• Architectural research
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.19-26
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• 2009

The effect of rebirthing technique on the genetic algorithm (GA)-based size optimization is investigated. The GA mimics the principles of nature and it can gradually improve structural design through biological operations such as fitness, selection, crossover and mutation. However, premature optimum has been often detected in the generic GA with continuous design variable. Since then, the so-called rebirthing technique has been proposed to avoid this problem. However, the performance of the rebirthing technique has not been reported. Therefore, the size optimizations of spatial structures are tackled to investigate the performance of the rebirthing technique on the generic GA. From numerical results, it is well proved that the rebirthing technique is very effective to produce the optimum values regardless of the values of parameters used in the GA operations.

• Proceeding of KASS Symposium
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.101-106
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• 2008

This paper describes a comparative study of genetic algorithm and mathematical programming technique applied in the design optimization of geodesic dome. In particular, the genetic algorithm adopted in this study uses the so-called re-birthing technique together with the standard GA operations such as fitness, selection, crossover and mutation to accelerate the searching process. The finite difference method is used to calculate the design sensitivity required in mathematical programming techniques and three different techniques such as sequential linear programming (SLP), sequential quadratic programming(SQP) and modified feasible direction method(MFDM) are consistently used in the design optimization of geodesic dome. The optimum member sizes of geodesic dome against several external loads is evaluated by the codes $ISADO-GA{\alpha}$ and ISADO-OPT. From a numerical example, we found that both optimization techniques such as GA and mathematical programming technique are very effective to calculate the optimum member sizes of three dimensional discrete structures and it can provide a very useful information on the existing structural system and it also has a great potential to produce new structural system for large spatial structures.