An evolutionary algorithm for generating planar developments of arbitrarily curved surfaces

In this paper, a new method based on constrained global optimization is proposed for generating planar developments of arbitrarily three-dimensional surfaces. With this method an initial planar development is derived which is refined in order to satisfy certain criteria. This refinement is formulated as a global minimization problem under constraints. Generally, the constraints are used to control the local accuracy in the derived planar development. The overall minimization problem is resolved using a real-coded genetic algorithms (GA), which is developed for resolving multi-dimensional minimization problems. Indicative applications are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.