IUTAM Symposium on Evolutionary Methods in Mechanics

This book contains papers presented at the IUTAM Symposium on Evolutionary Methods in Mechanics held in Cracow, Poland, September 24-27, 2002. Recently, Evolutionary algorithms and methods have become the most effective tools for solving specific kinds of problems in mechanics, especially in structural and multidisciplinary optimization. The book is devoted to both theoretical and practical developments of computational mechanics methods drawing their inspiration from nature with particular emphasis on evolutionary models of computation such as genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategies, classifier systems, evolutionary programming and other evolutionary computation techniques in mechanics. The Special emphasis is put on evolutionary optimization in various fields of mechanics. The subject of evolutionary optimization has recently experienced a remarkable growth. New concepts, approaches and applications are being continually and exploited to provide efficient tools for solving a variety of optimization problems in mechanics. Several important topics are presented: evolutionary methods in shape and topology optimization, evolutionary methods in size and material optimization, evolutionary methods in multiobjective optimization, in inverse problems of engineering mechanics, in biomechanics, coupling of evolutionary methods and neural networks in mechanics, methods of artificial intelligence in mechanics based on evolutionary approaches and other unconventional applications in mechanics. Research workers, specialists and professionals who deal with methods of artificial intelligence, especially in the field of evolutionary computation, structural and multidisciplinary optimization would be interested in this book.