Citation:
Mike J W Riley, Tom Peachey, David Abramson and Karl W Jenkins. (2010). Multi-objective engineering shape optimization using differential evolution interfaced to the Nimrod/O tool. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Volume 10, Number 1. pp012189
Abstract:
This paper presents an enhancement of the Nimrod/O optimization tool by
interfacing DEMO, an external multiobjective optimization algorithm. DEMO is a variant of
differential evolution – an algorithm that has attained much popularity in the research
community, and this work represents the first time that true multiobjective optimizations have
been performed with Nimrod/O. A modification to the DEMO code enables multiple objectives
to be evaluated concurrently. With Nimrod/O’s support for parallelism, this can reduce the
wall-clock time significantly for compute intensive objective function evaluations. We describe
the usage and implementation of the interface and present two optimizations. The first is twoobjective
mathematical function in which the Pareto front is successfully found after only 30
generations. The second test case is the three-objective shape optimization of a rib-reinforced
wall bracket using the Finite Element software, Code_Aster. The interfacing of the already
successful packages of Nimrod/O and DEMO yields a solution that we believe can benefit a
wide community, both industrial and academic.