• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.392-399
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• 2009

The paper concerns the description of the step by step development process of the new fixed blade runner called "Mixer" suitable for the uprating of the Francis turbines units installed at the older low head hydropower plants. In the paper the details of hydraulic and mechanical design are presented. Since the rotational speed of the new runner is significantly higher then the rotational speed of the original Francis one, the direct coupling of the turbine to the generator can be applied. The maximum efficiency at prescribed operational point was reached by the geometry optimization of two most important components. In the first step the optimization of the draft tube geometry was carried out. The condition for the draft tube geometry optimization was to design the new geometry of the draft tube within the original bad draft tube shape without any extensive civil works. The runner blade geometry optimization was carried out on the runner coupled with the draft tube domain. The blade geometry of the runner was optimized using automatic direct search optimization procedure. The method used for the objective function minimum search is a kind of the Nelder-Mead simplex method. The objective function concerns efficiency, required net head and cavitation features. After successful hydraulic design the modal and stress analysis was carried out on the prototype scale runner. The static pressure distribution from flow simulation was used as a load condition. The modal analysis in air and in water was carried out and the results were compared. The final runner was manufactured in model scale and it is going to be tested in hydraulic laboratory. Since the turbine with the fixed blade runner does not allow double regulation like in case of full Kaplan turbine, it can be profitably used mainly at power plants with smaller changes of operational conditions or in case with more units installed. The advantages are simple manufacturing, installation and therefore lower expenses and short delivery time for turbine uprating.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.76-85
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• 1998

Recently, Genetic Algorithm(GA) is widely adopted into a search procedure for structural optimization, which is a stochastic direct search strategy that mimics the process of genetic evolution. This methods consist of three genetics operations maned selection, crossover and mutation. Contrast to traditional optimal design techniques which use design sensitivity analysis results, GA, being zero-order method, is very simple. So, they can be easily applicable to wide area of design optimization problems. Also, owing to multi-point search procedure, they have higher probability of converge to global optimum compared to traditional techniques which take one-point search method. In this study, a method of finding the optimum values of suspension parameters is proposed by using the GA. And vehicle is modelled as planar vehicle having 5 degree-of-freedom. The generalized coordinates are vertical motion of passenger seat, sprung mass and front and rear unsprung mass and rotate(pitch) motion of sprung mass. For rapid converge and precluding local optimum, share function which distribute chromosomes over design bound is introduced. Elitist survival model, remainder stochastic sampling without replacement method, multi-point crossover method are adopted. In the sight of the improvement of ride comfort, good result can be obtained in 5-D.O.F. vehicle model by using GA.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.313-322
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• 1994

Structural optimization has been developed by two methods. One is the direct method which applies the Nonlinear Programming (NLP) algorithm directly to the structural optimization problem. This method is known to be very excellent mathematically. However, it is very expensive for large-scale problems due to the one-dimensional line search. The other method is the approximation method which utilizes the engineering senses very well. The original problem is approximated to a simple problem and an NLP algorithm is adopted for solving the approximated problems. Practical solutions are obtained with low cost by this method. The two methods are compared through standard structural optimization problems. The Finite element method with truss and beam elements is used for the structural and sensitivity analyses. The results are analyzed based on the convergence performances, the number is function calculations, the quality of the cost functions, and etc. The applications of both methods are also discussed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.1099-1120
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• 2014

In this paper, reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) of structures is addressed. For this purpose, the global search and optimization capabilities of genetic algorithm (GA) are combined with the efficiency and reasonable accuracy of an advanced moment-based finite element reliability method. For performing RBDO, three variants of GA including a real-coded, a binary-coded and an improved binary-coded GA are developed. In these methods, GA performs (finite element) reliability analyses to evaluate reliability constraints. For truss structures which include finite element modeling, reliability constraints are evaluated using finite element reliability analysis. Response sensitivity required for finite element reliability analysis is obtained by direct differentiation method (DDM) rather than finite difference method (FDM). The proposed methods are examined within four standard test examples and real-world design problems. The results illustrate the superiority and efficiency of the improved binary-coded GA. Results also illustrate that DDM significantly reduces the computational cost and improves the efficiency of the optimization procedure.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.53-61
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• 2008

In this research, the layout and geometry of U-type ribs in the part, including significant process conditions, are automatically optimized to reduce part warpage with robustness in consideration. The optimization procedure are based on an iterative redesign methodology integrated with computer aided injection molding simulation, Taguchi's Design of Experiment(DOE), and a direct search-based optimization method. The robustness of a design alternative is efficiently measured by introducing composite noise factor and Taguchi's signal-to-noise ratio. As a solution search methodology, the modified design space reduction method based on orthogonal arrays is employed to exploit an optimal robust design alternative. To illustrate the proposed methodology, a case study is performed on simulation results, where an optimal robust design alternative is obtained with a moderate number of iterations.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.392-395
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• 1995

This paper presents a time efficient method for determining a sequence of locations of a mobile manipulator that facilitates tracking of continuous path in cluttered environment. Given the task trajectory in the form of octree data structure, the algorithm performs characterization of task space and subsequent multistage optimization process to determine task feasible locations of the robot. Firstly, the collision free portion of the trajectory is determined and classified according to uniqueness domains of the inverse kinematics solutions. Then by implementing the extent of task feasible subspace into an optimization criteria, a multistage optimization problem is formulated to determines the task feasible locations of the mobile manipulator. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown through a simulation study performed for a 3-d.o.f. manipulator with generic kinematic structure.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.82-96
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• 2019

A semi-submersible structure has been widely used for offshore drilling and production of oil and gas. The small water plane area makes the structure very sensitive to weight increase in terms of payload and stability. Therefore, it is necessary to lighten the substructure from the early design stage. This study aims at an optimization of hull structure based on a sophisticated yield and buckling strength in accordance with classification rules. An in-house strength assessment system is developed to automate the procedure such as a generation of buckling panels, a collection of required panel information, automatic buckling and yield check and so on. The developed system enables an automatic yield and buckling strength check of all panels composing the hull structure at each iteration of the optimization. Design variables are plate thickness and stiffener section profiles. In order to overcome the difficulty of large number of design variables and the computational burden of FE analysis, various methods are proposed. The steepest descent method is selected as the optimization algorithm for an efficient search. For a reduction of the number of design variables and a direct application to practical design, the stiffener section variable is determined by selecting one from a pre-defined standard library. Plate thickness is also discretized at 0.5t interval. The number of FE analysis is reduced by using equations to analytically estimating the stress changes in gradient calculation and line search steps. As an endeavor to robust optimization, the number of design variables to be simultaneously optimized is divided by grouping the scantling variables by the plane. A sequential optimization is performed group by group. As a verification example, a central column of a semi-submersible structure is optimized and compared with a conventional optimization of all design variables at once.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2006.07d
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• pp.1830-1831
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• 2006

In this paper, the search is conducted along each of the coordinate directions for finding the minimum. If $e_i$ is the unit vector along the coordinate direction i, we determine the value a, minimizing f(a)= $f(x+ae_i)$, where a is a real number. A move is made to the new point $x+a_ie_i$ at the end of the search along the direction i. In an n dimensional problem, we define the search along all the directions as one stage. The function value at the end of the stage is compared to the value at the beginning of the stage in establishing the convergence. The gradient appears to be zero at point. We can safeguard this by introducing an acceleration step of one additional step along the pattern direction developed by moves along the coordinate directions.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.149-156
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• 2010

In this paper, the optimal design of a wind generator, implemented with the hybridized GA(Genetic Algorithm) and ES(Expert System), has been performed to maximize the AEP(Annual Energy Production) over the whole wind speed characterized by the statistical model of wind speed distribution. In particular, to solve the problem of calculation iterate, ES finds the superior individual and apply to initial generation of GA and it makes reduction of search domain. Meanwhile, for effective searching in reduced search domain, it propose Intelligent GA algorithm. Also, it shows the results of optimized model 500[kW] wind generator using hybridized algorithm and benchmark result of compare with GA.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.1231-1237
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• 2022

In the present study, the optimization of the main particulars of a ship using AI-based design search techniques was investigated. For the design search techniques, the SHERPA algorithm by HEEDS was applied, and CFD analysis using STAR-CCM+ was applied for the calculation of resistance performance. Main particulars were automatically transformed by modifying the main particulars of the ship at the stage of preprocessing using JAVA script and Python. Small catamaran was chosen for the present study, and the main dimensions of the length, breadth, draft of demi-hull, and distance between demi-hulls were considered as design variables. Total resistance was considered as an objective function, and the range of displaced volume considering the arrangement of the outfitting system was chosen as the constraint. As a result, the changes in the individual design variables were within ±5%, and the total resistance of the optimized hull form was decreased by 11% compared with that of the existing hull form. Throughout the present study, the resistance performance of small catamaran could be improved by the optimization of the main dimensions without direct modification of the hull shape. In addition, the application of optimization using design search techniques is expected for the improvement in the resistance performance of a ship.