Optimal Design of Concrete Gravity Dam using Honeybee Mating Optimization (HBMO)

Optimization of dam and massive structures is a popular topic in civil engineering due to the complexity of the problem and benefits to industry. Current structural optimization software packages often lack the ability to find original optimal designs because of their deterministic nature, while those employing stochastic methods are not tailored specifically for dam and massive concrete structures. This paper presents a methodology to arrive at optimal design of concrete gravity dam using Honeybee mating optimization (HBMO) algorithm that is a general search technique for the solution of difficult combinatorial problems with its theoretical roots based on the marriage behavior in honeybees. The results clearly indicate that HBMO yields the best solutions for all benchmarks due to its capability to explore and exploit the solution space effectively.