Advances in Metaheuristics : Applications in Engineering Systems

The potential application areas for polymer composites are vast. While techniques and methodologies for composites design are relatively well established, the knowledge and understanding of post-design issues lag far behind. This leads to designs and eventually composites with disappointing properties and unnecessarily high cost, thus impeding a wider industrial acceptance of polymer composites.

Manufacturing of Polymer Composites completely covers pre- and post-design issues. While the book enables students to become fully comfortable with composites as a possible materials choice, it also provides sufficient knowledge about manufacturing-related issues to permit them to avoid common pitfalls and unmanufacturable designs. The book is a fully comprehensive text covering all commercially significant materials and manufacturing techniques while at the same time discussing areas of research and development that are nearing commercial reality.

Advances in Metaheuristics: Applications in Engineering Systems provides details on current approaches utilized in engineering optimization. It gives a comprehensive background on metaheuristic applications, focusing on main engineering sectors such as energy, process, and materials. It discusses topics such as algorithmic enhancements and performance measurement approaches, and provides insights into the implementation of metaheuristic strategies to multi-objective optimization problems. With this book, readers can learn to solve real-world engineering optimization problems effectively using the appropriate techniques from emerging fields including evolutionary and swarm intelligence, mathematical programming, and multi-objective optimization.The ten chapters of this book are divided into three parts. The first part discusses three industrial applications in the energy sector. The second focusses on process optimization and considers three engineering applications: optimization of a three-phase separator, process plant, and a pre-treatment process. The third and final part of this book covers industrial applications in material engineering, with a particular focus on sand mould-systems. It also includes discussions on the potential improvement of algorithmic characteristics via strategic algorithmic enhancements.This book helps fill the existing gap in literature on the implementation of metaheuristics in engineering applications and real-world engineering systems. It will be an important resource for engineers and decision-makers selecting and implementing metaheuristics to solve specific engineering problems.