A tabu search method for the optimisation of fluid power circuits

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Tabu search-based algorithm for optimizing fluid power circuits, demonstrating its effectiveness on mathematical tests and real hydraulic circuit design problems, outperforming simple steady state methods.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Tabu search algorithm tailored for fluid power circuit optimization, integrating memory cycles to escape local optima and improve solution quality.

Findings

Effective on mathematical test functions

Successful application to real hydraulic circuits

Outperforms simple steady state calculations

Abstract

This paper describes the development of an efficient algorithm for the optimization of fluid power circuits. The algorithm is based around the concepts of Tabu search, where different timescale memory cycles are used as a metaheuristic to guide a hill climbing search method out of local optima and locate the globally optimum solution. Results are presented which illustrate the effectiveness of the method on mathematical test functions. In addition to these test functions, some results are presented for real problems in hydraulic circuit design by linking the method to the Bathfp dynamic simulation software. In one such example the solutions obtained are compared to those found using simple steady state calculations.