Advances in Particle Swarm Optimization and Informed Metamodeling for Designing Complex Systems
MIE Department Seminar
September 15, 2015
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Advances in Particle Swarm Optimization and Informed Metamodeling for Designing Complex Systems
Souma Chowdhury, PhD.
Aerospace Engineering, Mississippi State University
Abstract: The behavioral complexity of new-age engineering systems, such as renewable energy systems and unmanned aircraft systems, present tremendous challenges to their conception, analysis, and design. With this perspective, this talk will focus on: (1) new advances in the areas of swarm optimization, metamodeling, and multifidelity design, and (2) how these methods offer unique solutions to the challenges in designing utility-scale wind farms and families of multi-mission UAVs. Specifically, a mixed-discrete Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm was developed, where particles are instilled with a new intelligence that allows them to preserve their spatial diversity within the population, while ensuring that the speed of search for optimum is not compromised. This algorithm has been used to provide powerful solutions to highly multimodal, high-dimensional, and multi-objective optimization problems such as designing product families and designing the layout of multiple non-identical wind turbines with the objective to minimize wake energy losses and land footprint. In the area of surrogate modeling, novel error estimation techniques have been formulated to quantify the model uncertainty at orders of magnitude greater accuracy than typical cross-validation-based error measures (as estimated by benchmark tests). This model error quantification technique has been used to investigate a first-of-its-kind 3-level model selection framework and variable-fidelity optimization methods. These methods are creating new opportunities in designing large-scale wind farms and innovative unmanned aerial systems, both of which are typical complex systems that are often subject to high uncertainties.
Bio: Souma Chowdhury is currently an Assistant Research Professor in Aerospace Engineering and a Faculty of Computational Engineering at Mississippi State University, and will be starting as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at University at Buffalo in Spring 2016. He specializes in Multidisciplinary Optimization and Complex System Design. His fundamental areas of research focus on the following topics: heuristic optimization algorithms, metamodeling, multi- fidelity modeling and optimization, and uncertainty analysis; with primary applications in wind energy, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), product platform planning, and building energy-efficiency. He graduated with his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2012. He has authored 2 book chapters, 24 international journal articles, and over 50 full-length conference publications. He is a professional member of ASME and a Senior Member of AIAA, and a selected member of the AIAA Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Technical Committee. He has served on multiple NSF Review Panels for proposals related to energy sustainability, and serves as a reviewer for 14 international journals in the areas of design, computing, and energy. He is also involved in organizing and chairing technical sessions on emerging topics in the ASME IDETC, ASME PEC, AIAA Aviation, ISSMO WCSMO, and OPTI conferences.
Date posted
Oct 14, 2021
Date updated
Oct 14, 2021