This study evolves and categorises a population of conceptual designs by their ability to handle physical constraints. The design process involves a trade-off between form and function. The aesthetic considerations of the designer are constrained by physical considerations and material cost. In previous work, we developed a design grammar capable of evolving aesthetically pleasing designs throu...

The need of polygonal elements to represent the domain is gaining interest among structural engineers. The objective is to perform static analysis and topology optimization of a given continuum domain using the rational fraction type shape functions of six node hexagonal elements. In this paper, the main focus is to perform the topology optimization of two-dimensional plate structures using Evo...

Practical optimization methods including genetic algorithms are introduced, based on evolutionary computing or soft computing. Several application examples are presented to demonstrate and discuss the efficiency and applicability of the described methods.

An evolutionary algorithm that utilizes a-priori problem specific information and allows intuitive representation of the problem design variables is proposed. A technique for conditioning the components of the fitness statement using ranking and a graphical method for monitoring components of the rank based fitness function are presented. By utilizing generationally dependant non-linear rank ba...

*Department of Informatics, Kansai University, Takatsuki, Osaka 569-1095, Japan [email protected] **Graduates School of Informatics, Kansai University, Takatsuki, Osaka 569-1095, Japan [email protected] *** Department of Informatics, Kansai University, Takatsuki, Osaka 569-1095, Japan [email protected] Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural ...

Evolutionary computation is emerging as a new engineering computational paradigm, which may significantly change the present structural design practice. For this reason, an extensive study of evolutionary computation in the context of structural design has been conducted in the Information Technology and Engineering School at George Mason University and its results are reported here. First, a g...

This paper presents the bidirectional evolutionary structural optimization (BESO) method for the design of two-phase composite materials with optimal properties of stiffness and thermal conductivity. The composite material is modelled by microstructures in a periodical base cell (PBC). The homogenization method is used to derive the effective bulk modulus and thermal conductivity. BESO procedur...

A Reliability-Based Design Optimization (RBDO) framework is presented that accounts for stochastic variations in structural parameters and operating conditions. The reliability index calculation is itself an iterative process, potentially employing an optimization technique to find the shortest distance from the origin to the limit-state boundary in a standard normal space. Monte Carlo simulati...