OPTIMISATIONPRIME

A team of four Masters students from the University of Strathclyde's department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who have created a free MATLAB-based, online optimisation service.

Our applications make use of evolutionary algorithms developed at the University of Strathclyde in order to optimise criteria given by the user according to specified boundaries and constraints.

With an emphasis on collaboration, our talented team of engineers has worked hard to deliver an innovative, high-quality solution to online optimisation, made easy with intuitive MATLAB user interfaces and quick guides.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Over the course of 12 weeks, three different MATLAB based applications were designed, allowing any user to input data and, through the click of a button, have meaningful optimised data outputs readily available. Each application has been designed through MATLAB App Designer and restructured through numerous iterations to reach their current form.

Each application makes use of MPAIDEA (Multi Population Adaptive Inflationary Differential Evolution Algorithm) and MACS ( Multi Agent Collaborative Search ) algorithms for single and multi-objective problems respectively. Defining initial populations in the User Interfaces and deciding a maximum iteration limit creates a platform for computational evolutionary algorithm optimisation to take place.

Through the consistent help of our supervisor Dr Annalisa Riccardi, this project has produced successful applications that both demonstrate the capability of evolutionary optimisation algorithms for any definable problem, and give helpful optimisation outputs for the STEM community.

Our three applications are capable of optimising the following:

Minimisation of time and/or wet fuel usage in a spacecraft,
Minimisation of mass, cost and/or deflection in a structural cantilever beam, in addition to material
Any defined objective function input, in our Open Input Solver

Please click the links below to learn more about the individual solvers, and to download the application package.