OPTIMAL DESIGN OF DOUBLE LAYER BARREL VAULTS USING AN IMPROVED HYBRID BIG BANG-BIG CRUNCH METHOD

In this paper, optimal design of barrel vaults is performed using the Improved Big Bang-Big Crunch (IBB-BC) method. This method can be used for problems with continuous and discrete variables. Here, double layer braced barrel vaults are optimized considering weight of the structure as the objective function, where the necessary constraints are satisfied. The cross sectional areas are considered as continuous variables. The algorithm is based on the Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) and Harmony Search (HS). The BB-BC applies for global optimization and the HS deals with variable constraints. After a number of sequential Big Bangs and Big Crunches, where the distribution of randomness within the search space during the Big Bang becomes smaller and smaller about the average point computed during the Big Crunch, the algorithm converges to a solution. In the proposed method, similar to HPSO, HS is used for controlling the variable constraints.