Comparative Study on Bionic Optimization Algorithms for Sewer Optimal Design

Sewer network as a necessary urban infrastructure plays an important role in people´s daily life. Conventional optimization techniques have significant limitations on solving the problems of sewer optimal design. Because as a high-dimensional discrete complex optimization problem, sewer optimal design is characterized by its discrete objective function and, as an integer discrete variable, its decision variable amount keeps the same pace with engineering scales. Over the last decade, various kinds of modern bionic optimization algorithms with their special advantages have been created and applied into sewer optimal design successfully. Based on previous studies, this paper analyses and compares the solution performances of genetic algorithms (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and ant colony algorithms (ACA) from the three aspects respectively, they are convergence, speed and complexity of algorithm. The research result shows that compared with the other two algorithms, the ACA manifests its superiority for better convergence, satisfactory speed and relatively small algorithm complexity, which are very suitable for solving the problems of sewer optimal design.