Hossein Sadri - MSc. student of Civil Engineering, Dept. of Civil Eng., School of Engineering, Shiraz University
Seied Hosein Afzali - Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering, Dept. of Civil Eng., School of Engineering, Shiraz University

Optimization of the weight of the structures is a popular topic in civil Engineering due to the economic benefits. In this paper, a methodology is arrived, for the first time, at optimal design of 2-D and 3-D trusses using Modified Honey Bee Mating Optimization (MHBMO) algorithm which is recently proposed for the combinational optimization problems. In this research the objective function is to minimize the weight of the 2-D and 3-D truss structures while satisfying the design requirements imposed by design codes. Using some truss examples with fixed geometry show the MHBMO algorithm with respect to the other optimization algorithms such as the simulated annealing and the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), etc. is a powerful search and optimization technique for structural design. The proposed technique finds optimal or near-optimal trusses, which are also found to have smaller than or closely near the weight of those that are reported in the literature while the violations of the constraints for all of them have been zero.

Honey bee mating, Minimum weight, Optimization algorithm, Truss structures design