An investigation of the use of three selection-based genetic algorithm families when minimizing the production cost of hollow core slabs

Genetic algorithms (GAs) are search methods that have been successfully applied to a variety of tasks. This work investigates three families of GA’s variations namely MGA, Roulette and Tournament which have been proposed in order to find a solution to the problem of minimizing the production costs of hollow core slabs. In each family the elements differ from each other with respect to the reproduction scheme and the way the population is restored to its original size. Results are presented and analyzed to support a discussion about advantages and disadvantages of the proposed GAs variations in finding the solution to the problem. In addition, results obtained with a conventional optimization method are presented, for comparison.