Adaptive heuristic search algorithm for discrete variables based multi-objective optimization

Although metamodel technique has been successfully used to enhance the efficiency of the multi-objective optimization (MOO) with black-box objective functions, the metamodel could become less accurate or even unavailable when the design variables are discrete. In order to overcome the bottleneck, this work proposes a novel random search algorithm for discrete variables based multi-objective optimization with black-box functions, named as k-mean cluster based heuristic sampling with Utopia-Pareto directing adaptive strategy (KCHS-UPDA). This method constructs a few adaptive sampling sets in the solution space and draws samples according to a heuristic probability model. Several benchmark problems are supplied to test the performance of KCHS-UPDA including closeness, diversity, efficiency and robustness. It is verified that KCHS-UPDA can generally converge to the Pareto frontier with a small quantity of number of function evaluations. Finally, a vehicle frontal member crashworthiness optimization is successfully solved by KCHS-UPDA.     

An adaptive sampling strategy for Kriging metamodel based on Delaunay triangulation and TOPSIS

Metamodels have been widely used in engineering design and optimization. Sampling method plays an important role in the constructing of metamodels. This paper proposes an adaptive sampling strategy for Kriging metamodel based on Delaunay triangulation and TOPSIS (KMDT). In the proposed KMDT, Delaunay triangulation is employed to partition the design space according to current sample points. The area of each partitioned triangle is used to indicate the degree of dispersion of sample points, and the prediction error of Kriging metamodel at each triangle’s centroid is used to represent the local error of each triangle region. By calculating the weight of the area and prediction error for each triangle region using the entropy method and TOPSIS, the degree of dispersion of sample points and local errors of metamodel are taken into consideration to make a trade-off between global exploration and local exploitation during the sequential sampling process. As a demonstration, the proposed approach is compared to other three sampling methods using several numerical cases and the modeling of the aerodynamic coefficient for a three-dimensional aircraft. The result reveals that the proposed approach provides more accurate metamodel at the same simulation cost, which is very important in metamodel-based engineering design problems.     

Simulation of lifting motions using a novel multi-objective optimization approach

In this study, a novel lifting motion simulation model was developed based on a multi-objective optimization (MOO) approach. Two performance criteria, minimum physical effort and maximum load motion smoothness, were selected to define the multi-objective function in the optimization procedure using a weighted-sum MOO approach. Symmetric lifting motions performed by younger and older adults under varied task conditions were simulated. The results showed that the proposed MOO approach led to up to 18.9% reductions in the prediction errors compared to the single-objective optimization approach. This finding suggests that both minimum physical effort and maximum load motion smoothness play an important role in lifting motion planning. Age-related differences in the mechanisms for planning lifting motions were also investigated. In particular, younger workers tend to rely more on the criterion of minimizing physical effort during lifting motion planning, while maximizing load motion smoothness seems to be the dominant objective for older workers.Relevance to industryLifting tasks are closely associated with occupational low back pain (LBP). In this study, a novel lifting motion simulation model was developed to facilitate the analysis of lifting biomechanics and LBP prevention. Age-related differences in lifting motion planning were discussed for better understanding LBP injury mechanisms during lifting.     

An approximate optimization strategy using refined hybrid metamodel

An approximate model called metamodel or surrogate model is a mathematical model that numerically approximates response of a system during an engineering simulation process or test. The introduction of a metamodel makes it possible to express response defined in the design problem as a simple mathematical function of design variables. A metamodel can be built with response surface method (RSM), kriging, neural network, radial basis function, and so on. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. A combined metamodel called hybrid model, ensemble model, or multiple surrogates has been developed to maximize each metamodel's strength. The hybrid model of this research includes RSM and kriging. Besides, a strategy to refine the hybrid metamodel is implemented by reducing design space. In this process, information related to Hessian is utilized for an unconstrained optimization problem, on the contrary feasibility for a constrained optimization problem. This research presents a new hybrid metamodel-based optimization strategy called refined hybrid metamodel. Five mathematical test problems, two-bar design, spring design, and propeller shaft design problems are solved with the suggested method, verifying its usefulness. Most of the optimal results with the proposed method are closer to exact solutions with smaller function evaluations than existing methods.     

A robust optimization approach based on multi-fidelity metamodel

Multi-fidelity (MF) metamodeling approaches have recently attracted a significant amount of attention in simulation-based design optimization due to their ability to conduct trade-offs between high accuracy and low computational expenses by integrating the information from high-fidelity (HF) and low-fidelity (LF) models. While existing MF metamodel assisted design optimization approaches may yield an inferior or even infeasible solution since they generally treat the MF metamodel as the real HF model and ignore the interpolation uncertainties from the MF metamodel. This situation will be more serious in non-deterministic optimization. Hence, in this work, a MF metamodel assisted robust optimization approach is developed, in which the interpolation uncertainty of the MF metamodel and design variable uncertainty are quantified and taken into consideration. To demonstrate the effectiveness and merits of the proposed approach, two numerical examples and a long cylinder pressure vessel design optimization problem are tested. Results show that for the test cases the proposed approach can obtain a solution that is both optimal and within the feasible region even with perturbation of the uncertain variables.     

Crashworthiness design of multi-component tailor-welded blank (TWB) structures

Crashworthiness of tailor-welded blank (TWB) structures signifies an increasing concern in lightweight design of vehicle. Although multiobjective optimization (MOO) has to a considerable extent been successfully applied to enhance crashworthiness of vehicular structures, majority of existing designs were restricted to single or uniform thin-walled components. Limited attention has been paid to such non-uniform components as TWB structures. In this paper, MOO of a multi-component TWB structure that involves both the B-pillar and inner door system subjected to a side impact, is proposed by considering the structural weight, intrusive displacements and velocity of the B-pillar component as objectives, and the thickness in different positions and the height of welding line of B-pillar as the design variables. The MOO problem is formulated by using a range of different metamodeling techniques, including response surface methodology (RSM), artificial neural network (ANN), radial basis functions (RBF), and Kriging (KRG), to approximate the sophisticated nonlinear responses. By comparison, it is found that the constructed metamodels based upon the radial basis function (RBF, especially multi-quadric model, namely RBF-MQ) fit to the design of experiment (DoE) checking points well and are employed to carry out the design optimization. The performance of the TWB B-pillar and indoor panel system can be improved by optimizing the thickness of the different parts and height of the welding line. This study demonstrated that the multi-component TWB structure can be optimized to further enhance the crashworthiness and reduce the weight, offering a new class of structural/material configuration for lightweight design.     

Extended Gaussian Kriging for computer experiments in engineering design

Metamodeling or surrogate modeling is becoming increasingly popular for product design optimization in manufacture industries. In this paper, an extended Gaussian Kriging method is proposed to improve the prediction performance of widely used ordinary Kriging in engineering design. Unlike the forgoing approaches, the proposed method places a variance-varying Gaussian prior on the unknown regression coefficients in the mean model of Kriging and makes prediction at untried design points based on the principle of Bayesian maximum a posterior. The achieved regression mean model is adaptive, therefore capable of capturing more effectively the overall trend of computer responses and leading to a more accurate metamodel. Particularly, the regression coefficients in the mean model are estimated by a fast numerical algorithm, making extended Gaussian Kriging implemented roughly as efficient as ordinary Kriging. Experiment results on several examples are presented, showing remarkable improvement in prediction using extended Gaussian Kriging over ordinary Kriging and several other metamodeling methods.     

基于PRS元模型的粒子群优化算法及其应用*

针对传统粒子群算法优化黑箱模型过程中存在巨大计算开销的问题,提出一种基于PRS元模型的改进粒子群优化算法—PPSO算法。在该算法迭代过程中,构建PRS元模型,利用其最优值点辅助粒子种群的更新,此外仅选择元模型预估集中优值集的粒子进行目标函数的计算仿真。将PPSO算法与基本粒子群算法、混沌粒子群算法进行数值测试对比,并应用于模糊控制器的优化设计,仿真结果表明该算法可减少真实估值次数,提高优化搜索能力。     

Simulated annealing-based immunodominance algorithm for multi-objective optimization problems

Based on the simulated annealing strategy and immunodominance in the artificial immune system, a simulated annealing-based immunodominance algorithm (SAIA) for multi-objective optimization (MOO) is proposed in this paper. In SAIA, all immunodominant antibodies are divided into two classes: the active antibodies and the hibernate antibodies at each temperature. Clonal proliferation and recombination are employed to enhance local search on those active antibodies while the hibernate antibodies have no function, but they could become active during the following temperature. Thus, all antibodies in the search space can be exploited effectively and sufficiently. Simulated annealing-based adaptive hypermutation, population pruning, and simulated annealing selection are proposed in SAIA to evolve and obtain a set of antibodies as the trade-off solutions. Complexity analysis of SAIA is also provided. The performance comparison of SAIA with some state-of-the-art MOO algorithms in solving 14 well-known multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs) including four many objectives test problems and twelve multi-objective 0/1 knapsack problems shows that SAIA is superior in converging to approximate Pareto front with a standout distribution.     

Optimal design of structures subjected to time history loading by swarm intelligence and an advanced metamodel

This paper proposes a new metamodeling framework that reduces the computational burden of the structural optimization against the time history loading. In order to achieve this, two strategies are adopted. In the first strategy, a novel metamodel consisting of adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), subtractive algorithm (SA), self organizing map (SOM) and a set of radial basis function (RBF) networks is proposed to accurately predict the time history responses of structures. The metamodel proposed is called fuzzy self-organizing radial basis function (FSORBF) networks. In this study, the most influential natural periods on the dynamic behavior of structures are treated as the inputs of the neural networks. In order to find the most influential natural periods from all the involved ones, ANFIS is employed. To train the FSORBF, the input–output samples are classified by a hybrid algorithm consisting of SA and SOM clusterings, and then a RBF network is trained for each cluster by using the data located. In the second strategy, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is employed to find the optimum design. Two building frame examples are presented to illustrate the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed methodology. A plane steel shear frame and a realistic steel space frame are designed for optimal weight using exact and approximate time history analyses. The numerical results demonstrate the efficiency and computational advantages of the proposed methodology.     

Differential evolution based on ε-domination and orthogonal design method for power environmentally-friendly dispatch

This paper proposes a differential evolution algorithm based on ε-domination and orthogonal design method (ε-ODEMO) to solve power dispatch problem considering environment protection and saving energy. Besides the operation costs of thermal power plant, contaminative gas emission is also optimized as an objective. In the proposed algorithm, ε-dominance is adopted to make genetic algorithm obtain a good distribution of Pareto-optimal solutions in a small computational time, and the orthogonal design method can generate an initial population of points that are scattered uniformly over the feasible solution space, these modify the differential evolution algorithm (DE) to make it suit for multi-objective optimization (MOO) problems and improve its performance. A test hydrothermal system is used to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared with other methods, the results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for solving the power environmentally-friendly dispatch problem.     

A multi-point sampling method based on kriging for global optimization

In general, sampling strategy plays a very important role in metamodel based design optimization, especially when computationally expensive simulations are involved in the optimization process. The research on new optimization methods with less sampling points and higher convergence speed receives great attention in recent years. In this paper, a multi-point sampling method based on kriging (MPSK) is proposed for improving the efficiency of global optimization. The sampling strategy of this method is based on a probabilistic distribution function converted from the expected improvement (EI) function. It can intelligently draw appropriate new samples in an area with certain probability according to corresponding EI values. Besides, three strategies are also proposed to speed up the sequential sampling process and the corresponding convergence criterions are put forward to stop the searching process reasonably. In order to validate the efficiency of this method, it is tested by several numerical benchmark problems and applied in two engineering design optimization problems. Moreover, an overall comparison between the proposed method and several other typical global optimization methods has been made. Results show that the higher global optimization efficiency of this method makes it particularly suitable for design optimization problems involving computationally expensive simulations.     

Multi-objective optimization for design under uncertainty problems through surrogate modeling in augmented input space

Multi-objective design under uncertainty problems that adopt probabilistic quantities as performance objectives and consider their estimation through stochastic simulation are examined in this paper, focusing on development of a surrogate modeling framework to reduce computational burden for the numerical optimization. The surrogate model is formulated to approximate the system response with respect to both the design variables and the uncertain model parameters, so that it can simultaneously support both the uncertainty propagation and the identification of the Pareto optimal solutions. Kriging is chosen as the metamodel, and its probabilistic nature (its ability to offer a local estimate of the prediction error) is leveraged within different aspects of the framework. To reduce the number of simulations for the expensive system model, an iterative approach is established with adaptive characteristics for controlling the metamodel accuracy. At each iteration, a new metamodel is developed utilizing all available training points. A new Pareto front is then identified utilizing this surrogate model and is compared, for assessing stopping criteria, to the front that was identified in the previous iteration. This comparison utilizes explicitly the potential error associated with the metamodel predictions. If stopping criteria are not achieved, a set of refinement experiments (new training points) is identified and process proceeds to the next iteration. A hybrid design of experiments is considered for this refinement, with a dual goal of global coverage and local exploitation of regions of interest, separately identified for the design variables and the uncertain model parameters.

     

Metamodel-based collaborative optimization framework

This paper focuses on the metamodel-based collaborative optimization (CO). The objective is to improve the computational efficiency of CO in order to handle multidisciplinary design optimization problems utilising high fidelity models. To address these issues, two levels of metamodel building techniques are proposed: metamodels in the disciplinary optimization are based on multi-fidelity modelling (the interaction of low and high fidelity models) and for the system level optimization a combination of a global metamodel based on the moving least squares method and trust region strategy is introduced. The proposed method is demonstrated on a continuous fiber-reinforced composite beam test problem. Results show that methods introduced in this paper provide an effective way of improving computational efficiency of CO based on high fidelity simulation models.     

Adaptive weighted-sum method for bi-objective optimization: Pareto front generation

This paper presents a new method that effectively determines a Pareto front for bi-objective optimization with potential application to multiple objectives. A traditional method for multiobjective optimization is the weighted-sum method, which seeks Pareto optimal solutions one by one by systematically changing the weights among the objective functions. Previous research has shown that this method often produces poorly distributed solutions along a Pareto front, and that it does not find Pareto optimal solutions in non-convex regions. The proposed adaptive weighted sum method focuses on unexplored regions by changing the weights adaptively rather than by using a priori weight selections and by specifying additional inequality constraints. It is demonstrated that the adaptive weighted sum method produces well-distributed solutions, finds Pareto optimal solutions in non-convex regions, and neglects non-Pareto optimal solutions. This last point can be a potential liability of Normal Boundary Intersection, an otherwise successful multiobjective method, which is mainly caused by its reliance on equality constraints. The promise of this robust algorithm is demonstrated with two numerical examples and a simple structural optimization problem.     

Multiple meta-models based design space differentiation method for expensive problems

Meta-models and meta-models based global optimization methods have been commonly used in design optimizations of expensive problems. In this work, a multiple meta-models based design space differentiation (MDSD) method is proposed. In the proposed method, an important region will be constructed using the expensive points inside the whole design space. Then, quadratic function (QF) will be employed in the search of the constructed important region. To avoid the local optima, kriging is employed in the search of the whole design space simultaneously. The MDSD method employs different meta-models in the different design space instead of space reduction, which preserves the advantages of high efficiency of the space reduction methods and avoids their shortcomings of removing the global optimum by mistake in theory. Through extensive test and comparison with three meta-model based algorithms, efficient global optimization (EGO), Mode-pursuing sampling method (MPS) and hybrid and adaptive meta-modeling method (HAM) using several benchmark math functions and an engineering problem involving finite element analysis (FEA), the proposed method shows excellent performance in search efficiency and accuracy.     

Ensemble of metamodels: extensions of the least squares approach to efficient global optimization

In this work we present LSEGO, an approach to drive efficient global optimization (EGO), based on LS (least squares) ensemble of metamodels. By means of LS ensemble of metamodels it is possible to estimate the uncertainty of the prediction with any kind of model (not only kriging) and provide an estimate for the expected improvement function. For the problems studied, the proposed LSEGO algorithm has shown to be able to find the global optimum with less number of optimization cycles than required by the classical EGO approach. As more infill points are added per cycle, the faster is the convergence to the global optimum (exploitation) and also the quality improvement of the metamodel in the design space (exploration), specially as the number of variables increases, when the standard single point EGO can be quite slow to reach the optimum. LSEGO has shown to be a feasible option to drive EGO with ensemble of metamodels as well as for constrained problems, and it is not restricted to kriging and to a single infill point per optimization cycle.     

An accumulative error based adaptive design of experiments for offline metamodeling

A popular method to reduce the computational effort in simulation-based engineering design is by way of approximation. An approximation method involves two steps: Design of Experiments (DOE) and metamodeling. In this paper, a new DOE approach is introduced. The proposed approach is adaptive and samples more design points in regions where the simulation response is expected to be highly nonlinear and multi-modal. Numerical and engineering examples are used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed DOE approach. The results from these examples show that for the same number of simulation evaluations and according to metamodel accuracy, the proposed DOE approach performs better for majority of test examples compared to two previous methods, i.e., the maximum entropy design method and maximum scaled distance method.     

一种自适应特征地图匹配的改进VSLAM算法

从提高机器人视觉同时定位与地图构建（Visual simultaneous localization and mapping,VSLAM）算法的实时性出发,在VSLAM的视觉里程计中提出一种自适应特征地图配准的算法.首先,针对视觉里程计中特征地图信息冗余、耗费计算资源的问题,划分特征地图子区域并作为结构单元,再根据角点响应强度指标大小提取子区域中少数高效的特征点,以较小规模的特征地图配准各帧:针对自适应地图配准时匹配个数不满足的情况,提出一种区域特征点补充和特征地图扩建的方法,快速实现该情形下当前帧的再次匹配:为了提高视觉里程计中位姿估计的精度,提出一种帧到帧、帧到模型的g2o（General graph optimization）特征地图优化模型,更加有效地更新特征地图的内点和外点.通用数据集的实验表明,所提方法的定位精度误差在厘米级,生成的点云地图清晰、漂移少,相比于其他算法,具有更好的实时性、定位精度以及建图能力.     

Robust optimization of structural dynamic characteristics based on adaptive Kriging model and CNSGA

Dynamic characteristics greatly influence the comprehensive performance of a structure. But they are rarely included as objectives in traditional robust optimization of structures. In this study, a robust optimization model including both means and standard deviations of dynamic characteristic indices in the objective and constraint functions is constructed for improving the structural dynamic characteristics and reducing their fluctuations under uncertainty. Adaptive Kriging models are employed for the efficient computation of dynamic characteristics. An intelligent resampling technology is proposed to save computational costs and accelerate convergence of Kriging models, which takes full advantage of the test points for precision verification, the sample points within the local region of the biggest relative maximum absolute error and the near-optimal point to improve the global and local precision of Krigings. The high efficiency of proposed intelligent resampling technology is demonstrated by a numerical example. Finally, an efficient algorithm integrating adaptive Kriging models, Monte Carlo (MC) method, constrained non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (CNSGA) is proposed to solve the robust optimization model of structural dynamic characteristics. Kriging models are interfaced with MC method to efficiently compute the fitness of individuals during CNSGA. The implementation of proposed methodology is explained in detail and highlighted by the robust optimization of a cone ring fixture with lots of circumferentially distributed holes in a large turbo generator aimed at moving its natural frequencies away from the exciting one. The comparison of the optimized design with the initial one demonstrates that the proposed methodology is feasible and applicable in engineering practice.