A PARALLEL EVOLUTION STRATEGY FOR SOLVING DISCRETE STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION

A method to solve optimization with discrete variables by using modifi ed evolution strategies (ESs) is presented. ESs imitate biological evo lution and combine the concept of artificial survival of the fittest w ith evolutionary operators to form a robust search mechanism. An impor tant characteristic of ESs that differs from other conventional optimi zation algorithms is that in place of a single design point the ESs wo rk simultaneously with a population of design points in the space of v ariables. This allows for an implementation in a parallel-computing en vironment. In this paper the modified ESs for solving discrete optimiz ation problems and their parallelization are described. Copyright (C) 1996 Civil-Comp Limited and Elsevier Science Limited