Evolutionary algorithms and other metaheuristics in water resources: Current status, research challenges and future directions

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier. NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Environmental Modelling and Software. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Environmental Modelling and Software Vol. 62 (2014), DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2014.09.013The development and application of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) and other metaheuristics for the optimisation of water resources systems has been an active research field for over two decades. Research to date has emphasized algorithmic improvements and individual applications in specific areas (e.g. model calibration, water distribution systems, groundwater management, river-basin planning and management, etc.). However, there has been limited synthesis between shared problem traits, common EA challenges, and needed advances across major applications. This paper clarifies the current status and future research directions for better solving key water resources problems using EAs. Advances in understanding fitness landscape properties and their effects on algorithm performance are critical. Future EA-based applications to real-world problems require a fundamental shift of focus towards improving problem formulations, understanding general theoretic frameworks for problem decompositions, major advances in EA computational efficiency, and most importantly aiding real decision-making in complex, uncertain application contexts

A Critical Review of Optimization Methods for Road Vehicles Design

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77078/1/AIAA-2006-6998-235.pd

A multifidelity multiobjective optimization framework for high-lift airfoils

High-lift devices design is a challenging task as it involves highly complex flow features while being critical for the overall performance of the aircraft. When part of an optimization loop, the computational cost of the Computational Fluid Dynamics becomes increasingly problematic. Methods to reduce the optimization time has been of major interest over the last 50 years. This paper presents a multiobjective multifidelity optimization framework that takes advantage of two approximation levels of the flow equations: a rapid method that provides quick estimates but of relatively low accuracy and a reference method that provides accurate estimations at the cost of a longer run-time. The method uses a sub-optimization, under a trust-region scheme, performed on the low-fidelity model corrected by a surrogate model that is fed by the high-fidelity tool. The size of the trust region is changed according to the accuracy of the corrected model. The multiobjective optimizer is used to set the positions of the ap and slat of a two-dimensional geometry with lift and drag as objectives with an empirical-based method and a Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations solver. The multifidelity method shows potential for discovering the complete Pareto front, yet it remains less optimal than the Pareto front from the high-fidelity-only optimization

Evolutionary algorithms and other metaheuristics in water resources: Current status, research challenges and future directions

Abstract not availableH.R. Maier, Z. Kapelan, Kasprzyk, J. Kollat, L.S. Matott, M.C. Cunha, G.C. Dandy, M.S. Gibbs, E. Keedwell, A. Marchi, A. Ostfeld, D. Savic, D.P. Solomatine, J.A. Vrugt, A.C. Zecchin, B.S. Minsker, E.J. Barbour, G. Kuczera, F. Pasha, A. Castelletti, M. Giuliani, P.M. Ree

An interactive design environment for coal piping system

The design of coal piping system of a coal-fired power plant is a complex and time-consuming engineering task that involves meeting of several design objectives and constraints. The distribution of coal particles in a pneumatic pipeline can be highly inhomogeneous. Current coal piping design technology relies on empirical model and does not consider particle distribution characteristics in the pipe. In this thesis, a design tool which couples a validated detailed pipe model and an interactive optimization algorithm is developed. This new design tool uses evolutionary algorithms (EAs) as the optimization algorithm, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as the evaluation mechanism. The process uses an iterative approach that allows design to be evaluated using CFD analysis automatically to optimize several criteria. The proposed design change is then re-meshed and displayed. Three fundamentally different techniques from traditional optimization methods were considered in order to reduce computation time. Firstly, the tool has been implemented in a virtual engineering environment using VE-Suite. Secondly, the system is integrated with a general interface to allow users to set up the design procedure and interact or guide the searching path as the design evolves. Thirdly, a fast calculation approach is used to reduce the time for single CFD case. The proposed interactive design tool is analyzed and enhanced so that it is usable by the general engineering community. A real coal pipe application was carried out using this design tool. The main objective is to distribute coal flow to its two branches as uniform as possible. The results of this work suggested that the optimum coal pipe can be found relatively fast even when using high-fidelity CFD solver as the analysis method, and the optimum pipe can greatly reduce the coal flow unbalance. This indicates that the tool presented in this thesis can be used as a new and efficient design environment for coal pipe

Geometric-based Optimization Algorithms for Cable Routing and Branching in Cluttered Environments

The need for designing lighter and more compact systems often leaves limited space for planning routes for the connectors that enable interactions among the system’s components. Finding optimal routes for these connectors in a densely populated environment left behind at the detail design stage has been a challenging problem for decades. A variety of deterministic as well as heuristic methods has been developed to address different instances of this problem. While the focus of the deterministic methods is primarily on the optimality of the final solution, the heuristics offer acceptable solutions, especially for such problems, in a reasonable amount of time without guaranteeing to find optimal solutions. This study is an attempt to furthering the efforts in deterministic optimization methods to tackle the routing problem in two and three dimensions by focusing on the optimality of final solutions. The objective of this research is twofold. First, a mathematical framework is proposed for the optimization of the layout of wiring connectors in planar cluttered environments. The problem looks at finding the optimal tree network that spans multiple components to be connected with the aim of minimizing the overall length of the connectors while maximizing their common length (for maintainability and traceability of connectors). The optimization problem is formulated as a bi-objective problem and two solution methods are proposed: (1) to solve for the optimal locations of a known number of breakouts (where the connectors branch out) using mixed-binary optimization and visibility notion and (2) to find the minimum length tree that spans multiple components of the system and generates the optimal layout using the previously-developed convex hull based routing. The computational performance of these methods in solving a variety of problems is further evaluated. Second, the problem of finding the shortest route connecting two given nodes in a 3D cluttered environment is considered and addressed through deterministically generating a graphical representation of the collision-free space and searching for the shortest path on the found graph. The method is tested on sample workspaces with scattered convex polyhedra and its computational performance is evaluated. The work demonstrates the NP-hardness aspect of the problem which becomes quickly intractable as added components or increase in facets are considered