11,125 research outputs found
Towards the Evolution of Novel Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines
Renewable and sustainable energy is one of the most important challenges
currently facing mankind. Wind has made an increasing contribution to the
world's energy supply mix, but still remains a long way from reaching its full
potential. In this paper, we investigate the use of artificial evolution to
design vertical-axis wind turbine prototypes that are physically instantiated
and evaluated under approximated wind tunnel conditions. An artificial neural
network is used as a surrogate model to assist learning and found to reduce the
number of fabrications required to reach a higher aerodynamic efficiency,
resulting in an important cost reduction. Unlike in other approaches, such as
computational fluid dynamics simulations, no mathematical formulations are used
and no model assumptions are made.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure
A simple method for detecting chaos in nature
Chaos, or exponential sensitivity to small perturbations, appears everywhere
in nature. Moreover, chaos is predicted to play diverse functional roles in
living systems. A method for detecting chaos from empirical measurements should
therefore be a key component of the biologist's toolkit. But, classic
chaos-detection tools are highly sensitive to measurement noise and break down
for common edge cases, making it difficult to detect chaos in domains, like
biology, where measurements are noisy. However, newer tools promise to overcome
these limitations. Here, we combine several such tools into an automated
processing pipeline, and show that our pipeline can detect the presence (or
absence) of chaos in noisy recordings, even for difficult edge cases. As a
first-pass application of our pipeline, we show that heart rate variability is
not chaotic as some have proposed, and instead reflects a stochastic process in
both health and disease. Our tool is easy-to-use and freely available
Design Optimization Utilizing Dynamic Substructuring and Artificial Intelligence Techniques
In mechanical and structural systems, resonance may cause large strains and stresses which can lead to the failure of the system. Since it is often not possible to change the frequency content of the external load excitation, the phenomenon can only be avoided by updating the design of the structure. In this paper, a design optimization strategy based on the integration of the Component Mode Synthesis (CMS) method with numerical optimization techniques is presented. For reasons of numerical efficiency, a Finite Element (FE) model is represented by a surrogate model which is a function of the design parameters. The surrogate model is obtained in four steps: First, the reduced FE models of the components are derived using the CMS method. Then the components are aassembled to obtain the entire structural response. Afterwards the dynamic behavior is determined for a number of design parameter settings. Finally, the surrogate model representing the dynamic behavior is obtained. In this research, the surrogate model is determined using the Backpropagation Neural Networks which is then optimized using the Genetic Algorithms and Sequential Quadratic Programming method. The application of the introduced techniques is demonstrated on a simple test problem
State-of-the-art in aerodynamic shape optimisation methods
Aerodynamic optimisation has become an indispensable component for any aerodynamic design over the past 60 years, with applications to aircraft, cars, trains, bridges, wind turbines, internal pipe flows, and cavities, among others, and is thus relevant in many facets of technology. With advancements in computational power, automated design optimisation procedures have become more competent, however, there is an ambiguity and bias throughout the literature with regards to relative performance of optimisation architectures and employed algorithms. This paper provides a well-balanced critical review of the dominant optimisation approaches that have been integrated with aerodynamic theory for the purpose of shape optimisation. A total of 229 papers, published in more than 120 journals and conference proceedings, have been classified into 6 different optimisation algorithm approaches. The material cited includes some of the most well-established authors and publications in the field of aerodynamic optimisation. This paper aims to eliminate bias toward certain algorithms by analysing the limitations, drawbacks, and the benefits of the most utilised optimisation approaches. This review provides comprehensive but straightforward insight for non-specialists and reference detailing the current state for specialist practitioners
GPS-ABC: Gaussian Process Surrogate Approximate Bayesian Computation
Scientists often express their understanding of the world through a
computationally demanding simulation program. Analyzing the posterior
distribution of the parameters given observations (the inverse problem) can be
extremely challenging. The Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) framework is
the standard statistical tool to handle these likelihood free problems, but
they require a very large number of simulations. In this work we develop two
new ABC sampling algorithms that significantly reduce the number of simulations
necessary for posterior inference. Both algorithms use confidence estimates for
the accept probability in the Metropolis Hastings step to adaptively choose the
number of necessary simulations. Our GPS-ABC algorithm stores the information
obtained from every simulation in a Gaussian process which acts as a surrogate
function for the simulated statistics. Experiments on a challenging realistic
biological problem illustrate the potential of these algorithms
Data-efficient Neuroevolution with Kernel-Based Surrogate Models
Surrogate-assistance approaches have long been used in computationally
expensive domains to improve the data-efficiency of optimization algorithms.
Neuroevolution, however, has so far resisted the application of these
techniques because it requires the surrogate model to make fitness predictions
based on variable topologies, instead of a vector of parameters. Our main
insight is that we can sidestep this problem by using kernel-based surrogate
models, which require only the definition of a distance measure between
individuals. Our second insight is that the well-established Neuroevolution of
Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) algorithm provides a computationally efficient
distance measure between dissimilar networks in the form of "compatibility
distance", initially designed to maintain topological diversity. Combining
these two ideas, we introduce a surrogate-assisted neuroevolution algorithm
that combines NEAT and a surrogate model built using a compatibility distance
kernel. We demonstrate the data-efficiency of this new algorithm on the low
dimensional cart-pole swing-up problem, as well as the higher dimensional
half-cheetah running task. In both tasks the surrogate-assisted variant
achieves the same or better results with several times fewer function
evaluations as the original NEAT.Comment: In GECCO 201
- …