SIZE OPTIMIZATION OF NONLINEAR SCALLOP DOMES BY AN ENHANCED PARTICLE SWARM ALGORITHM

The present paper focuses on size optimization of scallop domes subjected to static loading. As this type of space structures includes a large number of the structural elements, optimum design of such structures results in efficient structural configurations. In this paper, an efficient optimization algorithm is proposed by hybridizing particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm and cellular automata (CA) computational strategy, denoted as enhanced particle swarm optimization (EPSO) algorithm. In the EPSO, the particles are distributed on a small dimensioned grid and the artificial evolution is evolved by a new velocity updating equation. In the new equation, the difference between the design variable vector of each site and an average vector of its neighboring sites is added to the basic velocity updating equation. This new term decreases the probability of premature convergence and therefore increases the chance of finding the global optimum or near global optima. The optimization task is achieved by taking into account linear and nonlinear responses of the structure. In the optimization process considering nonlinear behaviour, the geometrical and material nonlinearity effects are included. The numerical results demonstrate that the optimization process considering nonlinear behaviour results in more efficient structures compared with the optimization process considering linear behaviour.