Proposal of Optimization Method Using Common Parts Information and Virtual Parent in Simultaneous Design Optimization Problem of Multiple Car Structures

Abstract

This paper proposes an effective algorithm for the recently proposed simultaneous design optimization problem of multiple car structures. In recent years, evolutionary algorithms typified by genetic algorithms have been extensively studied to solve single- and multi-objective real-world optimization problems. Mazda Motor Corporation developed the simultaneous design optimization benchmark problem that is based on a real car structures design and consists of many design variables and severe constraints. In this benchmark, three models of cars are simultaneously optimized and it is difficult to acquire optimal solutions with the limited number of evaluations with existing methods. This paper aims at proposing an algorithm based on NSGA-II, one of the most typical multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, and introduces several modifications considering the characteristics of the Mazda's benchmark problem. Specifically, we propose a method to effectively generate parent individuals using the characteristic that design variables of three cars are independent and genetic manipulation taking into consideration the characteristics of the objective function. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conduct experiments using the Mazda's benchmark problem. In the experiment, we compare NSGA-II with the proposed modifications with the original NSGA-II. The experimental result reveals that the proposed method can acquire extremely better solution set compared with the existing method.