The Buttressed Walls Problem: An Application of a Hybrid Clustering Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

José García, José V. Martí and Víctor Yepes
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José García: Escuela de Ingeniería en Construcción, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Valparaíso 2362807, Chile
José V. Martí: Institute of Concrete Science and Technology (ICITECH), Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 València, Spain
Víctor Yepes: Institute of Concrete Science and Technology (ICITECH), Universitat Politècnica de València, 46022 València, Spain

Mathematics, 2020, vol. 8, issue 6, 1-22

Abstract: The design of reinforced earth retaining walls is a combinatorial optimization problem of interest due to practical applications regarding the cost savings involved in the design and the optimization in the amount of CO 2 emissions generated in its construction. On the other hand, this problem presents important challenges in computational complexity since it involves 32 design variables; therefore we have in the order of 10 20 possible combinations. In this article, we propose a hybrid algorithm in which the particle swarm optimization method is integrated that solves optimization problems in continuous spaces with the db-scan clustering technique, with the aim of addressing the combinatorial problem of the design of reinforced earth retaining walls. This algorithm optimizes two objective functions: the carbon emissions embedded and the economic cost of reinforced concrete walls. To assess the contribution of the db-scan operator in the optimization process, a random operator was designed. The best solutions, the averages, and the interquartile ranges of the obtained distributions are compared. The db-scan algorithm was then compared with a hybrid version that uses k-means as the discretization method and with a discrete implementation of the harmony search algorithm. The results indicate that the db-scan operator significantly improves the quality of the solutions and that the proposed metaheuristic shows competitive results with respect to the harmony search algorithm.

Keywords: CO 2 emission; earth-retaining walls; optimization; db-scan; particle swarm optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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