Abstract—Modern managements of water distribution system (WDS) need water quality models that are able to accurately predict the dynamics of water quality variations within the distribution system environment. Before water quality models can be applied to solve system problems, they should be calibrated. Although former researchers use GA solver to calibrate relative parameters, it is difficult to apply on the large-scale or medium-scale real system for long computational time. In this paper a new method is designed which combines both macro and detailed model to optimize the water quality parameters. This new combinational algorithm uses radial basis function (RBF) metamodeling as a surrogate to be optimized for the purpose of decreasing the times of time-consuming water quality simulation and can realize rapidly the calibration of pipe wall reaction coefficients of chlorine model of large-scaled WDS. After two cases study this method is testified to be more efficient and promising, and deserve to generalize in the future. Keywords—Metamodeling, model calibration, radial basis function, water distribution system, water quality model. I.

Kriging is a useful method for developing metamodels for product design optimization. The most popular kriging method, known as ordinary kriging, uses a constant mean in the model. In this article, a modified kriging method is proposed, which has an unknown mean model. Therefore it is called blind kriging. The unknown mean model is identified from experimental data using a Bayesian variable selection technique. Many examples are presented which show remarkable improvement in prediction using blind kriging over ordinary kriging. Moreover, blind kriging predictor is easier to interpret and seems to be more robust to misspecification in the correlation parameters.

A simulation model is successful if it leads to policy action, i.e., if it is implemented. Studies show that for a model to be implemented, it must have good correspondence with the mental model of the system held by the user of the model. The user must feel confident that the simulation model corresponds to this mental model. An understanding of how the model works is required. Simulation models for implementation must be developed step by step, starting with a simple model, the simulation prototype. After this has been explained to the user, a more detailed model can be developed on the basis of feedback from the user. Software for simulation prototyping is discussed, e.g., with regard to the ease with which models and output can be explained and the speed with which small models can be written.

Genetic algorithms (GAs) used in complex optimization domains usually need to perform a large number of fitness function evaluations in order to get near-optimal solutions. In real world application domains such as the engineering design problems, such evaluations might be extremely expensive computationally. It is therefore common to estimate or approximate the fitness using certain methods. A popular method is to construct a so called surrogate or meta-model to approximate the original fitness function, which can simulate the behavior of the original fitness function but can be evaluated much faster. It is usually difficult to determine which approximate model should be used and/or what the frequency of usage should be. The answer also varies depending on the individual problem. To solve this problem, an adaptive fitness approximation GA (ASAGA) is presented. ASAGA adaptively chooses the appropriate model type; adaptively adjusts the model complexity and the frequency of model usage according to time spent and model accuracy. ASAGA also introduces a stochastic penalty function method to handle constraints. Experiments show that ASAGA outperforms non-adaptive surrogate-assisted GAs with statistical significance.

Design optimization applied in structural dynamics

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population-based, heuristic minimization technique that is based on social behavior. The method has been shown to perform well on a variety of problems including those with nonconvex, nonsmooth objective functions with multiple local minima. However, the method can be computationally expensive in that a large number of function calls is required to advance the swarm at each optimization iteration. This is a significant drawback when function evaluations depend on output from an off-the-shelf simulation program, which is often the case in engineering applications. To this end, we propose an algorithm which incorporates surrogate functions, which serve as a stand-in for the expensive objective function, within the PSO framework. We present numerical results to show that this hybrid approach can improve algorithmic efficiency. 1

In engineering design, an optimized solution often turns out to be suboptimal, when errors are encountered. While the theory of robust convex optimization has taken significant strides over the past decade, all approaches fail if the underlying cost function is not explicitly given; it is even worse if the cost function is nonconvex. In this work, we present a robust optimization method, which is suited for unconstrained problems with a nonconvex cost function as well as for problems based on simulations such as large PDE solvers, response surface, and kriging metamodels. Moreover, this technique can be employed for most real-world problems, because it operates directly on the response surface and does not assume any specific structure of the problem. We present this algorithm along with the application to an actual engineering problem in electromagnetic multiple-scattering of aperiodically arranged dielectrics, relevant to nano-photonic design. The corresponding objective function is highly nonconvex and resides in a 100-dimensional design space. Starting from an “optimized ” design, we report a robust solution with a significantly lower worst case cost, while maintaining optimality. We further generalize this algorithm to address a nonconvex optimization problem under both implementation errors and parameter uncertainties.

A common practice in modern engineering is that of simulation-driven optimization. This implies replacing costly and lengthy laboratory experiments with computer experiments, i.e. computationally-intensive simulations which model real world physics with high fidelity. Due to the complexity of such simulations a single simulation run can require up to

Abstract. Due to the scale and computational complexity of current simulation codes, metamodels (or surrogate models) have become indispensable tools for exploring and understanding the design space. Consequently, there is great interest in techniques that facilitate the construction and evaluation of such approximation models while minimizing the computational cost and maximizing metamodel accuracy. This paper presents an adaptive, integrated approach to global metamodeling based on the Multivariate Metamodeling Toolbox. An adaptive, evolutionary inspired, modeling algorithm based on neural networks is presented and its performance compared with rational metamodeling on a number of test problems. 1

With increase in demand for efficient cooling technologies in electronic systems, use of microchannels with liquid metals as cooling medium has gained significant attention. To analyze the effect of various geometrical parameters on microchannel performance with such coolant, Taguchi Orthogonal Arrays are used in this study. To replicate the results for simulation, external noise is introduced in two parameters, channel width and depth. In addition, channel wall and base thickness along with type of material affecting the performance is also analyzed. Results show that channel width, height and substrate thickness at the base are the prime factors of concern. In addition, interactive effect of wall and base thickness is also found to affect the performance significantly and their low values for optimum performance is recommended.