Optimum design of aircraft panels based on adaptive dynamic harmony search

Aiming at the optimization of aircraft panels, a modified version of harmony search (HS) algorithm is proposed based on the information of the harmony memory (a memory location where all the solution vectors are stored) for improvisation procedure, named as adaptive dynamic harmony search (ADHS) algorithm. In order to reduce the amount of calculation, response surface method is employed, and second-order polynomial with cross terms is used to construct the model. To demonstrate the advantage of the proposed algorithm, typical aircraft panels under buckling constraint are established, and several existing HS algorithms are compared. The effects of the number of improvisation (NI) and harmony memory size (HMS) are investigated and discussed in detail. Results indicate that the proposed ADHS can provide an optimum design in a robust manner, and local optimum solutions may be reduced based on the ADHS for optimization problems with multiple local minima. Finally, several useful information is obtained for the design of stiffened panels with cutouts.