The Plymouth Engineering Design Centre: evolutionary engineering design

The paper provides an overview of the evolutionary and adaptive computing research at the Plymouth Engineering Design Centre (PEDC) relating to the development and subsequent integration of such techniques with conceptual, embodiment and detailed design. Adaptive computing strategies relating to generic problem areas from the various stages of the design process are introduced and described. These include strategies for design space decomposition; adaptive search across fixed and variable length design hierarchies; the minimisation of computational expense associated with population-based search during detailed design; quantitative and qualitative multi-objective satisfaction; constraint satisfaction/constrained optimisation and co-evolutionary, multi-disciplinary design.