Expert-guided evolutionary algorithm for layout design of complex space stations

ABSTRACT

The layout of a space station should be designed in such a way that different equipment and instruments are placed for the station as a whole to achieve the best overall performance. The station layout design is a typical nondeterministic polynomial problem. In particular, how to manage the design complexity to achieve an acceptable solution within a reasonable timeframe poses a great challenge. In this article, a new evolutionary algorithm has been proposed to meet such a challenge. It is called as the expert-guided evolutionary algorithm with a tree-like structure decomposition (EGEA-TSD). Two innovations in EGEA-TSD are (i) to deal with the design complexity, the entire design space is divided into subspaces with a tree-like structure; it reduces the computation and facilitates experts’ involvement in the solving process. (ii) A human–intervention interface is developed to allow experts’ involvement in avoiding local optimums and accelerating convergence. To validate the proposed algorithm, the layout design of one-space station is formulated as a multi-disciplinary design problem, the developed algorithm is programmed and executed, and the result is compared with those from other two algorithms; it has illustrated the superior performance of the proposed EGEA-TSD.

KEYWORDS:

• Industrial informatics
• multidisciplinary design optimisation
• expert-guided evolutionary algorithms (EGEA)
• space station design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been partially supported by the 1000 Talents Plan awarded to the corresponding author affiliated with East China University of Science and Technology and Shanghai Science and Technology Foundation through an international cooperation grant program [grant number 12410709900].