Evolutionary approaches to solve three challenging engineering tasks (Q1574372)

The authors present three applications of evolutionary algorithms, namely the optimization of nuclear core reload design, the synthesis of multilayer optical coatings, and the synthesis of chemical engineering plants. The given examples demonstrate the applicability of the evolutionary approach to solve complex real-world problems, which often can be characterized as mixed-integer, variable-dimensional and multi-criteria optimization problems. Additionally, instead of using an objective function in closed form, the authors use complex simulation models as objective functions, thus prohibiting success for classical analysis. Whereas standard evolutionary algorithms are not able to solve the three complex tasks described above, the enhanced evolutionary algorithms (EAs) clearly demonstrate their potential to treat these problems. Finally, the authors show that the parallel EAs can improve the reliability and performance of evalutionary algorithms.