Elite Particles Method in Discrete Metaheuristic Optimization of Structures

One of the main concerns in optimization methods is reduction the number of function evaluation which is mentioned in many studies like (Gholizadeh et al, 2018).The present study focuses on a method and series of actions designed to achieve the answer with the aim of minimization the total number of analysis; and so the time; needed for global and local search. Although the suggested elite particles method (EPM) can be used for any population based optimization method, but here it is applied to one of the fundamental and widely developed metaheuristic algorithms; namely particle swarm optimization (Eberhart et al, 1995) to handle the truss structures optimization with discrete design variables. As the original version of the assumed method suffers from the slow convergence rate; specially when dealing with the discrete optimization problems; the elite particles modification algorithm; which can be used in almost all population based metaheuristic optimization methods; will be implemented for that method. Here the elite particles method is attached with the particle swarm optimization method and the gained metaheuristic algorithm is named modified particle swarm optimization (MPSO). MPSO utilizes two computational strategies named ‘Regeneration’ and ‘Mutation’.