Imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is a new socio-politically motivated global search strategy. The ICA is applied to hybrid composite laminates to obtain minimum weight and cost. The approach which is chosen for conducting the multi-objective optimization was the weighted sum method (WSM). The hybrid composite Laminates are made of glass/epoxy and carbon/epoxy to combine the lightness and...

This paper integrates Nelder–Mead simplex search method (NM) with genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), respectively, in an attempt to locate the global optimal solutions for the nonlinear continuous variable functions mainly focusing on response surface methodology (RSM). Both the hybrid NM–GA and NM–PSO algorithms incorporate concepts from the NM, GA or PSO, which are ...

One of the main obstacles in applying genetic algorithms (GA's) to complex problems has been the high computational cost due to their slow convergence rate. We encountered such a difficulty in our attempt to use the classical GA for estimating parameters of a metabolic model. To alleviate this difficulty, we developed a hybrid approach that combines a GA with a stochastic variant of the simplex...

Hybrid metaheuristics have received considerable interest in recent years. Since several years ago, a wide variety of hybrid approaches have been proposed in the literature including the new GA-EDA approach. We have design and implemented an extension to this GA-EDA approach, based on statistical significance tests. This approach had allowed us to make an study of the balance of diversification...

The Vehicle Routing Problem can be expressed as the problem of designing optimal collection or delivery routes from one or multiple depots to a number of terrestrially scattered customers or cities, subject to side constraints such as time, capacity, mileage etc. The VRP plays a key role in the fields of logistics and transportation. There exist a number of variants of VRPs. Mostly VRPs with fi...

In this paper, a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm, based on imperialistic competition algorithm (ICA), harmony search (HS), and simulated annealing (SA) is presented. The body of the proposed hybrid algorithm is based on ICA. The proposed hybrid algorithm inherits the advantages of the process of harmony creation in HS algorithm to improve the exploitation phase of the ICA algorithm. In addition...

This paper presents a hybrid approach of a genetic algorithm (GA) and local search algorithms for the backbone design of communication networks. The backbone network design problem is defined as finding the network topology minimizing the design/operating cost of a network under performance and survivability considerations. This problem is known to be NP-hard. In the hybrid approach, the local ...

To design a more economical structural form, it is necessary to optimize both the topology and shape of structures. To optimize topology, we propose a hybrid of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Evolutionary Structural Optimization (ESO). This paper describes the considerations in applying the proposed method to topology structural optimization. Through numerical examples, the proposed method showed b...

The application of pattern recognition (PR) techniques, artificial neural networks (ANNs), and nowadays hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in manufacturing can be regarded as consecutive elements of a process started two decades ago. The fundamental aim of the paper is to outline the importance of soft computing and hybrid AI techniques in manufacturing by introducing a genetic algo...