Sn. Patnaik et al., COMPARATIVE-EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHMS FOR STRUCTURAL DESIGN APPLICATIONS, International journal for numerical methods in engineering, 39(10), 1996, pp. 1761-1774
Non-linear programming algorithms play an important role in structural
design optimization. Fortunately, several algorithms with computer co
des are available. At NASA Lewis Research Centre, a project was initia
ted to assess the performance of eight different optimizers through th
e development of a computer code CometBoards. This paper summarizes th
e conclusions of that research. CometBoards was employed to solve sets
of small, medium and large structural problems, using the eight diffe
rent optimizers on a Cray-YMP8E/8128 computer. The reliability and eff
iciency of the optimizers were determined from the performance of thes
e problems. For small problems, the performance of most of the optimiz
ers could be considered adequate. For large problems, however, three o
ptimizers (two sequential quadratic programming routines, DNCONG of IM
SL and SQP of IDESIGN, along with Sequential Unconstrained Minimizatio
ns Technique SUMT) outperformed others. At optimum, most optimizers ca
ptured an identical number of active displacement and frequency constr
aints but the number of active stress constraints differed among the o
ptimizers. This discrepancy can be attributed to singularity condition
s in the optimization and the alleviation of this discrepancy can impr
ove the efficiency of optimizers.