A GAOC Method for Topology Optimization Design

This paper presents a new topology optimization method using hybrid genetic algorithm, namely GAOC, using the evolutionary mechanism of the genetic algorithm (GA) and the interpolation scheme of optimality criteria method (OC). In GAOC, the optimality criteria method is used to initialize the genetic population, and GA is then applied to the global search in the fixed design domain. In so doing the GAOC method can fully take advantage of the optimality criteria method and the genetic algorithm. The effectiveness of the GAOC method is demonstrated by the widely studied structural minimum weight design. Numerical examples show that the proposed optimization method GAOC can solve general topology optimization problems more effectively and can achieve better results with lower computational cost.