Managing approximate models in evolutionary aerodynamic design optimization

Approximate models have to be used in evolutionary optimization when the original fitness function is computationally very expensive. Unfortunately, the convergence property of the evolutionary algorithm is unclear when an approximate model is used for fitness evaluation because approximation errors are involved in the model. What is worse, the approximate model may introduce false optima that lead the evolutionary algorithm to a wrong solution. To address this problem, individual and generation based evolution control are introduced to ensure that the evolutionary algorithm using approximate fitness functions will converge correctly. A framework for managing approximate models in generation-based evolution control is proposed. This framework is well suited for parallel evolutionary optimization in which evaluation of the fitness function is time-consuming. Simulations on two benchmark problems and one example of aerodynamic design optimization demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to achieve a correct solution as well as a significantly reduced computation time.

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