• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.236-247
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• 1992

Optimization has been developed to minimize the cost function while satisfying constraints. Nonlinear Programming method is used as a tool for the optimization. Usually, cost and constraint function calculations are required in the engineering applications, but those calculations are extremely expensive. Especially, the function and sensitivity analyses cause a bottleneck in structural optimization which utilizes the Finite Element Method. Also, when the functions are quite noisy, the informations do not carry out proper role in the optimization process. An algorithm called "Second-order Approximation Method" has been proposed to overcome the difficulties recently. The cost and constraint functions are approximated by the second-order Taylor series expansion on a nominal points in the algorithm. An optimal design problem is defined with the approximated functions and the approximated problem is solved by a nonlinear programming numerical algorithm. The solution is included in a candidate point set which is evaluated for a new nominal point. Since the functions are approximated only by the function values, sensitivity informations are not needed. One-dimensional line search is unnecessary due to the fact that the nonlinear algorithm handles the approximated functions. In this research, the method is analyzed and the performance is evaluated. Several mathematical problems are created and some standard engineering problems are selected for the evaluation. Through numerical results, applicabilities of the algorithm to large scale and complex problems are presented.presented.