G.I.N. Rozvany ASI Director, Professor of Structural Design, FB 10, Essen University, Essen, Germany Structural optimization deals with the optimal design of all systems that consist, at least partially, of solids and are subject to stresses and deformations. This inte grated discipline plays an increasingly important role in all branches of technology, including aerospace, structural, mechanical, civil and chemical engineering as well as energy generation and building technology. In fact, the design of most man made objects, ranging from space-ships and long-span bridges to tennis rackets and artificial organs, can be improved considerably if human intuition is enhanced by means of computer-aided, systematic decisions. In analysing highly complex structural systems in practice, discretization is un avoidable because closed-form analytical solutions are only available for relatively simple, idealized problems. To keep discretization errors to a minimum, it is de sirable to use a relatively large number of elements. Modern computer technology enables us to analyse systems with many thousand degrees of freedom. In the optimization of structural systems, however, most currently available methods are restricted to at most a few hundred variables or a few hundred active constraints.

This is the second of two volumes which examine structural optimization of large structural systems. Topics covered in these volumes include optimality criteria and topology optimization, decomposition methods and approximation concepts, neural networks and parallel processing.

Computational optimization methods have matured over the last few years due to extensive research by applied mathematicians and engineers. These methods have been applied to many practical applications. Several general-purpose optimization programs and programs for specific engineering applications have become available to solve particular optimization problems.Written by leading researchers in the field of optimization, this highly readable book covers state-of-the-art computational algorithms as well as applications of optimization to structural and mechanical systems. Formulations of the problems and numerical solutions are presented, and topics requiring further research are also suggested.

In its thousands of years of history, mathematics has made an extraordinary ca reer. It started from rules for bookkeeping and computation of areas to become the language of science. Its potential for decision support was fully recognized in the twentieth century only, vitally aided by the evolution of computing and communi cation technology. Mathematical optimization, in particular, has developed into a powerful machinery to help planners. Whether costs are to be reduced, profits to be maximized, or scarce resources to be used wisely, optimization methods are available to guide decision making. Opti mization is particularly strong if precise models of real phenomena and data of high quality are at hand - often yielding reliable automated control and decision proce dures. But what, if the models are soft and not all data are around? Can mathematics help as well? This book addresses such issues, e. g. , problems of the following type: - An elevator cannot know all transportation requests in advance. In which order should it serve the passengers? - Wing profiles of aircrafts influence the fuel consumption. Is it possible to con tinuously adapt the shape of a wing during the flight under rapidly changing conditions? - Robots are designed to accomplish specific tasks as efficiently as possible. But what if a robot navigates in an unknown environment? - Energy demand changes quickly and is not easily predictable over time. Some types of power plants can only react slowly.

This proceedings volume contains papers presented at the Third Scientific Meeting of the IFIP Working Group on "Reliabilty and Optimization of Structural Systems". The contributions reflect recent developments in the field of modern structural systems optimization and reliability theory and point out directions for further research. Also perspectives for the education in this field were discussed.

The 6th meeting sponsored by IFIP Working Group 7.5, on reliability and optimization of structural systems, took place in September 1994 in Assisi, Italy. This book contains the papers presented at the working conference including topics such as reliability of special structures, fatigue, failure modes and time-variant systems relibility.