GUIDED LOCAL SEARCH - AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE IN FUNCTION OPTIMIZATION

The Guided Local Search method has been successfully applied to a numb er of hard combinatorial optimisation problems from the well-known TSP and QAP to real-world problems such as frequency assignment and workf orce scheduling. In this paper it is demonstrated that the potential a pplications of GLS are Mot limited to optimisation problems of discret e nature but also to difficult continuous optimisation problems. Conti nuous optimisation problems arise in many engineering disciplines (suc h as electrical and mechanical engineering) in the context of analysis , design or simulation tasks. The problem examined gives an illustrati ve ex-ample of the behaviour of GLS, providing insights on the mechani sms of the algorithm.