BULLETIN of the

POLISH ACADEMY of SCIENCES

TECHNICAL SCIENCES

BULLETIN of the POLISH ACADEMY of SCIENCES: TECHNICAL SCIENCES
Volume 54, Issue 4, December 2006

Civil Engineering and Electronics

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pp 505 - 513

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Optimizing complex systems by intelligent evolution: the LEMd method and case study

R.S. MICHALSKI
Most methods of evolutionary computation follow a Darwinian-type model that proceeds through random mutations or recombinations of the genetic material1 and natural selection of individuals carried out according to the principle of the survival of the fittest. In such a model, the creation of new individuals is not guided by any reasoning process or “external mind”, but rather by random or semi-random changes. Recently, a new, non-Darwinian approach to evolutionary computation has been proposed, called Learnable Evolution Model (LEM), in which the evolutionary process is guided by computational intelligence. In LEM, a new way of creating individuals is proposed, namely, by hypothesis formation and instantiation. In numerous experiments, LEM has consistently and significantly outperformed compared conventional Darwinian-type algorithms in terms of the evolution length (the number of fitness evaluations) in solving complex function optimization problems. Based on the LEM ideas, we developed a method, called LEMd, which is tailored to problems of optimizing very complex engineering systems. This article provides a brief description of LEMd and its application to the development of a specialized system, ISHED, for the optimization of evaporator designs in cooling systems. According to experts in cooling systems, ISHED-developed designs have matched or outperformed the best human designs. These results and those from the experimental testing of learnable evolution on problems with hundreds of variables suggest that LEMd may be an attractive new tool for optimizing very complex engineering systems.
  
Key words: 

engineering design optimization, evolutionary computation, function optimization, learnable evolution model, machine learning, genetic algorithms


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