An efficient hybrid algorithm for the optimization of problems with several local minima

The problem of design optimization is of high industrial interest, and has been extensively studied for years, with excellent results. However, there is the well-known issue of a reasonable balance between the computational e ffort usually required by stochastic methods, and the fact that determinist ic optimizers, even though much more efficient, are not guaranteed to local ize a good minimum, as they can remain trapped in the first found local one . To overcome these problems, the authors developed a hybrid strategy, whic h gave good results in terms of speed and reliability of the obtained optim a, especially when the objective function is obtained through a finite elem ent analysis, due, for example, to the absence of an analytical solution of the problem, and the direct use of a stochastic method would be unfeasible for practical purposes, because of the intolerable processing time require d. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.