Optimum Cost Design of Reinforced Concrete Retaining Walls Using Hybrid Firefly Algorithm

Abstract

This paper develops a novel optimization method namely hybrid firefly algorithm with harmony search technique (IFA-HS), to obtain the optimal cost of the reinforced concrete retaining walls satisfying the stability criteria. The hybrid IFA-HS is utilized to find the economical design adhering to provisions of ACI 318-05. Also Coulomb lateral earth pressure theory is used to derive the lateral total thrust on the wall. Some design examples are tested using the new method. The results carried out on these examples confirm the validity of the proposed algorithm. The IFA-HS method can be considered as an improvement of the recently developed firefly algorithm. The improvements include the utilizing of a memory that contains some information extracted online during the search, adding of pitch adjustment operation in harmony search serving as mutation operator during the process of the firefly updating, and modifying the movement phase of firefly algorithm. The detailed implementation procedure for this improved meta-heuristic method is also described.