Co-evolutionary design of discrete structures based on the ant colony optimization

In order to optimize the sizing and topology of discrete structures together and resist the combinatorial explosion of the solution space, a co-evolutionary design (CED) method based on ant colony optimization (ACO) for discrete structures is proposed. The tailored ant colony optimization for the sizing of structures (TACO-SS) and the tailored ant colony optimization for the topology of structures (TACO-TS) are implemented respectively. Theoretical analysis shows that the computation complexity of each sub-process in CED based on ACO above is polynomial and it guarantees the efficiency of this method. After the parameter settings in TACO-SS and TACO-TS are discussed, the convergence history of a sub-process is studied through an instance in detail. Finally, according to the design examples of the 10-bar and 15-bar trusses under different cases, the effectiveness of the CED based on ACO is validated and the effects of the loads and the deflection constraints on the co-evolutionary design are discussed.