Derivative-free Methods for Structural Optimization

Abstract

The focus on efficiency has grown over recent years, and nowadays it is critical that buildings have a good performance regarding different criteria. This need prompts the usage of algorithmic approaches, analysis tools, and optimization algorithms, to find the best performing variation of a design. There are many optimization algorithms and not all of them are adequate for a specific problem. However, Genetic Algorithms are frequently the first and only option, despite being considered last resort algorithms in the mathematical field. This paper discusses methods for structural optimization and applies them on a structural problem. Our tests show that Genetic Algorithms perform poorly, while other algorithms achieve better results. However, they also show that no algorithm is consistently better than the others, which suggests that for structural optimization, several algorithms should be used, instead of simply using Genetic Algorithms.