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SIMULATED ANNEALING AND ADAPTIVE DYNAMIC VARIABLE BAND MUTATION FOR STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION BY GENETIC ALGORITHMS

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Genetic Algorithm is known as a general tool for optimization .in the field of discrete variables such as the case of structural problems. For such a search to be efficient and practical, the genetic parameters should be selected of proper type and should be fine tuned. For this purpose, a direct index coding is utilized in this paper and the corresponding mutation operator is improved in two ways. First, it is modified incorporating simulated annealing concepts to form a generation based genetic algorithm. A dynamic vanable band mutation IS also developed as the second attempt in order to properly adopt mutation operator WIth the treated problem during optimization. A number of structural examples are treated by the proposed method to investigate its effect on efficiency and convergence rate of the genetic search.

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