Analysis and benchmarking of meta-heuristic techniques for lay-up optimization

The analysis and benchmarking of three meta-heuristic algorithms to determine laminate stacking sequences is presented. The benchmarking is undertaken for a simply supported composite laminate subject to strength and buckling constraints. A genetic algorithm, ant colony and particle swarm optimization are considered. It is shown that for inherently discrete sets of ply orientations, ant colony optimization outperforms the other algorithms. For continuous problems, a particle swarm may be the most appropriate. It is further shown that selection of an appropriate algorithm may be indeed problem dependent.