Optimum discrete design of steel tower structures using optics inspired optimization method

This paper presents an optics inspired optimization (OIO) method for optimum design of steel tower structures with discrete variables. Inspired by the optical characteristics of concave and convex mirrors, OIO tries to solve optimization problem. In OIO, the surface of the objective function to be minimized is considered as a reflecting wavy mirror consisting of peaks and valleys. To generate a new solution (artificial image point) from a given solution (artificial object/light point) in the search space, it is assumed that the artificial ray glittered from the artificial light point is reflected back artificially by the function surface in which each peak is considered as a convex mirror and each valleys is treated as a concave mirror. Then, the artificial image point is formed by the theory of optics in Physics, and a new solution is generated in the search space accordingly. Numerical experiments have been conducted on 4 benchmark design examples with discrete variables, and the results obtained by OIO are compared to those reported in the literature. The results show that OIO can produce high quality solutions and show a relatively fast convergence rate.