A Minimum Cost Design Approach for Steel Frames Based on a Parallelized Firefly Algorithm and Parameter Control

Abstract

In this work, the applicability of a Firefly Algorithm (FA) to the real problem of the minimum cost of a detailed design for steel frames is studied. To reduce the calculation time, which is a common problem of meta-heuristic algorithms when they are used to solve real design cases, and to better suit the characteristics of the algorithm, a parallel migration strategy has been implemented and tested. As it is well known that the performance of any metaheuristic algorithm depends on the chosen value of its parameters, an extensive sensitivity analysis has been carried out. This not only serves to improve performance but also provides information on how it depends on the values of these parameters. With the information obtained from this analysis, and in order to achieve the robust behavior of the algorithm, a parameter control strategy has also been implemented and tested. Finally, a study demonstrating the close dependence between one of the parameters and the number of variables considered in the examples has been carried out. As a result of this final study, a simple expression is proposed that provides the minimum necessary population based on the number of variables in the problem.