Structural optimization by genetic algorithms with tournament selection

A new approach to optimization design concerning the configurations of structures using genetic algorithm (GA) with a tournament selection strategy has been proposed. The tournament selection strategy is used as a replacement for the commonly used fitness-proportional selection strategy to drive the GA so as to improve the fitness of each succeeding generation more efficiently. Numerical results for three examples reveal that a significant reduction of computation cost has been achieved in the newly proposed GA with tournament selection, as compared to the widely used GA with fitness-proportional selection and other hybrid GA approaches. Also, it has verified that the tournament selection performs well over the fitness-proportional selection and other hybrid techniques in enhancing GA search efficiency.