the course of an ongoing optimization process. These problems are more challenging than static problems in real-world applications because the latter are usually dynamic, with the environment constantly subjected to change or the size of a problem incre...