A general and flexible method of problem definition in structural optimization systems

This paper describes the implementation of a general and flexible method of formulating problems of mathematical programming in structural optimization systems. The method enables the formulation and solution of problems involving scalar, integral, min/max, max/min and possibly non-differentiable user defined functions in any conceivable mix. The mathematical formulation is based on the bound formulation, and the implementation specific details involve a parser capable of interpreting and performing symbolic differentiation of the user defined functions.