Research On The Theory And Methods Of Layout Design And Their Applications

This dissertation studies the relevant theory and design methods based on computational intelligence & human-computer interaction and their applications to layout design of engineering systems. The engineering backgrounds of this dissertation are layout design of the national spacecraft modules that our institute undertakes and the cooperative development work of crawler crane QUY150 with Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Inc. The difficulties of solving complex engineering layout problems lie in computational complexity (Combinatorial explosion will occur.) and the complexity of engineering practice. This subject belongs to three-dimensional layout problems with behavioral constraints theoretically and concerns the knowledge of spacecraft design, mechanical engineering, computer science, mathematics, mechanics and system engineering. So it can be ascribed as the frontier fundamental and applied research of cross-discipline subject with NP complexity theoretically. In term of engineering practice, this subject has extensive applications, such as layout design of spacecraft module, engineering machinery, submarine and shipping, tank, under-water suspension engineering, platform of marine drilling well, bullet train, multiple spindle box of machine tool, robot. Their degenerate problems are the layout problems without behavioral constraint such as the nesting of steel sheet. Although it is concerned for a long time and of great importance and urgency in terms of theory and practice, this subject is far from being solved satisfactorily.As a rule, there are both the quantitative and the qualitative performance indexes and constraints in layout design problems of complex engineering systems. At present, the main methods for solving this kind of problems are as follows: (a) Mathematical optimization model and solving it by computer algorithms + Symbolic model and solving it by artificial intelligence. (6) Mathematical optimization model and solving it by computer algorithms + Human-computer cooperation or human-computer interaction. But it is rather difficult to put the former method into practice for complex engineering systems. The reason lies in that it is not easy to create knowledge base, inference engine and self-learning rule by AI methods under the circumstances. It is more difficult for the high-technology complex systems (e.g. spacecrafts), because the relevant data and documents are confidently and they can't be exchanged outside the research and development circle. Furthermore, the relevant theory and methods are hard to be put into engineering practice without the fellowship of human. As above stated, according to the state of our nation, this dissertation adopts the latter method and mainly carries out the following research works.1. By survey of the various types of layout problems (especially complex layout problems), as well as the present status and trend of their solution methods, it makes clear that the method is feasible and effective for solving layout design problems of complex engineering systems, which adopts computational intelligence algorithms together with human-computer cooperation.2. To overcome the two main defects, i.e. premature convergence and slow convergence rate, of the traditional parallel genetic algorithm (PGA), a parallel hybrid ant immune algorithm (PHAIA) is proposed in this dissertation. PHAIA makes some improvements on PGA asfollows. (a) Chaos initialization is adopted and subpopulations are classified as several types according to the values of crossover and mutation probability. (b) The model of gene combination operator, called ant combination, based on ant colony optimization (ACO) is established and it introduces ACO into PGA in the layer of genes. Hybridized with Powell method and added with ant combination operator can improve local searching performance of the algorithm considerably, (c) Introducing immunity theory into parallel genetic algorithm has double functions. One is that immune selector proposed in this dissertation can prevent algorithm...