A competitive comparison of different types
of evolutionary algorithms
Hrstka, O., Kucerova, A., Leps, M., and Zeman, J.
Department of Structural Mechanics
Faculty of Civil Engineering
Czech Technical University in Prague
Thákurova 7, 166 29 Prague, Czech Republic
Abstract:
This paper presents comparison of several stochastic optimization algorithms
developed by authors in their previous works for the solution of some
problems arising in civil engineering. The introduced optimization methods
are: the integer augmented simulated annealing (IASA), the real-coded
augmented simulated annealing (RASA), the differential evolution (DE) in its
original fashion developed by Storn and Price and simplified real-coded
differential genetic algorithm (simplified atavistic differential evolution,
SADE). Each of these methods was developed for some specific optimization
problem; namely the Chebychev trial polynomial problem, the so called type-0
function and two engineering problems: the reinforced concrete beam layout
and the periodic unit cell problem, respectively. Detailed and extensive
numerical tests were performed to examine the stability and efficiency of
proposed algorithms. The results of our experiments suggest that the
performance and robustness of RASA, IASA and SADE methods are comparable,
while the DE algorithm performs slightly worse. This fact together with a
small number of internal parameters promotes the SADE method as the most
robust for practical use.