Truss sizing optimum design using a metaheuristic approach: Connected banking system.

Several methods have been used to solve structural optimum design problems since the creation of a need for light weight design of structures and there is still no single method for solving the optimum design problems in structural engineering field that is capable of providing efficient solutions to all of the structural optimum design problems. Therefore, there are several proposed and utilized methods to deal with optimum design issues and problems, that sometimes give promising results and sometimes the solutions are quite unacceptable. This issue with metaheuristic algorithms, which are suitable approaches to solve these set of problems, is quite usual and is supported by the "No Free Lunch theorem". Researchers try harder than the past to propose methods capable of presenting robust and optimal solutions in a wider range of structural optimum design problems, so that to find an algorithm that can cover a wider range of structural optimization problems and obtain a better optimum design. Truss structures are one of these problems which have extremely complex search spaces to conduct search procedures by metaheuristic algorithms. This paper proposes a method for optimum design of truss sizing problems. The presented method is used against 6 well-known benchmark truss structures (10 bar, 17 bar, 18 bar, 25 bar, 72 bar and 120 bar) and its results are compared with some of the available studies in the literature. The performance of the presented algorithm can be considered as very acceptable.