Stress-based binary differential evolution for topology optimization of structures
Differential evolution (DE) is a heuristic optimization method used to solve many optimization problems in real-value search space. It has the advantage of incorporating a relatively simple and efficient form of mutation and crossover. However, the operator of DE is based on floating-point representation only, and is difficult to use in solving combinatorial optimization problems. In this article, a modified binary DE is developed using binary bit-string frameworks with a logical operation binary mutation mechanism. Further, a new stress-based binary mutation mechanism is also proposed to drive the binary DE search towards the optimal topology of the structure with higher performance and fewer objective function evaluations. The numerical results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm using stress-based binary mutation has high capability and efficiency in topology optimization of the structure.