A heuristic particle swarm optimization method for truss structures with discrete variables

A heuristic particle swarm optimizer (HPSO) algorithm for truss structures with discrete variables is presented based on the standard particle swarm optimizer (PSO) and the harmony search (HS) scheme. The HPSO is tested on several truss structures with discrete variables and is compared with the PSO and the particle swarm optimizer with passive congregation (PSOPC), respectively. The results show that the HPSO is able to accelerate the convergence rate effectively and has the fastest convergence rate among these three algorithms. The research shows the proposed HPSO can be effectively used to solve optimization problems for steel structures with discrete variables.