Integration of Computational Intelligence Applications in Engineering Design

Several techniques have been proposed recently as a result of the intensive research done in the field of computational intelligence. These techniques seem to act beneficially in a variety of scientific domains by performing better than the conventional methodologies. The current paper focuses on the domain of engineering design, whose demanding nature motivates the research for domain-independent and efficient tools and methodologies. In this context, the application of computational intelligence techniques in engineering design is reviewed and the enhancement of basic design processes such as knowledge representation, optimal solution search and design knowledge re-utilization by soft-computing techniques is described. The purpose of the paper is to present ways that Fuzzy Logic (FL), Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) can be beneficially used in engineering design as stand-alone tools or within a stepwise generic methodological approach for parametric engineering design is described, which is compliant with the existing design theory and practice. E