Swarm and immune computing of dynamically loaded reinforced structures

Abstract

In the paper an application of the particle swarm optimizer (PSO) and artificial immune system (AIS) to optimization problems is presented. Reinfored structures considered in this work are dynamically loaded and analyzed by the coupled boundary and finite element method (BEM/FEM). The metod is applied to optimize location of stiffeners in plates using criteria depended on displacements. The main advantage of the particle swarm optimizer, contrary to gradient methods of optimization, is the fact that it does not need any information about the gradient of fitness function. A comparison of the PSO, artificial immune system and evolutionary algorithm (EA) is also shown and it proves the efficiency of the former over other artificial intelligence methods of optimization. The coupled BEM/FEM, which is used to analyse structures, is very accu-rate in analysis and attractive in optimization tasks. It is because of problem dimensionality reduction in comparison with more frequently used domain methods, like for instance the FEM. Numerical examples demonstrate that the combination of the PSO with the BEM/FEM is an effective technique for solving computer aided optimal design problems, both with respect to accuracy and computational resources.